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Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

nature.com

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Re: Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

#81

Post by soulofmischief »

Youden wrote: post #60
elevaet wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit off topic, but what do you think about people doing nitrous recreationally? It's always concerned me that people are inhaling close to pure nitrous oxide and holding it in. I've always wondered if this creates damaging low-oxygen conditions without the normal reflexes kicking in, and if this can cause brain/neuronal damage. I believe in medical settings it's delivered in a mixture with O2, but in recrea…

I was being treated with nitrous medically. I asked the anaesthesiologist about how it works recreationally and his answer was that yes, it was mostly just hypoxia.

This is easily falsified by a cursory internet search about the physiological mechanism behind nitrous oxide's effects. It is appalling that a medical professional would so confidently give you an uneducated, crackpot answer. The exact same mechanism which knocks you out gives you euphoria at lower doses.

If someone holds their breath long enough to cause hypoxia when inhaling nitrous oxide, they have other problems. You can easily hold your breath 1-2 minutes while sitting on a couch without experiencing hypoxia. If you're experiencing euphoria as strong as what nitrous oxide causes from hypoxia, you're basically about to die.

Re: Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

#82

Post by laserlight »

meindnoch wrote: post #79
laserlight wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you get half the oxygen needed and somehow doing so doesn't cause hypoxia, which means “deficiency in the amount of oxygen reaching the tissues”?

You don't get half the oxygen. You get as much oxygen as you would during normal calm breathing, which is pretty shallow. Basically, you take a normal breath, which is about 50% lung volume, and then fill your lung up to max capacity with n2o. But you know what? Pulse oximeters are pretty cheap nowadays. Try it for yourself.

I see. So, you take a normal breath and top it up with N2O. That makes sense.

Re: Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

#84

Post by contravariant »

alwinaugustin wrote: post #83

Just asked ChatGPT to summarise it and it gives this. Just published it to share the link, and will delete in a day or two. https://alwinaugustin.medium.com/how-circular-breathwork-boo...

I can't be bothered to read AI generated slop that long, but that typography is deranged.

Re: Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

#85

Post by zemvpferreira »

underdeserver wrote: post #47
dluan wrote: post #41

As a surfer, I've done a few breathwork classes even though I've never been close to being in conditions that really needed it. There is a tremendous amount of training that you can do to basically change your conscious thoughts in an instant. Going from 180bpm heart rate and anxious panic to a static breath hold for up to a minute while being ragdolled and disoriented, is basically ego death. If you watch some gnarl…

For someone with no connection to surfing at all, could you elaborate? Why is surfing special, or different from other sports, in needing to control your breathing?

Because panicking when you're being rag-dolled by even smallish waves can kill you, let alone waves of consequence. I don't have the words to describe what it feels like to be pushed to the bottom of the ocean by a wave, then just as you feel like you're running out of air be pushed back down by the next wave, and the next wave. You have no idea which direction is up and which is down, or how long it's been since you stopped breathing. 30 seconds will feel like death if you're not properly trained. Your very large very stiff board will be tumbling with you and could knock you unconscious or split your head open at any time.

My girlfriend got to be a decent surfer (~5 years practice and a former competitive swimmer) but never invested in learning the ocean. In 2018 she went out in a break she didn't know, in conditions above her league. Nothing too big (maybe 5 feet) but strong and relentless. Conclusion: She got sucked into the washing machine during a set and nearly drowned. Had to have the water beaten out of her lungs to restart breathing. Now she has panic attacks just getting into a flat ocean for a swim.

The sea is no joke. I encourage everyone to try surfing, it's a great hobby. But less than 10% of it is riding waves.

