In this digital era, one cannot deny to look at the screens whether computer, mobile or television. For work or entertainment or some communication, you need to use any of the media where you will have to look at the screen. But looking at any of the screen for the whole day leads to irregular or shallower breathing. Sometimes, people tend to hold their breath while replying back to a message or an email. This may sound awkward but if you notice seriously, you will find this common symptom among various people. Especially people who need to work for all day long sitting on a chair develop such conditions early.
Background
Former Apple and Microsoft executive and also researcher Linda Stone coined the term screen apnea to describe the phenomenon after a long and deep research. She noticed the practice in herself first and then when she followed others, she found the same pattern in almost 80% of people working on screen all day long. Not only people who are working at an office are having these symptoms but also who use smartphones or are addicted to television sitting at home gets affected with such condition. Another factor add to the condition and that is the sitting posture and habit of maximum people. This add more threat to the condition and breathing becomes shallower.
What’s wrong?
Human health get seriously affected for irregular breathing and one of the important side effects of this is imbalance in the biochemistry of human body. This happens mainly due to the fact that the number of gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitric oxide gets affected.
The experts have added in this context that nitric oxide gas is quite important for human body as it is used in immunity system of a person. This gas ensures that a human will understand the different feelings like pain, learning, sleeping, and more. Nitric oxide connects the nerve cells with each other for better understanding of such feelings. Human body faces various disorders or health issues and uses the nitric acid to fight all of them such as tumours, different kind of infections and more. Consequently, this imbalance in nitric oxide is responsible for the shallow breathing of humans.
Besides affecting the immunity system, it also affects the person with inflammation that can lead to obesity which further brings more side effects. Moreover, your immune system also gets affected so you are already prone to various infections. This condition can lead to further risky situations any time soon. In short, the process of regular breathing gets affected and brings long term problems.
Remedies
You can control the situation of irregular or shallower breathing with your best efforts at your home. You have to start with some good and healthy practices, such as –
- Sitting completely straightway in a proper chair for working all day long is the first practice you need to pursue. You may have to invest more but should not compromise as it will directly affect the spinal cord badly. The problem in spinal cord leads to irregular breathing too.
- You have to control the stress around you whether it is work-related or related to your family. With more stress come more irregular breathing. You should take small breaks from whatever work you are doing. Non-stop work or watching the screen can affect the breathing.
- Stop being harsh on yourself. You need to take care of your health whatever may be the situation. You need to have patience and have to consider various things in life but that should not affect your personal care.
You should try yoga and light exercise at home to avoid any health issues. Breathing exercise is also very common to avoid such critical situation or at least slow down the effect.