Breathing

[NomoneyNohoney]

Last night I was reading the previous topic, about climate change, but specifically about CO2 exhaled by humans. This stated that "the average human exhales about 5 litres of breath 12 times a minute."
As I sat reading that, I thought about 12 breaths a minute, and realised that, just sitting reading a webpage, I was breathing about once every two seconds, based on inhale and exhale as one breath. That quite worried me - am I breathing more rapidly, to compensate for damaged or inefficient lungs?
I had a look round the Net, and worryingly found a site where the author said that the ideal breathing pattern is between 5 and 7 breaths per minute (which did nothing to reassure me!)

I was expecting to find some circumstance that explained this, but again on the Net, people seemed to repeat this statistic, more or less. I got my wife to check her breathing rate, which was similar to mine, and thus am at a loss to understand what's going on. It seems wrong that 7 breaths a minute is both optimum, and possible.

Can any readers explain this? As you sit reading this post, what breathing rate do you have? Do you ever breathe at just 7 lung-fulls a minute?

[redsturgeon]

It is difficult to time your own breaths since once you notice then you tend to temporarily bring them under voluntary control rather than letting the autonomic system look after it. The best I can tell at the moment sitting with my laptop, a full cycle, breathe in, breathe out takes about 5 seconds for me, so 12 per minute. If I try to breath in in one second and breathe out in the next second that feels very fast and very forced.

http://www.healthline.com/symptom/rapid ... -breathing

This website gives the normal range as 12 to 20 breaths a minute so you are not too far out if the full cycle is 3 seconds rather than 2. I would not think you are suffering from any of the things listed as possible causes there, if you are feeling well.

Yogic breathing tries to overcome our natural tendency to take fast shallow breaths rather than full lungfuls more slowly and it does have benefits in terms of relaxation.

http://www.dummies.com/health/exercise/ ... echniques/

John

[UncleEbenezer]

Have you considered breath training? If you do any kind of voice training (singing, acting, public speaking), controlling your breathing is crucial to it. I should imagine something similar applies to sports, albeit for different reasons. Divers - at least those who start out young - may hold a single breath for minutes, while also doing physical work underwater.

Most of us have many different breathing patterns, and won't usually be conscious of one or another. What you read about in something purporting to be about climate change is probably a complete red herring: if you want the science there, the last places you should look include not just head-in-the-sand Denialists as seen in this Forum and the pseudo-science they reference, but also a lot of journalists who unwittingly feed them with ill-informed nonsense to attack.