My Breathing and Me

If it seems odd to anyone that I've redirected my focus in recent years from nutrition to breathing, I absolutely get it. Compared to brightly coloured wholefoods, breathing seems …dare I say boring? And coupled with scepticism because “I'm alive so I must be ok” the impact of how we breathe is easily sidelined. Nevertheless, it is utterly foundational and it matters more than most of us imagine. 

This post is in three parts with clear headings to facilitate easy access to the most relevant information to you, the reader. Whilst I've had the privilege of witnessing noteworthy changes in others, I'm best placed to relate my own experiences, especially as a few years have passed since I retrained my breathing thus enabling me to know what's really changed long-term. 

Persistent, low level anxiety 

I have no idea when this started, but it was definitely long enough ago that I believed it to be an inherent part of my character, a defective personality trait. The background low level anxiety ensured that I could easily be tipped into something more dramatic when genuinely stressful events occurred. I managed frustration badly, not infrequently it erupted as anger leaving me feeling disappointed with myself. I was easily overwhelmed, sometimes needing to remove myself even from something as innocuous as a busy narrow checkout queue. I reference the latter because I was reminded of it this morning as I waited in the queue at that same windowless supermarket and didn't feel any need to abandon my husband, Graham to deal with the long wait in a high-sided checkout line.

Why might all of these effects have subsided or even vanished as a result of me reprogramming my breathing? Quite simply, I was breathing a little bit too fast for my body's needs. Of course I didn't know this. Why would I? It had become my normal over the course of  … decades, probably. And it wasn't extreme so it wouldn't have been apparent to anyone else. This faster breathing effectively sends a message to the brain that there's a potential threat. You'll have noticed that we breathe faster when we are under threat, it's part of our preparedness for fighting or fleeing from it. But it shouldn't be happening when there is no threat. Faster breathing, even just a little too fast on a persistent basis is keeping the brain in a state of alert. Result? A continuous hum of background anxiety. The good news is it doesn't need to be like this. If a fast breathing rate is the cause or contributing factor, then it can be changed. I'm pleased to say that I am literally happier now.

Cold Extremities

Palpitations? Twitching?

The fact that I never dreamed there might be an association between my breathing and almost always having cold extremities points to a deficit in my knowledge of fairly basic biology. Even when I used to temporarily reverse it and feel warm even in cold weather, I didn't look to biology for clarification. Let me explain. This magic happened whenever I did a meditation. I'd sit comfortably, slow down and deepen my breathing so that I was properly using my diaphragm (or so I thought  … I was actually doing ‘belly breathing’ rather than 360° diaphragmatic breathing, but it was a definite improvement anyway) and within a couple of minutes, whoosh! Warmth spread throughout my body, actually reaching my fingers and toes. I was amazed every time. It was the only occasion where it happened so I actually concluded that it was a by-product of meditation, and in a sense it was, but it was more directly a result of my breathing. 

Why did changing my moment by moment breathing reduce the icy feelings of my fingers and toes even in the winter? Slowing and deepening the breath allows the inhale to reach the lower lobes of the lungs. This is where most of the gas exchange takes place enabling oxygen-rich blood to enter the bloodstream and be delivered to the muscles, organs and tissues of the body, even those on the faraway ends of the arms and legs! I'm actually warmer nowadays in cold weather. In winter, I still do an exaggerated practice of slow, deep breathing as a way of warming my toes quickly when I get into bed.

I've raised twitching and palpitations as questions because they've also gone and breathing can most certainly play a role. Every now and then I'd get facial twitches, especially in one or other of my eyes. I always attributed them to poor sleep which isn't an unreasonable conclusion, but I can't help noticing that even when my sleep is off nowadays, I don't seem to have any of these irritating little nervous twitches. As for palpitations, gosh! I had about a year of them after Covid in the early part of 2022. This is when I started attending to my breathing and they did finally stop. Was it down to me changing my breathing? I can't know for sure because other factors may be involved, but over-breathing can cause these and this is how:

Rapid breathing lowers carbon dioxide which we absolutely do need in the right amounts, it's not just a waste product. This increases the alkalinity of the blood (there's a sweet spot for our blood pH, too much acid or alkaline is a problem), and in simple terms, this reduces calcium in the blood leading to nerve and muscle excitability which can cause the issues referred to above. I'm certainly keeping an open mind about these because I simply don't know if, or how much my breathing was a factor. But the timing of their disappearance is interesting. 

