What makes us feel the need to exhale physically?
In: Biology
Firstly , we all know that our bodies take in oxygen, convert it to CO2 and then we exhale that.
When we hold our breath no more oxygen can enter our lungs, but also no carbon dioxide can leave. The build up of CO2 in the cells leads to a build up of CO2 in our blood. This build up basically sends a message to the muscles surrounding our diaphragm. The message is to contract. When a diaphragm contracts it pulls air into the lungs. Notice that the signal bypasses the brain, which is why we don’t need to think about breathing to be able to do it , but if we do think about it we can prevent it (which allows us to hold our breath)
If we don’t have any CO2 in our body, we don’t need to release it and thus do not need to breathe in. This is why hyperventilating (breathing very fast) causes you to faint. The faster you breathe, the more your lungs have gas content that looks like the atmospheric gas content. Since the atmosphere doesn’t have much CO2, not much CO2 gets into your blood. Like always mentioned, this will cause you to stop breathing in , and thus faint.
This is why when someone is freaking out they can breathe into a paper bag. Breathing into a bag creates an artificial atmosphere which is mostly CO2, since that’s what we breathe out. Now that your blood has the CO2 you can start to breathe normally again.
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