How long can you hold your breath

[Mozzer]

1:15 Anyt ips on making it longer?

[Howard]

45 seconds seems pretty mediocre compared with you lot.. Maybe I should exercise more
Might cough up the odd kidney if I'm not careful

And Nemeliza, that sig has damn near given me a boner

[TiG]

Originally posted by Howard
45 seconds seems pretty mediocre compared with you lot.. Maybe I should exercise more
Might cough up the odd kidney if I'm not careful

And Nemeliza, that sig has damn near given me a boner

Either that or you are being honest

To hold your breathe more than 90 seconds is mightely impressive and i don't believe that people who say they can do it for more than this are either telling the truth or aware that they are infact breathing.

Try it with your head under water, thats the only way to tell, and i'm sure most of us wouldn't be able to do more than 1 minute.

TiG

[wiltonson]

90 seconds before i gave up.

[tonicblue]

2 mins! and i smoke. im quite impressed

[TeePee]

I can do three minutes which is pretty easy when I'm not moving and completely restful. The furthest I've swam underwater without surfacing is about 400 metres. But I did have a scuba tank for that! Holding your breath while swimmin is much harder, since you need the oxygen for exercise, dontyaknow...

[SilentDeath]

i admit, for my second attempt i didnt move at all and had my eyes shut, helps imo

just done 1:35 with eyes open, so it cant help that much..

1m is about where i always have to orce myself to hold it, before that its easy, i couldnt do 2m, well i could, but i cba

[Agent]

After 10 puffs on my inhaler, i managed an hour

[Enverex]

Originally posted by lynni
u stupid lot!! has a nurse, i feel obliged to tell u how much your damaging yourselfs and cutting the oxygen off to your brain.... hence causing headaches and worse so, fainting. which means your brain is tellin u to breathe!! dont do it...... :-D

Geez, it's not like we do it regularily, I did it twice on the way home from College one day. The only thing I do is biking, but I have one habit of holding my breath for long periods of time (unintentionally) without noticing and feeling a bit weird. No idea why it happens. So its probably long term effects of that.I dont play any wind instruments or anything.

NS

[shiato storm]

Originally posted by TeePee
I can do three minutes which is pretty easy when I'm not moving and completely restful. The furthest I've swam underwater without surfacing is about 400 metres. But I did have a scuba tank for that! Holding your breath while swimmin is much harder, since you need the oxygen for exercise, dontyaknow...

now this is close to what I was about to say...during a dive, or swimming underwater without breathing apparatus it is entirely possible to kill youself due to the sudden lack of oxygen upon re-surfacing. its called shallow water black-out and its a result of holding your breath for too long.
it doesn't happen on the surface but you can bring yourself to something near when on the surface.

hyperventilate (breathdeeply and rapidly) for a short period of time then take one last gulp and hold it. any increase in time?
you can 'train' your chemorecptive pathways to work in hypoxic levels (low oxygen levels) if you hold your breath often enough over weeks. what makes you want to breath again is the build up of carbon dioxide, hyperventilating reduces the amount of CO2 in your blood and effectively 'knocks out' the receptors that detect it, it therefore takes a little while to build back up to a level that makes you stop holding your breath - hence time of breath hold is extended.

BUT...try this diving and you risk killing yourself. the pressure differences upon return to the surface cause any oxygen that you might have in your blood to actually leave the body - you breath out O2 as you rise towards the surface in effect...hence you black out, and die...

I'v tried to explain it in a way that everyone will understand, there is a far more technical way of explaining it but I don't expect you all to want to bother with funny numbers concerning pressures/gas volumes/gas concentrations and the like...
for those of you that can handle the numbers - sorry, just accept the fact that they're not here today and get on with life without them

[Kezzer]

about 2 seconds then i sneezed

[daniel_owen_uk]

1:03 but I have a lit half smoked cigarette in hand.

[SilentDeath]

1:50 this time using shiato storms method

if you hold it for too long and black out, would you just start breething again when your unconsuios? its hard to keep yourself from breething so i assume you wouldnt have control after that long...
i used to black out some times (when not holding breath) if i was lying down or sitting for ages then stand up.. once i fell ova which r0xd because it felt funny but dont get that any more probly because i get more exersise now

[shiato storm]

silentdeath, what you experienced when you stood up was a sudden and massive fall in blood pressure to your head, your baroreceptors (sensing blood pressure in the neck as blood goes to your brain) cannot respond fast enough and you feint. its actually rather elegant that the action of feinting causes you to fall to the ground - where the pressure needed to get to your head is minimal assuming your head and heart are at the same level.
feinting following hyperventilation is also an 'in-built' system that I think is rather clever too. Ok, heres the technical bit;
try this: breath deeply and rapidly as hard and fast as you can. what happens?
you feel dizzy.
anything else? feel sick, cramps in your hands/feet? twitching in your face?

you are in a hypocapnic state (i.e. as you hyperventilate what you are esentially doing is replacing the waste carbon dioxide in the blood with oxygen. a LOW level of carbon dioxide is called hypocapnia. hypo-cap-nee-a. it is a common misconception that CO2 is not needed in the body, on the contrary it aids balance the acidity of the blood and thus maintains many functions)

carbon dioxide is required in the function of nerves, thus your cramping. why this is so is because CO2 is closely linked to calcium which in turn is needed in nerves and muscles to function properly (you need it to lengthen out your muscles after they contract). lack of CO2 causes changes in the way calcium behaves giving you cramps.
now the fun bit: carry one hyperventilating...
you are dizzy. the brain NEEDS CO2 to survive, without it the acid balance is upset, the brain is a highly SENSITIVE organ and must be protected from hazardous things, in fact it is so well protected that it will initiate a shut down of the body to attempt a return to a point where it will be able to function safely. panting away now becoming dizzy don't be surprised to wake up on the floor.

when you reach a point the brain can no longer tolerate it will shut itself down. you feint. this renders all concious actions ineffective and it takes over on the back up system it has...the same one used when we sleep.

so in answer to your ponderings - when you feint following hyperventilation your breathing returns to regular depth/speeds until the imbalance is restored. yes it is hard to maintain breathing at a rate that induces these symptoms but that is down to a few things; your determination to get there, if your body/brain allows it, lung capacitance (are your breathing muscles up to it?)...

I mentioned that blacking out kills you when surfacing from a dive but that is different from merely sitting down and is entirely due to the changes in pressure tricking your body into thinking you have a certain amount of air in your body when in fact you don't; hence you die X_X

it is unlikely sitting there hyperventilating that you will suffer anything more than dizzyness and certainly not death.
to alieviate your dizzyness re-breath into a bag/balloon - this will increase the CO2 in your body and all will be well again. don't go too far though as that too can lead to feinting - and yes again your back up brin functions will kick in...its a clever organ.

p.s. I take no responsibility for your health, you do it at your own risk and you can't lumber me with your problems if you give yourself a stroke/brain hemorhage etc...

[shiato storm]

p.s. I can do 2.45 without going overboard about it just sitting here, at a push could probably do 3 mins... oh and I am an athlete which gives me a teeny little advantage as my body is adapted to working in conditions of low oxygen.
AND I have 8 litre lungs...so the more you can take in one go the more you have in store...

[Nick]

/coughs phlegm over keyboard after 5 seconds....

/reaches for another Embassy unfiltered....