Note 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?
xenotux · 1h ago
Another factor is that it's easier to do it underwater than on land. The mammalian diving reflex is what helps.
When 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 · 1h ago
At 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.
mdaniel · 1h ago
I somehow thought that pure oxygen was poisonous[1], and it needed to be a nitrogen mix. I mean, I guess this stunt demonstrates that I'm clearly mistaken, or that the nuance is in the pressures involed?
Oxygen weathering is a primary constraint on life on Earth, and every carbon-hydrogen based organism in the past 2.5 billion years has had to develop biochemical coping mechanisms for this toxic gas that wants to react with carbon and with hydrogen; It is harnessing this reaction ("respiration") with biologically mediated processes and modulating it to specific rates that permits us life.
For humans, acute breathing gas toxicity only happens in a high pressure environment.
Air approximates an 80/20 nitrogen-oxygen mix. Atmospheric pressure is 14.7psi.
The 120psi air compressor in your auto body shop is equivalent to a dive only 81 meters deep. SCUBA divers and later saturation divers have probed the various limits of the human cardiopulmonary system using very specialized gas blends all the way down to 700 meters. Too much oxygen partial pressure causes all the symptoms you see listed, and higher partial pressures cause symptoms to appear faster.
> The curves show typical decrement in lung vital capacity when breathing oxygen. Lambertsen concluded in 1987 that 0.5 bar (50 kPa) could be tolerated indefinitely.
This means you could breath 80/20 nitrox at 2.5 bar, or 37 psi, or 25 meters depth, "indefinitely" in the sense of hours or days.
PS: Chronic use of 100% oxygen at atmospheric pressure causes other types of toxicity. Some of the oxidative damage therein, accumulated over the years at a normal 20%, probably directly analogizes parts of the human aging process. Other types of oxidative damage probably work faster than proportional exposure. We only start to notice damage like this in people with impaired lung function who rely on an artificial supply of oxygen boosted to beyond an 80/20 ratio, to breath.
thrown-0825 · 11m ago
Found the SCUBA diver
SOLAR_FIELDS · 3m ago
Indeed, the grandparent post is a pretty good summary of the takeaways you get from taking PADI’s enriched air nitrox course (which is a requirement if you ever want to dive with enriched air).
In the olden days this was tracked manually (the ratio of your depth to percentage of air and time under water to determine the same amount of time you could be underwater at a certain depth). As this is a sliding window based on multiple variables it’s of course annoying and less accurate to hand calculate this. Modern dive computers just seamlessly calculate it all for you nowadays.
tjohns · 1h ago
There's definitely nuance here.
Pure oxygen puts oxidative stress on your cells. Your body can handle that just fine at 1 atm, but at elevated partial pressures the increased concentration will (quickly) overwhelm your cellular mechanics.
Underwater, the maximum operating depth for 100% O2 is 6 meters (20 feet) - which isn't very much at all. If you dive any deeper than that, you'll be at severe risk for a seizure and unconsciousness, and likely drown. (I'm simplifying, see [1].)
Which is why you don't go diving with pure O2.
However, in this case the freediver wouldn't be breathing compressed O2 gas underwater. They would've been breathing it at the surface, at 1 atm.
It’s really several factors. Supplemental oxygen is common for people with diminished lung capacity, carbon monoxide exposure etc. However long term it’s not a good idea for healthy people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_therapy
At low pressure pure oxygen can similarly be beneficial, mountain climbers eventually need supplemental oxygen for Mount Everest though a few have made the trip without it they can’t stay at that altitude indefinitely. It can even help on airplane flights as commercial airlines don’t set things to sea level.
Where healthy people run into issues is when partial pressures get well over 100% at sea level. Part of the issue is people adjust their breathing based on carbon dioxide not oxygen levels. So at say 10 atmospheres at normal atmospheric mixtures your breathing the equivalent of 210%, but you don’t slow down enough to compensate. Thus why divers care so much about gas mixtures, however people with diminished lung capacity are going to encounter issues at different levels than normal divers.
teraflop · 1h ago
Yes, partial pressure is what matters. Normal air at 1 bar (1 atmosphere) contains about 0.2 bar of O2. Pure oxygen at sea level is 1 bar of O2.
The article you linked has a graph showing that 0.5 bar of O2 can be tolerated pretty much indefinitely, and it takes hours for significant toxicity to show up at 1 bar. Higher partial pressures cause much faster symptoms.
QuinnyPig · 1h ago
Yes. It’s under pressure that oxygen toxicity becomes an issue. It’s why you’ve gotta pay attention to your depth when diving with enriched air.
