PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Thomas Janssens TI - “It's all bad”: Fear avoidance beliefs predict lack of differentiation between dyspnea dimensions in anticipation of exercise-related dyspnea AID - 10.1183/13993003.congress-2016.PA1577 DP - 2016 Sep 01 TA - European Respiratory Journal PG - PA1577 VI - 48 IP - suppl 60 4099 - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/48/suppl_60/PA1577.short 4100 - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/48/suppl_60/PA1577.full SO - Eur Respir J2016 Sep 01; 48 AB - Background: Beliefs about physical symptoms and disease can have an impact on symptom levels and shape illness-related behaviors. Research suggests that emotions and physical symptoms during exercise are an important determinant of exercise participation, but little is known about the anticipation of dyspnea.Aims and objectives: In this study we investigated associations between dyspnea fear-avoidance beliefs, perception of dyspnea and physical activity in healthy individuals.Methods: Participants (N=341) completed the Multidimensional Dyspnea Profile (MDP) in response to vignettes describing high-intensity physical activity (running and stair climbing), and completed measures of dyspnea fear-avoidance and physical activity.Results: Fear-avoidance beliefs were associated with reduced physical activity (β=-0.11, p=.04). Furthermore, fear avoidance beliefs were associated with increased levels of anticipated dyspnea (F=5.31, p=.02) and emotional reactions to dyspnea in the exercise vignettes(F=12.94, p<.001), as well as decreased within-individual variance between ratings for different qualtities of dyspnea (controlling for mean dyspnea levels) (β run=-0.145, p=.01; β stair=-0.172, p=.002 ).Conclusions: Our results suggests that individuals with increased dyspnea fear avoidance report less physical activity, and see physical activity as 'all bad' (resulting in more intense dyspnea across dyspnea qualities, and more negative emotions as a result of dyspnea). These negative exercise-related beliefs may prove to be an important barrier for participation in physical exercise.