Respiratory Muscle Training and POTS

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Has anyone had success with respiratory muscle training?

I've been backsliding this summer, which I posted about a few weeks ago in a thread on heat and citocoline. 

One thing that I've been noticing is poor sleep. I have a diagnosis of sleep apnea, and even though it is supposedly under control, I still notice apnea-like sleep symptoms.  

So I've been looking for someway to improve my breathing, in the hopes this will improve my sleep, in the hopes this will reduce some of my symptoms. I've been looking into respiratory muscle training, specifically I found a book "Respiratory Muscle Training: Theory and Practice." The gist of this book (so far I'm in the third or fourth chapter) is that maximum inspiratory training (breathing in very hard, basically hyperventilating) will enhance both inspiratory and expiratory muscle performance.

It's interesting to me to see the book talk about certain themes:

(1) Balance and breathing are connected because the same muscles support both. People with poor breathing often have poor balance and vice-versa!

(2) Back pain and breathing problems are connected, because the same muscles support both the back and breathing.

(3) Any kind of weight training that puts a load on the spine will strengthen the diaphram (squats or carrying weights) 

Fascinating, right? I am amazed and hopeful. Many of these things resonate with me:

(1) I have a lot of weird low-back pain which now I attribute to the POTS causing me to have difficulty maintaining posture. When POTS is worst, I seem to 'melt' into chairs as I have no muscle tone. Clearly, this has been messing up my back for years. 

(2) I have very weak core muscles, despite being a lifelong runner. A doctor told me this recently. Perhaps my shockingly weak core is part of why I have trouble sleeping through the night. 

 So, my hope is that there's some connection here which I can exploit.My current plan is to do Wim Hoff Training before bed (hyperventilation followed by breath holding), core strengthening exercises (crunches, etc.) and I am wearing a device that makes respiration harder while I work for 30 minutes a day, working up to as much I can handle. 

I'm already sensing that there must be some connection between POTS symptoms and respiration that we don't understand.  I wonder if other people have insights into this. 

[MTRJ75]

This sounds a bit like the Wim Hof Method (the hyperventilation part at least). He claimed to be able to train his autonomic system. 

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On 7/30/2022 at 8:22 PM, MTRJ75 said:

This sounds a bit like the Wim Hof Method (the hyperventilation part at least). He claimed to be able to train his autonomic system. 

Yes. I've thrown in 10 minutes of Wim Hof at night before sleep. I'm only one day four, but this program is working wonders for me. I think it is definitely helping. I am just noticing that I'm a lot more with it today.  

 

 

[MTRJ75]

It's funny that this pops up on Health Rising a few days after your post. Thinking of purchasing one of these devices. 

https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2022/08/01/inspiratory-muscle-training-chronic-fatigue-long-covid/