What If You Hold Your Breath TOO Long? (Second by Second)

What if you hold your breath too long? Hold yours right now, with him: second by second, here is what your body is doing, all the way to a man who held it for twenty-nine minutes. How many seconds did you last? It's Pip's seventh birthday, and she bets her uncle she can hold her breath longer than he can. Loser gets no cake. On the way he finds out why the burn is mostly not about oxygen, why breathing fast first is the trick that drowns strong swimmers, and what a whale that stayed down for 3 hours 42 minutes says about the limit. Never practise holding your breath in water or alone. An animated short film from CurioPulse, every picture drawn in code. 0:00 Hold your breath, right now 0:21 Second 20: still full of oxygen 0:45 Second 45: out 1:10 Round two: the trick 1:58 Second 90: why does it hurt? 2:35 Minute 11 to 3 hours: the records 3:03 Too long? 3:32 Count your breaths Sources: Parkes 2006, Experimental Physiology: breath-holding and its breakpoint (doi:10.1113/expphysiol.2005.031625) Boyd et al. 2015, MMWR: hazardous underwater breath-holding (PMC4584570) Campbell et al. 1967, Clinical Science: breath-holding under curare (PMID 6028123) AIDA International and Guinness World Records: 11:35 on air, 29:03 on pure oxygen (Vitomir Maričić, 2025) Quick et al. 2020, Journal of Experimental Biology: a Cuvier's beaked whale's 222-minute dive (doi:10.1242/jeb.222109) Full list in the video's README: github.com/hmunna36/curiopulse/tree/main/long/hold-your-breath #Science #HumanBody #BreathHolding