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Croatian freediver held breath for 29 minutes
- desireco42 1y agoYou really have to be from the Balkans to do something like this :)
- schappim 1y agoHis spleen must be enormous[1]. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bajau-sea-nomads-free-diving-spleen-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bajau-sea...
- echelon 1y agoAnd he should avoid high impact sports and never get into a motorcycle accident. Spleens are big bags of blood, and trauma to them, especially when enlarged or inflamed, can be fatal. It's one of the easiest accidental ways to bleed out. Impressive hack and performance, though!
- downrightmike 1y agoAnd injury to it can cause spleen cells to colonize other parts of the abdomen. You could end up with extra spleens!
- Fruinker 1y ago[flagged]
- bigwheels 1y agoArchive-link: https://archive.is/ZR8JL https://archive.is/ZR8JL
- darkerside 1y agoI wonder if their babies also have enlarged spleens
- hermitcrab 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism
- darkerside 1y ago??? I'm theorizing that if this is truly a genetic trait that has been selected for, we'd see it appear before spleens were developed by breathing practice.
- jajko 1y agoJust came from 2 week vacation in Togian islands in Indonesia where there is big community spread across various places of these 'sea gypsies'. Their ability to hold breath easily for 5-6 minutes while freediving to 20m depth and chasing fish with harpoons is quite something to see.
- nfriedly 1y agoThat's 29min 4sec after breathing pure oxygen. The record for regular air is 11min 35sec. Pretty impressive either way.
- stavros 1y agoHolding your breath for more than 11 minutes?! That's absolutely crazy, wow.
- dhosek 1y agoWhen I was a kid in the 70s, I think the record was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3–5 minutes (maybe seven?) and we used to think that was such a short time that we could do it and then trying in the backyard bucket pools that were endemic in my neighborhood we found that cracking a minute was enough of a challenge.
- sejje 1y agoAt first. I was also a kid doing this, my cousins and I held ourselves underwater with the ladder rungs in a swimming pool. At first, yeah a minute was tough. But then it rapidly increased. Unfortunately I don't remember where we topped out, but I think ~3 minutes. We would also swim pool lengths underwater(but it was a relatively small pool at a condo building). I think I swam 9 once. They'd let us stay out all night at that pool, it was great. Florida summers don't really get chilly.
- Terr_ 1y agoSuch contests are more dangerous than they first appear: Many kids will grasp the obvious trick of hyperventilating to improve their time, but that can lead to abrupt unconsciousness and drowning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow-water_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow-water_blackout
- sejje 1y agoI know that now, and I would prevent any kids from breath-holding contests. But I didn't at 14 years old, nor did my mom or uncle, apparently.
- nradov 1y agoIt's so crazy that this is even possible. A lot of our old assumptions about the limits of human performance are being rewritten.
- surmoi 1y agoThe whole history of freediving is an excellent example. E.g Scientists were telling freedivers to not go under 100m, or their lungs would implode under the pressure. They did it anyway and discovered that our body has a way to protect against this, called blood shift! I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to scientists though ;)
- djtango 1y agoNote this is oxygen assisted - the diver breathed pure oxygen and (from the article) can increase available oxygen from 450mL to 3L in doing so. Still impressive nonetheless and I didn't know that this trick is sometimes used in Hollywood to extend underwater filming time. Avatar 2 comes to mind when I was impressed to find out Sigourney Weaver trained to hold her breath for 6 and half minutes in her 70s! Coming back to the article, I'm disappointed that the details were sparse - how do they check whether the contestant is conscious? How does the contestant know what his limits are before passing out?
- codechicago277 1y agoIt’s a classic at this point but David Blaine held the record for a while and gave a fantastic TED talk on his process: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_blaine_how_i_held_my_breath_for_17_minutes?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/david_blaine_how_i_held_my_breath_...
- xenotux 1y agoAnother factor is that it's easier to do it underwater than on land. The mammalian diving reflex is what helps.
- Azrael3000 1y agoTo answer your questions: - A coach / safety will give a signal to the athlete, e.g. pinching of the arm and the athlete will react to it by e.g. lifting a finger. - Training. You get to know your body and limits very well when training freediving for a longer time. That does not mean that you always avoid blackouts, particularly in competitions they happen but that's what safeties are for. In the end, a free diving competition is one of the safest places to explore your limits.
