What’s a satisfying breath?

Ever have the feeling that you can’t get a truly satisfying breath?
You can breathe, and you can carry on ordinary physical activity, but you just cannot take a breath deep enough to get that feeling of physical satisfaction that “there, that was a good one, a complete one.” I’ve known that for days at a time - very tiring. Very, very frustrating.

How about yawning? Have you ever noticed that some yawns are just so-so occurrences, but some are just a whole-body complete experience that leaves you relaxed and tingling, like whatever you just did really, really worked… for whatever it was supposed to be doing?

Same idea.
Breathing is just breathing, until you realize that you haven’t had a “complete” breath in a while. That feeling, as you take an extra-deep breath, your chest rises and your ribs expand and the experience achieves some sort of threshold … you make it to some peak that you didn’t even know was there, and then rolls down the other side. That’s ordinary. Until you start missing a few. Until it’s been hours and hours, and you keep catching yourself, every fourth or fifth breath, filling your lungs as hard as you possibly can, straining for that sensation of completeness, of “I’ve taken a sufficient breath”.

Sometimes, you can cheat, and force one, by holding your breath for a minute or two, until the desperation is ringing in your ears and the little spots are coming in from the sides of your field of vision, and then… then you get that momentary satisfaction of a breath that “went all the way”, that “completed”. But then it’s gone again, and the next ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand go by without that finish, without that satisfaction that some people (?) never miss.

I’ve wondered what that’s all about. I’ve wondered if many other people experience it. It is, I suppose, just a tiny inkling of what people experience with emphysema or COPD and other lung or nerve disease.
Maybe for me it’s associated with asthma or allergies, but it’s not clear that there’s a direct connection, or a causative one.

I wonder if it’s a carbon-dioxide thing. I’ve tried hyperventillating - when I was younger, I’d try to see how far I could swim under water, so I’d hyperventillate a bit first, to get the blood all charged with a few seconds extra oxygen. I noticed that, if I didn’t immediately duck under water and start striving - say I changed my mind or got distracted - then for the next minute or two, my normal breathing wasn’t quite as satisfying as normal. Sort of a mini version of that “lack of completeness” of a breath that I just described above.

Or, if that doesn’t ring any recognition bells, how about sneezes? How about orgasms? Ever notice that some are just (by comparison) ordinary, workmanlike events. Satisfying as a quick release, perhaps. But others are … oh, wow! That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Involving on multiple levels and devastatingly intense and full, as experiences go. I might be saying things better left unsaid about some of my sneezes there…

They say that hyperventillating not only temporarily charges the bloodstream with a little extra dissolved oxygen, but it also rather over-purges the blood of carbon dioxide. It’s really the accumulation of carbon dioxide that gives you the urge to take the next breath. That’s what made me think that I’ve had “attacks” (jeez, I’m using a lot of scare-quotes in this piece, aren’t I? well, anyway back to my thought… ) er… attacks of some sort of failure of the CO2 sensor. I haven’t actually had such an attack for a few years now. Are they done? Am I overdue? But I had them as a child and most of my adult life, up to, I guess a few years ago.

Hmm. I started chiropractic treatment a few years ago. Maybe the relevant nerve got un-impinged. Idle speculation, but the timing is right… unless I start having those experiences again.

Anybody else?

Not a shortness of breath. I could take a physically full breath, but I just couldn’t make it roll over the top of that completeness threshold that made it feel right and done and proper. Bad enough if it lasted a few hours. Exhausting and demoralizing if it lasted days.

Things that make you go “hmmm”.

Breathe easy, all.

That’s the way I see it, anyway.

Copyright 2008