The surprising brain benefits linked to holding your breath for minutes: study

Holding your breath may be more than just a good party trick.While it sounds like the last thing you’d want to do to your brain, new research suggests that regularly depriving it of oxygen could come with some surprising benefits.The study authors say their findings could one day pave the way for a new kind of brain training designed to make the vital organ more resilient.To investigate, the researchers turned to the world of freediving, where people plunge underwater and stay submerged on a single breath without an air tank or other equipment.Most people can hold their breath for somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds.

Experienced freedivers, however, spend years training their bodies and minds to resist the urge to breathe, allowing them to remain underwater for several minutes at a time.But the sport’s top performers can go far longer.Last year, Croatian freediver Vitomir Maričić set a Guinness World Record by voluntarily holding his breath underwater for a staggering 29 minutes and 3 seconds.For most people, going that long without oxygen would be a medical emergency known as hypoxia.The brain is especially vulnerable when oxygen runs low.

Within minutes, neurons can start dying, while the nervous system struggles to send the signals needed to breathe, move, speak and see, according to the Cleveland Clinic.Oxygen deprivation can cause symptoms like dizziness and trouble concentrating at first, then progress to problems such as confusion, drowsiness and seizures.If it lasts too long, it can cause permanent brain damage or death.And yet, something unexpected appears to be happening inside the brains of freedivers.Despite repeatedly pushing their brains into low-oxygen states, studies have found that these athletes don’t show the cognitive problems typically linked to hypoxia.

They also show no signs of obvious structural damage to their hippocampi, a vulnerable area of the brain that plays a key role in memory and navigation.To find out why, researchers re...