Breathing: Abnormal Breathing

[Explor­ing Life] Abnor­mal breath­ing habits can sig­nif­i­cantly impair our qual­ity of life. Due to the stress and pres­sures of life, we may be habit­u­ally breath­ing abnor­mally with­out know­ing it. Chronic abnor­mal breath­ing has been linked to a range of seri­ous stress-induced dis­eases and con­di­tions. Abnor­mal breath­ing degrades the expe­ri­ence of being alive. Under­stand­ing the core ele­ments and effects of abnor­mal breath­ing is fun­da­men­tal to breath aware­ness and re-establishing nat­ural full breath­ing pat­terns.

Breath­ing Abnormalities

…poor breath­ing habits have arisen not only out of our psy­cho­so­matic “ig-norance,” our lack of organic aware­ness, but also out of an uncon­scious need for a buffer­ing mech­a­nism to keep us from sens­ing and feel­ing the real­ity of our own deeply-rooted fears and con­tra­dic­tions. There is absolutely no doubt that super­fi­cial breath­ing ensures a super­fi­cial expe­ri­ence of our­selves. [1]

Hyper­ven­ti­la­tion: Hyper­ven­ti­la­tion, or over­breath­ing is an unhealthy increase in both the depth and rate of breath­ing. One of the mis­taken beliefs about hyper­ven­ti­la­tion is that it cre­ates too much oxy­gen in the blood stream. Increased lev­els of oxy­gen in the blood­stream are not prob­lem­atic. The actual prob­lem is a decrease in car­bon diox­ide in the blood stream. If blood lev­els of car­bon diox­ide is low enough it can lead to adverse symp­toms such as irri­tabil­ity, fatigue, dizzi­ness, anx­i­ety, and poor con­cen­tra­tion. Extremely low lev­els of car­bon diox­ide can result in fainting.

Many peo­ple live in a state of chronic hyper­ven­ti­la­tion, that is, hyper­ven­ti­la­tion becomes their “nor­mal” state of breath­ing. Chronic hyper­ven­ti­la­tion is related to:

1. Dis­ease and a weak­ened immune system ;
2. Men­tal dis­or­ders such as anx­i­ety, panic, and depression;
3. Feel­ings such as iso­la­tion, lone­li­ness or abandonment;
4. Expo­sure to envi­ron­men­tal con­t­a­m­i­nates and toxins;
5. The social annoy­ance known as exces­sive talk­ing can also induce a state of hyperventilation;
6. Trau­matic events caus­ing chronic stress also lead to chronic hyperventilation.

Hypoven­ti­la­tion: Hypoven­ti­la­tion, or under­breath­ing, results from a depri­va­tion of oxy­gen as expe­ri­enced in the feel­ing of being smoth­ered or suf­fo­cated. It may also be described as a short­ness of breath. The brain is lit­er­ally send­ing a warn­ing mes­sage that the body is oxy­gen defi­cient and unless addressed dam­age to the body may be imma­nent. How­ever, bar­ring any res­pi­ra­tory prob­lems, hypoven­ti­la­tion is usu­ally resolved through deep breath­ing in order to imme­di­ately step up the oxy­gen lev­els in the blood­stream. It seems that hypoven­ti­la­tion does not trans­fer into a prob­lem that can be chronic in a healthy person.

Hold­ing the breath: In a cri­sis one of our instinc­tive responses to the sit­u­a­tion is to hold our breath. In doing so, we place our per­cep­tion on high alert and increase our sen­si­tiv­ity to our imme­di­ate sur­round­ings. Hold­ing the breath can also be a con­trol mech­a­nism for the repres­sion of anger, frus­tra­tion, or more sim­ply to restrain the energy that seeks to over­take our behav­ior in a sit­u­a­tion. While there are con­texts in which this is unavoid­able, the habit of hold­ing the breath is destruc­tive since it over-taxes the fight-flight instinct and over­loads the body with chem­i­cals such as adrenaline.

