Why Holding Your Breath For 24 Minutes Is Almost Impossible | WIRED

if you're like most people you can probably hold your breath 30 seconds maybe a minute before you start to feel the urge to breathe but the truth is most healthy people can actually hold their breath quite a bit longer than that some people can hold it a lot longer the current world record is 11 minutes 30 seconds and as if that weren't ridiculous enough some competitions allow athletes to breathe pure oxygen before their breath bulbs in 2016 spanish free diver alicia goethe used this technique to go 24 minutes and 3 seconds without breathing how is that possible to find out I spoke with professional free divers and researchers who study their physiology I also took a crash course in proper breath holding technique when I started I could hold my breath for about a minute but by the end I was holding it way longer than I ever would have expected but before we get to that let's talk about some of the science behind breath holding and why the professionals are so much better at it than the rest of us the reason why some people are better at holding their breath for a long time would be partly genetics and partly because of training that's Peter Lindholm he's a physician researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institute he's been studying the physiology of elite breath-hold divers for more than two decades he says that a lot of them are just physically gifted take long sides for example the average human has a total lung capacity of between 4 & 6 liters but many of the world's top free divers have lung capacities of 10 liters or more this isn't necessarily something that they've trained they were just born with big lungs on top of this many professional free divers use the muscles of their mouth and throat to overfill their lungs with air this is called lung packing and the x-ray footage you see here shows an elite free diver using the technique to expand his lungs several leaders beyond their normal capacity Lindholm also says a lot of elite breath holders have relatively slow metabolisms and relatively large blood ball which makes sense your blood and your lungs hold oxygen and your body consumes it the slower you turn through your oxygen supply the longer you can go under breath full of air before succumbing to unconsciousness but when it comes to breath holding lung size is only part of the equation even more important is a physiological response called the mammalian diving reflex when you hold your breath it actually causes your heart rate to slow down this reduces your body's oxygen consumption now what that does is it reduces the blood flow to your legs and your arms so blood is pumped preferentially to the brain which means that the oxygen that's in the blood and oxygen stores in the lungs is used by the brain and not consumed by your muscles and cold water it actually amplifies the response exposing your face to cold water activates your tried Imanol nerves what are your trigeminal nerves take your fingers and you pinch your cheek and you feel it you have your trigeminal nerves to think they're responsible for sensation in your face but they also connect to the part of your nervous system that regulates your heart it's not totally clear how or why this response evolved and it's found in a lot of animals but for some reason when your tribal nerves get chilly they tell your autonomic nervous system to tell your heart to slow things down and as it turns out slowing down is probably the single most important thing you can do when you're working with a limited supply of oxygen I don't try to focus too hard this is also sports where you can't really just push it like you can you know get them do a run and really pump yourself and go do it this is something to be completely the opposite you have to be really really relaxed serbian free diver lena Balta is a 16 time national record holder she showed us some of the techniques she uses to calm herself before a dive the most important is a series of slow controlled inhalations called a breather these help her relax and purge her lungs of carbon dioxide when she's ready to go she takes the series of sharp inhales using the muscles of her diaphragm to fill her lungs before topping them off with some lung packing these techniques take time and practice to perfect which is important because when done incorrectly they can be pretty harmful or even deadly purging too hard before a dive can cause you to blackout which is not something you want to do in the water and it's exactly why divers not only compete but practice in the company of spotters and lung packing I could actually tear the tissues in your lungs but lindholm says that with just a few hours of supervision and instruction most people can actually learn to hold their breath well over two minutes so I gave it a shot Brian Stanley is a free diving instructor at bamboo reef dive shop in San Francisco he had me start by holding my breath on land with my face in a bowl of cold water I lasted about a minute but thanks to the mammalian dive response my heart rate dropped from 74 to next Brian had me move outside the pool deck to hold my breath while lying down the idea here was to help my body relax this time I held my breath for just over two minutes just next Brian taught me some basic breath up techniques whether to use my diaphragm to pull my lungs and to focus on relaxing and what this will do is it will help to relax your muscles reduce any stress or tension that you have in the body and then get that heart rate lower which is key for starting your free dive as I held my breath he calmly instructed me to relax every part of my body beginning with my toes progressing up to my head and then going back down to my feet if you've ever taken a yoga class it felt surprisingly similar to that before I knew it I had held my breath for just over three minutes finally Bryan had me put on a wetsuit and get in the pool where we did some more breathing exercises and finally had me lie face down and hold my breath for as long as possible now there's a few things going on here for starters being in the pool did a lot to relieve tension throughout my body I found it much easier to relax while bobbing in the water than I did when I was on the pool deck and the wetsuit made me super buoyant which helped me relax even further nobody knows for sure but the mustache probably helped to after 2 minutes in the water Bryan started having me signal with my finger every few seconds to let him know I was okay we'll say this again please never attempt this without professional supervision and before I knew it I had lasted three minutes and then three minutes and thirty seconds then three minutes and 45 seconds got your breath that was so cool over 64 16 for 16

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: breath, diving, oxygen, freediver, lung capacity, why it's almost impossible, holding your breath, holding breath, breathing, breathing underwater, underwater, holding breath record, 24 minutes, holding breathing, hold breath, holding your breath underwater, breathing techniques, breathe, hold your breath, almost impossible hold your breath, almost impossible, almost impossible breathing, breath holding, how to hold breath, hold breathing, wired

Id: 1-i6kNJ0QuM

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2017