If You Sigh and Yawn Often and Feel Short of Air

I sigh without meaning to, and I yawn often. Sometimes it seems I have to take a big breath before my breath feels filled.

There are such people. They keep taking big breaths because they feel stifled, yet on examination the lungs and heart are normal and the oxygen saturation is normal too. Then they are told it is a "habit" or "nerves."

That is right. It is a habit. But I see this habit not as one to brush off lightly, but as one that quietly unsettles the balance of the whole body.

A Big Breath Actually Creates the Stifling

In ordinary conditions the signal to breathe comes less from a lack of oxygen than from the build-up of carbon dioxide. If oxygen drops sharply a signal comes from that side too, but day to day the carbon dioxide side leads. But when you sigh and take big breaths often, carbon dioxide leaves more than it should. Then the body receives the breathing signal less for a while, and this mismatch appears as a 'feeling of being short of air' — that is, an urge to breathe even more deeply.

In other words, you do not breathe big because you feel stifled; rather, a stifled feeling arises because you breathe big — a loop. A sigh calls forth a sigh.

When this state persists, the body grows accustomed to the lowered carbon dioxide. Its set point shifts toward breathing excessively even at small tensions. Then numbness in the hands and feet, dizziness, neck and shoulder tension, easily spiking blood pressure, and a decline in sleep quality follow one by one. This is why these seemingly unrelated symptoms come together.

That chronic hyperventilation lowers the carbon dioxide set point and produces various symptoms is a known fact.

I see breathing as one of the most upstream regulatory valves among the body's several axes. The breath regulates the body's acid-base balance moment to moment, and that balance sets the environment of nerves, muscles, and blood vessels. So when a single breathing habit goes astray, its effects spread along several branches. The numbness, spiking blood pressure, neck and shoulder knotting, and dizziness I described in earlier articles often have breathing resting on them as well. But that does not mean breathing is their root. Each has its own circumstances, and breathing is a condition that spans several of them at once.

The goal is a body that needs less breath

For these patients, my goal is not "how to breathe better" but "a body that does not need to breathe as much."

This does not mean forcibly holding back sighs and big breaths. It is about slowly returning the set point so the body grows reaccustomed to the lowered carbon dioxide. This takes time. A long-held habit does not change in a few days. I use herbal medicine to lower the on-edge autonomic nervous system while this reset goes on. The set point does not move by counting breaths; it moves slowly as the body grows less hurried.

Cases Where You Must Go to a Hospital First

Not every symptom of stifled breathing should be attributed to habit. If you are short of breath even at rest, more stifled when lying down, or if chest pain, severe palpitations, bluing lips, or ankle swelling come together, you must have your heart and lungs examined first. Anemia, thyroid problems, and asthma also cause shortness of breath.

I do not say that all shortness of breath and sighing is due to habit. After first filtering out physical problems with tests, I address the remaining place — the 'stifled feeling when the tests are normal.'

The sigh is not something to scold

Frequent sighing is a mark that the body has long been under tension. It is not a thing to scold that breath for; rather, we must ask why you came to breathe that way. When a single breath eases, I often see in my consultation room the several symptoms that had been resting upon it settle down together. Let us untangle that thread together.

Written by Dr. Heo Ji-young (PhD in Korean Medicine Pathology, Kyung Hee University · former Research Professor of Herbology, Kyung Hee University)