‘Email apnea’: Reading work emails makes us forget to breathe

Reading or sending emails may seem like an innocuous task, but sometimes, this simple act can trigger a dramatic bodily response. Like forgetting to literally breathe.

“Many of us have heard of sleep apnea: the condition where breathing gets interrupted during sleep.” Dora Kamau, Lead Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher at mental health app Headspace, told Fast Company. “Email apnea is a similar idea—just happening in the middle of your workday,” 

When we’re intensely focused on a task, the brain will “switch off” certain unconscious functions to redirect its processing power to the task at hand. In that state, a lot of people unknowingly alter their breathing, taking short sips of breath, or sometimes holding it altogether. 

The term for this phenomenon was first coined by Linda Stone in the late 2000s in an article published by HuffPost. After noticing her own breathing became shallow when sat at her computer checking her emails, she decided to invite 200 participants to take part in a study at her home. 

She found that 80% of the participants also breathed more shallowly when stationed in front of a screen. Those who didn’t had received some kind of formal training in breathing as either athletes, dancers or musicians. 

“When we open an inbox, scroll through a feed, or get pulled into something on a screen, our nervous system shifts into low-grade alert mode,” explains Kamau. “In these moments, the body is doing what has been designed to do: to protect us. It’s a human, biological response to perceived uncertainty, threat or danger, which in the modern world, an overflowing inbox can feel like.”

If you don’t think you do this, the tricky thing about email apnea is that it’s easy to miss, “because it happens in the background of something else you’re doing,” says Kamau. 

Do you reach the end of a work session feeling inexplicably tired, even if you haven’t done anything physically demanding? Do you suffer from tension headaches or a tight feeling across the shoulders and chest? Do you find yourself taking a big, involuntary sigh or deep breathing without really knowing why? 

These are all signs of email apnea. “That sigh is your body self-correcting, trying to restore balance after a period of shallow or held breath,” says Kamau.

When we hold our breath or breathe shallowly for extended periods, carbon dioxide builds up in the bloodstream, signaling to the body to stay on high alert. Even after you’ve closed the email, that stress response keeps running, holding on to that tension long after your laptop is shut. 

“It also negatively impacts cognitive function,” Kamau explains. “When we’re not breathing fully, we’re not getting optimal oxygen to the brain, which means decision-making, creativity, and focus all take a hit. Ironically, the very things we need most at work.”

Next time you’re racing to hit inbox zero, take a beat and notice your breath. Slow diaphragmatic breathing, expanding the lungs fully and breathing into the stomach, signals to the body it can relax. It reduces the heart rate, lowers blood pressure and can even help us make better decisions.

It’s also important to designate mini-breaks to keep email apnea at bay. “At Headspace, we just created and launched a Pomodoro timer specifically designed with this in mind,” says Kamau. 

Making micro-adjustments to the way you sit can help, too. “Hunching over a screen compresses the lungs and makes full breathing physically harder,” she says. 

“Simply sitting up slightly, rolling the shoulders back, and dropping them away from the ears creates more space for the breath to move in our bodies.”

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