Quantifying hyperventilation

[Simos]

Hyperventilation is a hugely covered topic on here and I understand the main mechanisms/implications as I'm sure most people but I was wondering whether there was anyone that had any data on how fast/much CO2 levels drop while hyperventilating.

I know it's a very general question as it's hard to define what 'hyperventilating' is in the above context but what I would be particularly interested to find out would be by how much the CO2 level would drop if I did 3 fast 'purge breaths' before diving and along the same lines, whether 5 fast 'purge breaths' for example make a big difference from 3 or none etc...

I usually do 3 purge breaths before diving but there are times (if I get the timing wrong with official top etc) that I might end up doing 5-6 purge breaths. Do you reckon this results in any significant hyperventilations effects I should worry about?

 

[azapa]

its quite easy to quantify if you want it to be: hyperventilation is any breathing other than normal, unconscious tidal breathing, like the breathing you are doing now while reading this.

 

[Fondueset]

I think you are referring to purging Co2 - which has a number of undesirable effects. Over time you learn to feel this as you are preparing to dive. For my part - I only do rapid deep breaths to recover - then, for breathe-up - I do progressively long, slow, deep breaths paying attention to how I feel and slowing further - or introducing pauses - if I begin to feel low CO2.
I try to keep the same rhythm right up to the moment of the dive - so no 'purge breaths' before diving.

In pool training I do hard breathing between laps - but this is for a brief time and with cardio exertion and short breath-holds.

 

[trux]

There is avery nice ventilation and saturation online simulator/calculator at Altitude.org | Advanced blood oxygen content calculator, where you can see the effects very well. You just need to enter all the relevant data, to see how it influences the pH and other factors. It was made for studies in hypobaric (altitude) medicine, but works very well for sea level too. For the beginning, you may start with the simpler and better comprehensible version at: Altitude.org | Oxygen Levels

 

[Simos]

Thanks for the info guys - I know I am asking something really hard to quantify... when I try to simulate hyperventilation (dry) to see how it feels, I need to do at least 15-20+ fast breaths do start feeling the effects (tingling in hands etc). Are those effects only felt when CO2 drops really low if you know?

Also, am I right in thinking that if I'm training 25m swim on surface followed by 25m dynamic and then the same again (with short pauses in between) it's harder to hyperventilate with a few fast exhales since my body is working harder and therefore I must have a high CO2 load than normal...