Hold­ing the breath is inti­mately related to stress, anx­i­ety and depres­sion. For exam­ple, some­thing as rou­tine as dri­ving to work often morphs into the end­less onslaught of a com­mute through the inferno and back. The fear of lack­ing the nec­es­sary finan­cial resources to sur­vive occu­pies a great deal of our energy in life, and dif­fi­cul­ties in this area can lead to a pro­found and neg­a­tive impact on the qual­ity of our life. Some­times we feel like stop­ping the world, and this serves to cre­ate a sense of hold­ing on to survive.

Hold­ing the breath alters the blood chem­istry in unde­sir­able ways. Too much car­bon diox­ide in the blood increases acid­ity in the body; too much oxy­gen in the blood makes the body too alka­line. If blood chem­istry is too acidic we feel like yawn­ing to bring in more oxy­gen. How­ever, if we in turn bring in too much oxy­gen our bod­ies begin a mer­cu­r­ial dance between being too acidic and too alka­line. The toxic effects of this dance are revealed phys­i­cally, men­tally, and emotionally.

Chronic shal­low breath­ing: Chronic shal­low breath­ing is also known as habit­ual chest breath­ing. David Coul­ter pro­vides a clear indi­ca­tion of how seri­ous this prob­lem can be:

Habit­ual chest breath­ing nor only reflects phys­i­cal and men­tal prob­lems, it cre­ates them. [2]

Coul­ter describes a range of prob­lems asso­ci­ated with shal­low breath­ing includ­ing over­stim­u­la­tion of the ner­vous sys­tem, increased heart rate and blood pres­sure, as well as prob­lems with diges­tion and cir­cu­la­tion. The prob­lem­atic nature of tho­racic breath­ing lies in the fact that air does not tend to reach the lower parts of the lungs, where most of our blood sup­ply is. There­fore tho­racic breath­ing inhibits the intake of oxy­gen into the blood stream. The word “shal­low” refers to a style of breath­ing in which the upper part of the lungs are empha­sized at the expense of the lower parts of the lungs.

Sleep Dis­or­dered Breath­ing and Mor­tal­ity: Sleep dis­or­ders is a gen­eral cat­e­gory that includes insom­nia, sleep apnea, rest­less legs syn­drome, nar­colepsy, and para­som­nia. Abnor­mal breath­ing while sleep­ing can lead to numer­ous health prob­lems includ­ing hyper­ten­sion and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease. Research into sleep-disordered breath­ing and mor­tal­ity found that:

About 1 in 10 women and 1 in 4 men have a chronic con­di­tion called sleep-disordered breath­ing although most are unaware of their prob­lem. Sleep-disordered breath­ing, which is com­mon­est in middle-aged and elderly peo­ple, is char­ac­ter­ized by numer­ous, brief (10 sec­ond or so) inter­rup­tions of breath­ing dur­ing sleep. These inter­rup­tions, which usu­ally occur when relax­ation of the upper air­way mus­cles decreases air­flow, lower the level of oxy­gen in the blood and, as a result, affected indi­vid­u­als are fre­quently aroused from deep sleep as they strug­gle to breathe.

The researchers focused on the link between abnor­mal breath­ing, sleep and “all-cause” mor­tal­ity. All-cause mor­tal­ity that is the chance of dying from any cause. The find­ings of the research concluded:

…par­tic­i­pants with severe sleep-disordered breath­ing (an AHI of ?30) were about one and a half times as likely to die from any cause after adjust­ment for poten­tial con­found­ing fac­tors. Peo­ple with milder sleep-disordered breath­ing did not have a sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant increased risk of dying. … men aged 40–70 years with severe sleep-disordered breath­ing had a sta­tis­ti­cally increased risk of dying from any cause (twice the risk of men of a sim­i­lar age with­out sleep-disordered breath­ing). Finally, death from coro­nary artery dis­ease was also asso­ci­ated with sleep-disordered breath­ing in men but not in women. [3]

The authors of the research study state that sleep-disordered breath­ing is an inde­pen­dent pre­dic­tor of mor­tal­ity and that this asso­ci­a­tion is not attrib­ut­able to age, obe­sity, or other chronic med­ical con­di­tions. This means that a com­pletely healthy per­son with no exist­ing med­ical con­di­tions is at a much greater risk of mor­tal­ity if they suf­fer from sleep-disordered breathing.