Sleep

I've written about my 3 decades of insomnia before so I'll refrain from repeating all of that here. Suffice to say, it was an absolute revelation that learning to breathe slowly, subtly (always through the nose) and diaphragmatically improved my sleep when nothing else had. I thought I'd tried everything. How long had I been ‘training’ unhelpful breathing patterns and then taking them to bed with me?! And was there anything else I’d missed? Getting breathing right is fundamental, but that doesn't mean it's all that's ever needed.

A couple of years after the breathing-related improvements, I realised my body was desperately trying to compensate for yet another challenge, something similarly foundational. I wouldn't describe myself as sun averse, but I clearly wasn't getting optimal sunshine (my preferred source of vitamin D) and in the winter I was adhering to the standard dosing recommendations for supplementation and it left me deficient. Addressing it rather more decisively further improved my sleep such that good nights now outnumber the not-so-good nights. After around 30 years of pretty dismal sleep where good nights were an occasional flash in the pan, I'm delighted with this new status especially as it comes at a time of life when sleep duration and quality often diminish. My days are better, I feel more confident and I no longer have to plan according to when I'm likely to be awake enough to cope.

Why does breathing impact so significantly on sleep?

The slightly too fast breathing was the chief problem for me (for many others, it's breathing through the mouth). As is the case for persistent anxiety, breathing in excess of the body's needs tells the brain there's a threat. The ensuing brain cell excitability can interfere with falling asleep (and further contributes to unwanted mind chatter). This had long since ceased to be my problem. Instead I was waking up in the small hours and staying awake; why would my brain want me to go back to sleep if the ‘threat’ hadn't passed? There's a lot more to breathing and sleep, especially for women in respect of hormonal changes and some of the challenges are not yet well acknowledged by the medical profession so I recommend my previous post on the subject if you think this could be relevant for you. And for more sleep-related content, please see below.*

Concluding Thoughts

I'd love for this to have been a more light-hearted post, but the direct and indirect effects of a big chunk of life with insomnia and anxiety don't lend themselves too well to humour. And I'm disappointingly confident that a visit to a doctor with any of the above wouldn't have included an evaluation of my breathing. Instead, I may well have left with a prescription for sleeping pills, anti-anxiety medication or even antidepressants. All of which have undesirable side effects. I may have been offered counselling or CBT (which did in fact once happen). These definitely have their place and can make a real (side effect free) difference, but what are the chances I would have concluded they were only minimally effective for me? If my breathing was still off, I would have likely sabotaged such interventions. 

So my hope in writing this is to alert others to the possibility that their ingrained breathing habits may be making life harder than it needs to be. It almost demands a leap of faith to believe that something so simple could matter so much, especially when, despite the wealth of scientific literature, the effects of how we breathe are not part of medical training. It's not just nutrition that escapes the curriculum!

What can you do about it? Some people can definitely address their breathing by themselves. We have a simple checklist on the Breathing Space section of our website to help you assess your own breathing. Most breathing retraining needs to factor in the biochemical dimension (oversensitivity to carbon dioxide), the biomechanical dimension (proper engagement of the diaphragm) and the mind body dimension which is typically an overriding feature. For anyone who is undecided about the best approach, we have a page which may help you decide. 

If this long post has given just one person hope or inspiration then my chief motivation has been fulfilled. 

Best wishes to you. 

~Annette Henry 

• Buteyko Breathing Instructor (Cert BBM)

• Oxygen Advantage Functional Breathing Instructor

• Oxygen Advantage Breathing for Yoga Instructor Training

Annette

*Other relevant posts for sleep issues:

What you can do when sleep is elusive and why slow light breathing can be so beneficial:

When You Really Cannot Sleep 

If you haven't slept and have concerns about the impact on your brain, there's new research revealing some very optimistic news: Your Brain and CO²

I now have a protocol to use for the purpose alluded to here. This will be taught to students with sleep issues who train with me.