BREATHLESS: AIR HUNGER PANIC AND ITS TREATMENT

Author:

George Nardone

Year:

2023

Publisher:

Get all Grazie

Necklace:

Ebook

During the American Civil War military doctors, observing the combat stress of soldiers, described for the first time the phenomenon of acute hyperventilation and its symptoms. Subsequently, starting from the 50s, air hunger, dyspnea and the sense of suffocation were the subject of research which confirmed that hyperventilation was the basis of numerous idiopathic pathologies. Thirty-five years later, Giorgio Nardone, under the supervision of Watzlawick and Weakland, understood that the mechanisms of respiration and fear influenced each other, and that the problem of air hunger could be solved by going from the search for explanations to fine-tuning of solutions which, if they worked, "explained" the problem itself. A real Copernican revolution of which the author was the protagonist, promoting a therapeutic treatment capable of acting on both the psychology and physiology of the subject. In Breathless, the author offers interesting insights into the mechanics that fuel the effect of the sense of suffocation, making use of the contributions of Simona Milanese, a specialist doctor, and Sabino de Bari, a physiotherapist. The hope is that this writing contributes to spreading the idea that the vicious circle between pathological fear and dysfunctional breathing can and must be broken.