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

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

#202

Post by AndrewKemendo »

prepend wrote: post #113
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #61

This looks amazing. The only suggestion I have is to make it paid, instead of free so I can maintain low anxiety that you're not going to sell my data, or show me ads in the middle of box breathing.

It has in app subscriptions for annual and monthly fees. So it is a stealth paid app. Hopefully this lowers the probability of them selling your data. I prefer an app purchase price rather than in app purchases as it allows for family use and use by people with multiple apple ids that are linked.

>Hopefully this lowers the probability of them selling your data.

I want that probability to be zero though. So until it is, there's a fundamental conflict at the root that prevents full trust

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

#204

Post by lukko »

rak wrote: post #203

This seems pretty cool. I was a big fan of Spire[1] and their device that monitored steps and breathing. Spire seems to have completely left the consumer market and I would love another device that does that stuff. 1. https://www.spirehealth.com/

Thanks for the link. Yep, it seems a few companies have developed technologies and then left the space, or never made it to market. Spirosmart seemed promising - https://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/spirosmart... - (and Senosis was subsequently acquired by Google) but I've never seen a real-world clinical application.

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

#205

Post by lukko »

aiProgMach wrote: post #201

Nice job! My sister has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and always on Oxygen concentrator, do you think this app _at this stage of development_ can help her? or it's strictly only for wellness purposes?

Hey, thank you - it's strictly wellness at the moment, so only for people with no underlying breathing problems. Hopefully, we can develop it into a medical device for COPD + asthma fairly soon.

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

#207

Post by ElijahLynn »

telcal wrote: post #165
ElijahLynn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, first thing is, can you breath through your nose? Do you have that habit down? Fixing this is really important, for me at least. If a person can't breath through their nose, I suggest trying Afrin. This was such a huge lightbulb moment for me, and was my "AHA" moment. I really didn't know that the normal human condition is to nasal breathe. My mom has the same condition and I was raised by her so I didn't reali…

> If a person can't breath through their nose, I suggest trying Afrin. Be careful of the "rebound" effect with nasal sprays. Years ago I was "hooked" on Afrin. Not in a getting high sense but in the sense that I started to constantly need it in order to breath out of my nose, even after my cold went away. It was a terrible feeling and took weeks to wean off. With a bad cold and miserable congestion, nasal spray like…

This is very true! And my doctor/surgeon said that if you use a steroid like Sensimist with the Afrin then the rebound effect isn't as severe, which appears to be someone true so far. I do a spray of Afrin, then 10 minutes later do 2 sprays of sensimist. It isn't ideal and I am switching to surgery option now that I have tested it out for a few months now and would like to make it permanent!

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

#208

Post by gerbilly »

I wanted to chime in here and mention the concept of "Email Apnea"¹.

The idea is that we hold our breaths when anticipating an outcome.

The term was coined in relation to email, but I believe that programmers probably have it even worse, because we basically spend our entire day in a a loop where we, try something, anticipate the results try again, repeat...

I personally find myself doing it. I guess the best analogy for it is that we "wait with bated breath" to see the results of our last command or compilation. I think it's a problem inherent in all disembodied work.

We are supposed to move the body and the mind as a unit, instead, we are increasingly making ourselves into brains in a jar, and I think our breathing patterns reflect it.

1: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/email-apnea-is-a-re...

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

#210

Post by bikeformind »

lukko wrote: post #186
bikeformind wrote: post #167

You might want to explore using haptic feedback via the devices vibrator motor to prompt the user to breathe in and out. One short pulse for breathe in, and a longer pulse to breathe out. This would allow the user to perform the exercises with their eyes closed and the phone on their lap. I know the visual functionality is core to your design, but might be a good idea to provide some optionality for users who just wa…

+1. I did add very subtle haptics (possibly too subtle) as the indicator changes, but I like the idea of making them stronger and recognisable for each breath phase

pick up a cheap Fitbit on Amazon, they have a pretty good haptic breathwork flow.

another interesting thought, maybe user could lay down on their back place iPhone on chest, and you can measure breathing with accelerometer? that could be even more accurate than camera + mic

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