[HN Gopher] Screen Apnea
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Screen Apnea
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 141 points
Date : 2023-08-23 02:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| yamrzou wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Are you breathing? Do you have email apnea? (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117879 - May 2023 (33
| comments)
|
| _Reading on smartphone affects sigh generation, brain activity,
| and comprehension_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30181560 - Feb 2022 (125
| comments)
| avg_dev wrote:
| i remember that article from may (linda stone from this NYT
| article wrote that blog post). it really made sense to me then
| and it does now. i used to smoke 25+ cigarettes a day and i
| believe it was not uncommon for me to have a heart rate of
| 115+bpm while sitting around doing nothing after smoking a
| cigarette. i also have been mostly working from home for a
| decade or more and i barely moved for many of those years. i
| started getting into yoga a while back and learned a breathing
| technique called ujjayi. i also started going on a lot of long
| walks. and since 2018 i've been playing a wind instrument
| again. i quit smoking some time ago as well. my breath is so
| much deeper and my general health - physical and mental - is so
| much better than it used to be. i actually just did a deep
| inhale recalling how things were for me and reflecting on how
| much better they are for me now.
|
| i'm curious if anyone has any experience with that butyeko
| thing in particular...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Can't really read the article, but if they mean holding breath
| while doing things at the computer, I do this. Actually, I do
| this when I'm concentrating on something, doesn't have to
| necessarily be at a computer. I've been working on purposeful
| breathing lately to see if that helps.
| seper8 wrote:
| How to get anxiety 101
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| It's not a conscious thing. It just happens.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| Same with anxiety
| robg wrote:
| Possible for Apple to readily roll up the data for Watch and iOS
| users, but what's the product angle? Take a break to meditate /
| breathe / do yoga is just another recommendation to use another
| app?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| My partner stops breathing while deep into computer use. I just
| nudge them and they start breathing again. The watch could just
| vibrate and I'm sure it would help.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I've noticed this. Was pretty surprised. While awake can you
| really forget to breath? I thought it was impossible, but guess
| if the brain is really focused on something, can happen.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| If you're very focused but also relaxed, I think the urge to
| breathe can be delayed a lot longer than most people realize.
| When free diving, a major component of extending your dives is
| not dramatically improving your oxygen capacity but learning to
| relax and utilize oxygen better. Concentration and relaxation
| go an impressive distance in improving breath holds.
|
| So I don't think people forget to breathe, but it could be that
| we substantially delay breathing sometimes and it seems out of
| the ordinary, longer than someone normally might, and therefor
| strange. But maybe it's not? I'm not sure.
| VectorLock wrote:
| I don't think you can go all the way to suffocating from it.
| Even people with severe sleep apnea in very deep sleep will
| still be roused awake by their brains when their oxygen levels
| get very low.
| dillydogg wrote:
| In med school I was surprised at how long it takes for your
| oxygen binding to drop. Hemoglobin can hang onto oxygen really
| well, even with a low partial pressure of oxygen in the lungs.
|
| Doctors aren't always right, of course, but my respiratory
| professors said that the desire to breathe is largely based on
| mechanical sensing with a lesser effect based on O2 and CO2 in
| the blood.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Isn't your breath reflex based more on the presence of CO2
| rather than the lack of O2?
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| That's what I learned in my free diving training.
|
| If you lower co2 levels and then use oxygen, your
| co2-triggered urge to breathe will be delayed. Sometimes
| it'll be delayed until you're hypoxic, at which point you
| could pass out.
|
| This happens due to hyperventilation in free diving (and
| other reasons, though this is the most common). You exhale
| more co2 than you would while breathing normally, then dive
| deeper or longer than you should because your blood isn't
| the correct chemistry to trigger an urge to breathe when it
| should.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gizmodo59 wrote:
| Maintaining awareness of breath throughout the day is not an easy
| task but when you try to bring awareness every now and then it
| definitely helps you to be in the moment and not get carried away
| with thoughts. Helps to reduce stress and anxiousness too. Many
| meditative practices can help bring this like Vipassana or
| Samyama
| chewmieser wrote:
| Gift article (unlocked):
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/well/live/screen-apnea-br...
