Why anxiety or panic attacks lead to rapid breathing?

Panic attacks and SOB

You might have seen or might have experienced yourself the distress when breathing during an anxiety attack. Although the feeling is not arising out of any abnormality within the system, it can feel as if you are being suffocated and that you are not getting enough air to breathe. Your heart will start to pound hard and you imagine that you are going to die if you do not get enough air. At times, you may even feel a chest pain along with a light-headedness and weakness in your legs and arms. 

All this is because of the rapid breathing or in other words, due to the hyperventilation.

Sometimes you may wonder why you get the feeling of not enough air to breathe, even when you are breathing so rapidly during a panic attack? The reason is that when a person breathes rapidly, it expels the carbon dioxide at a faster rate and takes in more oxygen than usual. This will shift the oxygen and carbon dioxide balance maintained in the system, which is very important to facilitate normal breathing. Thus, it is the lack of carbon dioxide instead of the lack of oxygen, which gives rise to the rapid breathing through various physiological mechanisms. However, the worse is when you think that you are not getting enough air and try to breathe deeply. This will further increase the amount of oxygen taken into the lungs and will worsen the hyperventilation than settling the symptoms.

Therefore, you should have another means of increasing the amount of carbon dioxide present within the system.

One way is to convince yourself to start breathing slowly as if you are breathing through the stomach. Once you take one breath, you should hold it for few seconds. However, this is easier said than done, as our instinct during a panic attack does not allow us to think rationally unless we train ourselves to perform conscious breathing.

In some instances, breathing into a paper bag might also help increase the amount of carbon dioxide within the system. However, care should be taken not to use anything other than a paper bag and that the bag does not completely stuck in your face when you breathe in. 

You should also remind yourself that hyperventilation is not something abnormal and that many people around the world are also suffering from similar symptoms as a result of anxiety attacks.

So, the next time you experience a panic attach and feeling of suffocation, convince yourself to breathe slowly as much as possible.