TylerE · 1h ago
It is, kinda sorta, but at 1 atm you need to be breathing pure o2 for ~24 hrs before its meaningful (and longer than that before treatment is anything beyond "stop breathing pure o2". The dose isn't even cumulative. Just being on room air for 20-30 minutes resets the clock.
greesil · 1h ago
It's dangerous in an enclosed environment, see Apollo 1 for more details.
throwmeaway222 · 39m ago
holding your breath for 11 minutes is asking to see the gates damn
stavros · 2h ago
Holding your breath for more than 11 minutes?! That's absolutely crazy, wow.
OsrsNeedsf2P · 1h ago
I 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 · 1h ago
Did 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.
And 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 · 1h ago
And injury to it can cause spleen cells to colonize other parts of the abdomen. You could end up with extra spleens!
stevage · 1h ago
I'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.
nradov · 2h ago
It's so crazy that this is even possible. A lot of our old assumptions about the limits of human performance are being rewritten.
robocat · 1h ago
I 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?
jfengel · 26m ago
Just lots and lots of training. And probably some good genes to start with.
TylerE · 1h ago
The 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.
bobmcnamara · 1h ago
Huffing O2
awesome_dude · 1h ago
Free diving wouldn't be mainstream conscientiousness if it wasn't for possibly one of the greatest movies of all time
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?
The record for regular air is 11min 35sec.
Pretty impressive either way.
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.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity
For humans, acute breathing gas toxicity only happens in a high pressure environment.
Air approximates an 80/20 nitrogen-oxygen mix. Atmospheric pressure is 14.7psi.
The 120psi air compressor in your auto body shop is equivalent to a dive only 81 meters deep. SCUBA divers and later saturation divers have probed the various limits of the human cardiopulmonary system using very specialized gas blends all the way down to 700 meters. Too much oxygen partial pressure causes all the symptoms you see listed, and higher partial pressures cause symptoms to appear faster.
> The curves show typical decrement in lung vital capacity when breathing oxygen. Lambertsen concluded in 1987 that 0.5 bar (50 kPa) could be tolerated indefinitely.
This means you could breath 80/20 nitrox at 2.5 bar, or 37 psi, or 25 meters depth, "indefinitely" in the sense of hours or days.
PS: Chronic use of 100% oxygen at atmospheric pressure causes other types of toxicity. Some of the oxidative damage therein, accumulated over the years at a normal 20%, probably directly analogizes parts of the human aging process. Other types of oxidative damage probably work faster than proportional exposure. We only start to notice damage like this in people with impaired lung function who rely on an artificial supply of oxygen boosted to beyond an 80/20 ratio, to breath.
In the olden days this was tracked manually (the ratio of your depth to percentage of air and time under water to determine the same amount of time you could be underwater at a certain depth). As this is a sliding window based on multiple variables it’s of course annoying and less accurate to hand calculate this. Modern dive computers just seamlessly calculate it all for you nowadays.
Pure oxygen puts oxidative stress on your cells. Your body can handle that just fine at 1 atm, but at elevated partial pressures the increased concentration will (quickly) overwhelm your cellular mechanics.
Underwater, the maximum operating depth for 100% O2 is 6 meters (20 feet) - which isn't very much at all. If you dive any deeper than that, you'll be at severe risk for a seizure and unconsciousness, and likely drown. (I'm simplifying, see [1].)
Which is why you don't go diving with pure O2.
However, in this case the freediver wouldn't be breathing compressed O2 gas underwater. They would've been breathing it at the surface, at 1 atm.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_operating_depth
At low pressure pure oxygen can similarly be beneficial, mountain climbers eventually need supplemental oxygen for Mount Everest though a few have made the trip without it they can’t stay at that altitude indefinitely. It can even help on airplane flights as commercial airlines don’t set things to sea level.
Where healthy people run into issues is when partial pressures get well over 100% at sea level. Part of the issue is people adjust their breathing based on carbon dioxide not oxygen levels. So at say 10 atmospheres at normal atmospheric mixtures your breathing the equivalent of 210%, but you don’t slow down enough to compensate. Thus why divers care so much about gas mixtures, however people with diminished lung capacity are going to encounter issues at different levels than normal divers.
The article you linked has a graph showing that 0.5 bar of O2 can be tolerated pretty much indefinitely, and it takes hours for significant toxicity to show up at 1 bar. Higher partial pressures cause much faster symptoms.
But I started to question the brain damage and couldn't find good science to confirm it either way.
But as someone with bad lungs...yeah, you only get one set and most meds/treatments are partial symptom relief at best.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bajau-sea...
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!
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?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/