Are you breathing? Do you have email apnea? (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Are you breathing? Do you have email apnea? (2014)

lindastone.net

100 pointsDerCommodore33 comments

Funny, a lot of people seem to hold their breath when focusing on something; my girlfriend does it while gaming. I never noticed my breathing changes while doing anything, although it does seem to become more audible sometimes. But, it's automatic so I don't really pay much attention to it.

Also, it kinda sounds like advertising for this breathing method mentioned, but the website doesn't explain the breathing method, just tries to sell it to you then refer you to a practitioner.

> Also, it kinda sounds like advertising for this breathing method mentioned, but the website doesn't explain the breathing method, just tries to sell it to you then refer you to a practitioner.

I briefly looked into it and got the same vibe from Transcendental Meditation, that it’s mostly a scam. They take a very basic practice and convince you it has miraculous results and that it is impossible to learn except by paying them obscene amounts of money.

I never paid for or practiced either method, so I cannot give a first-hand account. But years ago I did look into Transcendental Meditation extensively and was not convinced it has anything worth paying for, as confirmed by multiple accounts of people who had tried it. The documentary David Want to Fly is particularly interesting from the perspective of someone who really wanted to like it by influence of David Lynch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wants_to_Fly

I first heard of Buteyko from this post so I haven’t done thorough research, but a cursory glance reveals the health claims may be greatly exaggerated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15907677/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buteyko_method#Medical_evidenc...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/jul/...

I noticed this in myself in few extreme focus situations. Mostly when driving or riding a motorcycle and suddenly having to dodge stuff at high speed.

> Funny, a lot of people seem to hold their breath when focusing on something

I clench my teeth while focusing. It's a habit that's probably near impossible to get rid of.

I've read somewhere that this is a mechanism to supress the signals sent by the tongue. The tongue is so sensitive that it can perturb our brain somehow, but once compressed it is only seen as noise, which the brain is then capable to ignore and concentrate on the actual task.

Interesting. Would there be another way to quiet these signals?

I do not know sorry. FYI it was taken from this source (French podcast), if you want to dig further (and somehow you find a way to translate it ;) )

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/premiere/emissions/moteur-...

One way I've found to train that habit is in yoga practice. One of my teachers would often say during particularly difficult or uncomfortable postures -- splits for example -- "use your legs not your jaw" and it was a great cue to realize you were holding tension there. Eventually you build the habit of checking in with it -- "am I clenching my jaw?" -- and it largely goes away with time and patience.

This probably not for You... but

For me, it took separating from my other half. The only ex{-,{girlfriend,wife}} I am not in contact with. It did wonders for my teeth-clenching.

Sucks.

Can't an Apple Watch detect when you've stopped breathing and give some alert signal?

Probably only at night when things are calm enough it activates that measurement, or if blood oxygen levels drop for long enough. I am unsure whether the change in blood oxygen would be detectable though—has anyone seen that measured based just on holding one’s breath for varying lengths of time?

Apple watch only checks oxygen levels every hour or so, and only if you are completely still.

Oh yeah! Now you mention it, it has all the elements of a chiropractor sales pitch:

Present a problem.

Convince the audience that they have it.

This problem will lead to {list of problems on par with stage 4 cancer}

We have the solution! No cancer for you if we crack your neck/teach you to breath

Here is a form to pay for your half price initial consult.

I practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu and have nearly passed out because I was focusing on doing something technical and stopped breathing while someone else was on top of me...

In fact it is not so funny, chronic hyperventilation or "under-ventilation" caused by concentration or by worrying causes a fight-or-flight state of mind and can lead to depression. My point being, don't write these articles off as snake oil too easily... Techniques like boxed breathing when you notice something is off, help a lot of people to mitigate imbalances in oxygen levels.

breathing is learned and habitual but also a direct consequence of one's mental state and condition. a relaxed person probably won't breath shallow. for one because that normally contradicts a physical state of relaxation and second because someone who breathes shallow will have a tough time relaxing. it goes both ways. it's also important to realize that healthy breathing is biologically the normal state. it's more that our tense and anxious society with it's unhealthy conditioning turns people into bad breathers.

now looking at those exceptional professions she lists what comes to my mind is not just that those people breathe professionally good but also that those jobs don't require you to open and read mails whose content is often highly unpleasant and daunting on a daily basis. so, one reason why office workers breathe less good while working and opening mails in particularly might also be because they are afraid of reading mails.

i can say for myself that this is true. i almost never looked forward to open a mail at work. at best it didn't evoke any emotion but usually mild stress and anxious anticipation.

> now looking at those exceptional professions she lists what comes to my mind is not just that those people breathe professionally good but also that those jobs don't require you to open and read mails whose content is often highly unpleasant

Professional musician here - one of her listed professions. Believe or not, unpleasant emails are part of my experience too. But honestly, I don’t understand why this introduction to therapeutic breathing is specific to email in any case. Breath-holding and shallow breathing are common with any high-stress situation. I notice it myself and in students leading up to and in the midst of technically-demanding passages.

