How can divers or ppl hold their breath underwater for long

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Hi,

How can people hold their breath for a super long time? The longest for me was a 1 min and 50 seconds . The world record underwater is 24 mins ? please

In: Biology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It requires a lot of training. When you hold your breath the first you notice is carbon dioxide poisoning. This is not actually dangerous on its own, especially in the small amount you get from holding your breath for a couple of minutes. However it is a very strong signal to your body that it is suffocating. It hurts very badly, your instincts is to fight for the surface, to breathe out to take another breath, you start producing adrenaline, your muscles tense up and convulse uncontrollably. But this is just your nerves and instincts reacting to the carbon dioxide. It is possible to train your body to ignore those signs and stay calm.

And training your body in staying calm and not use muscles unnecessarily will reduce your oxygen consumption. So people who are able to dive for long time is able to keep completely still and even lower their heart rate. And then it is also possible to train your body to absorb more oxygen and have bigger lungs.

So when you have people who have trained extremely hard on all this the very best of them is able to hold their breath up to 10 minutes, the world record is almost 12 minutes. There are indeed people who have managed to hold their breath for 24 minutes, but not without assistance. What they are doing to prepare to hold their breath for that long is to fill their lungs with pure oxygen. Regular air is only 20% oxygen. If they breathe pure oxygen before their dive they can fill their lungs with five times the normal amount of oxygen. This means they can extend their dive from 10 minutes to 24 minutes.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Breathing is a reflex caused by CO2 in our bodies. When we inhale, the oxygen converts into CO2. When there is certain amount of CO2 in the body, it starts to irritate the lungs. This is a signal to the lungs to exhale and then take another breath. However, even though the CO2 level increases, that does not mean that our lungs no longer have oxygen in them. In fact, we consume very little of the oxygen we inhale before the CO2 triggers us to exhale.

People who learn how to hold their breaths learn how to overcome that CO2 reflex. It is similar to physical training. Some activity make us feel like absolute garbage, and we feel like we are about to die. In truth, we are nowhere near dying, but only *feel* bad. It is the same with holding your breath. The CO2 will make you feel like absolute shit, but in reality, you still have plenty of air oxygen left. You need to learn to take the pain and ignore that reflex.

That is perhaps the main obstacle. With an average breath, you could probably hold your breath for several minutes just by ignoring the reflex. However, to get up the 24 minutes, there are other tricks such as lowering your heart rate to expend less oxygen, an using breathing techniques which draw in more oxygen.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Well I’m not an expert but I did actually witness the underwater breath holding record being set. I think it was like 2012 and the guy was under for like 23 minutes I think.

First of all they practice a fuck ton, to get that out of the way. Second of all they use special techniques which allow them to slow down their heart rate which means that their body uses much less O2, in other words the body produces much less CO2.

Also another 2 important factors are: 1- they dont move at all (try holding your breath while being still and then try doing it while walking)

and 2 – as they get ready to go underwater they breathe a different type of O2. I’m not completly sure what it is, I think its some sort of purified O2 but I could be completly wrong, someone correct me pls. Either the thing they breathe in before going under helps them stay there longer.

Anonymous 0 Comments

They train to hold their breath for longer and longer periods of time (this takes years), they are very skilled at managing the body’s consumption of oxygen (by avoiding unnecessary movements for example), and they train their brains to not panic like most of us would with an oxygen shortage.