Why the study?
Does a slow abdominal breathing technique improve heart rate variability in a child with ADHD?
Does a slow abdominal breathing technique improve heart rate variability in a child with ADHD?
A slow abdominal breathing technique can increase parasympathetic activity and heart rate variability in a child with ADHD, suggesting potential for emotional and attention regulation.
Breath control may modulate HRV in pediatric ADHD; hypothesis-generating and requires controlled trials before any clinical consideration.
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated to a lower respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and to a lower heart rate variability (HRV). The purpose of this study is to verify if through breath control, an ADHD boy (9 years old) could increase HRV. During breathing control, the child significantly reduced breathing frequency (BF) and heart rate (HR); significantly augmented mean RR interval and pNN50; augmented HRVi (ns) and HF (ns); and reduced LF/HF ratio (ns). Consequently, during short training sessions, this child had the capacity to augment various parameters of HRV, suggesting an increasing of vagal activity. If vagal activity was reinforced during breathing control, it means that maybe a process of bottom-up adjustment of attention and emotional responses can be promoted.
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Catela et al. (2018) studied this question.
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