Even though hyperventilation makes you feel like you're not getting a deep breath, it is actually caused by breathing out too much Co2 before you're able to produce more. When you hyperventilate your blood vessels constrict. This causes your body to reduce blood flow to the brain, it causes chest pains, it causes rapid heartbeat and more.
The latter is a forgotten reason that hyperventilation occurs, but it's common with those with anxiety. It causes hyperventilation because when you think about breathing your breathing becomes manual, and most people breathe poorly when they breathe manually. Coughing and any type of issue with breathing out Co2 too quickly can also lead to hyperventilation.
Unfortunately, during a panic attack, hyperventilation tends to get worse, both because anxiety causes you to breathe faster and because hyperventilation makes you feel like you're not getting enough air, so you tend to breathe deeper than your body needs.
This combination makes all of your symptoms worse. Once hyperventilation occurs, it is very difficult to stop entirely. You cannot simply hold your breath and have all the symptoms go away, nor can you stop a panic attack by breathing alone.
But the right breathing can decrease the severity of the symptoms, and when your symptoms are less severe you start fearing them less, thus decreasing your risk of panic attacks in the future. It's best to start this as soon as you even think you might be hyperventilating, and especially if you start to feel panic attacks coming on:.
You want to continue the breathing process rather than hold your breath because you want the oxygen levels to return to normal, not be replaced by too much carbon dioxide. It's a slow process, and you may have to fight the panic attack a little, but this type of panic attack breathing can be very valuable for stopping your symptoms from spiraling out of control.
Noses are for breathing, mouths are for eating. Mouth breathing, on the other hand, is associated with higher rates of snoring, sleep apnea, allergies, and illness. These breaths should be slow, but not too deep. Focus on gently sipping air through the nose on each inhale. You can do this on the train or in the middle of class and no one will even notice.
Now, as you continue to breathe along here, I want to talk a bit about breathing for relaxation and how you can make this exercise work for you. If you have anxiety, stress, or even panic attacks, keep reading. Anxiety cannot physically hurt you. You hear that? You are not in true danger. However, your brain makes it feel as if you are in danger. As a result, you can feel like you are short of breath, like your heart is pounding, and like the whole world is closing in around you.
Deep breathing is a way to hack your brain into relaxation by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which comes in and clean up the mess that your fight or flight response leaves behind. This process is called the relaxation response.
That's right. Before you can take a deep breath, you have to give one away. Because, when you've been breathing in a short, shallow manner from your chest , if you try and take a deep inhale, you just can't do it.
All you can do is take a more labored, shallow breath from your chest. That will give you all the air you need, but it won't feel good. Go ahead, try that now and see what I mean. Put one hand on your chest, the other on your belly. Breathe very shallowly from your chest a few times, then try to take a deep breath.
I think you'll find that, when you inhale, you use your chest muscles, rather than your diaphragm, or belly. When you breathe in this shallow manner, you get all the air you need to live, but you can also get other symptoms which add to your panic. You get chest pain or heaviness, because you've tightened the muscles of your chest to an uncomfortable degree. The chest pain people feel in a panic attack isn't from the heart, it's from the muscles of the chest.
You feel lightheaded or dizzy, because shallow breathing can produce the same sensations as hyperventilation. You also get a more rapid heartbeat, and maybe numbness or tingling in the extremities as well. One of the very first things I ask my patients with panic disorder to do is to learn and practice belly breathing.
I recommend it to you as well. Here's the breathing exercise. Place one hand just above your belt line, and the other on your chest, right over the breastbone. You can use your hands as a simple biofeedback device. Your hands will tell you what part of your body, and what muscles, you are using to breathe.
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