How the seizure threshold depends on breathing

Carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas we exhale, controls the excitability of nerve cells, as decades of medical research have proven. A slight increase in the level of CO2 in the brain reduces the excitability of nerve cells and makes people, when conducting human studies, feel calmer and more relaxed. Voluntary hyperventilation, or excessive breathing, has the opposite effect: it makes brain cells more excitable and makes people feel more anxious. You can easily remember horror movies where, in extreme panic, people gasp for air through their mouths. As a result, their nerve cells become overexcited (or “irritated,” as it was called in physiological studies done decades ago), and predisposed people become confused: they can’t make up their minds and suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. All of this research is directly related to seizures, seizure threshold, and epilepsy.

During seizures, nerve cells become hypersensitive and spontaneously emit signals, while adjacent brain areas amplify these signals. In addition, numerous studies devoted to epilepsy have shown that hyperventilation easily provokes seizures. Many medical studies suggest that hyperventilation easily triggers seizures in all patients. As a result, when performing an EEG test, medical professionals use hyperventilation to induce seizures to confirm the diagnosis of epilepsy or related conditions that cause seizures. Here are some of the publication titles that claim the ability of excessive breathing and low brain CO2 to produce seizures:

– Will a critical level of hyperventilation-induced hypocapnia be reached? [low CO2] always induce an absence seizure? (Wirrell et al, 1996)

– Effect of hyperventilation on seizure activation: potentiation by antiepileptic drug tapering (Jonas et al, 2010)

– Childhood absence epilepsy: electroclinical characteristics and diagnostic criteria (Ma et al, 2010)

– Clinical and electroencephalographic characteristics of epilepsy with myoclonic absences (Yang et al, 2009)

– Usefulness of supervised daily hyperventilation during long-term video-EEG monitoring (Arain et al, 2009)

– Moderate hyperventilation prolongs the duration of seizures in the electroencephalogram of the first electroconvulsive therapy (Sawayama et al, 2008).

– Correlation between cerebral perfusion and the activity of focal spikes potentiated by hyperventilation (Marrosu et al, 2000)

In a 1972 research paper published in the British Journal of Anesthesia, scientists measured the exact numbers by monitoring the average evoked electromyogram of brain cells. They found that even very slight changes in CO2 levels in the brain have a profound effect on seizure threshold. For example, just a 2.5% decrease in CO2 levels in nerve cells increased their excitability more than 2-fold (Higashi et al, 1972). This small drop in CO2 can be achieved with a big sigh or a few coughs!

Although the normal concentration of CO2 (the medical norm) is 40 mm Hg, most modern people breathe much more than this medical norm established about 100 years ago. Therefore, most people are deficient in CO2. In sick people with chronic disorders, breathing is even heavier (panting can often be seen and heard in patients with slight physical exertion). Therefore, it is normal that the rates of epilepsy and the incidence of seizures have had a strong increase during the last century. This change in breathing pattern (from slow and light to deep and fast) was due to lifestyle factors abnormal for modern civilization, including mouth breathing, lack of physical exercise (or mouth breathing exercise) , chest breathing, overeating, sleeping on the back and many others. Additionally, hundreds of studies have shown that excessive breathing leads to decreased oxygen content in the brain and body, and cerebral hypoxia (low O2) is another contributing factor.

Consider the common environment and lifestyle that cause heavy breathing and hyperventilation in all people:

– stress (when we are stressed, our unconscious breathing becomes deeper and faster)

– hyperthermia (or overheating)

– overeating (one may know that physical exercise is very difficult after heavy meals)

– abnormally high or low blood sugar

– sleep deprivation.

You can easily see that these are exactly the same factors that can trigger various types of seizures, including stress-induced seizures, febrile seizures (due to fever in children), hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic seizures, and seizures triggered by fever. Lack of sleep. Virtually anything that is harmful and abnormal to the human body, including poisons, drugs, toxins, infections, poor posture, strong emotions, causes heavy breathing and can lead to seizures only if the person is unconscious and heavy breathing at rest .

Therefore, the solution is to learn how to improve oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the body and brain by normalizing breathing using breathing techniques and correcting lifestyle risk factors. Then we can prevent all types and possibilities of seizures and successfully treat epilepsy.