breathing technique, hyperventilation problem?

There are two forms of hyperventilation. One comes from breathing VERY (hyper) fast. When one breathes too quickly, the breaths, due to the frequency of breathing, become very shallow and only the air in the trachea and bronchi gets out. As a result, the carbon dioxide (co2) that has come from your blood and into the air sacs (alveoli) in your lungs does not get removed from your body.

You should know that co2 from your cells working mixes with the water in your blood (blood is 92% water) and forms carbonic acid (h2co3). The h2co3 increases the acid level which means the pH of your blood goes down below '7' on the pH scale. There are nerves in your blood vessels that sense the pH drop (which means more h2co3, or more acid, which is bad for the body) and those nerves send a message to your brain. Your brain then causes the heart and lungs to increase their rate so you get rid of the co2, the pH returns to normal and the body remains at homeostasis.

The type of hyperventilation I first described, therefore, is deadly.

The second type of hyperventilation is what you do ... deep breathing. This type of hyperventilation removes excesses of co2 from your blood and the pH of your blood does not drop. In doing so, you lose the desire to breathe (called APNEA) and your heart rate drops.

If you hyperventilate like this a LOT (as you do), not only is your apnea very high, but you can become dizzy and possibly pass out. The reason you can pass out is that the pH of your blood does not drop but your brain's need for oxygen continues ... but you are not breathing and, therefore, not supplying new oxygen. If you do this kind of EXCESSIVE hyperventilation and then exercise, your muscles use available oxygen more quickly than normal and before the co2 level of the blood becomes high enough for you to feel like breathing. Your brain quickly becomes oxygen starved and you pass out. If this occurs while swimming, you can drown.

I knew, in high school, two guys who hyperventilated as you do. One guy we were watching as, in small groups, we were trying to swim three lengths of the pool underwater. Fortunately for this guy, some of us had finished and we were already out of the water watching when he just stopped moving. We had him out of the water within seconds and he was fine. The second guy decided to swim 50m underwater and he was all alone. He literally passed out about 1meter from the end and no one saw him. To this day his speech is slurred as he suffered brain damage.

A third time was about 5 years ago and one kid, while everyone was watching, made 65 yards of a 75 yard swim without breathing so he could avoid having to do a 400 fly for being late for practice. I didn't see him huffing and puffing (which was against practice rules). We got him out as quickly as possible but, he'd not taken a breath for the whole 65 yards and passed out so he didn't get a breath until even then. He'd not breathed for over a minute by the time we got to him and he was still not breathing. I got the water cleared, gave him CPR and he ended up fine except, he got water in his lungs and was kept overnight in the hospital. He'd not inhaled for at least 90 seconds! He was all purple and his eyes were all rolled back in his head. He was, at that time, a freshman and his senior year he went 1:42 in the 200 free!

So ... to end this loooong reply, it is OK to hyperventilate AS LONG as you LIMIT YOUR STRONG EXHALING to 4 or 5 breaths only. If you take too many, you already know that you are starting to pass out. Hyperventilating (strong exhlation) does not dilate capillaries, it only removes co2 from your blood.

Before freediving, if I want to increase my bottom time or depth, I take a deep breath and then exhale deeply. I do this a couple of times to rid my lungs of CO2. Then I inhale deeply and dive. I don't call this hyperventilating, I call it purging CO2, and I don't do it rapidly. If you do it too much you can hold you breath too long and pass out under water.

If you are doing it on dry land and passing out after 30 seconds you are hyperventilating. Slow down and relax and your times will get longer.