I’m doing emergency rescue for work and learnt that inhaling a few times at below 10% oxengenated air will leave you pretty much immobile, but I can hold my breath for at least a minute, so shouldn’t I be able to go without 02 for a similar amount of time? Sorry if this is smoothbrained, I tried googling it and couldn’t find an answer for this specifically.
In: Biology
This is a fantastic question! I will try to truly ELI5, so forgive some of the simplification.
To understand the answer, it is important to understand how we breathe. Breathing is something we don’t have to think about, and our lungs basically “trade” oxygen for carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is constantly being produced by your body and is a waste gas, and oxygen is used to make energy.
How does our body know when to take a breath? It is when the carbon dioxide levels (CO2) gets too high. This is so cool! We don’t rely at all on knowing if the oxygen levels are too low, only if the waste gas of CO2 is too high!
That means if you hold your breath, the CO2 keeps building up and eventually your body will start breathing again to get rid of it.
BUT, if you are in an environment where there is low oxygen, you will keep breathing out the CO2, but not making a good trade for the oxygen your body needs to run. You won’t even notice or feel like you aren’t breathing. That is because as long as the waste CO2 is being exhaled, your body won’t feel like it isn’t breathing!
Now that you know this, you can use that in a fun way. If you are in a contest to see who can hold your breath the longest, hyperventilate (breath really heavy like a panting dog) for a minute before you start. You will get rid of so much CO2 that your body will take longer before it triggers you to breath again!
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