Lovely topic... Suffocating in phlegm during EVERY effort, for months/years. Anyone else?

Training
43

Constant clearing of your throat:

Look up Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE). The best info is honestly on reddit. I had some symptoms described by others (along with difficulty swallowing). I now have to avoid gluten, dairy, tomatoes, and russet potatoes. Pizza destroys me. Even though it is NOT due to GERD, proton pump inhibitors can help (from what I can tell research has not solved why they help).

Two other things that has helped me are make sure to focus on breathing with belly and salt/electrolyte intake.

edit: to be clear, I was diagnosed via endoscopy

44

When I rode outdoors, I had ‘snot problems’ in two points in the year. The first one was spring, when the rains come and the molds and fungus erupt after laying low over the winter, and two was in the fall, and it varied a bit making identifying what could be causing it.

Spring was very likely mold and fungus growth in the wooded areas and farmland I rode by. Snot rockets and goobers were a thing. The fall was generally pine, but also died detritus around. I do remember one year I could SEE the pollen pouring out of the pine trees, and the snot rockets were epic, and my eyes felt like they were rolled in dirt.

Now the interesting part: I tested negative for pine, pine pollen, mold, and mildew, in a scratch test. So, yeah, I’m making it up?

Over the counter stuff like Allegra, Claritin, Zyrtec, etc, seem to ‘titrate out’ and lose their effectiveness in many people, so I and tons of other sufferers do a ‘round robin’ swap of the available drugs, changing every month or so.

One other thing was, immediately pre-pandemic, I was having more issues, so someone came and checked the house. They found a black mold infestation due to some A/C work we had done. So we ended up having to have part of the house gutted and replaced. (that was NOT fun) and the problem has gone away.

Get tested, and get your HOUSE tested. Seriously. Our insurance covered most of the repairs so it made it a lot easier to do it. (We ended up having to replace out entire A/C system as it was packed with mold) Now more snot rockets, a ton less phlegm and goobers. Even ear blockage and sinus headaches disappeared.

45

Also cardiac conditions can mimic this kind of symptom. The fluids backup and cause increased breathing issues and also phlegm caused by the backing up of fluids in the lungs.

Someone suspected that was my issue with coughing and gagging during workouts. I got worked up for potential cardiac issues, and came up fine, not that, thank Ford…

But do not ignore issues while working out. Anything that seems abnormal should be investigated. I mean, if you have to ride, and something is making that harder, have it looked at if you can get access to healthcare…

46

I’m not sure about that one since I don’t have the symptoms during normal life and I’ve never had any trouble eating anything (except cucumber - how gross is that stuff?!). Thanks for another possibility to investigate though.

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47

Another thing, and I only mention it because it was really weird when it was discovered. I was having a problem with clear mucus like stuff in my mouth back the year pre-pandemic, and was occasionally gagging on it, but it was kind of tenacious stuff. I had it for over a month, and when I went to the dentist, she said that it was from certain kinds of whitening tooth pastes. They can cause a reaction in certain people that creates this mucus like swamp where it’s just everywhere in their mouth. Not knowing that at the time, my wife said I should be looked at to see if it was esophageal regurg or some other condition because I would wake up some nights nearly choking on the stuff. I could almost pull it out with my fingers.

Once I stopped using the whitening toothpaste, the problem went away. It was really weird, and pretty gross too. YUCK!

I was also coughing, gagging, choking, and clearing my throat a lot during rides. That is where the cardiac potential came from as she suggested it could be a symptom of that. To find out it was toothpaste was just too bizarre. Who would ever think that toothpaste would cause that…

48

I have the same problem. I went to a pulmonologist who also did sports medicine. He said it wasn’t that uncommon and, in my case at least, was due to hay fever and the phlegm plugging the lungs. He put me on an inhaled Steroid (FloVent) and it has made a huge improvement. I don’t know if there are any doping considerations. I don’t race anymore (age 63) but it makes breathing during regular riding much easier.

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49

I don’t think I’m using special toothpaste - some version of Colgate but that’s something else to consider.

It should be noted I had no issues on the weekend with Sweetspot sessions. It seems to be threshold and above where it was noticeable.

50

I was prescribed Singular. I use it sparingly as it can cause other issues in some people, but now I can’t remember if it was in that whole toothpaste saga. They had me on an inhaler, can’t remember the name, and it tended to make me dizzy, so no inhaler. Singular just takes a while sometimes to kick in.

And it wasn’t ‘special toothpaste’, it was off the shelf Crest, and, at least for me, YUCK!!

I switched to Tom’s Wicked Fresh, and their Simply White, trading off between them. So far, after trying it for a week, no mouth slime, but still tradeoff JIC… And try to find a non-whitening major brand toothpaste. Even the dentist I go to still gives me trial sizes of the same slime producing toothpaste. They don’t have any that aren’t whitening. DOH… (I think Colgate (Crest?) bought Tom’s of Maine years ago, ironically)