Hyperventilation
- Thread starter Shoozer
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janemariesayed
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Hiya Shoozer. Yes, I get breathless due to anxiety attacks. I take a deep breath, hold it in for a second or two then let it out slowly. This brings more air into my bloodstream and calms me down. What is happening is that you have been shallow breathing for a while before the attack. Your heart starts to pump fast to get more air around your body. So when you take a deep breath and do that for a couple of minutes it calms you down.
Hi Shoozer, Thought to shared my experience with you. I can imagine how awful, stressful, ugly you name it the life can become with anxiety. I have been there with my breathing anxiety and let me tell you one thing, "DON'T WORRY, YOU ARE ALL FINE". put your hand on your heart and say "All is well". I suffered from it 5 to 6 years ago and I even recently this week I had it again because I made it up all in my mind. But first of all, most important is to know if this is really anxiety or maybe other lungs disease or other infection that cause breathing problem. If all is clear out by your doctor and you know it is anxiety then there is nothing to worry. I went to the gym last week, did some heavy arm workout and it gave me back pain next day due to some wrong postures. Now as we all know when we have upper back pain, it sometimes make breathing difficult. I am a person who is always thinking like what if this happen, what if that happen etc etc. And from here I started thinking that I am not breathing properly. This thought created extra adrenaline in my body and sends signal to brain that I am in danger. Guess what? My brain told me to breath heavy because it is not getting enough air. I started breathing deeply with my mouth and just in 2 minutes I fall into "HYPERVENTILATION STATE". Now this is not a good feeling. So I was still breathing heavy and made my hyperventilation even worse. This gave me more pain in my chest. The pain was sharp in the middle of chest. A tight feeling in the chest. I reached a stage where I thought ok that is it am gonna faint or die in few seconds because I'm not getting enough air. Then I told myself ok "All is well, All is well" I have to take control and get out of this or it will go even worse. Then I just closed my eyes, sat on couch and started breathing shallow with nose. I was holding my breath and then take it out in 7 to 8 seconds. Within next few minutes, I started to calm down and all was slowly going well. But I was not able to sleep the whole night. But slowly I am doing good and getting better. This was my story now lets talk about facts that why this all happened?
What is hyperventilation? - we all know the word "hyper" right? Hyperventilation is a condition where you start breathing fast and disturbs the natural oxygen and carbon dioxide balance inside your body. In hyperventilation, you upset the balance of these 2 gases by exhaling more than inhaling. When we think about carbon dioxide gas we think it is a waste gas but actually it plays a very important role in our body. In our body we have two type of actions. 1) conscious (which are in our control example moving your hand etc) 2) unconscious (which goes automatic like your heart or eye blinking). breathing is a unconscious type. Take an example of 1 day old child who is just born and look that child keeps on breathing automatic. Take an example of when you sleep. you keep on breathing automatic. Take an example of someone who passed out on floor after drinking lot of alcohol. Even thought that person is out and now on the floor, you can see that his body will keep on breathing automatic. The problem comes when we try to take the breathing in our control means we started controlling it and started to decide when to breath or not. When we started to control breathing we sometimes inhale more oxygen than what our body really needs. Believe me your body needs very little oxygen and your body decides automatic how much it needs. so when we inhale more oxygen than required, we have now upset/imbalance the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our body. The oxygen in our blood is converted to carbon dioxide and during hyperventilation, you have thrown out more carbon dioxide out from your body than what your body can produce. So you see? you have completely messed up the automatic natural reaction by deep breathing. And during this deep breathing and anxiety, you start to breath from the upper part of your chest/lungs which further gives a feeling of tightness in your chest and you feel like you are not getting enough air. So you again starts to breath deep and try to breath while yawning and keeps on falling yourself to the worst hyperventilation state by completing messing up the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Hyperventilation is not dangerous but it is going to give you a very severe discomfort feeling. Hyperventilation is caused by and cause severe anxiety. I would say never breath from your mouth but from your nose. if you breath from your mouth then try to learn breathing with nose because then you inhale very little oxygen compared to when you breath with your mouth. Remember "mouth is for eating and nose is for breathing".
You might also be feeling sharp pain in middle of your chest. Why is this pain there? It is because once your have upset the balance of O2 and CO2, your blood vessels that comes out of heart starts to shrink due to presence of less CO2. When they shrink and get small, your heart has to do extra work/job to push the blood through those shrinken vessels and this results in sharp chest pain.
