Your heart is racing, your arms are tingling and your respiration is shallow. You're having an anxiety attack. And on top of that, you’re in a public place. For example in a crowded restaurant or within the office. Not a spot where you possibly can comfortably lie on the ground and do some respiration exercises to calm yourself down.
What if there was a pill that might offer you this type of calm respiration as an alternative? This scenario could possibly be possible after a brand new scientific breakthrough.
neuroscientist at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla have identified a brain pathway that immediately reduces anxiety. The recent study, the published Earlier this week within the scientific journal Natural neurosciencelays out how the brain circuit mentioned above regulates voluntary respiration – that’s, conscious respiration, versus automatic respiration, which happens without you having to give it some thought – and allows us to slow our respiration and calm our minds.
The discovery opens up the potential for developing recent drugs that mimic the relaxed state common during respiration exercises, meditation or yoga. Sung Hanlead writer of the study, says he would love to someday bring what he calls a “yoga pill” to market to ease anxiety. It would likely be useful for the greater than 40 million adults within the U.S. who, in response to the National Alliance on Mental Illnesssuffer from an anxiety disorder.
Han says the brand new discovery is an actual scientific breakthrough.
“It's always exciting for a scientist to find something never known before,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “This top-down breathing circuit has long been a question in neuroscience. It is exciting to find the neural mechanism that explains how slowing breathing can control negative emotions such as anxiety and fear.”
We've long known that we are able to control our respiration patterns to vary our way of thinking – after we're stressed, we could try this Breathe deeply and slowly feel calmer. But scientists didn't understand that this works – which parts of the brain actually slow our respiration and why this activity makes us calmer. Now they know that within the cortex, the upper a part of the brain answerable for more conscious, complex considering, there’s a bunch of cells that send messages to the brainstem, which in turn sends information to the lungs. This is the “circuit” mentioned above.
The discovery confirms calming behaviors resembling: yoga, Mindfulness and even “Box breathing” – The latter is a way of repeatedly inhaling after which holding your breath for 4 seconds to alleviate stress – since it scientifically justifies these behavioral practices.
But the sensible applications are what make the Salk discovery so vital, Han says.
“It is possible that a whole new class of drugs could emerge that can have a more targeted effect on anxiety disorders,” he says.
These would differ from traditional anti-anxiety medications in that they more specifically goal specific areas of the brain. Common anti-anxiety medications like Xanax and Lexapro goal multiple areas of the brain that control multiple brain processes and behaviors. For this reason, these medications don’t work the identical for everybody and could cause unwanted negative effects. By targeting a single brain circuit more precisely, a drug becomes more practical and reduces potential negative effects. And in extreme cases, such a pill could possibly be more practical against anxiety than respiration exercises.
“If you're panicking, breathing techniques alone may not be enough to quell the fear,” says Han.
Han's team is now trying to search out the counter-circuit – a rapid respiration circuit – of this fear.
“To target the slow respiratory circuit, we need to understand the opposite circuit so we can avoid targeting it,” says Han. “To ease the fear.”
While Han hopes his findings will result in a “yoga pill,” this is probably going still a good distance off. The research and subsequent clinical trials could take as much as 10 years, he says. And nothing is for certain.
“I can’t say that this discovery is directly related to the discovery of the new drug,” Han says. “But I can say that it is a stepping stone. We now know the way. This is exciting. This is the first step.”
Originally published:
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