So you’re breathing normally, decide to take a deep breath and you feel a super refreshing feeling. But it doesn’t happen all the time when you take deep breaths, only once every couple minutes or so. Sorry if this is not a good explanation.
In: Biology
I once fucking lost it!
Went to hospital, got checked over, they didn’t find anything and it went away on it’s own.
sucked for about a month. And I feel like I still get it sometimes but I don’t know if it’s psychological
Part of respiratory drive is based on gas concentrations in the blood, but your lungs also have stretch receptors as a feedback mechanism. A super deep breath and maximizes the stretch receptor feedback, which lets your brain know you’re breathing adequately, and decreases the need for a sudden next breath and “air hunger”. Air hunger is an interesting drive, which is usually but not always correlated with good gaseous exchange, and in some medical cases, such as end of life, inappropriate air hunger becomes extremely agitating and needs to be suppressed pharmacologically.
Most people don’t breathe very efficiently. We inhale and exhale enough to get the air we need, but very few people subconsciously breathe in a way that completely fills and empties their lungs with each breath. If you’re not inhaling completely, you’re not getting as much oxygen as you could; if you’re not exhaling completely, carbon dioxide sits in your lungs from your previous breath. Taking a big, deep breath every once in a while resets your breathing, so to speak, which is why it feels so refreshing when it happens. If you find yourself doing this very often, you may have a habit of taking a lot of shallow breaths instead of fewer, deeper breaths.
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