We Regret To Inform You That You May Have ‘Email Apnea’ and Not Even Realize It
Photograph: Getty Images; Collage: Gabe Conte
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Unless you have an unconventional job that allows you to live off the grid, email is a fact of life. We wake up to it and spend the rest of the day playing a losing game of trying to reach inbox zero.
Next time you’re reading or sending an email—whether it has your full attention or it’s at the same time as simultaneously battling incoming Slack messages and texts, take a beat and notice how you're breathing. David Perls, who has taught Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at University of California San Francisco, says that a lot of people unknowingly alter their breathing when emailing, taking short, shallow breaths, or holding their breath altogether, a phenomenon dubbed “email apnea.”
“Email apnea is the tendency to hold our breath while emailing, a concept derived from sleep apnea, a serious medical condition in which someone’s breathing repeatedly stops and starts throughout the night,” Perls says, adding that the term was first coined by writer and speaker Linda Stone.
Perls explains that the problem with email apnea is that it can exacerbate anxiety, a cruel irony considering that anxiety (even low-grade anxiety) is a major part of what causes it in the first place. It can mess with the brain in other ways, too, such as clouding thinking and decision-making. Fortunately, there are easy ways to delete email apnea from your life forever.
Why Email Messes With Our Breathing
While stress is often the scapegoat for anything that screws with our well-being, psychiatrist Jasmine Sawhne, MD, MBA, says that it’s not just the emails that send you in a tailspin that cause a change in breathing. “When individuals become heavily absorbed in email tasks—specifically reading and composing emails—they may inadvertently hold their breath or breathe shallowly due to heightened cognitive focus and attention,” she says.
Even though you might not feel all that stressed out, Dr. Sawhne says that this heightened focus can activate a psychological stress response in the body. “The brain perceives the task of managing emails as a potential threat, activating the sympathetic nervous system and initiating a fight-or-flight response. This type of reaction redirects resources away from breathing, which basically translates into reduction of intake of oxygen and disruption of the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the bloodstream,” she says. Scientific research backs this up showing that focusing on a demanding task can lead to faster breathing.
Psychologist Shaakira Haywood Stewart, PhD, says that work anxiety can also elicit a stress response in the body, impacting breathing. (It’s the go-to scapegoat for a reason.) Seeing an email from your boss land in your inbox, getting a barrage of Slack messages, working from home with noisy construction, or kids screaming in the background…it can all heighten anxiety and activate the fight-or-flight response.
Dr. Haywood Stewart says that high-achievers and perfectionists are especially prone to email apnea because they are more likely to want every email they send to be perfect, which heightens the stress around it and also demands more intense focus.
“There’s nothing immediately harmful about email apnea, but if it becomes habitual—happening hour after hour and day after day—it really compromises healthy breathing,” Perls says. He explains that when shallow breathing becomes your default, the lungs don’t get enough oxygen, and not enough carbon dioxide is released from the body. When this happens, it can actually weaken the immune system. He explains that taking shallow breaths makes the body have to work harder to keep us healthy.
Making a habit of shallow breathing isn’t good for the brain, either. In the short term, Dr. Sawhne says it can cause trouble concentrating, memory problems, and decreased productivity. Scientific studies involving animals show that long-term, shallow breathing could impact cognitive function and memory in bigger, more debilitating ways.
Here’s what else is annoying about email apnea: Even though stress can cause shallow breathing, Perls says shallow breathing can also cause us to feel more stressed, which can cause someone to get stuck in an anxiety loop. “It’s bidirectional, meaning anxiety can cause shallow breathing, and shallow breathing can also cause anxious feelings,” he says.
How To Delete Email Apnea From Your Life
Since emails can disrupt breathing without you even realizing it, putting an end to it can be tricky. Like any problem, Perls says the first step is actually acknowledging the problem. This, he says, requires actively noticing your breathing throughout the day. “Since shallow breathing is an unconscious habit that’s ingrained in the body, it’s a behavior you have to unlearn,” he says, adding that this can take time, so be patient with yourself.
Perls recommends creating a breath check-in system to notice how you’re breathing. This can look like setting a timer every 90 minutes or linking a check-in to something that’s bound to happen regularly and has a tendency to stress you out (like your boss’s name in your inbox). He also says it’s important to take mini-breaks from email (and work in general) throughout the day. Refill your water glass. Take the dog for a 10-minute walk. Roll out your shoulders.
If you do a check-in with yourself and notice you’ve stopped breathing or are breathing shallowly, Perls says to focus on slowing your breath and taking deep inhales and exhales. “Make your exhale longer than your inhale,” he says. He adds that spending a few minutes doing a breathing exercise, like 4-7-8 breathing, can be helpful. The more you correct your breathing—replacing shallow breathing with deeper breaths—Perls says the less likely you’ll be to default to shallow breathing. Maybe you even consider it a sign to finally start meditating.
Perls says that making micro-adjustments to the way you sit can help, too. “Elongating the spine, sitting up taller, and relaxing the shoulders up and down opens the chest and signals to the body that we are safe, which then impacts the breath,” he says. The inverse is true, too: Perls says that being hunched over your phone or computer makes it harder to take deep breaths, which can lead to feeling anxious.
To prevent email apnea from happening at all, Dr. Haywood Stewart says to do what you can to make work less stressful. With email specifically, she says it can be helpful to unload some of the draining cognitive work onto AI, such as using a plug-in to catch grammar mistakes (Grammarly, for example). If you’re caught in a never-ending game of constantly answering emails, she says it can be helpful to limit checking emails to a few times a day instead of having it constantly open as a tab (if your job allows you to do so). That way, you can actually get some other work done. Dr. Sawhne likes this tip too, adding that, “Setting specific time limits for checking and responding to emails helps to avoid constant interruptions and reduces cognitive overload.” She also recommends organizing emails to streamline the process of reading and responding to them, like creating different folders for different types of emails and their level of importance.
Dr. Sawhne and Dr. Haywood Stewart both say it’s important to maintain a healthy boundary between work hours and when you’re offline. If you feel like you’re constantly on the clock, Dr. Haywood Stewart says making a boundary change may require talking to your manager about what the expectations are when it comes to replying to emails or doing other work-related tasks.
“Overall, recognizing and addressing email apnea within the broader context of digital stress is crucial for mental well-being in an increasingly technology-driven world,” Dr. Sawhne says. “Prioritizing offline activities and engaging in more face-to-face interactions can provide relaxation and connection and reduce digital demands.”
Every time you compose an email, compose yourself too. Your body—and your work—will both be better for it.
Originally Appeared on GQ
