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Show HN: I'm a doctor and built a responsive breathing app for anxiety and sleep
Hey HN!
I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia (https://www.piahealth.co https://www.piahealth.co) which developed Lungy (https://www.lungy.app https://www.lungy.app). Lungy is an iOS app that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial to do. It’s been just over a year since Lungy launched (here’s the original ShowHN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34534615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34534615) and it's had a huge update and complete redesign. We rebuilt the whole app, and added a real-time 3D soft body solver which gives some really cool interactions like blobs / objects that inflate as you breathe. We also made a version for Vision Pro, called 'Lungy Spaces'.
My background is as a junior surgical trainee and I started building Lungy in 2020 during the first COVID lockdown in London. During COVID, there were huge numbers of patients coming off ventilators and patients are often given breathing exercises on a worksheet and disposable plastic devices called incentive spirometers to encourage deep breathing. This is intended to prevent chest infections and strengthen breathing muscles that have weakened. I noticed often the incentive spirometer would sit by the bedside, whilst the patient would be on their phone – this was the spark that lead to Lungy!
Since making the first version we’ve made exercises fully customisable (you can dial in exact timings for each breath phase), added new breathing indicators, learning modules, e.g. self-care for anxiety symptoms, and lots of new visuals. The free version gives you access to a new breathing exercise each day, whilst premium ($14.99 per year, $39.99 unlimited) unlocks the full library of exercises, exercise data and visuals..
The visuals are mostly built using Metal (a couple use SpriteKit) and there are lots to choose from - boids, cloth sims, fluid sims, a hacky DLA implementation, rigid body + soft body sims - each one reacts to breath and touch. The audio uses AudioKit with a polyphonic synth and a sequencer plays generated notes from a chosen scale (you can mess around with the sequencer and synth in Settings/Create Music). The nice thing about the visuals + audio being generative is that the download size is relatively small with no other downloads. We’re still working on improving the breath detection, using ML - currently, it uses microphone input, with optional camera input to guide positioning.
We’re also close to finishing the medical device version - http://lungy.health http://lungy.health - designed as a pulmonary rehab platform for patients with asthma and COPD, it should hopefully be released in the UK early 2025.
Thanks for reading - would love to hear any feedback!
Lungy Version 2 here: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1545223887 https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1545223887
- IndySun 2y agoIn your experience do you also find that the average person making basic errors when breathing? Are they inefficient breathers? What are the long term consequences? I changed the way I breathe several decades ago after a few yoga lessons, and has come in useful almost every day. Being mindful of ones diaphragm was key, ie, if I am still doing it correctly.
- lukko 2y agoI think you mentioned the main ones, awareness of breathing rate / depth and relaxing your abdominal muscles / diaphragm to breathe deeply. Interesting side note - the innervation for the diaphragm comes from the neck, so if you are aware of sensation of it, it's experienced in the shoulder region. Breathing depth and rate is so closely linked to physiological stress. Breathing exercises are such a simple intervention to break this cycle but they do work surprisingly well.
- selimthegrim 2y agoIt looks really cool. Do you think there’s any applications to central or obstructive sleep apnea?
- lukko 2y agoYes definitely. Potentially it could be diagnostic too - the periods of apnoea would probably have a unique audio and accelerometer signal. OSA is typically diagnosed now with polysomnographs, which have a lot of wires and sensors and are quite uncomfortable to sleep with. I think there are a few startups in this space, making much more lightweight and comfortable hardware. It may be interesting to just use a phone though..
- bboygravity 2y agoAnecdote: I did 5 sleep tests (over the course of 6 years or so) with different hospitals in different countries with very differing results. I (EE) have 0 trust in the hardware/software of some of these devices. 1st test (the most elaborate in-hospital polysomnography with the tons of wires and not being able to move around): AHI 17 Subsequent ones all of the "take-home/installed at homee" portable type: 2nd: AHI 6 3rd: magically completely cured AHI 0 4th: AHI 5 5th: AHI 7 Yeah right...