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Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of RCTs
- Havoc 3y agoPapers should really come with a “jump to discussion/result” link
- LegitShady 3y agoI propose we call this the tl;dr
- eep_social 3y agoI like it but maybe we need a non-abbreviation, maybe we could call it something like “abstract” or “executive summary” depending whether our audience is academic or commercial.
- kylebenzle 3y agoIt could be like a summary of what follows. Oh, and what about like a SUPER short summary above that, like just one sentence about what its about, call it like a, "leader" or "header" or something like that?
- eep_social 3y agoOhhh, love it! Like books have titles!
- nhumrich 3y agoIts called the abstract. And its the first section of every official paper. Right at the end of the abstract: > Overall, results showed that breathwork may be effective for improving stress and mental health. However, we urge caution and advocate for nuanced research approaches with low risk-of-bias study designs to avoid a miscalibration between hype and evidence.
- richforrester 3y agoAlso literally has a link to "conclusions" :)
- crazygringo 3y agoNo, I agree with the original commenter. It's about reading the full discussion section to understand it in nuance, see the caveats etc. It's not about a summary -- it's about skipping the intro that reviews the literature you already know, the method, all the tables of results, and jumping to the actual good stuff. I frequently find myself scrolling to get to that part, overshooting, scrolling back...
- balfirevic 3y ago> However, we urge caution and advocate for nuanced research approaches with low risk-of-bias study designs to avoid a miscalibration between hype and evidence. It's interesting to think about the information conveyed by this sentence. Would anyone seriously propose non-nuanced research approach with high risk of bias that easily confuses hype for evidence?
- esquivalience 3y agoYes, all the time. Every time anyone posts a comment here or reads an article to form a opinion, without instituting a blind study behind it, they are deciding to proceed without nuanced research. The point is that in doing so we are at risk of confusing hype for evidence. As in the abstract here, often the signal comes just as much from the fact that something needs to be said at all - not just the content of what is said
- mmaunder 3y agoI’ve been doing O2 and CO2 “tables” which are breath hold exercises for free diving. For co2 you hold for 2 mins, breathe for 2, hold for 2, breathe for 1:45, hold for 2, breathe for 1:30 and keep reducing the breathing until you’re at 15 seconds. It’s getting you used to co2 building up. Much more to it than that but the feeling during and after is incredible. Been doing yoga for 6 years and never had a feeling of calm like this. Check out STAmina if you’re interested which is a free diving training app. Even integrates with pulse oximeters. And free diving itself is awesome and becoming very popular.
- Nicholas_C 3y ago+1 for Stamina, I use this app for apnea training for surfing. Wim Hof also produces a similar calming feeling, there are some good guided Wim Hof videos on youtube that are easy to follow.
- tra3 3y agoAre there any videos in particular that you can recommend?
- Nicholas_C 3y agoHere is a good one guided by Wim Hof himself: https://youtu.be/tybOi4hjZFQ?si https://youtu.be/tybOi4hjZFQ?si
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JoshTriplett 3y agoI had similar exercises when swimming: 4x25m with 3 breaths each 25m, 4x25m with 2 breaths each 25m, 4x25m with 1 breath each 25m, and 4x25m where you only breath when you hit the wall and turn. There are similar variants for 50m. That made a huge difference expanding my lung capacity, and I still have most of that expanded lung capacity today.
- Baeocystin 3y ago
- tqi 3y agoIs the estimated effect size (g=-0.35) -35%? That feels a bit high to me.
- rpier001 3y agoEffect size g is in units relative to variation. It's a corrected version of Cohen's d for cases of unequal variance between groups.
