And what about people like David Blaine or Tom Sietas? Sietas held his breath underwater for over 22 minutes (world record). I know they train for it like months and even years, but doesn’t holding your breath = no oxygen to brain?
Permanent brain damage apparently occurs just after 4 minutes of lack of oxygen to the brain, so why are freedivers left generally unscathed after 8 or 10 minutes without air?
In: Biology
Think of it like a survival video game where you have both an oxygen meter and a health meter. When underwater, your oxygen meter depletes slowly. Once the oxygen meter is empty then your health meter starts to go down until you die. The “4-6 minutes without oxygen” is the health meter part, you can’t really train that. You can, however, train your body to use up your oxygen meter more slowly and you can do things like breathing air with extra oxygen for a while to make your oxygen meter bigger. Those two combine so that you can give yourself a long time of oxygen meter before your health meter even comes in to play.
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