ME/CFS/fibromyalgia asthma hayfever anxiety snoring sleep apnoea
Not the most catchy title I admit but read on if you have ME/CFS, or a teenager with it, or unexplained anxiety.
If there is one thing worse than having ME/CFS, it is watching your child go through it; their life and education on hold, unable to leave the house, with little support or understanding. If I had found this information earlier, I may have been able to help my son more, I hope it helps you.Continue Reading
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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The fight or flight (or freeze) response is useful to deal with an immediate threat or danger, for example to fight or escape from a predator; or perhaps freeze in the case of a baby animal too small to run or fight, wanting to escape the predator’s gaze by keeping still. Fight or flight is when the sympathetic part of the autonomic (automatic or involuntary) nervous system is in charge (rather than the parasympathetic – rest and restore).
The brain becomes aware of danger due to messages received from the senses. Hormones are released and the sympathetic nervous system sends signals to various parts of the body to produce the changes seen below which “turn down” systems not needed immediately and focus on getting blood to the leg muscles for example :
Normally, when the immediate danger or threat has passed, the red alert or threat response should subside, but this does not happen efficiently when hyperventilation becomes chronic. A disordered breathing pattern usually includes chronic hyperventilation, often mouth breathing, and upper chest breathing, with the stomach held in tightly. People frequently have a wide range of symptoms. They are constantly on red alert, even when there is no threat. This condition is sometimes called the “fat folder syndrome” as patients are sent for multiple tests and may have many medical reports in their file. Any system in the body can be affected; nervous, respiratory, immune, circulatory, digestive, musculo-skeletal e.t.c. This adaptation of the body is now not helpful but very unhealthy; it can keep people in pain and discomfort and disability with a very poor quality of life.
A more comprehensive list of symptoms is here.
Breathing is such a basic and fundamental need that it is often overlooked by the medical profession with the assumption that “it takes care of itself”. Luckily it can be corrected, and many symptoms are often dramatically reduced. The symptoms can start to reduce once breathing is improved, becomes more relaxed, calmer, gentler, quieter -allowing the parasympathetic rest and restore to dominate and oxygen reaches the tissues more efficiently.
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Chronic hyperventilation unbalances the blood gases; one of the important changes can be low body carbon dioxide (CO2) or hypocapnia. CO2 is not just a waste gas; you need a certain amount for healthy body function. 
Part 1 focused on low CO2 and tightening of the airways and how hyperventilation, or over-breathing, can cause respiratory issues.
In part 2 we turn the spotlight on blood vessels and circulation: hyperventilation-induced hypocapnia can lead not only to the airways narrowing but also constricts certain blood vessels and affects the blood supply to many organs, leading to diverse symptoms from IBS to brain fog to cold hands and palpitations (fuller list of hyperventilation related symptoms). One example of reduced blood flow/low O2 supply is shown in the figure of a brain scanned before and after just one minute of voluntary hyperventilation. The reduction in cerebral blood flow can lead in turn to poor oxygen (O2) supply to the brain, and may contribute to brain fog, poor concentration and anxiety. Continue Reading
