Why do people breathe into a paper bag when stressed?
Question:
Answers:
People tend to hyperventilate (breathe fast, without giving the body time to process the air exchange) when stressed. This causes low levels of carbon dioxide in your blood. In the past, the remedy was to breathe into a paper bag, thus reducing the amount of oxygen you were taking in and increasing the CO2. Breathing through a paper bag is NO LONGER RECOMMENDED because this can quickly lead to too much carbon dioxide in your blood stream.
Nowadays, to increase your carbon dioxide, you need to take in less oxygen. To accomplish this, you can breath through pursed lips (as if you are blowing out a candle) or you can cover your mouth and one nostril, breathing through the other nostril.
Other Answers:
People breathe into a paper bag to help control their breathing.
When someone gets anxious, they start breathing at a rapid rate. The can begin to breath so fast that they are not truly breathing air into their lungs.
Breathing into a paper bag will cause you to breath in Carbon Dioxide (CO2) of which we breath out instead of the Oxygen (O2) which we normally breath in.
As they breath in more and more CO2, the body will automatically start to slow itself down. This allows the person to then breath at a normal rate and thus "control" their breathing.
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