- djtango 1y agoFor sure - what I find interesting is that passing out is a disqualification (I assume) so there is a fine line between achieving your utmost limit and being disqualified. Which is like most sports but my understanding is that it is quite easy to accidentally slip under so the guy must have incredible body awareness
- awesome_dude 1y agoFree diving wouldn't be mainstream conscientiousness if it wasn't for possibly one of the greatest movies of all time https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/
- surmoi 1y agoAlthough you need to watch the non US version for the real ending and good soundtrack !
- robocat 1y agoI wonder if the diver used any assistance to improve their oxygen capacity? Adding extra red blood cells into our body? Increasing the oxygen capacity of existing cells? Is there anything we can eat/drink that would soak up excess carbon dioxide?
- bobmcnamara 1y agoHuffing O2
- TylerE 1y agoThe funny thing is the co2 isn't doing much in the short term except make you feel completely terrible, because that's how most mammals evolved not dying in caves and underground tunnels. You can't feel low o2 (well, you can with training like aviators get) so you feel excess co2 instead.
- jfengel 1y agoJust lots and lots of training. And probably some good genes to start with.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoI briefly got into breath holding. It's impressive how long you can go with simple techniques; slow stretches with lungs full of air, packing, and iterating animal names. But I started to question the brain damage and couldn't find good science to confirm it either way.
- TylerE 1y agoDid you ever try wearing a pulseox and seeing what your sat looked like? As long as sats aren't ever dipping below (NOT medical advice, but I'm being conservative here), say, 90%, brain damage is very remote. Plenty of COPD patients walking around with sats in the 80s, or even 70s. But as someone with bad lungs...yeah, you only get one set and most meds/treatments are partial symptom relief at best.
- Nicholas_C 1y agoNot the OP but I used to do breathe hold training for surfing and bought a pulse oximeter. I don’t think I ever got below 90%.
- minitech 1y agoHey, I happened to try this recently when I was holding my breath for another reason! It hit 70% or a little lower by the end*, but that was after having exhaled for a while. I do wonder what effect that kind of thing can have, even minor. * sensor accuracy not guaranteed
- edwardsdl 1y ago
- stevage 1y agoI'm surprised they don't make any mention of how dangerous this sport can be. Particularly if you are taking steps to avoid CO2 build-up, which is the thing that triggers the suffocation reflex.
- MaxPock 1y agoI increased my lung capacity using Wim Hof breathing technique and can now hold my breath for 3 minutes.
- chneu 1y agoreminder that wim hof blew his intestines apart because he was using a public fountain to blow water up his own ass. he'd done it plenty of times before, he said, but they recently changed the water pressure and he wasn't aware.
- explodes 1y agoI did not need this reminder.
- furgot 1y agoWhile that is true, and the full context only makes it worse, the important reminder is that a lot of people have died doing "Wim Hof" breathing before diving. It is not safe to hyperventilate before going into the water, because you are not saturating your blood with any more oxygen (normal breathing accomplishes that), but you are rejecting CO2. Your urgent need to breath is not triggered by low O2 but by high CO2. So if you hyperventilate and then go under water, you will experience an urgent need to breath after you start to become hypoxic. This has killed people and will kill again. Don't let it be you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving_blackout#Shallow_water_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving_blackout#Shallow_wa...
- hermitcrab 1y ago"That guy has been cleaning his arse in our fountain again. Let's turn up the pressure to maximum."
- unsupp0rted 1y agoIf it had gone well, like it always did the previous times, then he would have shat out everything in his colon into the fountain. Yes, really.
- jajko 1y ago
- andyferris 1y ago[flagged]
- just-the-wrk 1y agoMost people on this forum could hit 3 minutes with normal air in an afternoon of training.
- MarkMarine 1y agoTrue story here. If you're fit you can train this pretty easily. I count my time pushing against the current in Northern CA with free diving fins, a 5mm suit and a speargun and I can manage 2:30. In a warm pool with no current, no sharks and plenty of time to relax I can hit 3:45 and I'm old and out of shape.
- mmcgaha 1y agoWhen I was in high school I could hold my breath all the way through comfortably numb. None of my friends could even come close. My technique was to breath in and out real fast until I felt tingly.
- matsemann 1y agoWhich is dangerous and should not be done that way, see my other comment here. Doing it that way masks the signals you get, drastically increasing the chances of blacking out.
