Canadian man holds his breath for 18 minutes and maintains consciousness.

Was it Cam Levins? He's still hibernating so it seems likely.

I heard a lot of canadian girls can breath through their ears.

Did he look relaxed?

Was he wearing trainers?

Amazing...

I thought brain damage is permanent after 5 min of lack of oxygen supply.

Did he breathe pure oxygen before doing this?

If you oxygenate your tissues and bloodstream before holding your breath it allows a longer hold.

"The longest time holding the breath underwater was 22 min 00 sec by Stig Severinsen (Denmark) at the London School of Diving in London, UK, on 3 May 2012.

Stig was allowed to hyperventilate with oxygen prior to the attempt, and did this for 19 minutes and 30 seconds"

-Guinness World Records

Did it result in brain damage? Is it Rob Ford?

must have had a tailwind

Wow… I looked into breath holding once, all the people who hold their breath for a long time inhale pure O2 before, but that's still unbelievable. I don't know how much of a difference it makes. I made it to 2 minutes once and that seemed like a really long time!

Jesus...is there anything Canadians CAN'T do?!

Flushed With Success wrote:

Jesus...is there anything Canadians CAN'T do?!

They can't put a man on the moon.

I've held my breath for 4 and 1/2 minutes. I did take a large gulp of air before hand, I was at sea level, and I'm a distance runner. I was fine afterwards, but I am posting on letsrun so there likely was some brain damage.

Did he cover the full 5000m? Garmin measured?

Well, that would be 18 metric minutes. Not sure how long that is in real time.

The trick is to supper saturate your tissues with O2, then remain very calm. Oh, and practice for 5 years.

Dennis Reynolds 2.0 wrote:

Flushed With Success wrote:

Jesus...is there anything Canadians CAN'T do?!

They can't put a man on the moon.

That's just showing common sense.

mechanism 1: being underwater lowers heart rate and metabolism

2: the supersaturation with pure O2 thing

3: which also lowers CO2 levels, delaying the reflex/need to take a breath.

These three things taken together result in a lot of freedivers passing out underwater and dying. Their CO2 levels get so low that they run out of oxygen before they feel like breathing. I read about a blue hole diver dying recently.

Dennis Reynolds 2.0 wrote:

They can't put a man on the moon.

But the Canadians did build the arm for the Space Shuttle, which means it can open bottles of good Canadian beer-