Overbreathing and Anxiety - which comes first?

Do you experience panic attacks or suffer with anxiety? You may well be breathing too much! (see symptoms of hyperventilation).

An estimated 1 in 10 people attending Emergency Departments are experiencing some form of acute hyperventilation or panic attack. 

Overbreathing (or hyperventilation) can be hard to recognise but can become a daily habit even after the initial cause, such as emotional or physical trauma or grief, has passed.

Overbreathing can also be due to physical demands on the body such as talking a lot. This can be particularly relevant in careers such as teaching or those where holding static postures is required - professions such as dentists, surgeons and similar. Overbreathing can also be caused by simple, everyday 'busyness'. The symptoms that then develop can then cause anxiety and so the cycle is established.

Breathing too much and using your upper chest / neck muscles to suck the air in can alter your body chemistry, upsetting the delicate balance and stimulating our emergency response or fight-flight freeze reaction. In the short term this can be useful in an emergency, but long term is extremely detrimental to our health.

How Physio2Breathe can help you

• Learn about the way you breathe and how it is causing your symptoms
• Learn your triggers and how to minimise them
• Learn how to return your breathing (and your body) to a state of calm
• Building on the foundations by learning breathing during more demanding situations such as exercise, speaking, performance allowing you to breathe freely and efficiently at work, rest and play
• Capnography - this test is used to see whether you are breathing too much by testing levels of Carbon Dioxide in the air you breathe out and involves a very simple test. It also allows you to look at your breathing ‘wave’ on a computer screen. For more information see Capnography.