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What else is driving your breath
Hormones, Blood Sugar & the Things You Consume
A little extra — not in the video
This segment isn’t covered in this week’s video. I’ve added it because it came up again and again on your initial calls — so many of you related to the way coffee, a glass of wine, a skipped lunch, or your cycle seemed to shift your breathing. So here’s the education piece to go with it.
Blood sugar — the glucose–breath link
When blood sugar drops (a skipped meal, a sugar crash a couple of hours after a high-carb one), your body releases adrenaline to mobilise energy. Adrenaline speeds the breath and raises chemoreceptor sensitivity — so a glucose dip can feel exactly like the onset of air hunger or anxiety. Sharp spikes do it too: rapid swings are more destabilising than steady levels. Steady blood sugar = steadier breath. Protein and fat with each meal, and not going too long without eating, smooth the curve your breath rides on.
Nicotine — a double hit to CO₂ regulation
Nicotine is a stimulant: it raises heart rate and breathing rate and pushes you toward the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) state — the opposite of where this programme is taking you. It also blunts the body’s chemoreceptor calibration over time, and smoking/vaping irritates the airways and encourages mouth breathing. The withdrawal dips between cigarettes or vapes drive their own air hunger, which is often misread as “needing” the next one. If you use nicotine, you don’t have to quit to do this work — but notice how your BOLT and your calm both shift in the 30–60 minutes after using, versus a couple of hours later.
Alcohol — sedation now, dysregulation later
Alcohol feels calming at first because it’s a depressant — but as it metabolises (especially overnight), it flips into a rebound sympathetic state: raised heart rate, fragmented sleep, and faster, shallower breathing. It also relaxes the upper-airway muscles, worsening snoring and mouth breathing, and dehydrates you. Many people notice their worst morning BOLT and their highest resting breath rate the day after drinking. You don’t have to be teetotal — just connect the dots so a rough breathing morning makes sense.
Caffeine — useful, until it isn’t
Caffeine is a stimulant that mildly raises breathing rate and can heighten the sensation of air hunger in sensitive people, particularly on an empty stomach or stacked late in the day (where it also fragments the sleep that your breath recovers in). It’s not the enemy — but if mornings feel wired and breathless, experiment with having your first coffee after food, and notice your BOLT before and an hour after.
Hormones — why your breath changes across the month
This is the big one, and the most overlooked. Progesterone is a respiratory stimulant. When it rises (the luteal phase, the second half of the cycle, and dramatically in pregnancy), it directly increases your breathing drive and lowers your CO₂ set-point — meaning your body tolerates less CO₂ before it signals you to breathe. This is why air hunger, breathlessness, and the “can’t get a satisfying breath” feeling so often spike in the days before a period, and why breathing can feel different month to month even when nothing else has changed.Oestrogen, which supports vagal tone and mood, dips at the same time. The result, for many people, is a premenstrual window where the nervous system is simply more reactive — and the breath shows it first. None of this is in your head, and none of it undoes your progress. It’s a predictable tide. The practice is to expect it and meet it gently, not to push harder.
From the clinic
So many of my clients quietly blame themselves for a “bad breathing week” — when it lines up exactly with their luteal phase, a few late nights with wine, or a stretch of skipped lunches. Knowing the driver takes the fear out of it. Your breath isn’t sliding backwards; it’s responding to a stimulant, a hormone, or a glucose dip, and it settles as those do. Track it for a cycle and the pattern reveals itself.
- Naomh