Autism and Irregular Breathing

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Thank you Marybird. I will definitely read the full article.

OMG!! !! !! Lightbulbs flashing everywhere. According to the information in these articles, so many things about me make total sense now. If the Limbic System and Cerebellum are closely related to the breathing centers, this would explain how sounds can make me black out and collapse and why I find it very difficult to breathe during extreme sensory overload. And if my bronchial tubes are not shaped right and I am not capable of getting the amount of oxygen that a normal person gets, this would explain why since I was a little kid I always felt like I was not getting enough oxygen to my brain and neck and why very often I found it very difficult to hold my head up. It would also explain why no matter how hard I tried, I was never as fast as everyone else in sports and why I get more exhausted and more quickly than my peers in sports that require short bursts of speed but in full marathons I can manage because they are slow and steady. This would also explain why some cognitive functions tend to disappear when I am emotionally overwhelmed or dealing with too much sensory overload. The inability to take a proper breath added to the inability for the brain to process things fast enough to keep up along with the Autistic proprioception issues would explain a TON. This would also explain why when people say "Just breathe," it does not seem to make a damn bit of difference to me except to enrage me. I am sure any deep breath does help but not to the extent that it would someone else. It also explains why Mozart and Brahms would be turning in their graves because I had to chop up lines of music and shorten the phrasing and rephrase everything when I was singing because I could never sing a long line. Wow. I feel better now. It wasn't my fault.

Any song teacher would teach you to breathe from your abdomen - not your chest.

In light of all this exciting discovery and coming to some sort of realization about why I am the way I am I have also just felt an enormous deep emotional pain because it occurred to me just how many people in my life have yelled at me and bullied me because I was physically slower than they were and could not keep up when I was walking with them or doing some kind of sport with them. I wonder if they would apologize now if they knew that it was physically and physiologically impossible for me to keep up with them. I guess I'll never know. But at least I know what my problem is now so I hopefully I will never have to deal with that kind of bullying again, at least I will know how to address it.

This might also explain why when I was at a health fair one time and I did the breath oxygen test where you take a deep breath into the machine that measures your lung capacity, the lady administering the test asked me how many packs of cigarettes I actually smoked every day. I have never smoked in my life.

This is very interesting that this subject got brought up. when I was in school. I too found myself never having enough breath to compete in any kind of high cardio related exercises and sports, and always found myself last in everyone of them. However. I could hold my breath for about 2-3 minutes. So if anyone wanted to take me on in a breath holding contest. I had no problem beating them. When I was 8 years old. I could easily swim the entire 25 meter length of the pool underwater without fins on and 50 meters if I had fins on. Unfortunately, there was no breath holding competitions or underwater swim races. But if there where. I would be the reining champion.

In the sport of freediving. (which is a recreational sport I like doing.) They teach you to breath through your abdomen instead of your chest because you can take in more air and it pulls more fresh air down to the bottom of your lungs and well. Which is needed if you are gonna hold your breath for a long time. Where as, if you just breath through your chest, you only fill the upper half of your lungs with fresh air.

I've found for me that holding my breath for a long time (like 3-4 minutes) can really slow my mind down. After having a sensory overload and going to a quiet place. I will do a long breath hold to lower my blood/oxygen levels. This in return will lower my heart rate and force my brain to slow down and manage the sensory and over stimulation issues better.

Sometime I wonder of shallow breathing for autistics is a way to lower oxygen levels to the brain when it becomes over stimulated. What do you guys think of that idea?

That's great to hear It's nice to know that you've found a solution

Thank you!

LupaLuna, that is AMAZING that you can hold your breath like that. I can't hold my breath for very long at all. I never could. Even with diaphragm breathing for singing, I don't get as good a breath as others and I can't hold it for more than a few seconds. I have never made it longer than barely half a pool length. When I was a lifeguard I had a pool with a 14 foot diving well. We had a pool vac that could not bounce off walls and turn itself because it was broken so we had to swim with it and dive down and turn it every time. It was challenging for me to do the 14 feet. I am absolutely amazed at you. But I guess for freediving you have to be able to hold it very long. That is awesome!

I also find myself holding my breath a lot. I also think I have shallow breathing. Then I end up breathing in very deeply and very suddenly and people think I am upset or dislike something or am otherwise uncomfortable. And I have attacks of this sort of rapid, deep inhalation kind of like a tic.

I too have wondered if I don't breathe as unconsciously as others do.

I also get out of breath easily and get really out of breath often while walking and talking, especially if outside on soft or dirt terrain or like in a forest. It's like the forest sucks my voice away.

I am of the view that I do not use my diaphragm effectively as I always have difficulty formulating even the most simplest of sentences. I am now making a conscious effort to breathe more regularly and deeply in an attempt to alleviate some of my anxieties.

My breathing has always been irregular. I always had problems with singing long lines, but I practiced a lot and worked extremely hard at it. I would shake with exertion while singing, though, like a rock star Nobody around me had this problem though.

I hadn't irregular breathing, but I had a wrong way of breathing (that is not autistic behaviour, many people breathe in a wrong way).

When I breathed in, my shoulders went up. When I breathed out, my shoulders went down. I was often out of breath and my voice sounded hoarse. That was corrected by a singing teacher. She taught me how to breath correctly: that is if you breath in, the diafragm halfway your torso goes down, and your shoulders do not move. My problems of being short of breath and a hoarse voice were gone, from that moment.

It isn't just an autistic issue, many NT's breath in a wrong way, and have to learn how to do that correctly.

i dont know. but i'm fairly sure my breathing problems come from PTSD. i get a knot in my stomach and dont breath fully. just short, shallow breaths.