GRAND CAYMAN ISLAND — As a doctor monitored his heart and his blood and breathing, David Blaine filled his lungs with pure oxygen and prepared to hold his breath — for 16 minutes, he hoped. Mr. Blaine is a famous magician, but he insisted that this was no trick.
He was training to break the world record for breath-holding, a logical enough step in his other career. As a self-described endurance artist, he’d spent 35 hours atop a 105-foot pole and survived a week buried in a coffin.
He’d fasted for 44 days in a box suspended over the Thames, a nutritional experiment that was written up in The New England Journal of Medicine (with Mr. Blaine listed as a co-author).
This breath-holding experiment, conducted last week at a swimming pool on Grand Cayman Island, was being run by Ralph Potkin, a pulmonologist in Los Angeles who is a researcher trying to understand the human propensity for going without air.
This ability isn’t new — it involves an ancient reflex shared with dolphins and other mammals — but it has only recently been rediscovered, thanks largely to the sport of free diving. Using just their lungs, free divers have kept going deeper and holding their breath longer than anyone expected.
“The empiric results have consistently exceeded theoretical predictions,” Dr. Potkin said. He is the team physician for the United States free-diving team, whose members were training at Grand Cayman Island along with Mr. Blaine.
Although I think way too many people here take the Ironman way too seriously, comparing it to David Blaine is insulting, even to me. He’s just a bozo looking for some way to get on TV, or in the NY Post. Yawn.
How many people can do an Ironman? Pretty much anyone in any semblance of decent shape. How many people could come remotely close to holding their breath even 1/4 as long? It’s an impressive feat despite his propensity for hype.
I agree. I think David Blaine is an unbelievable entertainer. Yes, much of his work is “fake” in my opinion, but it is fun to watch. Just like pro wrestling
Actually not that hard to hold your breath for 4 minutes if you:
1: Hyperventilate your CO2 down really low.
2: Do 1 while breathing 100% O2.
I did it once while on night shift for kicks. Can’t remember but I think I went > 5 minutes - dropped my O2 sat <50% and got a wicked headache afterward. Decided after the fact that it wasn’t that smart…now if you do that + can drop your HR low/go zen or relaxed - I can see 8-10 minutes. 16 is a long time.
I can easily see how divers who hyperventilate can black out underwater with minimal or no warning signs.
Also very easy to double how far you can swim underwater by hyperventilating (but dangerous).
The record he set is for the oxygen saturation assisted record, before you all get crazy about how long that is. The breath holding that you all do in your local pools has a record in the 8 minute range. SO when you compare what it is you are doing, use the 8 minutes as the gold standard. Still an impressive feat, he did break the world record…It’s nice to be the best in the world at anything, except the guy that just set the record for trapping his daughter in a basement…)-;
