Holding your breath without realising: email apnoea, and what to do about it

    Every so often you notice you have not breathed for a while, and you take a big catch-up breath. It happens over the inbox, mid-scroll, in the middle of a tricky paragraph. The rest of the time you have no idea it is going on.

    Do this now

    Catch it and reset — one minute

    1 minute

    1. The moment you notice: do not take the big catch-up breath. That is the habit you are unlearning.
    2. Let the air out first, slowly, all the way. Then breathe in small through the nose.
    3. Keep the next six breaths small and nasal, exhale a little longer than inhale.
    4. Unclench the jaw and drop the shoulders — both are almost always part of it.
    5. Then go back to the screen. Sixty seconds, no ceremony.
    Run it with a timer

    Why concentration suspends breathing

    Breath-holding is part of the orienting response: when something demands attention, the body briefly goes still, including the breath, so that nothing interferes with taking in information. It is entirely normal in short bursts. What is new is doing it several hundred times a day at a screen — the phenomenon Linda Stone named email apnoea after observing it in knowledge workers in the 2000s.

    Why the catch-up breath is the problem

    The hold itself does very little. The recovery that follows is a large gasping breath, often through the mouth, which dumps carbon dioxide and sets off the same sensations as any other over-breathing: tight chest, light-headedness, an unsatisfying next breath. Over a day of it, the baseline drifts and the afternoon feels foggy for reasons nobody connects to the inbox.

    Why catching it beats watching it

    You cannot consciously monitor an automatic process for eight hours; trying it just makes the breathing self-conscious and worse. What works is a cue attached to something that happens anyway — opening the inbox, a slack notification, standing up — and a reset that is small enough to run without stopping work.

    What changes it, over a week

    • Pick one cue

      Every time you open your email, take three small nasal breaths before reading. One cue, done consistently, beats general vigilance.

    • Every 60–90 minutes

      Stand up, mouth closed, thirty seconds of slow nasal breathing. Breaks during work are what the evidence supports.

    • All day

      Mouth closed, jaw unclenched. The jaw is the easiest tell that you are holding.

    • Each morning

      Control Pause. If it sits under 15 seconds on weekdays and higher at the weekend, the screen is part of the story.

    When this is not a breathing pattern

    See a clinician — promptly, and before assuming any of this applies to you — if any of these describe you:

    • Pauses in breathing during sleep, or someone telling you that you stop breathing — ask about a sleep study
    • Breath-holding with fainting, palpitations or chest pain
    • Daytime sleepiness severe enough to affect driving
    • Breathlessness on exertion, which is a different problem entirely
    • Breath-holding that started with a new medication

    This page is education, not medical advice, and no part of it is a diagnosis. Full disclaimer.

    Questions people ask

    Is breath-holding at a screen actually harmful?
    The holds themselves are trivial. The pattern around them — mouth-breathing gasps, braced shoulders, hours without a break — is what produces the tight chest and afternoon fog, and that is worth changing.
    How do I notice it more often?
    Do not try to notice more. Attach the check to an event: opening email, ending a call, sitting back down. Cue-based habits survive; vigilance does not.
    Is this the same as sleep apnoea?
    No. Sleep apnoea is airway obstruction during sleep, it is a medical condition, and it needs diagnosing with a sleep study. Daytime breath-holding at a screen is a behavioural pattern. They can coexist, which is why snoring and daytime sleepiness are on the list above.

    What this page is built on

    • — Sokhadze, 2007, Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback — respiratory and autonomic changes during attention-demanding computer tasks
    • — Albulescu et al., 2022, PLOS ONE — micro-breaks during work and wellbeing
    • — Traditional: Buteyko's central observation that habitual large recovery breaths, not the holds, drive the symptoms

    Named by author and year. The DOIs live in the journal.

    Put a number on it

    Most of what is on this page tracks one measurement: the Control Pause. It takes sixty seconds, needs no account, and it is the thing that tells you whether any of this is working.

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    Go deeper

    From the journal

    The breath itself

    Air hunger, sighing, a nose that never clears, a breath that never lands. All topics