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Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

lungy.app

141–150 of 223 posts

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#141
Great concept! A randomized controlled study (RCT) would be the next step in elevating this from a wellness app to a medical/behavioral intervention.

At least in the US, this could be a good candidate for an NIH or similar grant, and partnering with an academic researcher who has done it before would lessen the workload.

My former colleagues at the Center for Behavioral Health and Technology at UVA https://bht.Virginia.edu (for example) conduct research similar to this.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#142

I find the "medical disclaimer" odd: https://www.lungy.app/medical-disclaimer > By using this App, you confirm that : (i) you are medically fit and in sound health. (ii) you have consulted your relevant health practitioner, medical advisor, or doctor before using Lungy (iii) Lungy and Pi-A Creative Systems have made the health and medical consequences of using Lungy clear (iv) you fully agree that you are using Lungy…

What’s odd about it for me is not the content or wording (seems to point out pretty common issues with intensive breathing), it’s more the fact that it’s not presented to the user during onboarding in a meaningful or noticeable way.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#143

I find the "medical disclaimer" odd: https://www.lungy.app/medical-disclaimer > By using this App, you confirm that : (i) you are medically fit and in sound health. (ii) you have consulted your relevant health practitioner, medical advisor, or doctor before using Lungy (iii) Lungy and Pi-A Creative Systems have made the health and medical consequences of using Lungy clear (iv) you fully agree that you are using Lungy…

Not a lawyer, but language like this is important. You should never represent that your software cures a disease or condition, or that it replaces a doctor (unless it's actually a FDA-cleared medical device). The general guidance from FDA can be found here:

https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#144
post #87
post #43

I can't test your app, since I don't have an iPhone, but I'm hoping you could answer a vaguely related question for me. One of my COVID readings was Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art , by James Nestor. Its author says, "humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly". Like your app, it proposes a lot of breathing exercises. It explains their benefits in terms of increasing CO2 tolerance, and believes that we'v…

As a permanent snorer and nose cold sufferer several tips in that book worked wonders for me. I already had a good set of lungs and low breathing rhythm thanks to swimming, but a few weeks of sleeping with my mouth taped shut and attention to my jaw posture solved quite some issues. (N=1 YMMV etc)

What kind of tape do you use? I've just started trying this and best I have found so far in my local grocery store is Nexcare Absolute Waterproof tape. It stays on all night, but I wondered if there was something a bit easier to remove.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably just covering all the bases, similar to ye olde "this coffee has been shown to cause cancer in California" type warnings, i.e. nothing really to worry about, just there in case someone decides to sue.

I have/had anxiety disorder and breathing exercises can definitely trigger panic attacks. So while yes it's there to cover all the bases, it's not that odd and is definitely a thing.

I wonder if it due to reduced or increased blood oxygen. Certainly hypoxia can cause a variety of symptoms such as anxiety and panic. Did you measure your blood oxygen at the time?

Presumably if the breathing exercises are to be useful, the user should be getting the normal amount of oxygen. The problem I see is that if you're actively controlling your breathing, you're bypassing the normal automatic breathing, so it is probably easy to get too much or too little.

The only time I've deliberately used breathing exercises was to see if I was able to increase my blood O2 levels above 12000ft, and I did manage to successfully increase it from about 80% to 90+% using deliberate deep breathing.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#147

Am I alone in my overall skepticism around breathing exercises for healthy adults (sounds like you were working with COVID patients, so maybe more appropriate for them)? My understanding is that the research is far from conclusive, and "breathe more" seems like too generic advice to really apply in any specific sense. Just screams, "Placebo!" to me. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wheres-the-proof-... http…

"breathe more"

I don't think anyone pushes for that, but "breath more mindful".

And that breathing exercies work, can be quite good shown for example with people doing extensive ice bathing for example. If you won't breath right there, you will get sick.

edit: But your point seems to be more stress related - well, I don't know what all those apps claim, but breathing is a very important body regulation and on of the easiest to influence. Meaning if you pay attention to your breathing and notice they are short and shallow - just starting to breath deep and conscious can put your body into a different state.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#148
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a feedback loop that characterizes the stress/anxiety response, where people breathe faster, which in turn increases the stress response, causing even faster breathing. People with chronic anxiety also develop decreased CO2 tolerance over time[1] from this rapid breathing, perpetuating the chronic rapid breath. Breath exercises that increase CO2 tolerance like Buteyko breathing allow one to interrupt this pr…

I recently came across this by accident and your explanation jives. I noticed I would get fairly fatigued, and have to take a nap around 11am every morning, and eventually found that it was basically every 4-5 hours, even mid-day too. I would take a 10-20m power nap and usually wake up feeling really good, I would even hit REM in that time. Then a few months ago, I noticed when I was having this feeling I was usually…

Thanks a lot for the detailed writup, I'm currently investigating similar stuff but didn't really know whereto look, this will help me a lot.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently came across this by accident and your explanation jives. I noticed I would get fairly fatigued, and have to take a nap around 11am every morning, and eventually found that it was basically every 4-5 hours, even mid-day too. I would take a 10-20m power nap and usually wake up feeling really good, I would even hit REM in that time. Then a few months ago, I noticed when I was having this feeling I was usually…

Thanks for writing this all out—I too have a deviated septum and can relate to a lot of what you wrote. Have you considered surgery for your nose?

Yes, I forgot to mention but I have surgery coming up in February so hopefully I want need my Afrin dependency anymore! I wasn't sure about surgery at first, and was just super duper happy I could breath through my nose, after 40 years of not even knowing that it wasn't normal to breath only through my mouth. But after a few months of this precious nose breathing, and my mouth not drying out at night anymore which caused me to want to drink water at night, and would contribute to waking up to pee, getting shitty sleep, and putting me in chronic stress from sleep deprivation, I now am ready to take the next step and get surgery to fix the deviated septum and have my turbinates function as they were intended to again!

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#150

I find the "medical disclaimer" odd: https://www.lungy.app/medical-disclaimer > By using this App, you confirm that : (i) you are medically fit and in sound health. (ii) you have consulted your relevant health practitioner, medical advisor, or doctor before using Lungy (iii) Lungy and Pi-A Creative Systems have made the health and medical consequences of using Lungy clear (iv) you fully agree that you are using Lungy…

OP mentions they're a doctor, but they don't say of what exactly, and only mention their background is as a trainee. Why on earth should that be enough to buy into something they say they created to fix problems in an entirely different field of medicine?

This all feels like the same old crap with a coat of government health grant money on top.

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