For most people, “shortness of breath” (medically known as dyspnea) is associated with physical exertion. But some of us experience it while sitting on the couch, without an underlying health issue. 

I remember my first episode of “air hunger.” Despite deep inhales, I couldn’t catch my breath. My mouth would be wide open and I would do this bizarre hybrid of a yawn and a sigh. But I couldn’t “get on top of it.” There was no relief. 

It was extremely distressing and it quickly led to panic, which caused me to breathe faster and harder. This initiated a feedback loop that made it even harder to catch a breath. 

Hey, Google, “I can’t catch my breath.” Guess what? The results of that search did not help me catch my breath. Go figure. Many of the results mentioned that heart problems could bring on this type of breathlessness. 

I already had considerable health anxiety around my heart. In fact, when I first started having panic attacks in 2019, I booked an appointment with a cardiologist because I was convinced I had a heart problem. But my heart was fine. It was fine then, and it’s fine now. So what is going on? 

What causes air hunger if there is nothing wrong with your heart or lungs? 

My first episode of air hunger coincided with an exceptionally bad hangover. Nothing on this site is medical advice but here is some indisputable LIFE ADVICE: do not drink excessively during benzo withdrawal. Better to avoid drinking entirely, but if you do have a drink here and there, be sure to hit the brakes after one. If you can’t hit the brakes, you can’t drink. 

Ever hear the term “hangxiety?” Anxiety is an unsurprising symptom of a hangover. Alcohol acts on the same GABA receptors as benzos. As your body tries to shake off the effects of the alcohol, your excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate is activated, sending your neurons into a frenzy. 

Alcohol also causes your cortisol to spike, increasing both your blood pressure and your heart rate. While your brain is speeding up neural activity, your body is activating its stress response. If you’ve ever had a hangover, you know exactly what this combination feels like. 

The hangxiety and other physical symptoms can easily lead you to take rapid, gasping breaths, often through the mouth. This sends you down a path of overbreathing. You end up expelling most of your oxygen before you can even use it. You also end up with a problematic ratio of carbon dioxide. 

Carbon Dioxide is the Key

In excess, carbon dioxide is bad for us, lethal even. But we need a certain amount – the right amount – of this gas to breathe properly. 

You may be breathing in enough oxygen, but the oxygen molecules are unusable if they stay attached to their hemoglobin transport. Carbon dioxide determines the strength of that bond. 

With the right amount of CO2, the oxygen can separate from the hemoglobin and actually enter your body’s cells. Too little CO2 and the oxygen stays attached to hemoglobin, riding around your bloodstream but not actually going where it needs to go. 

Carbon dioxide also helps regulate blood pH. If you are breathing in too much or too little of the gas, your brain and body pH can become too acidic or too alkaline. While this might seem like a purely physiological phenomenon, the body’s pH balance has been linked to panic attacks. 

A hangover offers ripe conditions for overbreathing and the resulting “air hunger” that stems from the imbalance of carbon dioxide, but it’s only one of many instigators. If you are prone to anxiety, you can find yourself blindsided by air hunger seemingly out of nowhere.

Once you start overbreathing it can be hard to hit the brakes. It feeds into itself and can quickly become a runaway train. It’s best to avoid it in the first place.

How to Avoid Air Hunger 

Avoiding triggers is one way to be proactive. Some of my triggers are excessive physical exertion, stress, and as mentioned above, hangovers and drinking too much. Log your instances of air hunger and try to find some common themes in the circumstances. Does it always happen at the same time of day? Does it happen after or during a certain activity? 

You can also learn to breathe better. In fact, you need to breathe better. Almost all of us do. Start by reading Breath by James Nestor. This book explains the science with clear, easy to understand writing. It will help you understand the link between the physiology and the psychology. 

Testing your CO2 Tolerance

Next, test your CO2 tolerance. This is a very simple exercise: breathe normally at rest and then following an exhale, hold your breath and count until you feel inclined to breathe again. You want to count how long it takes before you first get the desire to really take a breath again. This is not holding your breath until you absolutely can’t take it.  

The longer you can do this, the better. As a rule, if it’s fifteen seconds or less, you’ve got work to do. In fact, if it’s twenty seconds or less you have work to do. 

Increasing your CO2 tolerance is straightforward. There are different breath holds and breathing techniques that you can practice anywhere and anytime (ok perhaps not during intense physical activity). Have a look in this video. From minute 6:40 there are specific techniques for increasing your CO2 tolerance, like box breathing which involves a 4 second inhale, a 4 second hold, a 4 second exhale and another 4 second hold at the end.

Nasal Breathing

Even when you are not practicing a breathing technique, there is something incredibly simple that you can try to do at all times: breathe through your nose. 

Our mouths are well suited for eating and talking, but for breathing they seem to do more harm than good. Breathing through your nose slows down your breathing and it helps fill up the lower lobes of the lungs. It also releases nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator that serves to widen your blood vessels, increasing the circulation of oxygen in the bloodstream. 

While you can be mindful of nasal breathing during the day, it’s a bit more difficult when you’re sleeping. Like cold plunges, mouth taping is having a moment with the health and wellness community. While you should of course consult a doctor before doing anything like this, it should be noted that many athletes, wellness coaches and pulmonologists have bought in to this practice.

Personally speaking, it took me a few days to get comfortable with mouth taping. The first time I tried it, I nearly had a panic attack. But now it has become second nature and I find myself waking up with a remarkable amount of energy and noticeably less anxiety. 

Again, consult a doctor. This is worth repeating: nothing on this site is medical advice. And it goes without saying that nothing on youtube is medical advice, either. There are credible medical sources telling us that mouth taping will not in fact solve all sleep related breathing problems.  

What to Do in the Moment 

Prevention is well and good, but what happens if you get blindsided by an episode of air hunger anyway? One of your triggers may bring it on despite the protective steps you have taken. All is not lost. There are still things you can do to get the feeling of breathlessness under control.

Practice Longer Exhales

Longer exhales serve the dual function of increasing your CO2 tolerance and stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system. While your sympathetic nervous systems carries signals that activate your “fight or flight” stress response, your parasympathetic nervous system carries signals that relax and calm the body and mind.

Try to make your exhale double the length of your inhale. So if you inhale for 4 seconds, try to exhale for 8. My personal favorite breathing technique is the 4-7-8 method. Inhale through the nose for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7, and then exhale through the mouth (or the nose) for 8 seconds.

Other Breathing Techniques

Here are some additional breathing techniques that you can do in the moment to try and reign in air hunger.

While the title in the video below suggests these are techniques to stop a panic attack, I’ve found they serve a broader purpose.

One last thing. It can be difficult to tell yourself that there is not something physically wrong with you when you are going through something that is often terrifying and distressing like air hunger. But knowing the body chemistry behind the physical symptoms offers some relief. I now know there is nothing wrong with my heart or my lungs. I just have an unbalanced ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide in my bloodstream. 

If you are convinced there is something wrong with you, go and see a doctor. If the doctor can’t find anything wrong with you, it may give you some peace of mind. In any case, I am not a doctor myself and nothing on this site is medical advice. What worked for me might not necessarily work for you!

I know I’m not the only one who has dealt with air hunger. I imagine you have too if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this post. All of this stuff is so damn frustrating and too often terrifying as well. I feel like the best shot we have is talking with each other and pooling our lessons learned. I would love to hear about your experience, and if you’ve found different solutions.