- heyjamesknight 3y agoCohen's d and Hedges' g shouldn't be interpreted as the size of the change in scores, but rather how the distribution is shifted. A score of .35 is considered a "low to moderate" effect. https://rpsychologist.com/cohend/ https://rpsychologist.com/cohend/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- westurner 3y ago4-7-8 breathing has origins in Pranayama FWIU? "Effects of sleep deprivation and 4-7-8 breathing control on heart rate variability, blood pressure, blood glucose, and endothelial function in healthy young adults" (2022) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9277512/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9277512/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=Effects+of+sleep+deprivation+and+4%E2%80%907%E2%80%908+breathing+control+on+heart+rate+variability%2C+blood+pressure%2C+blood+glucose%2C+and+endothelial+function+in+healthy+young+adults&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=Eff... Pranayama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama
- crdrost 3y agoYeah it's somewhat of a more broad term though? Like, the freakiest pranayama gets is rechaka pranayama, where you breathe out the air from your lungs and try to hold it out, depleting your blood-oxygen levels (hypoxia mimesis). Has also been practiced in qigong[1], thankfully you can't actually induce self-unconsciousness this way (at least not without, say, breathing into a bag[2]). But all to say that my understanding is that pranayama is just kind of yoga slang for "breathwork", there's not just one kind of it as far as I know? 1. https://www.pacificcollege.edu/news/blog/2020/03/26/the-link-between-qigong-breath-holding-and-nitric-oxide https://www.pacificcollege.edu/news/blog/2020/03/26/the-link... 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17324641/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17324641/
- bart_spoon 3y agoSo the results from all studies are based on self-reported stress, studies may include other non-breathing related interventions, the breathwork intervention can comprise any number of kinds of breathwork, and authors themselves conclude that the studies included are at a “moderate” risk of bias? Seems hard to say anything substantive about the conclusions when the inputs are that shaky.
- Madmallard 3y ago[flagged]
- nichohel 3y agoA true control seems impossible for any "breathwork" study; anyone doing regimented breathing knows that they are doing something. And placebos work, whether you believe in them or not (say the studies ...)
- yencabulator 3y agoIf you can't show that a specific breathing exercise is somehow better than an essentially random breathing exercise, then it doesn't matter what kind of breathing exercises you do. If you can't show that a breathing exercise is better than e.g. same time spent on stretching, then there's not much point in doing (separate) breathing exercises at all.
- CretinDesAlpes 3y agoAnybody has done breathwork naturally without even knowing about its existence? I didn't know any of this (had 0 interest in the body/yoga/meditation before) and I used to do this pattern of deeply inhaling slowly and holding until I can't really anymore, then slowly exhaling. Then repeating for a few times. Very relaxing. Although I know about breathwork a bit more now and the different patterns, I am not sure if this practice has a name (but I wouldn't be surprised to find out if so).
- meristohm 3y agoI've been aware of breathwork since I was a teenager, but I always look for easy actions, with low barriers: Watching my resting dog breathe I noticed he inhaled slowly and exhaled without much apparent control, just relaxing and letting it all huff out, then pausing awhile before the next inhalation; I tried this, it feels good, so I keep doing it when I want to feel more calm. From reading Breath, by James Nestor, I learned that a good target for calm-inducing breathing is about eleven seconds for an inhale/exhale pair, common with many religious activities like chants, etc. Breathing like my dog, I aim for five seconds in, ~three out (not counting, just letting it out), and as long a pause as feels right, sometimes pushing myself a little to extend.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Gimpei 3y agoI’m no expert on meta-analyses, but if the total pooled samples is 785 and there are 12 studies. That seems like quite a small average sample size per study. Is this not underpowered? An average of junk is still junk.
- rdmirza 3y agoSmall individual study sample size does not necessarily mean junk. Junk is a product of poor methodology. The main concern with sample sizes may be overestimates of effects if the event is rare, or poor precision (ie large confidence intervals). However you’re right to presume that small studies are likely to be lower quality, often because they’r observational as opposed to randomized studies.
- huijzer 3y ago> Overall, results showed that breathwork may be effective for improving stress and mental health. However, we urge caution and advocate for nuanced research approaches with low risk-of-bias study designs to avoid a miscalibration between hype and evidence. So after searching through 1325 papers and systematically summarizing 12 randomized controlled trials, this is the result? This has kept multiple professors busy for months and all we learned is "breathwork may be effective"? It doesn't matter anyway. The professors have a Nature publication and Nature has some readers. Everybody happy.
- saeranv 3y agoThat kind of innate skeptism is good science though.
- yencabulator 3y agoIt's a pretty strong message that the effect has not been proven. I was personally under the opposite assumption, having seen reporting on some of the earlier research.
- huijzer 3y ago> It's a pretty strong message that the effect has not been proven. The message is that the effect has (may have) been proven since "showing breathwork was associated with lower levels of stress than control conditions".
- yencabulator 3y agoThey can't rule out the effect, but it might still just be placebo and/or unrelated to breathing (or it might be a statistical fluke).