In medicine, hyperventilation (or overbreathing) is the state of breathing faster and/or deeper than necessary, bringing about lightheadedness and other undesirable symptoms often associated with panic attacks.
Hyperventilation can also be a response to metabolic acidosis, a condition that causes acidic blood pH levels.
Counterintuitively, such side effects are not precipitated by the sufferer’s lack of oxygen or air. Rather, the hyperventilation itself reduces the carbon dioxide blood to below its normal level, thereby reducing the blood’s pH value (making it more alkaline), initiating constriction of the blood vessels which supply the brain, and preventing the transport of oxygen and other molecules necessary for the function of the nervous system.
Hyperventilation can, but does not necessarily always cause symptoms such as numbness or tingling in the hands, feet and lips, lightheadedness, dizziness, headache, chest pain, slurred speech and sometimes fainting, particularly when accompanied by the Valsalva maneuver. Sometimes hyperventilation is induced for these same effects.