| dt3ft wrote:
| [dead]
| cicce19 wrote:
| I've noticed lately that I have a lot of jaw tension which is
| linked to stress and I think information overload which is
| related to this article. Has anyone else had this? What has
| worked?
| hiddencost wrote:
| Have you looked into wearing a mouth guard while sleeping? Life
| changing.
|
| Massage can be good. Ask them to focus on neck + jaw stuff.
|
| Otherwise, ergonomics stuff: Standing desk, padded floor mat,
| kinesis, sideways keyboard, getting your monitor at the right
| height.
|
| Strengthening core muscles can be good, too.
| squirrel6 wrote:
| I actually also wear my night guard during the day,
| especially when I can tell I'm holding a lot of tension in my
| jaw.
| dcsommer wrote:
| Yes, habitual clenching is pretty common from what I can tell.
| It leads to gum recession and other dental issues, as well as
| headaches.
|
| I have made progress on it by habitually doing "self-scans" for
| where I'm holding tension in my body. Jaws and shoulders are
| common areas. I then focus on clearing my mind and relaxing the
| part in question. It's worked well for me.
| bigger_inside wrote:
| I have a hard time not putting this into the lineup of anti-
| technology moral panic aided by pseudoscience intent on gobbling
| up a new field.
|
| Do we all remember how "internet addiction" was, at first, a joke
| in a newsgroup until a psychiatrist stumbled upon it and thought
| they could make a name for themselves by transferring - badly -
| existing elements of addiction discourses on internet use? And
| we're still suffering from their success, which, in psych terms,
| means that the found enough people they could convince that, yes,
| really, what they were doing were "sick" (usually because that
| was a good way to appease their families)[1]? And usually because
| "healthy use of time", in puritan-capitalist societies, is always
| magically time spent productively to make money or support the
| family, God forbid (literally) that it was recreational?
|
| This smells somewhat related, in the line of "but really, it's
| stressing you. You don't realize, but it is. Trust me. The bill
| is in the mail."
|
| [1] https://journals.openedition.org/reset/122
| tekla wrote:
| Yeah i read some of these articles and it sounds exactly like
| what 5G conspiracy shit or crystal crazies sound like, except
| with a veneer of respectability because of "tech"
| sirbranedamuj wrote:
| Yeah I find it hard to take articles like this seriously. "Be
| cautious of intensely focusing on something for long,
| uninterrupted periods. Reduce distractions from notifications
| where possible. Stand up and take a walk every once in a
| while."
|
| like this is just generic health advice with a catchy name and
| trendy, vague connotations with tech overuse.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I have taken up Brazilian jiu-jitsu and discovered I stop
| breathing when concentrating. That's somewhat ...
| counterproductive when you have a 150lb person on top of you and
| are trying to focus on a new move for sweeping them.
| klyrs wrote:
| Just get a roomba
| jobigoud wrote:
| Personally I have noticed "File explorer apnea". When I need to
| navigate to a file or folder very deep into the hierarchy,
| starting from the root. I know exactly where it is but still need
| stepping into the hierarchy of folders, clicking on the right
| folder at each step as fast as possible.
| ctenb wrote:
| I started using broot a while ago because I was fed up with
| file explorer.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| I don't know about your file explorer, but doesn't it have a
| way to just input the path, maybe even with autocomplete? The
| Finder has [?][?]G, for example. Please ignore my comment if
| you are enjoying this kind of navigation, though!
| eastbound wrote:
| Since you know Finder, is there a plugin to display a
| treeview on the left of Finder instead of navigating in the
| columns for every level of depth?
| user_7832 wrote:
| While not a perfect solution, I use Everything by voidtools -
| it's search app that's damn nice. I can just enter
| modellingreport *.xls and get to where I need to.
| vlachen wrote:
| I have almost completely moved away from clicking through
| folder hierarchies since I learned about Everything [1]. That
| little program beats the pants off anything Windows has built
| in for search.
