Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of RCTs

I’ve been doing O2 and CO2 “tables” which are breath hold exercises for free diving. For co2 you hold for 2 mins, breathe for 2, hold for 2, breathe for 1:45, hold for 2, breathe for 1:30 and keep reducing the breathing until you’re at 15 seconds. It’s getting you used to co2 building up. Much more to it than that but the feeling during and after is incredible. Been doing yoga for 6 years and never had a feeling of calm like this. Check out STAmina if you’re interested which is a free diving training app. Even integrates with pulse oximeters. And free diving itself is awesome and becoming very popular.

So the results from all studies are based on self-reported stress, studies may include other non-breathing related interventions, the breathwork intervention can comprise any number of kinds of breathwork, and authors themselves conclude that the studies included are at a “moderate” risk of bias?<p>Seems hard to say anything substantive about the conclusions when the inputs are that shaky.

4-7-8 breathing has origins in Pranayama FWIU?<p>&quot;Effects of sleep deprivation and 4-7-8 breathing control on heart rate variability, blood pressure, blood glucose, and endothelial function in healthy young adults&quot; (2022) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC9277512&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC9277512&#x2F;</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar?hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C47&amp;q=Effects+of+sleep+deprivation+and+4%E2%80%907%E2%80%908+breathing+control+on+heart+rate+variability%2C+blood+pressure%2C+blood+glucose%2C+and+endothelial+function+in+healthy+young+adults&amp;btnG=" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar?hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C47&amp;q=Eff...</a><p>Pranayama: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pranayama" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pranayama</a>

Anybody has done breathwork naturally without even knowing about its existence? I didn&#x27;t know any of this (had 0 interest in the body&#x2F;yoga&#x2F;meditation before) and I used to do this pattern of deeply inhaling slowly and holding until I can&#x27;t really anymore, then slowly exhaling. Then repeating for a few times. Very relaxing. Although I know about breathwork a bit more now and the different patterns, I am not sure if this practice has a name (but I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised to find out if so).

I’m no expert on meta-analyses, but if the total pooled samples is 785 and there are 12 studies. That seems like quite a small average sample size per study. Is this not underpowered? An average of junk is still junk.

A true control seems impossible for any &quot;breathwork&quot; study; anyone doing regimented breathing knows that they are doing <i>something</i>. And placebos work, whether you believe in them or not (say the studies ...)

Papers should really come with a “jump to discussion&#x2F;result” link

Is the estimated effect size (g=-0.35) -35%? That feels a bit high to me.

&gt; Overall, results showed that breathwork may be effective for improving stress and mental health. However, we urge caution and advocate for nuanced research approaches with low risk-of-bias study designs to avoid a miscalibration between hype and evidence.<p>So after searching through 1325 papers and systematically summarizing 12 randomized controlled trials, this is the result? This has kept multiple professors busy for months and all we learned is &quot;breathwork may be effective&quot;?<p>It doesn&#x27;t matter anyway. The professors have a Nature publication and Nature has some readers. Everybody happy.