Re: Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

#86

Post by sentimentscan »

eigenschwarz wrote: post #76
s1artibartfast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Neuroscientist and breathwork facilitator, do you think there is any harm in intentional apnea (e.g. free diving, static holds, ect)? At what point does cell damage (not necessarily death), kick in? As someone involved in these sports, I operate under the assumption that any damage would kick in after loss of consciousness. For example, if I hold my breath, even for 4 or 5 minutes but dont pass out, that is an i…

Does this help? I am a physicist with interest in these subjects and have always been wary of breathwork because of tetany and the following studies. What do experts closer to this field make of these? [1] "Brain Damage in Commercial Breath-Hold Divers" https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] "Do elite breath-hold divers suffer from mild short-term memory impairments?" https://cdnsciencepu…

Could you please explain more about the Ref[2], what does it mean beyond what is in article and how serious is it? "These findings suggest that breath-hold diving training over several years may cause mild, but persistent, short-term memory impairments"

Can you tell more about recreational nitrous oxide and when does the "damage occur"? Is there the same thing with wim hof? (like for example with oximeter 80 Sp02 or below?) I got in wimhof/oxide around 80 Sp02 the interesting thing is I got this feeling with fighting to hold my breath but below 90 I kinda needed to convince myself that I should breath in both cases,

Re: Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

#87

Post by alpaca128 »

cgio wrote: post #64
collingreen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atheism isn't specifically "a goal of rationality" it's just not believing in a deity (usually because of a rejection of "trust me bro, now pay your tithing" style pitches). I expect for most people the choice to believe or not believe stories with no evidence is orthogonal to the choice of an altered mind.

It looks like you put atheism and agnosticism in the same boat. There’s a certain belief, trust and conviction to lack of a deity in atheism. Not in agnosticism. That state of mind is orthogonal to belief is mostly true. On the other hand , there is also a motivation to explain away religious experience as physiological process, which explains the overlap in group membership.

> There’s a certain belief, trust and conviction to lack of a deity in atheism

Atheism means a lack of belief in a god. Just because many atheists go a step further or the word agnostic exists, that doesn't change the meaning.

I have yet to see an "official" source that says it's definitely belief of absence and not absence of belief. Agnosticism works just as well if you view it as subcategory of atheism.

Re: Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

#89

Post by Davidzheng »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #85
underdeserver wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone with no connection to surfing at all, could you elaborate? Why is surfing special, or different from other sports, in needing to control your breathing?

Because panicking when you're being rag-dolled by even smallish waves can kill you, let alone waves of consequence. I don't have the words to describe what it feels like to be pushed to the bottom of the ocean by a wave, then just as you feel like you're running out of air be pushed back down by the next wave, and the next wave. You have no idea which direction is up and which is down, or how long it's been since you…

Not the most convincing advertisement

Re: Decreased CO2 during breathwork: emergence of altered states of consciousness

#90

Post by kragen »

a1371 wrote: post #26
pkaye wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you measure indoor air quality? CO2 levels?

Our current understanding is that no amount of CO2 is dangerous as long as everything else is fine, but in reality CO2 acts like the canary in the coal mine. When it climbs, it shows accumulation of stuff you don't want to deal with. Measurement of compounds is best done using a monitor like Aranet, but incidental bumps in different values don't mean much. Long trends matter. If Radon is an issue in your region, a de…

You say, "Our current understanding is that no amount of CO2 is dangerous as long as everything else is fine," but I don't think that is correct. Like any other non-oxygen gas, carbon dioxide is an asphyxiant, and it is routinely used as such to kill rats, but it has significant toxicity even at much lower levels. NIOSH says:

> Signs of intoxication have been produced by a 30-minute exposure at 50,000 ppm [Aero 1953], and a few minutes exposure at 70,000 to 100,000 ppm produces unconsciousness [Flury and Zernik 1931]. It has been reported that submarine personnel exposed continuously at 30,000 ppm were only slightly affected, provided the oxygen content of the air was maintained at normal concentrations [Schaefer 1951]. It has been reported that 100,000 ppm is the atmospheric concentration immediately dangerous to life [AIHA 1971] and that exposure to 100,000 ppm for only a few minutes can cause loss of consciousness [Hunter 1975].

(https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/124389.html)

100,000 ppm is 10%, so at that point the carbon dioxide has reduced the oxygen in your air from 21% to 19%, far from asphyxiation conditions.

Even at much lower levels, carbon dioxide can produce drowsiness and mental impairment.

On the other hand, reaching 5% or 10% carbon dioxide by oxidizing carbon with oxygen from the air, for example by breathing or having a fire, will reduce the oxygen content of the air to an extent that is more dangerous than the carbon monoxide. So carbon dioxide toxicity is generally not the thing to worry about with respect to indoor air safety. But that doesn't mean it's not real.

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