Are you familiar with the sounds your lungs can make and what they might indicate? Learn about wheezing , crackling, stridor, and their meanings . Wheezing is a high-pitched whistling sound that can happen when you breathe. It’s caused by narrowed airways or inflammation, and is a symptom of a few different medical conditions, such as asthma, COPD, or allergies. Wheezing is a high-pitched whistling sound during breathing. It occurs when air moves through narrowed breathing tubes in the lungs. Wheezing during expiration alone indicates milder obstruction than wheezing during both inspiration and expiration, which suggests more severe airway narrowing. By contrast, turbulent flow of air through a narrowed segment of the large, extrathoracic airways produces a whistling inspiratory noise (stridor).