I seem to have this either after a while when in a classroom or office, or even just when having to do admin at home.
After about 30 minutes, I start barely breathing and then after a while I start getting headaches and it becomes more difficult to concentrate.
I very often push through because I don’t really know what to do when I’m in a situation where I still have to stay for hours. like a class.
Any good ways to help with this?
It’s anxiety and yes, I’ve done it all my life. I don’t have much real advice except that you can train yourself to do body check-ins frequently. You can learn to recognize situations where it will be the most severe. Listen a little less intently and breathe and be chill. Remind yourself that if anything surprising happens, you can easily handle it. You don’t need to grip the wheel so tightly.
I only recently managed to notice it clearly most of the time. Before, it seems like I would just keep pushing myself harder and harder. And then be sick or in shutdown for days.
You need to start building a breathing system. Body scan, breathe. Train yourself to check in and then breathe. I’m not sure if there is a metric on a smart watch or ring to watch for oxygenation levels that you can use an alert to remind yourself to breathe. I’ve not tried that. I did just get in the habit to do a body scan and give myself a reminder. It’s marginally effective.
Also, if you’re doing this, you should be checked for Central Sleep Apnea. You likely do it while sleeping as well.
How do you get checked for sleep apnea? And is the only way to treat it those cpap machines?
You need a full sleep study to determine. An overnight at a sleep center. They are literally quiet facilities with few people about. I recommend talking to your primary care physician (if you’re in the US) to tell them what you’re doing with breathing and mention a concern of central apnea. They can request the sleep study to make sure your insurance covers it. And yes, a bipap machine would be necessary to correct it. Which might sound awful but your doctor would likely give you a small talk about the strain this can put on your heart. I hold my breath when there’s any kind of stress in dreams because I’ve forced myself to wake up from naps and realized I wasn’t breathing. To some degree, a bipap machine will retrain your brain as well. Maybe to a degree where it fixes things in the rest of your day for long periods. The new nose and/or mouth pieces are also much smaller and less intrusive than they used to be.
You sound fairly young and are likely to ignore medical stuff but please don’t. At least talk to your doc about it (or find a doc if you don’t have one. Again, assuming you’re in the US, make an appointment at a hospital satellite office not a doc in the box). This is a psychological issue that is largely fixed by physical medicine.
I’ll mention it next time to my doctor. I think she would take it serious. But are there no people who ever managed to get rid of sleep apnea with other interventions?
I’ve heard exercise helps for that, but maybe only for people that are overweight? I’m not sure.
I haven’t done much exercise since a long time, but my weight is fine. So not sure if it would help
Yeah, obstructive apnea is by far the most common and is also commonly due to weight. But central apnea is neurological. Your brain just isn’t sending a signal to your body to breathe. The autonomic nervous system can be altered with anxiety or emotional trauma. Which seems like this might fall under. But no clear way to fix it as far as I’m aware, only treat it like in this case. You might find that some time with the bipap or CPAP devices will correct it for a bit, maybe even in daily life, but it will likely reoccur over time.
Can you just test a device like that from another person, or do they have to be calibrated (or maybe it’s unhygienic?), cause I know a person who has one
I don’t really use smartwatches because I would forget to charge them. But my regular watch can vibrate from time to time, so maybe I can use that as a reminder to check-in.
The problem for me seems to be that it takes quite a long time after I notice it to regulate it again. Sometimes I need to pay attention to my breathing for like 30 minutes before I calm down again.
If that happens often, I can’t really get much done.
While you’re on a screen, there are a bunch of apps and browser plugins that have a breathing reminder you set at your internal. Might not fix everything but could help a little.