Word: oxygenate
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...This reflex can help us conserve the oxygen we do have, but it doesn't do much for the painful muscle spasms. Overcoming those is a matter of concentration and meditation. "This is one of those Zen sports," Potkin explains...
...Suppressing the powerful pain impulse too successfully can prove deadly: subjects can continue holding their breath up to the point that their brains shut down from lack of oxygen. If you're 100 feet under water - or even three feet underwater in a pool - it's not a good time to pass out. In order to break the world record, Blaine had to hold his breath without fainting. (Had he continued until he'd depleted his brain's oxygen, however, Potkin is convinced he could have gone for another full minute...
...When you deprive your body of oxygen, it is only a matter of time before your carbon dioxide levels build, triggering a reflex that will cause your breathing muscles - including the diaphragm and the muscles between the ribs - to spasm. The pain of these spasms is what causes most people to gulp for breath after just a couple of minutes. When holding your breath underwater, however, you have a bit of mammalian evolution on your side. When humans are submerged in cold water, our bodies instinctively prepare to conserve oxygen, much in the way that dolphins' and whales' bodies...
...course, another factor associated with longer holding times is the consumption of pure oxygen beforehand. The world record for holding your breath after inhaling pure oxygen is now Blaine's - 17 minutes and 4 seconds. The record without the pure oxygen, which Blaine failed to break during an attempt last year in Manhattan's Lincoln Center, is 8 minutes and 58 seconds...
...Remember basic high-school science, where an electric current passed through water produces hydrogen and oxygen? Get the electricity from solar power, collect the hydrogen to use as fuel, and carbon doesn't even enter the equation. Honda, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors and BMW have new models that run on hydrogen, but we don't see much enthusiasm from governments. Is it because hydrogen, being so simple to generate, could be too difficult to tax? John Don, Karalee, Queensland...