A new app, Breathe Flow, available from Vagus Health provides deep insights into your breathing. The app provides advice on how to improve breathing and reduce stress.
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Breathe Flow App to improve Breathing
The app is easy to use and requires you to perform a 30-second ECG test on your Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch to get started.
The app basically shows you your real breathing and it teaches you to do controlled breathing with their unique ‘ideal breathing curve’.
The app works with numerous smartwatches
The new Breathe Flow app is available on both the Apple app store and Google Play Store for wearOS. Apple Watch users will need to use their ECG recording app on their watch and use the Breathe Flow app on their iPhone and keep it live to follow the instructions.
Samsung Galaxy Watch users will need to download the “Breathe Flow” Wear OS app on the Play Store on your Watch. Use it to do the recordings. Keep BREATHE FLOW live on your phone.
Similarly, Withings ECG Watches can open the Withings “Health Mate” app on the phone. Keep BREATHE FLOW live. Record according to Withings instructions.
Importance of Vagus Nerve
It is widely known in the scientific community now that the vagus nerve is our most important nerve for immunity and health problems such as stress, anxiety, inflammation, and depression.
The simple idea is that by monitoring the vagus nerve, users can adjust their lifestyles to achieve better health and higher ‘life-quality’.
How to use Breathe Flow on your Apple Watch
Once you have downloaded the Breathe Flow app from Vagus Health on the App Store, you are ready to go. Make sure that the new app is present on your Apple Watch before moving on to the steps below.
- Open ECG app on your Apple Watch
- Hold your finger on the crown
- Inhale deep and calmly during the first 5 seconds with your finger on the crown
- Once you have completed the 30 seconds on the ECG app, open the Breathe Flow app on your iPhone
- You will find the instructions to interpret your breathing curve in the Breathe Flow app
Interpreting Sinus curves with Breathe Flow app
The first chart in the app that you will see is the Breathe Flow chart that shows you how well you were inhaling and exhaling during the ECG recording.
The Blue line on the chart signifies your breathing. When you inhale the blue line moves upwards and similarly when you exhale it moves downwards. The important callouts in the graph are the places where the blue line becomes blurred or changes color. This signifies non-smooth breathing.
When using the ECG app for Breathe Flow, make sure to practice diaphragmatic breathing as opposed to shallow breathing. The rationale here is that deep breathing work, makes the vagus nerve and body’s autonomic cardiac respiratory system work the best.
Your stomach should visibly move in and out during breathing.
Your goal is to get a smoother sine wave.
When you are mindful of your breathing the diaphragm movement and pulse changes become synchronized, the vagus nerve is activated and your oxygenation becomes optimal.
Doing deep breathing work several times a day will not only reduce your stress and anxiety but will also improve the vagus nerve’s ‘relax and healing’ capacity.
You will see a detailed list of inferences from the app with the provision to ask questions directly on that screen.
Breathe Pulse Inferences
The next section below the Breathe Flow chart is the Breathe pulse inferences. You are required to answer a few simple Q&A to enable the Breathe Pulse calculations.
In order to get started, tap on the ‘Complete Q&A to enable Breathe Pulse’ on the Breathe Flow app on your iPhone.
BHI or Breathing Health Index Diamond Chart
The app provides you with a BHI (Breathing Health Index) score and shows the the relationship between four major variables in a diamond chart. These variables are:
- Since the ECG test triggers a HRV calculation, your HRV score is available.
- BRE or Breathing depth index is the next metric. This signifies how deep you are breathing. When the depth index is higher, it means you are doing deeper and better breathing with large volumes in airflow. When you breathe effectively, your BRE score should be greater than 50 according to the app maker.
- RSS or Respiratory sinus smoothness is an index for how smooth the breathing curve is during the test. The index value is between 0 – 100 where 100 is very smooth (good)
- CSS or Cardiac sinus smoothness is the last metric on the diamond chart that shows how smoothly the heart rate is varying up and when during the ECG test.
On the Diamond chart provided in the app, your objective is to cover the diamond as much as possible. In the example below, my BRE scores were a dismal 5 ( 0 – 100 scale) which minimizes the diamond chart coverage dramatically.
This would mean that I need to breathe slowly and deeply when doing the test next time.
As per the app, your average BHI or Breathing Health Index should be higher than 50. We are not sure how the app accounts for age, sex, and other factors that can influence the aggregate score. The app integrates with Apple Health and brings over your name, date of birth, and gender info from your Apple Health settings automatically.
Overall, the Breathe Flow app from Vagus Health looks really good and automatically provides you with some good insights about your breathing and stress management. Try the Box Breathing technique and you will see good results.
We are not clear as to why this health app or any health app would require provisioning for Vagus NFT tokens. That part does look sketchy on the app but otherwise, it gives you a solid understanding of your basic respiratory health parameters and can help you train your breathing.
