Re: Breathing problems question????

I had these same problems, as well as the ones the OP posted about. I'm not positive what the daytime air hunger was about, though I know that it generally triggered bouts of hyperventilation, which led to numbness, tingling, and worse.

When it got to the stage you describe here, though, it got truly scary. I was down to about 2 hours per night of sleep, and that lasted a couple of weeks. It was a horrible, horrible experience, and I hope no one else ever has to go through it. What I finally determined to be causing it was twofold, and I'm not sure which was causing it, because I treated them both simultaneously.

The first issue is adrenal fatigue. I strongly suspect that pretty much all of us who are suffering from Mirena hell have this to one degree or another. and those of us who started having our Mirena issues after an illness or other major life stressors are probably the worst affected, as stress is a huge contributing factor in adrenal fatigue. I treated this with adrenal cortex extract, and eventually spent the extra money to get the supplements designed by Dr. James Wilson (google him). They're expensive as heck, but they are also very quickly reversing my downward spiral.

The other issue was low vitamin D. My doctor was the one who suggested testing for this, and she was right on the money. She doesn't believe I have Adrenal Fatigue (most MDs don't recognize anything short of complete adrenal failure), but was willing to prescribe some high-dose Vit. D to help me get my levels back up in a hurry. I am also taking 4000-5000IU daily of over-the-counter VitD supps on days when I don't take the prescription variety.

Honestly, while I do blame Mirena for aggravating these conditions (especially the adrenal fatigue) I am beginning to wonder how much of it was directly Mirena-related, and how much would have happened to me anyway (though perhaps more slowly, if I hadn't tangled with mirena), given the amount of stress I have been under this past year. Don't get me wrong, I'm still anti-Mirena (I just don't think it's a healthy thing to put in our bodies), but I also think that in my personal situation, mirena was just one piece of the puzzle, and I'm really glad I kept looking for causes. If I hadn't puzzled out the adrenal fatigue thing on my own...I'd probably be in ICU by now.

Also, I've started a blog, if anyone is interested in following the details of my journey back to health. It can be found at cureyourself.org, if you're interested (if posting that breaks any rules, feel free to delete it; I'm not trying for shameless self-promotion, just letting y'all know where I'm doing most of my sharing these days).

Good luck to all of you fighting this good fight!