Michael McMahon Posted May 21 Posted May 21 (edited) In 2016 I was in a psychiatric ward for a month and a half with anxiety. It felt as if I was breathless but somehow I wasn’t physically drowning. One possibility is the breathlessness was the opposite of a lucid dream where I wasn’t fully self-aware in the real world as if it were like a negative symptom of schizophrenia in terms of apathy. So one version of breathlessness is as a form of extended sleep paralysis where breathing is hard even as you walk around. I couldn’t understand how meticulous the pain response appeared to be in changing forms between chest pain, overheating and breathlessness yet the body controls our smooth transition into unconsciousness during sleep. For example during sleep our body keeps working to move blood through the valves with the calf muscle pump when we roll around. So a sensation of heavy legs with shin splints could mimic a sleepy calf muscle pump. “Sleep paralysis is a feeling of being conscious but unable to move. It occurs when a person passes between stages of wakefulness and sleep. During these transitions, you may be unable to move or speak for a few seconds up to a few minutes. Some people may also feel pressure or a sense of choking.” webmd “Calf muscle pump (CMP) promotes venous return from the lower extremity and contributes to preload and cardiac output.” pubmed To some extent the pain of breathlessness might have served as a reminder that the brain is also physical in helping to control breathing and heart rate as a way to counteract dissociation when we can’t touch our own brain. To some extent when we feel lightheaded our brain is like a dumbbell weight that we can detect by lying down. Perhaps the anxiety wasn’t drowning but the fear of drowning! Titanic 1997 - Rose rescues Jack (axe scene) Edited May 21 by Michael McMahon
swansont Posted May 21 Posted May 21 ! Moderator Note What is your inquiry? I don’t see anything but some hand-waving and a tenuous connection between breathlessness and drowning. Nothing resembling rigor.
Michael McMahon Posted May 21 Author Posted May 21 25 minutes ago, swansont said: ! Moderator Note What is your inquiry? I don’t see anything but some hand-waving and a tenuous connection between breathlessness and drowning. Nothing resembling rigor. The brain can be a big mystery where a lot of the brain is viewed as being for emotional processing. Yet we forget how strong the heart is when it never stops pumping where a lot of the brain might be interconnected with monitoring the heart. Could the brain be like the speed dial on a car? We don’t often think of the brain as being like an engine rather than just a computer so could anxiety help us breathe more passively?
TheVat Posted May 21 Posted May 21 (edited) Heart rate is mainly a brain stem thing, in terms of regulation. You might ask your healthcare provider about vagal maneuvers, which can help the vagus nerve (the major connector in the parasympathetic nervous system which regulates the heart, breathing, digestion, and making whoopie) calm the heart and breath and reduce negative feedback loops from anxiety. The main purpose of the parasympathetic NS is maintaining homeostasis by regulating the body's visceral organs. It is the relaxing system of the so-called gut-brain axis, which counters the sympathetic NS which turns on fight-or-flight responses (and the panic attacks you described in the OP) - responses your inner hunter-gatherer ape also needs. The PNS is sometimes described as "relax and digest," which is seeking a functional balance with the SNS and fight and flight. I leave, an exercise for the reader, which system the other F depends on. (the F that fills the blank in the famous Four Fs of animal behavior - fighting, fleeing, feeding, and _____). Again, discuss particular techniques with a healthcare specialist. Some are quite powerful, but you need guidance from an expert to do them properly. I can't provide that. Edited May 21 by TheVat 1
swansont Posted May 21 Posted May 21 1 hour ago, Michael McMahon said: The brain can be a big mystery where a lot of the brain is viewed as being for emotional processing. Yet we forget how strong the heart is when it never stops pumping where a lot of the brain might be interconnected with monitoring the heart. Could the brain be like the speed dial on a car? We don’t often think of the brain as being like an engine rather than just a computer so could anxiety help us breathe more passively? This is not helping convince me that you have a rigorous, scientific argument. Perhaps you should start with some credible sources, researching how anxiety can affect breathing.
Michael McMahon Posted May 21 Author Posted May 21 31 minutes ago, swansont said: This is not helping convince me that you have a rigorous, scientific argument. Perhaps you should start with some credible sources, researching how anxiety can affect breathing. Many adults and teenagers with smaller heads can still be very intelligent and athletic. Yet when we admire a larger bodybuilder like Arnold Schwarzenegger we forget that he might be helped in maintaining more upper body strength simply by having a larger brain and head size. So even though many track athletes have a diverse head size it’s still possible when we think of lions that their larger muscles can be helped by having a larger head to breathe more efficiently. -3
Phi for All Posted May 21 Posted May 21 1 hour ago, Michael McMahon said: Many adults and teenagers with smaller heads can still be very intelligent and athletic. Yet when we admire a larger bodybuilder like Arnold Schwarzenegger we forget that he might be helped in maintaining more upper body strength simply by having a larger brain and head size. So even though many track athletes have a diverse head size it’s still possible when we think of lions that their larger muscles can be helped by having a larger head to breathe more efficiently. ! Moderator Note This is pure supposition. If you want to use this as part of an argument, you need to provide some credible sources that support it. This is a mainstream section, so we need more rigor.
Michael McMahon Posted May 21 Author Posted May 21 (edited) 1 hour ago, Phi for All said: ! Moderator Note This is pure supposition. If you want to use this as part of an argument, you need to provide some credible sources that support it. This is a mainstream section, so we need more rigor. Well a cheetah has a smaller head than a lion and the cheetah can still breathe as efficiently as possible. A larger head in terms of breathing might be more about multitasking where you can still breathe mostly efficiently without having to focus as hard on it. So someone with a larger upper body can indirectly use their larger neck muscles to assist their breathing even if their larger neck muscles weigh them down a bit during running. Edited May 21 by Michael McMahon -1
swansont Posted May 21 Posted May 21 37 minutes ago, Michael McMahon said: Well a cheetah has a smaller head than a lion and the cheetah can still breathe as efficiently as possible. A larger head in terms of breathing might be more about multitasking where you can still breathe mostly efficiently without having to focus as hard on it. So someone with a larger upper body can indirectly use their larger neck muscles to assist their breathing even if their larger neck muscles weigh them down a bit during running. ! Moderator Note Responding to a request for credible sources with more conjecture isn’t really the direction we were hoping this was going to go. Even if this had been posted in Speculations it would be closed down for a lack of rigor, but you posted in a science section without making any attempt at presenting any science. We don’t have a WAG section. Stop posting WAGs. (Wild-Ass Guesses, in case you’re not familiar with the acronym)
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