|
| [1] https://www.voidtools.com/
| ddingus wrote:
| Seconded. I love this program.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Any other essential Windows tools in 2023?
| moogly wrote:
| Directory Opus. Friends don't let friends use File
| Explorer.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Maybe too obvious but PowerToys adds a lot of things I wish
| Windows shipped with.
| adaptbrian wrote:
| f.lux
| runnerup wrote:
| I think that functionality is now default features in my
| windows, MacOS, iOS, and android phones.
| qwertox wrote:
| It has other niceties, like set everything greyscale or
| red (darkroom mode), exclude some monitors and other
| stuff. For me it is a must-have.
|
| Together with Autohotkey and StrokeIt. StrokeIt lets me
| navigate back and forth with left/right mouse gesture
| (right mouse button), close tab/window (depending on
| application category) by gesturing up, minimize by
| gesturing down. I couldn't live without it.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| In Windows it won't do sunrise/sunset times if you don't
| enable location access. F.lux doesn't need location
| access, you set it manually.
| avtar wrote:
| * Run, Peek, and Video Conference Mute from Powertoys
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/
|
| * Bvckup for replicating data across different drives, not
| free but one of the best designed Windows tools and very
| worth the price https://bvckup2.com/
| ywain wrote:
| I recently replaced Powertoys Run with ueli:
| https://ueli.app/
|
| Basically the same thing, but Powertoys Run was always
| slowish while ueli is very snappy. It also integrates
| with Everything.
| NikkiA wrote:
| Keypirinha for me
|
| https://keypirinha.com
|
| It's been a while since it was updated last, but since it
| works, does that matter?
| avtar wrote:
| Thanks, Everything integration is huge. I'll check it
| out.
| vlachen wrote:
| ShareX [1] is my other "must install" app. I never would
| have guessed how much my branch of engineering consists of
| "take a screenshot and draw lines, arrows and circles on
| it." Being able to customize my workflow to do all of that
| is really great.
|
| Also, Notepad++ [2] is one of those unseen programs that
| really stands out.
|
| [1] https://getsharex.com/
|
| [2] https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
| robotnikman wrote:
| Notepad++ has probably been one of my most used programs
| for over a decade now.
| runnerup wrote:
| I use AutoHotkey only for "paste by typing" to paste
| passwords at a controlled typing rate into paste-disabled
| password fields like bank websites.
|
| ProcessExplorer is indispensable for me as well.
|
| I use Sublime a lot for the multi cursor support (just
| highlight a repeating element and press Ctrl-D ... there
| are more advanced controls but that covers 80% of what you
| need.
|
| Meld is my favorite cross platform diff tool. I use it for
| git merge conflicts, but also just for so many general
| purposes tasks in life.
|
| 010 editor is amazing for editing very very large
| documents/files. Only app I know that can gracefully work
| with multi GB text files.
|
| AgentRansack / FileLocator Pro I paid for a technicians
| license I loved it so much. Not sure if Everything is a
| complete standin, it might be.
| koalacola wrote:
| Thanks so much for this recommendation, I've wanted something
| similar to this on Windows after falling in love with
| Spotlight on Mac, and the built-in Windows search function is
| just awful.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I have long used File Locator Pro (AKA Agent Ransack) and I
| could never give it up now. Might be work checking out
| skrebbel wrote:
| I love this comment because (I concur and) in the context
| here it suggests that Everything helps with healthy
| breathing.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| I wonder if just tagging everything hierarchically would be a
| superior approach to this. Sometimes feel like I'm wasting my
| time doing so much "traversing"...
