NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

LSM3212 CA3 Essay

Assignment 2: Static Apnea

Matric Number: U090023J

For his 18th birthday celebration, your friend Stephen decided to organize a competition game of breath-holding. The winner should be able to hold his/her breath longer than all the other contestants. As you have learned in LSM3212 module about Ama divers who are able to stay at a depth of 20 meters underwater while holding their breath for more than 2 minutes by simple hyperventilation, you decided to follow the same strategy. Upon your turn at the breath-holding competition you started to hyperventilate extensively with open mouth for a couple of minutes; soon you began to feel lightheaded and drowsy. Immediately Stephen gave you an empty paper bag to re-breathe in it.

1. How are Ama divers able to hold their breath for more than 2 minutes? And you were not able to achieve it. (5 marks) The Ama divers also employ similar hyperventilation techniques to expel carbon dioxide from their bodies. However, they do not do so with an open mouth, instead, they opt to exhale by whistling, this reduces the amount of carbon dioxide that is expelled to a minimum, while still allowing them to dive for long periods of time.

2. Explain the mechanism of the symptoms you have experienced during hyperventilation. (5 marks) The purpose of hyperventilation is to expel carbon dioxide from the body (as much as possible). During this step, the participant inhales and exhales rapidly, taking up a lot of oxygen and expelling a lot of carbon dioxide. This causes the partial pressure of oxygen (PO2) to increase and the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (PCO2) to decrease. As more carbon dioxide is expelled, the pH of blood increases (more alkaline), causing vasoconstriction of the blood vessels that supply the brain. This results in the feeling of lightheadedness and drowsiness due to the decreased supply of oxygen and other molecules necessary for the functioning of the nervous system to the brain. This reduced state of carbon dioxide in the body, is known as hypocapnia, which caused oxygen to have a higher affinity for hemoglobin, further reducing the availability of oxygen to the brain.

3. What is the purpose of Stephens effort? Do you support his action? (5 marks) The purpose of re-breathing through the paper-bag, is to force the person who is hyperventilating to uptake the carbon dioxide which

he or she has exhaled during the hyperventilation. This will undoubtedly increase the PCO2 of the person in question. However, re-breathing with the paper-bag should not be a long term treatment, as it might lower the PO2 level to a fatal level, resulting in yet another episode of hyperventilation. References Andersen, H. T. 1966 Physiological adaptations in diving vertebrates. Physiological Reviews 46: 212-43. Butler, P. J., and A. J. Woakes 1987 Heart rate in humans during underwater swimming with and without breath-hold. Respiration Physiology 69: 387-99. Hardy, Alistair 1960 Was man more aquatic in the past? The New Scientist 7: 6425. Hong, S. K., and H. Rahn 1967 The diving women of Korea and Japan. Scientific American 216: 34-43. Roede, Machteld 1991 Aquatic man. In: Machteld Roede, Jan Wind, John M. Patrick and Vernon Reynolds (eds.), The Aquatic Ape: Fact of Fiction?; pp. 306-328. London: Souvenir Press Schagatay, Erika, and Boris Holm 1996 Effects of water and ambient air temperatures on human diving bradycardia. European Journal of Applied Physiology 72: 1-6. Schagatay, Erika 1996 The Human Diving Response: Effects of temperature and training. Lund: University of Lund Press