In the past year, my FEV1 had gone up, not down. I had gone a LONG time (about 15 years) without getting my PFT's checked, but then I had been practicing some pretty hard martial arts then, and it wasn't a concern.
However, since loosing some of those hard practices from a seemingly non-repairable injury, I had to consider other ways to keep my lung functions up, and with finding a good doctor, have my lung functions more closely monitored.
However, the doctor had indicated that my body doesn't seem to be taking in enough O2, despite having high FEV's...I'm beginning to wonder where the significance of the FEV is, if the doc says my O2 level is so low.
alegris (Adrienne), I'm curious what things you are doing to try and increase your FEV with no success? I would like to make a suggestion to do something as simple as deep breathing control, rather than trying to do something that lookes like you're going to prepare to run a marathon or something like that. If you happen to do a lot of walking, I would suggest making some walks a little more brisk, and that is something I think you can adjust slowly until you get used to it. And, the key word would be "taking a little bit at a time".
If getting high FEV's is only a matter of being able to expand your lungs with a bunch of air, then retract it, then it would make sense to me to be doing some excercise of deep breathing, to put in more air than what is used for a normal breathing pattern.
I happen to have a 15 minute walk from home to the train station, and then another 15 minutes from the train station near work to the office. It's not much excercise for me, but since it's something I have to do, it certainly helps, because I'm always walking pretty fast, so it's always a brisk walk for me.
Actually, my first 14 years of living in Japan was with no car, so I had to travel by what Mockingbird used for transportation, my "Chevero-legs"! Even with having a car now, I find I still only get to use it on the weekends, mostly.
In conclusion, I personally think that depending on how much "breathing excercise" a person does, the average value of the FEV shouldn't change significantly, as long as other aspects of your health is doing fine. And, of course, I wish everyone's health does fine!
