How do paper bags help with panic attacks?

A lot of people say breathing in and out of paper bags help relieve panic attacks, which is often followed by hyperventilation. Studies show that it actually isn't true.

Paper bags help control breathing. Your body is in fight or flight and you hyperventilate causing too much oxygen to enter the bloodstream. Paper bags prevent you from breathing excessive amounts of oxygen and can calm a person down as well as prevent them from fainting.

I'm honestly not sure they do. Maybe they help with your breathing but other than that I have no idea.

This method is said to help because you will be breathing in more CO2 which will bring your pH level back to a normal range. That is what the scientists say. I personally believe that it can help because you think it can help.

The paper bag is used to reduce hyperventilation while having the panic attack. Hyperventilation is one of the leading cause of panic attacks.

Well traditionally breathing into a paper bag was used as a way of dealing with the short term symptoms of panic attacks. When you hyperventilate you need more carbon dioxide (CO2) to normalise the levels in your blood. However more recent research shows that breathing into a paper bag creates a sharp increase in CO2 that causes MORE panic attacks. Bad news! A more recent approach to hyperventilating is to focus on measured breathing and attempt to lengthen and slow breathing without the aid of a bag. This helps to reduce the panic attack, and also increases the CO2 in your blood but at a much healthier rate. It also avoids the problems of too little Oxygen in the blood caused by breathing into a bag. So really the answer is, modern science says it doesn't really help much, and it isn't very safe.

Paper bags are used to help regulate your breathing. It controls how much air you breathe in and how much air you breathe out. A close friend was having a bad panic attack one time and I gave her a paper bag to use, which helped her calm down and gave her something to focus on, bringing her back down to earth.

It's all about breathing. When having a panic attack, you need to control your breathing or you'll hyperventilate. Breathing into a paper bag helps to keep your breathing normal.

When you have a panic attack generally you are short on breath or breathing to fast, so I belive a paper bag will help you to control your breathing

They actually helps by resetting your CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels in your blood. Frequently when you are having a panic attack you hyperventilate which can exacerbate the anxiety and also add extra physical sensations. If you don't have a paper bag, fear not, there is another exercise which you can do to reset your carbon dioxide levels as well. Breathe in from your nose for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, then exhale out of your mouth for eight seconds then repeat around 10 times. 4-7-8 breathing is an excellent tool to use and while it may be hard at first to execute, I can promise it is a life saver!