Excessive Yawning and Constant Need to Breathe Deep

I feel for you.  I know what you are going through. I have had success avoiding these aggravating and miserable symptoms by avoiding consumption of the artificial preservative sodium benzoate.  It could be hard to avoid sodium benzoate on a vegan diet because as a preservative sodium benzoate does such a good job at keeping fruit and vegetable juices consistent in a liquid form.  It does a particular good job in citric juices and there is no known suitable alternative for shelf-stable citric drinks.  Most all of the manufacturers use it, i.e. it is present in high quantities in most of the shelf-stable juices. It is in a lot of soda too and food like pickles, jams, and margarine.   But if you go for the "no artificial preservatives" refrigerated options, sodium benzoate can be avoided without too much skipping out on what you really want.  Eliminating this single ingredient works for me.  It only takes a couple of days for my body to get through an episode if I mess up and consume sodium benzoate (it can be easy to forget to check your food first and makes going out to eat hard sometimes).  Anyway, It may be worth it to you to try it for a few days to see if your symptoms fade.   I hope this helps.  Good luck.  

Sodium Benzoate?! wow - i'll keep an eye out for this one. How did you manage to pinpoint this? 

I'm not sure how much of this I would consume daily but I will look into this - Thank you so much

I managed to pinpoint it after months and months of meticulous food logs. 

When I first started having breathing difficulties, I was really scared.  I was yawning all the time, but couldn't get any satisfaction.  When I was able to "catch my breathe", the feeling returned a few moments later.  I went to the hospital and got a cardiac work-up.  I am healthy and the best the doctor could come up with was anxiety. But,  I wasn't experiencing any anxiety that I was aware of.  The problem lessened and intensified in a pattern that I realized correlated with eating or drinking.  So I started down the long road of documenting which foods or drinks worsened the symptoms and which foods did not. After many months of data and much cross-referencing of ingredients, the one and only ingredient that was in all of the foods or drinks that caused symptoms was sodium benzoate.  So I now avoid all sodium benzoate consumption.  For a long time I have been symptom free and feeling great.  It works.  I no longer keep food logs.  Occasionally I feel the onset of mild symptoms.  When that happens, I analyze what I have eaten within the past two hours.  Each time, I have found sodium benzoate somewhere I didn't expect it.  For example, a pastry caused symptoms, but sodium benzoate wasn't in the ingredients. I went to the bakery and figured out that they were using margarine that contained sodium benzoate   The ingredients of the pastry just listed "margarine." Anyway, but refining it by trial and error, I can remain symptom free.  It is a good quality of life too.  But I am by no means cured, one dose of sodium benzoate and I'm right back to suffering.  It's something I have learned to live with.

 I suffered a panic attack 3 months ago and was taken to hospital where they found nothing wrong physically. However since then my anxiety has kicked in and have been hyperventilating and trying to take these “satisfying breaths” that never come.it has really put my life on hold and interferes with my social life, work life and relationship. 

Im thinking of doing the Buteyko breathing course soon.

I try to check the food ingredients, I saw Sodium, yet saw Sodium Benzoate..

Sodium is completely different from Sodium Benzoate.  I don't have any problems after consuming sodium or consuming anything other than "sodium benzoate".  When I consume "sodium benzoate," it takes just a few minutes, less than an hour, for me to develop exactly the same breathing troubles that are described perfectly in this forum.  Then, it takes about 2, or 2 1/2, maybe even 3 days for my breathing to return to completely normal after an episode of sodium benzoate consumption.  When I don't consume "sodium benzoate," I don't have these problems. 

I am not a doctor and I don't know why this works, but it does work for me.  I usually don't post on any forums, but I thought I would share my experience because this may work for others too.  I know how disconcerting and scary these breathing issues are, and I hope this post helps some people get relief.