- scabby 1y ago> “the longest breath held voluntarily under water using oxygen” Voluntarily is an important point here.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoProbably even more important that you have to come out alive
- sriram_malhar 1y agoIncredible! Assuming I understand such a feat even with exposure to pure O2, how does he manage to avoid CO2 build-up? Or, how did he train to retain CO2? Cells use up O2 and release CO2 into the blood to form carbonic acid (keeping it simple), so the blood pH levels drop, which the body does not care about at all. This is what induces the suffocation reflex. I wish I had known this while trying to master breathing while swimming freestyle: it is not just their VO2 max, but also their ability to retain CO2. Both aspects need to be trained.
- Azrael3000 1y agoYou cant avoid co2 build-up, you can only slow it down, main factor here is relaxation. Particularly your brain needs loads of o2, so if you can keep that calm it helps a lot. Obviously a slow metabolism helps as well, so before big static performances fasting is common. And regarding co2 tolerance, it is a training effect. With training you can withstand much higher levels of co2 without resulting in panic
- cenamus 1y agoAnd co2 build up isn't even that dangerous, just really uncomfortable. Lack of co2 (from hyperventilating) actually inhibits oxygen uptake and causes dizzyness (up to passing out) that way
- matsemann 1y agoThe body doesn't notice a lack of oxygen. Hence the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning or air without o2 etc, as you won't notice o2 lacking. What you notice is co2 buildup, and as long as you keep breathing that's not happening. When freediving, you can't really avoid it. What you learn however is how to deal with it. Control your diaphragm when it wants to start breathing, as the spasms are wasted energy. It's mostly a mind thing. With simple exercises (co2 tables) and just getting used to the feeling, it took my quite a short time to reach 5 minutes. One "trick" btw is hyper ventilating. But DONT DO IT! It get rids of lots of co2 in your blood stream / lungs, so it takes a bit longer for the co2 buildup. But you need that buildup. Even though it's painful, that's your only signal as to how you're doing and which you kinda calibrate against. Especially when diving, hyper ventilating before can make it so you suddenly go unconscious before you felt the urge to surface.
- splitbrain 1y agoNo Guybrush Threepwood joke in here yet?
- Tepix 1y agoI'm curious about breath holding and freediving: When you're depriving your body of oxygen for such a long time, do you not risk cells dying, in particular in your brain? If not, how do we know it's not happening?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rich_sasha 1y agoCan you use the oxygen trick to practically extend snorkelling dives? I used to do a little scuba, but overall didn't like the reliance on often poorly maintained kit. But I do love snorkelling - the lightness and simplicity of it. Can I breathe pure oxygen for half an hour on the boat and be able to repeatedly snorkel longer?
- kaapipo 1y agoEven though you can do it with pure oxygen, it won't be fun. This is because our breathing reflex activated from the rising carbon dioxide levels - meaning that for a significant portion of the attempt the person was fighting their urge to breathe.
- belorn 1y agoThe desire for breathing comes from CO2, not oxygen. Pre-breathing pure oxygen will likely not have a significant impact on non-trained free divers Pure oxygen also has its own issues and risks which is part of the training for people who use it. It is not a stretch to call it the opposite of simplicity.
- metalman 1y agoshallow water practice is the best way to gain capacity and confidence, or some sort of winhoff method....sitting on the couch or whatever as it is a simmilar flex that you can drop into any sort of free STATIONARY time, ie not while driving, or on top of anything like that, or before doing a dive, even just blowing your head up, blowing baloons, again within limits, as I believe that there are possible ways to injur yourself doing that, but as an easy to do (very rough) capacity test that can be repeated as often as desired for almost no cost. I got to the point where I could swim a full lap(two lengths)in an olympic pool underwater with no trouble, and only a few extra breaths before going, it seemed to be mostly up to following a very moderate and steady stroke.
- semessier 1y agowondering how newborns under respiratory distress can survive hypoxia almost 30' post-birth with 50 and 57% measured SpO2, respectively.
- a_f 1y agoI think it is in some part to do with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_hemoglobin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_hemoglobin
- drno123 1y agoAt least two other Croats broke the same record in the last 11 years (Goran Čolak 23:01 in 2014 and Budimir Šobat 24:37 in 2021). There must be some genetic predisposition.
- unsupp0rted 1y ago> There must be some genetic predisposition. Impossible. It's purely cultural factors, like West African runners or Jewish Nobel prize winners.
- xrd 1y agoIt is sobering to see all the related articles underneath that talk about divers who died. Every one of those articles.
- whycome 1y agoSo, are "blood scrubbers" a thing? Something like dialysis that could let someone stay under water longer by removing CO2 (combined with novel ways of oxygenating the blood). Could future SCUBA just skip the lung gas exchange part entirely?