I will be sitting down or laying down and at random will find myself either taking a deep breath out of nowhere or a short, quick inhale. In my mind I imagine it is like my lungs are keeping a normal rhythm and then just decide to either take a big gulp of inhale or exhale, etc. and then goes back to normal. Nothing medically alarming…just wondering why that happens and the physiology behind why that happen. Thanks in advance!
In: 250
What you’re experiencing is actually quite common! Sometimes, your body might take a deep breath or a quick inhale to help regulate the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your bloodstream. These spontaneous breath changes can happen due to tiny adjustments your brain makes to ensure your body gets enough oxygen. It’s a normal part of your body’s way of keeping things in balance.
It’s very common for people with forms of Dysautonomia and called “air hunger”. (Not necessary to have Dysautonomia to experience this, but in such cases it’s literally your body remembering to breathe and re-regulate your autonomic functions.) The person who commented first nailed it too for otherwise healthy people.
Breathing regulates the amount of O2 and CO2 in your blood.
CO2 partially turns into carbonic acid when dissolved in water, turning it more acidic. A pressure dip will make the carbonic acid turn to CO2 and Water again, making it less acidic. You can see this when you open a soda bottle and CO2 starts bubbling up.
The body has special cells in your aorta and carotids that monitor O2/CO2 levels and pH of your blood. When O2 levels are too low, these will make you take a deep inhale. When CO2 levels are too high or pH is too low, they will make you exhale deeply to get CO2/carbonic acid out of your bloodstream.
What triggers?
Chemical receptors (known as chemoreceptors) found in your spinal cord and heart blood vessels detect O2 and CO2 levels. Too little O2 would result in more breathing but too much CO2 would result in more breathing as well (to expel it from our blood because it can lower our blood ph (ideal pH is around 7).
There is constant detection from the receptors and what happens is it’s sending this info in real-time to parts of the brain that regulates breathing (those parts are the pons and the medulla). So the signal travels from receptors down the neurons and into the brain.
From the brain, the information is processed and it in turn sends a feedback signal (also via neurons) giving instructions for the body (heart, lungs, breathing muscles) to breathe more frequently and forcefully.
All the answers here so far are wrong. Sighing every now and again is a necessary process to prevent your alveolar (the tiny air sacks where gas exchange takes place) from getting stuck together from surface tension and collapsing. If enough alveoli collapse then whole segments of your lungs can collapse and not function properly, a process called atelectasis.
Reading this.
I definitely yawned halfway through reading the question.
There actually has been studies about yawning being ‘contagious’. There are even some dogs that yawn in response to seeing a person do it!
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It could also be a form of self soothing. If you’re in a particularly stressful state, a sigh can help stimulate your parasymp nervous system and bring a little bit of relaxation.
This is why you’ll see dogs sneeze, shake off, or sigh when their play gets too intense. They’re self-regulating via breath and movement.
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