What causes the need to breathe?

[SailfishX]

Hi!

I hope you could clearify a thing for me:
I`ve heard that it is not the lack of oxygen that causes the need to breathe while holding your breath but rather the increased amount of carbon dioxide.

Is there anyone here that may verify or disqualify this allegation?

Regards,
Tom-André

 

[trux]

There are several factors influencing the urge to breath, but it is a well and long establisehd fact that the main driving factor is indeed the CO2. You can read about it in every basic book about freediving, in every book about pulmonary physiology, and of course you'll get thousands of links to literature explainign details if you enter the terms into Google, or look it up in Wiki, or in any other places including the DeeperBlue archive.

 

[Kars]

Well, we NEED to breath because we NEED oxygen

But the URGE to breath is triggered by a high(er) concentration of CO2 in the bloodstream.


People who Hyperventilate do NOT add O2. But they do lower the CO2 in their lungs and bloodstream, postponing the feeling of the need to breath. So much so, that for some the feeling and or warning comes too late and they swim into a black out.

Freedivers have more tolerance (are used to) of high CO2 levels.

There are some very good freedivers in Norway, I'm sure they would like to meet you and share some training and fun times together.

Love, Courage and water,

Kars

ps. this forum has a very nice search function, it may prove even faster than we can type

 

[SailfishX]

Well, we NEED to breath because we NEED oxygen

But the URGE to breath is triggered by a high(er) concentration of CO2 in the bloodstream.


People who Hyperventilate do NOT add O2. But they do lower the CO2 in their lungs and bloodstream, postponing the feeling of the need to breath. So much so, that for some the feeling and or warning comes too late and they swim into a black out.

Freedivers have more tolerance (are used to) of high CO2 levels.

There are some very good freedivers in Norway, I'm sure they would like to meet you and share some training and fun times together.

Love, Courage and water,

Kars

ps. this forum has a very nice search function, it may prove even faster than we can type

Of course I meant the "urge" and not the "need", you have to excuse my english sometimes:crutch

I kinda knew this fact but needed to confirm it because my dad talked wih a doctor the other day wich did not agree to this aligation.

As you say, when a unexperienced freediver, or a experinced one for that matter, hyperventilate before diving they "empty out" the CO2 in the blood. What I thought happened later was that the diver could run out of oxygen, and thereby BO, since the amount of CO2 in the diver`s bloodstream isn`t high enough to trigger the "urge" to breathe.

As I recall it, people who have suffered a blackout while freediving after hyperventilating say that the only thing they felt right before they blacked out was an almost euphoric feeling. No urge to breathe at all. Talk about drowning with a smile on your face...

 

[Kars]

What can I say, doctors are often very well indoctrinated

Some for instance think you'll die from holding holding your breath more than 4 minutes. Though we know that the literature is much more precise and says the brain cannot survive '4' minutes without O2. In other words, the doctor is misled by his own lack of critical thinking and knowledge. He did not use the "Trivium" thought method. PodOmatic | Podcast - Gnostic Media - Jan Irvin - #049 - The T R I V I U M - An Interview with Gene Odening, Part 1

But I'm wandering a bit off topic..

 

[4444]

Low blood pH? I'm not sure. How does the body sense increased CO2? Where are the sensors located? How come we don't have the urge to breathe near the bottom of the CWT dive when the partial pressure of CO2 goes sky high in the blood?

 

[trux]

As I wrote in my initial post, it is a little bit more complex than just the CO2 level. It is not only the PaCO2 sensors (located to great extent in the carotid arterial walls), but also pH and PaO2 receptors, but there are also other factors having influence. Still, under normal circumstances it is basically mostly the CO2 level (regardless if sensed through pH receptors) that controls the urge to breath.