But I’m deeply sceptical that the solution is anything more than developing better awareness of one’s habitual responses and deliberately reprogramming them.

i assume you're not trapped in a cage-like environment staring at a screen for 8 hours constantly receiving messages while feeling observed and judged. it's a big difference just occasionally receiving a mail and some of them can be unpleasant.

Why would you assume that? "Professional musician" covers an incredibly wide range of experiences but large swathes of that easily fall into solo entrepreneur. Even among professionals very very few musicians are practicing or performing for the majority of their working time.

Full disclosure: I am biased because my mother is an expert in Buteyko breathing and myofunctional therapy and runs a practice called HappyMyo.

This stuff is something I ALWAYS wrote off as hokey garbage, until I tried it. Training the breathing (and the musculature of the face, not mentioned much in the article) completely got rid of my snoring. I have heard of other testimonials from athletes of improved performance as well. If you have one of the conditions that Buteyko/myofunctional therapy can help, I highly recommend you research it before surgery, assuming it's relatively benign.

Late last year i started to have a lot of stomach gas and as a result i burp what feels like hundreds of times per day.

Initially I thought it might have something to do with sugar free drinks but by now I believe that's less likely. It happens much stronger when I drink caffeine, often caffeinated sugar drinks. So I assume it has something to do with this. But it also happens when I don't take any caffeine, it's just less strong.

I have not yet done a proper medical examination since that is very annoying to do. Other than the burping I have zero issues.

I feel strongly that it has something to do with what I eat and I am trying to figure that out. But caffeine is hard to stay away from...

Lately I've got a feeling that there might be a psychological component to it as well. Around that time I quit my job, tried my hands on a few personal projects, got a light depression and so on.

This article is very interesting since I spend most of the day in front of a screen, mostly reading, bad posture, very hectic etc. Caffeine always makes me tense and could very well be a catalyst.

Any suggestions for how I could monitor my breathing?

I've had similar issues with belching before, and it turned out I had an Ulcer (H. Pylori Infection).

You can pretty quickly get a breath test done at one of those cheapo lab clinics, but also after I got that test I went to a GI doc and did an endoscopy and there was some underlying acid reflux that I'm still figuring out how to handle.

Concentration also causes less energy to be sent to the digestive system because the energy gets diverted to the brain. Concentration is an evolutionary 'fight or flight' adaptation. Therefore when you are highly concentrating, its possible that your digestion gets impaired. Couple this with shallow breathing, then you would have even less energy available for digestion.

Which causes the food to be badly digested, leading to gas and even various syndromes that cause irritation & inflammation in the intestines and even the body in general. Because when a non-digested piece of food enters the intestines, the body can easily trigger the immune responses of the body, thinking that 'a foreign substance has entered the digestive system' (which is natural). This kind of digestive problems, IBS etc seem to be common in tech circles.

"I'll just eat at my desk."

You don't know the harm you're doing!

Sounds like you have gerd - caffeine relaxes the lower esophageal sphincter. Stress significantly aggravates GERD.

For burping there's both the physiological and psychological component involved.

There's been a number of studies about various breathing exercises you can do that will reduce this.

There's one where you put your tongue behind your teeth, open your mouth slightly and breathe, trying to emphasize breathing using your diaphragm.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7590068/

Here's a similar one.

https://www.cghjournal.org/article/S1542-3565(17)31307-1/ful...

There was also a hacker news article recently about exercises you could do to strengthen those muscles which I'm only starting to try myself.

Normally, I don't hold my breath reading an email. If anything, I'm doing a lot of (frustrated) exhaling. Now, when it comes to games? Yeah, it happens! When nerves are involved, you tend to lock up in many ways.

In general, it seems like the solution is to get some (aerobic) exercise. Or breathing practices? Judging by other comments, probably not this Buteyko method.

It’s not email, it’s anything you do on a small screen:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05605-0

These describe two different problems.

Discussed at the time:

Reading on smartphone affects sigh generation, brain activity, and comprehension - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30181560 - Feb 2022 (125 comments)

I read this page as I observed I had a very cramped, almost non-existent, breathing.

Time to enjoy some sweet O_2 molecules.

I have found the same issue with videoconferencing especially with participants who have a low bandwidth connection, background noise and echo or a bad microphone.

Also having to listen to my coworker with completely broken word stress feels like I'm being beaten with a shovel

When I'm cycling hard and I have to think about something like shifting or starting to go uphill and concentrating on that effort, I've noticed that I don't breath enough.

I've also noticed that I breath differently standing up and sitting down. While sitting down, there is less room in my abdomen for my lungs to expand, and that leads to shallower breaths.

This is really interesting to me because it implies that shallow breathing for long periods of time is a bad thing.

I previously assumed that it was a good thing, due to interpolation from martial arts training - breathing exercises -> body becomes more efficient at pulling oxygen from the air and using it.

I think I may need to reevaluate my assumptions.

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