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Comment by jasonhansel | Hacker News Reader

I find the "medical disclaimer" odd: https://www.lungy.app/medical-disclaimer

> By using this App, you confirm that : (i) you are medically fit and in sound health. (ii) you have consulted your relevant health practitioner, medical advisor, or doctor before using Lungy (iii) Lungy and Pi-A Creative Systems have made the health and medical consequences of using Lungy clear (iv) you fully agree that you are using Lungy at your sole discretion and at your own risk.

> There have been rare reports that people with certain mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression have experienced worsening symptoms after engaging in intensive breathing exercises and/or mindfulness practices. As such, you are requested to consult your doctor or medical provider before using Lungy if you are unsure or have a mental health condition.

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Not a lawyer, but language like this is important. You should never represent that your software cures a disease or condition, or that it replaces a doctor (unless it's actually a FDA-cleared medical device). The general guidance from FDA can be found here:

https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...

Presumably just covering all the bases, similar to ye olde "this coffee has been shown to cause cancer in California" type warnings, i.e. nothing really to worry about, just there in case someone decides to sue.

I have/had anxiety disorder and breathing exercises can definitely trigger panic attacks. So while yes it's there to cover all the bases, it's not that odd and is definitely a thing.

I wonder if it due to reduced or increased blood oxygen. Certainly hypoxia can cause a variety of symptoms such as anxiety and panic. Did you measure your blood oxygen at the time?

Presumably if the breathing exercises are to be useful, the user should be getting the normal amount of oxygen. The problem I see is that if you're actively controlling your breathing, you're bypassing the normal automatic breathing, so it is probably easy to get too much or too little.

The only time I've deliberately used breathing exercises was to see if I was able to increase my blood O2 levels above 12000ft, and I did manage to successfully increase it from about 80% to 90+% using deliberate deep breathing.

I have had a few panic attacks before and I 100% can see how a breathing excessive could trigger that. One of the things they tell you to do when having one is slow your breathing and do the 5-4-3-2-1 technique (https://www.bradencenter.com/5-4-3-2-1-grounding-technique/).

So if you usually associate slowing your breathing down with when you are having a panic attack it could trigger one for some people. For example, mine usually was triggered as soon as I laid down to go to sleep for some reason. I could fall asleep on the couch fine, but for some reason in the bed it was completely different.

What exactly do you find odd about it?

I'm one of those rare people that can't do any sort of deep breathing exercises or meditation without ending up in a manic state due to a severe anxiety disorder.

I will double-check that the wording is correct, but these are standard clauses you would find in any breathing or meditation app, for instance, see Headspace T+Cs here: https://www.headspace.com/terms-and-conditions-minimal (clause 10.5).

OP mentions they're a doctor, but they don't say of what exactly, and only mention their background is as a trainee. Why on earth should that be enough to buy into something they say they created to fix problems in an entirely different field of medicine?

This all feels like the same old crap with a coat of government health grant money on top.

What’s odd about it for me is not the content or wording (seems to point out pretty common issues with intensive breathing), it’s more the fact that it’s not presented to the user during onboarding in a meaningful or noticeable way.

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