If you were giving out superpowers, which one would you take? No food, no sleep, or no air? The last item is likely to be the least popular. We breathe much more often than we eat or sleep, but we take air for granted, as something that is always enough. This makes sense, but some people - mostly freedivers - have taken breath control to the absolute. They also need air, they just know exactly when and how much.
IN-OUT
The simple fact is that we cannot do without oxygen. Do not be ashamed, this is a hallmark of most living organisms on Earth. Oxygen in tissues oxidizes organic matter from food, allowing energy to be produced for life. It is needed so much that it is difficult to imagine - the standard daily dose starts from 300 liters, and with hard work this number can be safely multiplied by ten, the lungs work without stopping. Back, we release the carbon dioxide formed during oxidation - also with the help of our lungs. That is why we breathe so often - about fifteen times a minute, and we hate holding our breath. How in general, with such needs of the body, blocking its access to air for longer than a couple of minutes?
In fact, it is not so difficult, five to seven minutes without air will not do much harm to an untrained person. True, if you try to hold your breath just by an effort of will, the body will begin to rebel after a minute and will force the experimental host to take the desired breath. If you train regularly, the threshold of "intolerance" can be significantly lowered, another question - why would anyone do this, not related to water sports, pearl hunting or diving in general? Unless for fun, to shock friends and family, to win arguments … Then you should remember that serious breathing exercises are safe somewhere at the level of juggling with knives. The result is very effective, but a risky undertaking.
Diving apnea
Taking apart the materials on the subject of breathing quickly leads to a contradiction. In one place they assure that after seven minutes without air there is a high probability of clinical death, and in another they congratulate Tom Sitas on a new record, who has been under water without equipment for 23 minutes and one second. Wow, isn't it? The same dolphins, unlike us, living in water, hold their breath for a maximum of 15 minutes, and then someone managed to overtake them! Maybe this German Ichthyander also got shark gills?
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In fact, of course, everything is a little more complicated. Sitas did not cheat, but he could hardly compete with a dolphin under normal conditions. He broke the record in the so-called "static apnea", a special sports discipline that involves holding your breath at a shallow depth with an almost complete immobility of the body. Otherwise, in fact, such achievements simply would not have been possible - with "dynamic apnea", i.e. diving to great depths with and without fins, breath-holding records usually do not exceed five minutes. In fact, static apnea is an underwater meditation technique for which separate training sessions are conducted. Freedivers spend years not only removing psychological barriers, but also naturally changing their own body. The volume of the lungs increases, oxidative processes are slower, and, accordingly,the production of toxic carbon dioxide slows down. But even with all the tricks and ten years of practice, it is extremely difficult to jump above your head. There are two types of static apnea competitions - with and without pure oxygen. If the freediver breathes oxygen without impurities before diving, he can double the breath holding time! The record of the same Sitas without a trick with pure oxygen is 10 minutes and 12 seconds. Also impressive, no words, but this is not 23 minutes. So whales and dolphins can breathe out with relief. The record of the same Sitas without a trick with pure oxygen is 10 minutes and 12 seconds. Also impressive, no words, but this is not 23 minutes. So whales and dolphins can breathe out with relief. The record of the same Sitas without a trick with pure oxygen is 10 minutes and 12 seconds. Also impressive, no words, but this is not 23 minutes. So whales and dolphins can breathe out with relief.
CHAINS, COFFIN AND ICE
If you return to holding your breath as a way to surprise the audience, your eyes will inevitably fall on the famous magicians and illusionists. One of the most popular tricks of the legendary Harry Houdini was freeing him from the chains in a water chamber, and at some point he was thrown into the Thames, shackled and attached to his feet with an iron ball. To survive in such representations required more than dexterity and flexibility (or even a pre-prepared key). Today, apnea training is available to many, and at the beginning of the 20th century, holding your breath for five minutes seemed like something incredible. In addition, it is one thing to meditate, plunging headlong into a bath, and another thing to sink to the bottom of the river with shackles on your limbs and a kettlebell on your leg. If Houdini could learn the breathing technique from someone, then he trained the steel will absolutely independently.
Modern illusionist David Blaine held his breath a little less than world records - by 17 minutes and 4 seconds. Using pure oxygen, of course. Blaine generally experimented with a limited air supply: he climbed into an underground coffin for a week, then into a glass bubble of water, where air was supplied through a tube, and also spent three days in a specially formed block of ice. Breathing in such conditions and staying calm is a separate art.
ATMOSPHERE OF DINOSAURS
At first glance, oxygen is needed by everyone - people and other animals, plants and fungi, most microorganisms. Although someone still manages to do without it, one would hardly want to be equal to such a landmark. Anaerobes - organisms that do not require oxygen for life, are mainly represented by bacteria that cause one or another infection in us. Anaerobes are easy to find in all purulent-inflammatory foci, their names are familiar to us from childhood (unfortunately) - Escherichia coli, staphylococci, streptococci, tetanus, botulism, etc. Some of them oxygen is not something that is not needed, but is directly contraindicated, poisonous which is quite good news for air-dependent organisms like us. This, however, does not mean that holding our breath we are at risk of attack by bacteria.
Constantly hearing about the need for oxygen, someone, forgetting school lessons, may think that most of it is in the air. But this is absolutely not the case. Air is 78.1% nitrogen, oxygen in it is only 20.93%. By the way, we are unable to assimilate nitrogen during breathing, and the lungs simply filter it out. Now there is a feeling that there is not enough oxygen in the atmosphere, right? But no - there is more of it than ever. A couple of hundred million years ago, during the time of dinosaurs and giant insects, the oxygen concentration in the air fluctuated at the level of 10-15%. Which, by the way, allowed the ancient giants to remain giants - at least according to a number of theories. But a modern person in such an atmosphere, most likely, would quickly suffocate (not because of a lack of oxygen, but from an excess of carbon dioxide).
People cannot live without oxygen, even if they freeze themselves in ice or dive to great depths. We want to live, and therefore we breathe, no matter how impressive we set records. Perhaps it’s for the best that you cannot choose the superpower to refuse air - why get closer to E. coli?
Sergey Evtushenko