barefootisbetter

I'm so curious. You all sound like you know what your talking about, so here is my situation. I have suffered from chronic back pain for about 5 years straight. The culprit could be a combination of things: lots of migrant labor and hard physical labor, such as raking blueberries, picking apples, cleaning homes on my own for 6 years, and stress from a divorce after 8 years of marriage. And I'm 27, with a 10 yr old son. You can imagine my stress level. I've been through very hard hitting relationship issues to top it off. So, all of this combined, the stress, then the pain becoming chronic, ordained me with anxiety, tension, sensitivity, and at times full blown panic attacks. I won't beat around the bush, it's been rough. And money's been tight. Which leads to my ultimate point. I screened for a medical study to earn some extra bucks testing pain meds for a few weekends. They did all their usual tests, took blood, ECG ect, and they called me back the next day to tell me they need anther blood sample because my carbon dioxide levels were a little too low. I asked her what causes that, she didn't know, which leads to my research online. Wow. This is a very serious issue. I've only been reading up on it for 30-40 min, and it's really hitting me hard how important this is. And I haven't even mentioned the most important part. Low levels of carbon dioxide can lead to muscle spasms, which is what the doctor determined is causing my roller coaster, sometimes completely debilitating back pain. I've had x-rays and an MRI, been to chiropractors, Neurologist, Acupuncturist, Yoga master.... they all seem to find the same conclusions. My muscles are spazzing out! Did all of this really start with the improper breathing stress can cause? It seems so. Did the stress I allowed myself to feel so intensely, really lead to such misery and hardship? Damn, I need to pay attention here. There are many things going on I am not aware of. So, it seems before I do anything else...... I need to calm the **** down and breath properly!! Since I found out improper breathing causes all of this, I started paying attention to my breathing as it changed. I have terrible breathing habits. I breath shallow breaths, from my chest, and often breath fast, and shallow. The energy I noticed I lost was astonishing.