O2 Saturations (SATS) and exercise

[Mr Happy]

Recent events have given me the kick up the ar*e that I needed to try and get some sort of exercise in to my daily routine.

My O2 sats are generally between 93-96% on air.

After a couple of minutes of walking on the treadmill (at a very casual 3mph - just to set the scene)) my Sats generally drop to 82-86%.

Can anyone tell me how long it is safe to continue when sats go that low - as I don't really want to be constantly stop/starting each time they dip below 88% as it's already taking me long enough to walk my mile-a-day ?

Does that make sense?

[Diddyangel]

I'm not an expert on this (but am on 24/7 o2 at the mo for the end of this pregnancy) I've been told not to let mine go under 90 - someitmes hard mine were 86% at rest in clinic on wed but i'm on 5lpm. I'm not doing excercise right now, but I do know sometimes you need o2 for excercise but not all the time. Def worth talking to your team about.
Good for you getting some active excercise - we can fight this and win!
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Charlotte
Beautiful daughter born Dec 2005 at 35 weeks and son born May 2008 at 32 weeks

[DavidGilmour]

You should start slow and gradually start building up as your lungs get stronger. I wouldnt go below 85%, I find when I get to 82-83 I get bad headaches when working out, so take it easy

[Emmie]

If this is a regular thing for you, then I'd have thought the CF team should have considered giving you O2 to have during exercise? My understanding was that they prefer them not to go below 89% and if gentle walking is dropping them to the low 80's then that sounds like you need some O2 support when in the gym?
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35 with CF, married to a wonderful husband, and Mummy to dear little Tedber (born January 2010)

[BoneyD]

It all depends really on how you feel when doing the exercise. Personally for me my sats on air are anything between 87 - 92 % depending on the weather (Hot Days I seem to be higher) and also how cold my hands are.

I used to do alot of exercise when I was younger (doing anything from around 7 - 10 hours of judo alone, not to mention running, football etc... Now after doing exercise my o2 sats drop down very quickly to around 62-67%. However I don't find that its my lungs that are stopping me from carrying on, its more of a case of cramp in the back of my calf muscles due to the lactic acid building up.

I've been told that if i exercise I should be using oxygen although i'm too lazy to do any exercise. Everyone's body is different so it all depends how you feel really. Its always a good idea to speak to your physios at the hospital though who i'm sure will advise you accordingly.
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[Jon]

I think the normal rule is anything below 88% requires oxygen supplementation. Below this put a lot of stress on your heart. I used to be quite proud of the fact I could exercise without oxegen... that was until I put a sat meter on whilst doing it and found it down at about 81%. I now use 2 litres of oxygen and it is much better. I can now go for longer and faster on the bike. I use a bike at home with my oxygen concentrator (3 days a week) then down the gym on the other 3 days (Sundays off). Sounds a lot?????? well I prefer to use this 'CF time' doing exercise rather than Iv's. Living with CF is going to steal a large part of your lives (guaranteed) so better to use it as a positive (doing exercise) than a negative (doing Iv's). I must spend about 8 hours a week doing exercise. However before this I would spend a lot longer than this on Iv's (if you total out the year). It just seems better economic sense to me.

One thing that I found helped me a lot on the exercise tolerance is breathing out hard when working out. I found that this helps stop the build up of CO² and makes going for longer easier. The lung are a two way gas exchange system of course and the temptation is to breath in hard to get more oxygen into your body but if you don't breath out hard the CO² just builds up making you feel crap.

Sorry, not trying to lecture here but I think exercise is one of the most critical factors in living a longer life with CF and the more you can do the better it is. Shame it's just so dam hard to do

Regards Jonathan
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Kind regards, Jonathan

[Astrid]

I would really recommend talking to your team if you drop below 88% because cor pulmonale is a very real risk and no fun at all. I used to let my sats drop because I thought I was feeling alright, but it came with a price tag.

[Mr Happy]

Thanks for the advice guys - some really useful tips/info there.

I'm back at the hospital next week so will mention it to my team then (I hadn't even consideredthat beign prescribed O2 just for exercise was an option).

Rich