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I've noticed that humming or singing along to music while sitting
| at a computer is a fairly good solution for forcing myself to
| breathe.
| y-curious wrote:
| I help run a Myofunctional Therapy business (Happy Myo in NYC)
| with my mother and she's a huge fan of humming as a tool. Did
| you come up with this on your own? Good intuition! I'm glad to
| see more and more focus on breathing in the media lately.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Yeah, mostly just a thing I've been doing since I was a kid,
| but I've been paying a lot of attention to breathing lately
| (blood pressure...) and I get notably less negatives sitting
| at a computer if I'm humming along to music.
|
| If I just sit here silently, I often notice cold hands/feet
| and a blood pressure spike. Often associated with
| intermittent sighs or irregular breathing.
|
| Humming just forces me to breathe. I can't keep humming if I
| don't have air, and it's a good regulator to keep me
| breathing without having to really think about it.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Same here, but with muttering profanities
| namaria wrote:
| I debug like McNulty and Bunk going through that crime scene
| together.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I just noticed I wasn't breathing while reading these comments.
| electrondood wrote:
| Yeah, this isn't some new technology-caused phenomenon. This
| happens whenever we pay attention to something, including
| books.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Lnctj
| contingencies wrote:
| FWIW slowing your breath can also indicate positive metabolism
| change and is a core feature of numerous meditative traditions.
| Now what if we throw in laughing at cat videos while infinite-
| scrolling causing you to regress to active breathing. Laughing
| good. Breathing good. Slow breathing also good. Humans are
| complex.
| 303uru wrote:
| Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art is bordeline quackery and
| it's interesting the extent to which it has wormed its way into
| every discussion. Nestor does not exercise enough skepticism and
| overlooks the placebo effect completely in reporting out that
| breathing deeply will essentially solve every problem in your
| life. As a clinician, I think pretty weak, and also overlooks
| that poor breathing or mouth breathing is a symptom of other
| underlying issues not the issue itself. Go exercise for 60
| minutes a day and you'll breath just fine.
| jboy55 wrote:
| When I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, it wasn't the breaths
| per hour that was the concern, it wasn't waking up during the
| night, it was my blood oxygen would dip to the 60s.
|
| So the researcher measured heart rate, breathing rate and not
| blood oxygen? Or maybe they did, and the headline of, "People
| hold their breath sometimes, blood oxygen remains in normal
| ranges", doesn't inspire me to learn how to breath.
| norir wrote:
| I agree that Nestor's book should not be considered canonical
| but this sentiment goes way too far in the opposite direction.
| I have seen enormous improvements in my overall wellbeing since
| I started focusing on my breathing about four years ago. Prior
| to that I have both been a nationally ranked competitive
| cyclist and avid pickup basketball player so, in other words,
| quite fit. Of course my personal experience is inherently
| unscientific but it is also true. There are many, many positive
| effects that I have experienced that are directly related to my
| focus on the breath, but of course there have been other
| factors in my life too. I agree that just focusing on the
| breath alone cannot fix every problem (and wish some of the
| more zealous evangelists would dial back some of their claims)
| but I am quite certain that just exercising is not sufficient
| for many people. Conscious focus on the breath is important.
| [deleted]
| k4rd4shev wrote:
| I've noticed this with myself.
|
| When doing some engrossing reading or coding I tend to start to
| get anxiety sometimes, probably related to not breathing while
| concentrating. This sometimes cascades into a full blown panic
| episode, sometimes it doesn't.
|
| Putting a name to it helps me identify the issue in a better way.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| If you want to explore this in yourself consider getting a
| continuous logging SpO2 sensor. Wellue makes good ones, I had
| good luck using an O2Ring to understand my own obstructive sleep
| apnea. It logs your blood oxygen saturation every couple of
| seconds and is easy to export data from.
|
| Note fast sampling is important. Most SpO2 sensors are designed
| to give a reading once every 30 seconds or so, at the best. They
| tend to average the sample taken over that time. You want to
| catch the momentary dips between breaths. (For instance I don't
| think the Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor can do this.)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| You're correct re: Apple Watch O2 sensor: it takes 15 seconds
| to generate a result AFTER you tap the icon. No continuous
| sensing. True, you can repeat the sequence ad infinitum but not
| only does that get old fast, but it also yields simply a graph
| of results reported every 15 seconds with inadvertent movement
| artifact hardwired in as opposed to a continuous trace.