Sleep Apnea: One of the most com­mon sleep dis­or­ders is sleep apnea, a con­di­tion in which the air­way is obstructed dur­ing sleep caus­ing a pause in breath­ing, or when breath­ing becomes extremely shal­low. The word apnea means tem­po­rary ces­sa­tion of breath (from the Greek apnoia mean­ing breath­less). When the air­way is restricted dur­ing sleep, the decrease in oxy­gen lev­els trig­gers the brain to inter­rupt sleep (sur­vival mech­a­nism) in order to clear the air­way and increase oxy­gen lev­els in the body. The fre­quent drops in oxy­gen trig­ger the release of stress hor­mones, which ele­vates blood pres­sure and places the ner­vous sys­tem into fight or flight mode. Sleep apnea is linked to increased risk of hyper­ten­sion, heart attack or fail­ure, irreg­u­lar heart rhythm, dia­betes and obe­sity. [4]

It is inter­est­ing to note that the National Health Ser­vice (UK) advises:

As unusual as it sounds, there is evi­dence that reg­u­larly play­ing the Aus­tralian wind instru­ment, the didgeri­doo, can help to reduce the symp­toms of mild to mod­er­ate OSA. [5]

It seems rea­son­able to assume that any wind instru­ment, when prac­ticed cor­rectly and reg­u­larly, will improve the gen­eral qual­ity of breath­ing, and there­fore have the poten­tial to help reduce or relieve the symp­toms of sleep apnea.

Abnor­mal Breath­ing: Key Points

• Abnor­mal breath­ing can become chronic.
• Abnor­mal breath­ing may be sub­con­scious and out of our own awareness.
• Abnor­mal breath­ing can cause seri­ous degen­er­a­tive dis­ease such as heart attacks, and seri­ous degen­er­a­tive con­di­tions such as high blood pressure.
• Abnor­mal breath­ing can cause men­tal dis­or­ders such as chronic anx­i­ety, panic attacks, dis­ori­en­ta­tion, and depression.
• Abnor­mal breath­ing pat­terns can be the root cause for a lack of enjoy­ment and ful­fill­ment in life.
• Sleep-disordered breath­ing is a seri­ous con­di­tion that increases the prob­a­bil­ity of all-cause mortality.
• Sleep apnea is a com­mon type of sleep dis­or­der in which abnor­mal breath­ing pat­terns dur­ing sleep cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant amounts of stress on the body that over time can become life threatening.

Notes

1. Lewis, Den­nis. The Tao of Nat­ural Breath­ing, 1997.

2. Coul­ter, David. <a href=“http://www.worldcat.org/title/anatomy-of-hatha-yoga-a-manual-for-students-teachers-and-practitioners/oclc/46456367?referer=list_view” target=Blank”>Anatomy of Hatha Yoga, 2001. Coul­ter ded­i­cates a chap­ter that details the phys­i­ol­ogy of breathing.

3. Pun­jabi NM, Caffo BS, Good­win JL, Got­tlieb DJ, New­man AB, et al. (2009) Sleep-Disordered Breath­ing and Mor­tal­ity: A Prospec­tive Cohort Study. PLoS Med 6(8): e1000132. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000132.

4. An overview of sleep apnea includ­ing an ani­ma­tion of how obstruc­tive sleep apnea works can be found at The National Heart, Lung and Blood Insti­tute: Dis­eases and Con­di­tions: Sleep Apnea (Accessed August 2009). Also see:

• Your Guide to Healthy Sleep.
• Sleep Stud­ies
• NHS: Sleep Apnoea
• Med­line­Plus: Sleep Apnea
• Sleep Heart Health Study

5. NHS: Sleep Aponea: Treat­ment.