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You are in: Home > Chest Information > Living With > Keeping Active

Keeping Active

• Benefits of keeping active
• Tips to help you with your breathing during activity
• (Modified) Borg scale of perceived breathlessness
• Build things up slowly!

Benefits of keeping active

If you have a chest illness, you may be afraid that physical activity will make you more breathless, or that being breathless may harm you. This isn't true!

By gradually building up the amount of activity you do, you can help to improve your breathing. You will also strengthen your arms, legs, trunk and heart. This will, in turn, make everyday activities less tiring and less demanding of your energy. This reverses the so–called 'cycle of inactivity' where the less you do the less you become able to do. Working the lungs through exercise can improve things like breathlessness and energy loss.

If you exercise regularly you can:

• Look and feel better
• Sleep better
• Reduce anxiety and depression
• Improve your appetite
• Be stronger and more flexible
• Improve your posture
• Reduce general aches and pains
• Decrease your cholesterol level
• Decrease high blood pressure

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Tips to help you with your breathing during activity

To improve your activity level you need to be able to stay in control of your breathing. Try the following tips and tricks for increasing your activity levels.

• Always stop an activity earlier than your maximum limit so that you have some reserve once you have stopped. When you stop an activity, your breathlessness always gets worse before it starts to recover. This is because when you stop moving, your muscles are not able to help pump the blood and oxygen round your body but there is still an 'oxygen debt' to be paid to the body.
• Do not allow yourself to become more than moderately breathless while you are doing something. You should be able to talk a little as you exercise; if you can't you need to slow down. The (modified) Borg scale (below) can help you do this.

• Exhale on effort / don't hold your breath. If you hold your breath during the most strenuous part of a movement, it can make you more breathless. Instead, breathe out as you get up from sitting, as you push and pull a vacuum, as you bend down to pick something up and also as you stand up again.

• Move to the rhythm of your breathing. Tune in to your breathing rate and time your steps as you walk, for example 'in for 2 steps and out for 6'.

Once you have a good understanding of these breathing control techniques you will have the confidence to be more active.

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(Modified) Borg scale of perceived breathlessness

This is a tool that can be used to help you assess how breathless you are feeling at any one time. It can be helpful in teaching yourself how to adjust your activity depending on how you are feeling.

A physiotherapist can go over this and explain how to use it. It involves imagining a line with 0 at one end and 10 at the other and judging where on that line you are with your breathlessness.

Rating	Description
0	No breathlessness at all
0.5	Very, very slight (just noticeable)
1	Very slight
2	Slight breathlessness
3	Moderate
4	Somewhat severe
5	Severe breathlessness
6
7	Very severe breathlessness
8
9	Very, very severe (almost maximum)
10	Maximum

Aim to be no more than moderately breathless (i.e. a Borg score of 3) in whatever you are doing. This will mean that you can be active but still in control of your breathing and you can recover comfortably when you stop.

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Build things up slowly!

What form of activity you do depends on your condition and symptoms. It is advisable to check with your GP before you start any new programme of activity.

• Start with gentle exercise, e.g. walking.
• Pace yourself and build up your activity level gradually.
• Try and do some form of physical activity every day.
• Take your time, practice breathing control and remember that you are in control.

Your doctor who may be able to refer you to a respiratory physiotherapist for individual help / advice or refer you for pulmonary rehabilitation.

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