When you hold your breath to the maximum your body will allow, be it underwater or just in air, you can gain a few seconds extra by slowly releasing your breath. It will feel better and your body won’t react like it is suffocating while you are doing it. Why does this happen? We’ve all tried to hold our breath for as long as we can. We take a huge intake of air and then hold it as much as we can. But, when you breathe out slowly the “air” that’s in your lungs, you don’t feel like you are going to suffocate while doing it. In fact, it’s almost like a great relief. Why is that?
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Because getting rid of the Co2 is what wants your body the most. This is what makes you want to breathe. A normal breath just absorbs about 20% of the oxygen taken in at any time. So holding in and slowly exhaling along the way is the best tactic for holding breath the longest.
Your body doesn’t really sense “I’m out of oxygen, I need to breathe!” Instead, it realizes “There’s CO2 in my lungs, I need to breathe!”
You can use this trick to win ‘hold your breath’ contests, as you’ve noticed. Take a bunch of deep breaths (to oxygenate your blood), and then breathe out (bonus points if you can start the timer as you start to breathe, such as going underwater). Your body senses the leaving air (which is assumed to contain all your CO2), giving you the mentality to not breathe and just use up the oxygen you already have.
You body isn’t good at working out if you don’t have enough O2, what it is good at is knowing that you have too much CO2. So breathing and the suffocating feelings related to CO2 build up. So when you breath out, you reducing your CO2 levels, so it probably feels good rather than suffocating.
Your body can’t really detect a lack of oxygen, what it detects and and drives your urge to breathe is an excess of CO2
For a “fun” demonstration of the whole CO2 gives you the urge to breathe thing- try hyperventilating. (Note: don’t actually try this). When you hyperventilate you actually expell too *much* CO2. Do this long enough and it causes the pH of your blood to change, leading to some really freaky symptoms like your hands going numb and then clenching and curling in. I’ve been in this state and it’s not pleasant. The weirdest thing is that if you stop breathing you don’t feel the urge to breathe again for a long time, because you don’t have enough CO2 built up. I once held my breath for like 2 minutes and was completely comfortable the whole time- no feeling of pressure in my lungs at all. I had to remind myself to take in some oxygen after awhile.
Because your body doesn’t register a lack of oxygen. It senses a buildup of CO2.
That’s why hypoxia can be so insidious. Your body doesn’t react much to the oxygen deficiency until your cognitive function starts to suffer.
When you hold your breath for a long time, your body builds up carbon dioxide. Exhaling lets that extra carbon dioxide out, making you feel like you’re not suffocating. It’s like getting rid of stuff that’s not good for you.
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