Breathing Remedies

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Hyperventilation and long COVID?

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In this blog I am going to discuss the link between hyperventilation (over breathing or disordered breathing) and long COVID. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic a lot of attention was focused on spread of the virus and on helping the surge of hospitalised patients with serious illness.

Long COVID

More recently in the pandemic, focus has been on care of the survivors of COVID-19 who have “long COVID”. Many people have persisting symptoms several months after the onset of the infection including exercise intolerance, fatigue and breathlessness. Previous outbreaks of coronaviruses have also caused persistent breathlessness, muscle weakness, fatigue and reduced quality of life.Continue Reading

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Is ME/CFS/SEID linked to disordered breathing/overbreathing/hyperventilation?

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litchfield

Dr Peter Litchfield, a breathing expert notes that “Overbreathing can be a dangerous behaviour immediately triggering and/or exacerbating a wide variety of serious physical and mental symptoms, complaints, and deficits in health and human performance.”

So does overbreathing or hyperventilation play a part in ME/CFS/SEID?

 1) Hyperventilation symptoms are very like those of ME/CFS/SEID

“Hyperventilation syndrome (HVS) can show itself in different ways. Most people with HVS will experience some, or many, of the following symptoms:

Respiratory: breathlessness tightness around the chest fast breathing frequent sighing

Tetanic: tingling (e.g. in fingers, arms, mouth) muscle stiffness trembling in hands

Cerebral: dizziness blurred vision faintness headaches

Cardiac: palpitations tachycardia (rapid heart beat)

Temperature: cold hands or feet shivering warm feeling in the head Gastrointestinal: sickness abdominal pain

General: tension anxiety  fatigue and lethargy insomnia”

(this information was taken from my local Derbyshire NHS Community Health info on Hyperventilation Syndrome, and it is great that they recognise it).

Any and every system in the body can be affected. Here is a more detailed list, not everyone has the same symptoms, genetics also plays a part.

 2) Hyperventilation depletes the tissues of oxygen

a. Low levels of CO2 stop release of oxygen from the blood

Short of breath? Breathe less!  Says Dr Myhill, well known CFS expert.

“Many patients, particularly asthma patients, but also CFS patients, have a sensation that they are not getting enough oxygen to their tissues. Their response to this is to breathe more deeply. However blood cannot become more than 100% saturated with oxygen. All that happens is that more carbon dioxide is washed out of the blood. This makes oxygen cling more fiercely to haemoglobin in red blood cells and therefore oxygen delivery to the tissues is made worse! Paradoxically, to improve oxygen supply to the tissues you have to breathe less! Breathing less increases carbon dioxide levels and improves oxygen delivery.”

b) Low levels of CO2 reduce blood flow to the brain

Dr Medows researches orthostasis (feel worse when standing) and  ME/CFS  “Some of those with ME/CFS and orthostasis (feel worse when standing) also experience very rapid, deep breathing during an orthostatic challenge, like trying to catch your breath after strenuous exercise. This hyperventilation, in turn, leads to reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, or affecting the pH of the body. And, guess what? One of the most powerful modulators of brain blood flow happens to be CO2. The lower the CO2, the lower the cerebral blood flow.”

Dr. Medow’s hypothesis: that the reduced cerebral blood flow and brain fog occurs, at least in part, because of impaired control mechanisms for regulating C02 and/or blood pressure.

3) Learning to breathe less can help ME/CFS/SEID symptoms

Breathing normalization by re-education can help; you can find some success stories here.

 

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Self-improvement is a big job. Breath retraining requires personal discipline and effort.

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Yes, self-improvement is about awareness and sticking with it, it’s not just for January.

I love this inspirational quote from Doe Zantamata:real self improvement

Self-improvement is a big job.

It’s like rebuilding a house. Some things need a little touch up, some could use repair, and sometimes a whole section needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

But it can’t just be non-stop work.

You need rest. A good meal. A day off to enjoy the sunshine or just do fun stuff without thinking much at all.

It may feel like you want to just get everything fixed right now but you’ve got to be patient with yourself and step back and admire all the work you’ve done and are doing along the way.

That’s the only way to stay encouraged for the long haul.

Real and lasting self-improvement is a lifetime achievement, not an overnight success.

-Doe Zantamata

 

And here is a real-life story of someone I know that mirrors much of this. Sticking with it is certainly a theme here too. Steve Darch, a breathing educator colleague has kindly allowed me share his story of:

Recovery from Chronic Asthma, COPD stage 2 and Bronchiectasis

“I played 36 holes of golf yesterday on a very hilly course and carried my clubs despite it being very wet and muddy underfoot.
I was never at any point out of breath, my energy and concentration levels were good and woke up this morning with no aches and pains!!

If five ýears ago having been hospitalised on a regular basis and diagnosed with Chronic Asthma, COPD stage 2, Bronchiectasis and taking every medication ever invented someone had told me I was going to be able to do this I would have laughed in their face.

I believe that my healing process is still continuing and although getting older I feel younger and more energetic by the year.

I can 100% put this down to correcting my breathing.

Since changing my breathing I have lost around three stone and maintained this loss (three years) despite at times not eating or drinking as I should. Coming off medication and in particular steroid medication and reduced emotional eating improved my digestive system as well. (NB never come off medications without your doctor’s consent, as this could be dangerous. Steve could only reduce his medications because his condition had improved).

I still monitor my breathing on a regular basis but have learnt to enjoy the breathing exercises and these are now built into my daily lifestyle.

I have been signed off by my NHS Consultant and my lung function continues to improve.

At the same time I have seen a huge reduction in lung infections, coughs, allergies, flu etc.