| yamrzou wrote:
| How accurate is it?
| fer wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong (not a doctor), but I believe it is very
| unlikely that one off events of apnea lower your saturation to
| a level of clinical relevance to need 2s frequency; saturation
| drops only after a continued chain of such events or some sort
| of constant obstruction (COPD, asthma exacerbation, etc).
|
| Also, though sample of n = 1, training for freediving my breath
| holding PR is 3m31s, and my SpO2 barely went down. The CO2
| reflex kicks in before O2 goes significantly low.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| In my experience with the O2ring missing a breath or three
| isn't really noticeable. but I was experiencing prolonged
| periods of obstructive sleep apnea and it was very visible on
| the SpO2 graph, I could see every (infrequent) breath.
|
| Not clear from the article how serious "screen apnea" might
| be; the health threat it identifies is just the stress of it,
| not oxygen deprivation.
| batch12 wrote:
| > Screen apnea is a manifestation of our body's stress response,
| said Stephen Porges, a professor of psychiatry at the University
| of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in the autonomic
| nervous system.
|
| Is it really though? I have noticed that I do this a lot -- all
| the time when I am in a relaxed state. For example, I've observed
| this when I'm driving, reading, watching a movie, thinking, etc.
| Wouldn't my body signal if I wasn't getting enough oxygen?
| mannykannot wrote:
| Surprisingly, the body does not signal a low-oxygen state, and
| the urge to breathe is stimulated by a rising carbon dioxide
| level. This works fine for healthy individuals in the
| environment we have evolved to live in, but it makes hypoxia an
| insidious killer in an environment where the oxygen partial
| pressure is substantially less than it normally is, as the
| victim does not notice that anything is amiss.
| appplication wrote:
| I would challenge this as well. I grew up swimming
| competitively. Regularly holding my breath feels maybe oddly
| comforting. But maybe that's somehow bad for me?
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| LaGrange wrote:
| (a dead response)
|
| > I doubt you would feel good if your brain wasn't getting
| enough oxygen.
|
| Without getting into _too much detail_, I have decent amounts
| of experience telling me that, for a lot of people, it would
| in fact feel rather good. Not to me, but I also dislike (in a
| sensory way, not moral) alcohol and many other things that
| make the brain feel a bit "fuzzy," which I think might be the
| more uncommon thing, actually.
| iamwpj wrote:
| I tend to fall to this side. If you have anxiety while reading
| emails, you might also have anxiety while not reading emails.
| If your anxiety causes breathless-ness, you should focus on
| treating anxiety.
|
| Really smacks of the you should be drink x amount of water per
| day, when in reality you should drink water when you're not
| thirsty or if you have a craving.
| tonymillion wrote:
| I believe it's less related to stress and more related to a
| predatory response.
|
| Halting breathing is a great way to avoid movement when
| intently focusing on prey (look at cats who do the same thing,
| although they do have to wobble their heads a little to develop
| a 3d distance)
|
| I know a lot of people want to dismiss our predatory past but
| it's there, and I'm sure reading (especially emails, comments
| etc) specifically looking for information to "prey" on triggers
| that same response.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| One thing everyone will do regardless is a physiological sigh,
| about every 5 minutes. That may be what you're noticing. That's
| completely natural.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| Good advice in here. Once the body enters its so-called "defense
| cascade" -- including the flight or fight response -- then it's
| going to take 17-21 minutes to return to stasis.
| yamrzou wrote:
| I can't find this information in the article. Could you share
| the source?
| taylorbuley wrote:
| It's not in the article. That comes from a research paper
| that I can't find easily at the moment. Here's a famous
| article that discusses the animal model and footnotes a study
| showing 20 minutes in rats, too.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4495877/
| fredthedeadhead wrote:
| > Dr. Porges hypothesizes that the larger your screen, the less
| mentally taxing it can be. "As you narrow the visual field,
| you're increasing the demand on your nervous system to exclude
| everything outside of it," he said.
|
| Scientific justification for my ultrawide. Fantastic!
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