What is the function of sighing?

It is certain a social signal: the parental sigh when the adolescent makes his school bag swing again. And the teenager’s disgrace if he has to clean it up. The sigh is a non-verbal message: « Work along well », respectively « don’t moan like that, old. » Whether that communication is useful in this case can be seen. Usually something like this is counterproductive. But what about – is sighs sometimes useful?

A search on Pubmedthe platform for medical publications, yields more than three hundred hits. They deal with all kinds of topics ranging from the influence of sighing on the lung function of newborns to the cause of the deviation ‘sigh dyspnu‘And sigh as’psychophysiological reset. ‘

A American overview article in Current Biology (2017) Gives some nice facts. A sigh is a breathing that is two to five times as deep as normal, we read. Sometimes we sigh deliberately, but most of the time we don’t notice: we sigh all day long, on average about five minutes. It is the brainstem that controls these unconscious sighs. All mammals sigh, and that already starts in the womb with a ‘sigh-like’ breathing movement: probably to the breathing muscles to train And to stimulate the development of the lung tissue.

Tissue

The most important function of sighing is physiological, according to the Americans. Our lung tissue consists of hundreds of millions of vesicles: the end stations of the many branches of the bronchi. They are around 200 micrometer in diameter. During normal breathing, vesicles tend to fold in. If that takes too long, it will be at the expense of the stretchability of the lung tissue, and therefore to absorb oxygen. That is why we sigh regularly: then the lung tissue is completely filled with air again, into the furthest corners, and the tissue stretches nicely. A Italian study From 2020 suggests that patients in the ventilation in the hospital benefit from a programmed sigh regime.

Then there is the link with emotion. If we sigh – usually unconsciously, but sometimes also deliberately – we express « the entire spectrum of emotions, » according to the Americans. A chess, for example, sighs if he sees that he can no longer win the game. Sometimes sighs express positive emotions, such as relief. In addition, sighing can also be a social signal. Suppose you have just given a difficult presentation together with your colleague. As soon as you are alone again, you broke a sigh of lighting: so, that’s on it. The sigh gives you a stress discharge for you, but also calls for it Sharing emotionsarouses togetherness and empathy, thereby strengthening the bond with your colleague.

That stress discharge in relation to deep breathing was investigated in hundreds of studies, especially in the context of conscious relaxation and meditation. A deep breathing, especially as well as the diaphragmamong other things, lowers blood pressure, heartbeat and the production of the stress hormone cortisol and increases the oxygen uptake. People who regularly breathe deeply, feel better And report less stress. One sigh already has such a micro effect.

So you don’t make the sigh of lighting because you relax, but to relax. Flemish researchers devoted a whole study to the difference (Physiology & Behavior2016). So it is not a sigh of relief, they conclude, but a sigh for lighting. A sigh to relieve.

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