Breathe, Just Breathe

Amid the whirlwind of exams, extracurriculars, and deadlines, many students find that their greatest struggle is not acing tests, but rather managing their stress. When we are faced with a stressful situation, we often resort to relaxation techniques, such as meditation and yoga, which utilize deep breathing. By engaging in these relaxation techniques, we are usually able to calm down and focus on the task at hand, whether it be a test or an essay that was procrastinated to the night before the due date. In fact, deep breathing is also used by athletes, such as martial artists who want to improve precision before their matches. Overall, deep breathing serves as an effective strategy for nearly all individuals to clear their minds and concentrate on their responsibilities.

To understand the science of deep breathing, we first need to understand the science behind stress. When you begin breathing short shallow breaths out of nervousness, your autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for involuntary physiological processes, recognizes that you are in a stressful situation. The amygdala, or the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions, perceives stress and sends a signal to the hypothalamus, which then sends signals to the adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine into the bloodstream. This entire process activates the sympathetic nervous system, which belongs to the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system carries signals relating to the stress response across the body. These signals include increased heart rate, constriction of the blood vessels, and the suppression of other functions and systems, such as the digestive and immune systems, through the release of the hormone cortisol. This is also known as the flight or fight response.

While the fight or flight response is helpful in the short term, it can also be very harmful to your mental and physical well-being. There are two types of stress, eustress and distress. While eustress is typically considered short term and beneficial stress, distress is usually long term and negative stress. Eustress is caused by events such as being in anticipation for challenging yet enjoyable tasks, like sports games, while distress is caused by negative events such as rejection, loss, and injury. Specifically, while eustress motivates us and enhances our performance because of the challenge we experience due to the stressor, distress causes doubt and panic as we do not know how to process nor cope with the stressor. 

Overall, long term stress is harmful for one's health, both mentally and physically. This type of stress can increase your risk for mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and sleep problems. This is because stress affects nearly all of your body systems and organs. Specifically, when you have been in the flight or fight response for long periods of time, you end up taking in less oxygen; since the brain has a high oxygen demand, the lack of oxygen being delivered to the brain results in a lack of proper brain function and concentration. 

Chronic stress is also harmful to your physical health and causes various complications. These health complications are each linked in some way to the release of the hormone cortisol during the flight or fight response. While cortisol serves the acute, or short term, purpose of regulating the body during the stress response, when released chronically, cortisol instead triggers complications such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and higher risk of illness. Alongside cortisol’s job of being anti-inflammatory and acting as a signal to suppress unnecessary functions, it also causes the liver to engage in gluconeogenesis and decrease glycogen production. Since glycogen is responsible for storing glucose and gluconeogenesis creates glucose from other, non-carbohydrate substrates such as amino acids and glycerol, cortisol essentially causes increased glucose production and release from the liver and into the bloodstream. As a result, during the fight or flight response, blood sugar is elevated. While this increase in blood glucose is helpful in the short term as it allows for faster energy production by the cells, chronic high blood pressure can cause permanent damage and result in lifelong conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. Individuals are also at a higher risk of developing illnesses and infections when they have chronic stress. This may sound contradictory to our common knowledge because when you experience short term stress, cortisol is released and this lowers inflammation. However, with chronic stress, your body instead adapts to the constantly elevated levels of cortisol and inflammation increases. This increased inflammation interferes with the immune system’s job of fighting against infections, making you more susceptible to illness.

On the other hand, when you engage in deep breathing, you increase your oxygen intake. This means that there is increased air pressure in your lungs and it is easier for the oxygen to diffuse into the bloodstream to be brought to your somatic cells. This in turn triggers the activation of your parasympathetic nervous system, which is another part of the autonomic nervous system. Unlike the sympathetic nervous system, the responsibility of the parasympathetic nervous system is to relax your body after stress. When your parasympathetic nervous system activates, normal functions are restored, including slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, and normal digestion. Overall, the more time we spend with our parasympathetic nervous system activated, the healthier we are.

Ultimately, stress management is both vital and is easier to do than many believe. By engaging in relaxation techniques such as yoga and meditation, or engaging solely in deep breathing, we are able to take control of our body and properly regulate it to remain concentrated and prevent, as well as  manage chronic stress. However, different techniques work differently for different people and situations. Some possible breathing techniques that you can try include the 4-4-4 breathing technique, which involves breathing in for four seconds, holding your breath for four seconds, and exhaling for four seconds, as well as the diaphragmatic breathing technique where you breathe in slowly through your nose and out through your mouth using your diaphragm and abdominal muscles. It is important to try out each technique and find the one that works best for you. Overall, the more you practice deep breathing and other relaxation techniques, the more your body is in a relaxed state, combatting the effects of stress. Thus, by making small changes to our routines, such as setting aside a minute to just breathe, we are not only resolving our stress at the moment, but also improving our health in the future.