How to get out of hyperventilation?
first of all as I said, tell yourself all is well, all is well. close your eyes and try to calm. start taking slow breath from your tummy instead of chest. Inhale with your nose (using your tummy, means your tummy should expand like football. NOT WITH CHEST BUT TUMMY) for 5 seconds, hold it for 3 seconds and then release the air through the lips in 7 seconds . the lips gonna make slow whistling sound. keep doing it for few times. This is going to increase the carbon dioxide level in your blood which will bring you out of hyperventilation state. the moment your body builds up enough Carbon dioxide, you will feel clam and relaxed. Once you made the perfect balance of O2 and CO2 again, you will see that your sharp pain the chest will start to go away because now your vessels are open again and your heart is doing less work.
Second way is breath in paper bag. because as you will release breath (co2) in the paper bag and then when you inhale it again, you will be actually inhaling carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. so it will again increase the level of co2 in your blood and makes your calm. Don't do it more than 10 times.
OR what you can do it that you stand up, go out of home and start walking. when you walk your body will automatic start taking smaller breath and will produce enough co2. thus the level of O2 and CO2 will start getting normal.
And what you have to learn is that you should not be thinking about your breathing. Let it happen automatic. focus on other things. Do not focus on breathing. You can do this experiment right now to see the results. try to think of your breathing, try to focus on you breathing, try to control on your breathing, I bet you within next 5 minutes you will find yourself in hyperventilation state.
So again do not worry about it. you are totally fine and just do not think about breathing. and also start to learn by breathing with nose instead of mouth. (remember mouth is for eating and nose is for breathing). I hope after reading this you will find yourself more calm and relax and I hope you will get out of any anxiety or hyperventilation. I wish you very best of luck with it and I pray that you get back stronger and healthy. Again mouth is for eating and nose is for breathing and breathing is unconscious process. do not control it).
Greetings and let me know how you feel later.
Rimpy
Allenafaith
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I only do this when I am crying because of a really bad anxiety attack. Normally what helps me is to just hold my breath for a few seconds and really focus on breathing. I breathe in through my nose a long breathe and let it out slowly through my mouth. Doing that for a few minutes normally helps me a lot.
Claraviolet
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I can't breathe sometimes and ..........sometimes I feel like I am about to faint.
Well, I can't stand others touch at all and if I couldn't get to sanitize my hands soon, I would be in deep trouble. Even two days back, I had to give handshake to a business person, because of my work and I had to try hard...very hard to breathe during those 20 minutes.
After that, I had to run to my desk and sanitize my hands. I bet the person beside my desk was freaked out as I was breathing really hard and covered in sweat.
I am glad that I was able to hold my tears to be honest. That was my achievement of the year.
It's really hard to share these things with others, as they don't know what we are talking about and thinks we could improve it ....with some effort.
Sanitizing helps but not all that much. After that I listened to my favorite music for almost an hour to get back to my original self. This is just one my experiences.
Well, I can't stand others touch at all and if I couldn't get to sanitize my hands soon, I would be in deep trouble. Even two days back, I had to give handshake to a business person, because of my work and I had to try hard...very hard to breathe during those 20 minutes.
After that, I had to run to my desk and sanitize my hands. I bet the person beside my desk was freaked out as I was breathing really hard and covered in sweat.
I am glad that I was able to hold my tears to be honest. That was my achievement of the year.
It's really hard to share these things with others, as they don't know what we are talking about and thinks we could improve it ....with some effort.
Sanitizing helps but not all that much. After that I listened to my favorite music for almost an hour to get back to my original self. This is just one my experiences.
You might be suffering from Hyperawareness OCD?
Claraviolet
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I have heard of Hypersensitiveness before but I don't think that is the reason why I have been suffering.
I am not disgusted by my body function....completely. I can withstand many things and I can tolerate others stuff, to some extent. It's really hard to believe but Tactile sensitivity is what that comes to my mind. I might be completely wrong about my own analysis.
It's just that, there are some things that are common but other stuff don't match up. Guess that's why I just refer to my stuff as Anxiety and OCD. I don't have any other word for them. It's really difficult to come up with a perfect name, for one's condition.