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When anxiety and panic take your breath away.

A guidebook to the causes and treatment of an increasingly common disorder.

Breathing: the first and last thing we do – the thread of life. The air we breathe, which nourishes our blood and our organism. If this mechanism breaks down, we get ill. It is what happens when anxiety forces us to breathe unnaturally: we feel oppressed, we gasp for air, inhale more of it, but create the opposite result. With contributions from Simona Milanese, a specialist doctor, and Sabino de Bari, a physiotherapist, Giorgio Nardone offers food for thought about the mechanism that fuels the feeling of choking effect, in order to break the vicious circle between pathological fear and dysfunctional breathing.