When breathing trouble is not a supplement question

Severe shortness of breath that comes on suddenly. Chest pain or pressure. Blue or grey lips or fingertips. Struggling to speak a full sentence. Coughing up blood. Any of those is an emergency — call your local emergency number.

If you use a rescue inhaler and it is not working the way it normally does, that is also an emergency, not a wait-and-see.

Breathlessness that is worse than it was a few months ago. A cough lasting more than three weeks. Wheezing that is new. Waking at night short of breath. Reduced exercise tolerance you cannot explain. Recurring chest infections. Any swelling in the ankles alongside breathlessness.

Several conditions that present this way are highly treatable when caught and much harder when they are not — asthma, COPD, heart failure and sleep apnoea among them. Delay is the expensive part.

BreathiZen is a dietary supplement. It does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any of those, and it is never a substitute for an inhaler or a prescription. We would rather lose the sale than have someone read this page and wait.