This did not happen overnight!!!

From observing my clients many expect unrealistic changes to happen quickly and give up on their breathing exercises too quickly because it can be hard work and involves personal discipline and effort.

I believe change happens slowly and gradually and we sometimes forget how far we have moved forward since changing our breathing.

If we also consider with ageing and continuous medication how our health might be now if still hyperventilating the changes for me have been massive”.

He is not surprisingly passionate about helping others. Steve’s Natural Breathing Training website.

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How did we get a disordered breathing pattern/hyperventilation in the first place?

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It is fascinating to note that before World War 2, the normal minute volume for breathing was 4-6 litres per minute, but this increased to ~12 litres per minute by the 1990’s.

hyperventilation-syndrome-c

Something has been going on:

20th/21st century lifestyle –all these factors can encourage you to breathe more than you should:

  • Overeating, eating processed foods
  • Sedentary lifestyle/poor posture encouraging upper chest breathing
  • Helpline type jobs –lot of talking
  • Centrally heated homes/”soft lifestyle” soft beds, oversleeping
  • Environmental pollution
  • Belief that deep breathing is good for you –breathing more and more when you feel breathless
  • Information overload –internet, gadgets –“screen time” linked with poor sleep
  • CHRONIC STRESS –the big one!

Dr Buteyko defined stress as anything that causes you to breathe more than you need to.

Stress can be emotional or physical.

A good example is someone I know who sustained a very nasty broken leg in a skiing accident. She had the initial physical stress and pain of the injury to deal with; suboptimal surgery in a non- state -of -the -art foreign hospital, of painful travel home; emotional stresses insurance to sort out, weeks off work, immobility, worry about the future, many, many visits to hospital for X- rays that showed lack of annealing of the fracture; the stress of expecting to see the consultant who could handle the complicated case but seeing  junior doctors who gave conflicting advice; further surgery and bone grafts; physical stress of more pain and 6 months of having to sleep on her back to keep the injured leg straight. (You can breathe up to twice as much sleeping on your back as your side).

Not surprisingly her breathing pattern suffered. You get the picture, chronic stress can lead to chronic hyperventilation/disordered breathing pattern.

And what are the symptoms of disordered breathing/hyperventilation? Numerous, including increased pain and panic, which can make you breathe more, depleting your body oxygen and causing a vicious cycle.

A client with ME/CFS described rather well the time leading up to her health collapse as “a decade of crises”- the breathing can slide into abnormality without you noticing, and stay that way as it is eventually accepted as normal. For some, ill health comes out of the blue or “I was fine until I had that cough, then I never really got better” but for many “I just didn’t feel right for several years” with IBS/anxiety e.t.c. creeping up on them.

So physical factors causing stress could include:  pain; illness and injury; infection; toxic environment/pollution, and emotional stressors  could be: work stresses (indifferent, bullying or inconsistent management); or not having a job; financial worries; toxic relationships; exams;  bereavement;  new baby e.t.c, e.t.c

Many women in their 40’s may find themselves sandwiched between the demands of teenage offspring and aging parents, also holding down a job, with their own needs being ignored. shutterstock_53154181

With today’s culture, many people put their job before their health, dosing up on decongestants when they have the flu and soldiering on rather than resting and recuperating.

The work/life balance is a difficult one, I heard someone say she doesn’t have time to look after her health while she is working –it’s OK for retired people!  Something badly wrong there….

Luckily a disordered breathing pattern is something that can be put right; surely it is worth it to safeguard your future health, or improve your current health…
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How hyperventilation harms: part 1 hyperventilation can narrow the airways.

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People who have asthma and other respiratory problems (blocked nose, sinusitis, cough etc) tend to breathe a lot more than normal (yes it is possible to breathe too much!)

Over breathing or hyperventilation is breathing more than the body’s requirement at any given time, so if you are seated quietly, but breathing as much as you would need for walking, that is hyperventilation. So you can breathe too many breaths per minute, or too much air per breath, or both. The blood gases can then get out of balance; one of the important changes can be low body carbon dioxide (CO2) or hypocapnia.Continue Reading

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The disease of deep breathing? Three dysfunctional breathing patterns; have you got one?

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one tip weil

A client asked me recently “Why not write a topic about what deep breathing actually means in the Buteyko context?” So here goes, I am preparing to open a can of worms… But before I do that I will just recap that as a breathing educator I identify and help to correct (using the Buteyko method), disordered or dysfunctional breathing  and that: The aim of breathing education is to restore a healthy breathing pattern, to allow the natural, normal, nasal, soft, gentle, smooth, quiet, invisible, efficient, underlying breathing pattern to emerge, so breathing is easier and with the diaphragm free. The most effective way of doing this is by relaxation; by removal of layers of tension caused by bad breathing habits and stress. As the breathing softens and reduces, symptoms decrease too. Dr Buteyko called his method “reduced breathing by relaxation”. 19072  And when I teach I avoid the word DEEP like the plague! That is because it is so utterly confusing as it means two (at least) completely different things to different people:Continue Reading

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Do you ever feel out of breath or dizzy or exhausted after only minimal exercise? How are you breathing?

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The previous better breathing blog post was all about the importance of breathing through your nose, but even before you focus on nasal breathing, you have to cultivate good awareness of your breathing; many people tell me they breathe through their noses, but I observe them mouth breathing without realising. If you have never thought it mattered, why would you notice? I used to be the same. I certainly did not notice that I was taking in gasping breaths through my mouth when I was speaking. Now I can breathe in calmly through my nose when speaking, most of the time anyway.

Remember that the MORE you breathe, the LESS oxygen you are getting. Continue Reading

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