Not breathing right. Does this have to do with caregiving?
I've discovered something the last few days. My blood oxygen often runs low -- about 92%. My heart is fine. No COPD. No drugs suppressing breathing. What I discovered was I don't breathe deeply enough. If I make myself breathe deeply, the saturation goes up to 97% fairly quickly.
Now what does this have to do with caregiving? I keep catching myself being very tense. My shoulders and chest muscles are tense and I'm breathing only using my chest muscles, instead of my diaphragm. When I was in the kitchen this evening, I found myself very tense and even holding my breath. It was like I was trying to make myself small and invisible. Then I figured out what might be happening. I am in someone else's home and not my own. I thought about how animals in the wild will tread lightly and tensely when crossing another's territory.
I am trying to train myself to do deep breathing, instead of shallow. I have gotten into a very bad habit. It made me think that the tension that comes with anxiety can actually take your breath away. Lower blood O2 is not good for heart, brain, or other organs. When someone says Breathe, it is such good advice I am learning.
Blood pressure pills really helped me breathe better but it took a while to get the right dosage that didn't make me fall asleep.
For me, a good stress reliever is vacuuming.... of course it raises the blood pressure on the cats and they dive under the beds. Too bad that doesn't work on one's parent(s).... keep them under the bed for a couple of hours :P
its tension , not to be confused with, but caused by stress . tension simply meens tensed up muscles . at rest , when you should be relaxing them they are staying wound instead . wound muscles restric blood flow , hence low o2 , AND urn fuel and leave subsequent waste material . the added waste material is poisoning you . you need ativan for yourself during this period .. im a doc , remember ? im docs agent for the purpose of purchasing building materials and his firewood cutter / stone mason / equiptment operator -- close enough ..
Another good reason to stop our shallow breathing is that according to Teepa Snow's YouTube video, by doing shallow breathing and/or holding our breathe, we are depriving our brain of the needed oxygen. We're starving it. And this has been linked with dementia.
That tension reliever where you breathe in through your nose pushing out the bottom of your chest, then blow steadily out - oooooooooohhh - through your mouth really does work. I find myself holding my breath, too - Captain's right, it's sheer tension.
Or, as Joyce Grenfell put it in one of her schoolteacher sketches: "Breathe, Peggy dear! Don't forget to breathe!!!"
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