The symptoms of a panic attack often come from hyperventilation caused by breathing too deeply or quickly. This is why breathing in to a bag can raise CO2 levels in the blood and get a person feeling normal again. "Take deep breaths" is exactly the wrong thing to do in the case of a panic attacks

submitted by magnora7 from en.wikipedia.org

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[–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Holding your breath would also raise CO2 levels.

So if someone you know ever feels like they're having a panic attack, or if you feel dizzy and tingly and like you're losing consciousness, and feel like you're gasping for air, try holding your breath or breathing very shallowly and slowly, and you should return to normal over 5-10 minutes.

I just stumbled across this wiki article saying the primary cause of panic attacks is people breathing too quickly and deeply, causing hyperventilation and CO2 depletion, which ironically makes people gasp for air and feel like they can't breathe, so they breathe more deeply. This feedback loop is basically what a panic attack is, and it's why people sometimes pass out or feel like they're dying. The pH of blood actually changes because of the lack of CO2.

[–]jet199 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

From personal experience is the visual representation of your breathe which makes breathing into a bag work. Your brain thinks it's not getting air in but if it can see the bag going in and out it takes note of the feedback and calms down. If it were the CO2 which was important then breathing into other things without the visual stimulus would work, but they don't.

I've also had the same thing work with feeling your breathe. In the Andes I had altitude sickness and started to hyperventilate. One of the locals put alcohol hand sanitiser on her hands and cupped them around my mouth and because I could feel the sting of the alcohol when I breathed in that let my brain know air was going in and it stopped panicing.

As hand sanitiser is now everywhere that's a good quick alternate to use while someone is looking for increasingly rare paper bags.

[–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Interesting idea, thanks for sharing

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Kind of makes sense to me, I meditate to calm myself down and I do breath deeply but very very slowly, I think the effect is like holding your breath although it gives your body air very slowly as opposed to not at all. But that is similar. And when I am at the peaks of breathing in or breathing out I hold it for a bit so that is like holding your breath.

[–]Tom_Bombadil 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Awesome timing on this posting.

The US is likely entering a new vibration of intensity.

The Whitehouse just installed a 13 ft tall concrete anti-climbing wall.

Msn.com had an article about it, but already pulled it...
It still appears in the search results.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=13+ft+high+wall+around+the+Whitehouse&t=brave&ia=web

Another article reference from last week:

https://americanfaith.com/concrete-wall-going-up-around-white-house-as-u-s-mexico-border-project-remains-unfinished/.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

can't blame em, walls work great for their intended purpose. They probably don't want another January 6th this time not by clowns. I'm fine with it but let's build one for the mexican border too.