Something to note:

"The world record for holding your breath after inhaling pure oxygen is now Blaine's 17 minutes and 4 seconds. The record without the pure oxygen, which Blaine failed to break during an attempt last year in Manhattan's Lincoln Center, is 8 minutes and 58 seconds."

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1736834,00.ht...

The primary thing you need to know about holding your breath a long time is if you only work four hours a week, it will start to seem like a good idea.

Why would I want to intentionally deprive my brain of oxygen for more than a few seconds? Programming's already hard enough.

The primary thing you need to know about holding your breath is that there's more oxygen capacity in your blood than there is in your lungs.

That may or may not be true, but it's not why this trick works. The need to take a breath is triggered by the level of CO2 in your blood. Hyperventilation exercises like Blaine's flush out the CO2 so it takes longer to build up to the threshold level.

Wikipedia agrees with you. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea: "Blood leaving the lungs is normally fully saturated with oxygen, so hyperventilation of normal air cannot increase the amount of oxygen available."

To elaborate a little: you don't sense the oxygen level in your blood. You sense the CO2 level, using acidity sensors in your aorta. CO2 dissolved in your blood reaches an equilibrium with carbonic acid, which means that the acidity of your blood is proportional to the amount of CO2. It's stuff like this that makes physiology fun to study.

The primary thing you need to know about holding your breath is that it becomes painful, and in an emergency, you won't have had any time to warm up.

So perhaps a companion article, Why To Hold Your Breath Like David Blaine, would be in order?

I would rather go for beating the world record of breathing. Somewhere beyond 120 years, I think.

i've been playing salamander wrestling and underwater hockey the past few months. they're great!!! it's like zen meditation breathing exercises. it's also super fun. and yeah, my breathing is improving tons. (water is the awesome)

edit: i just wanted to convey that breathing better, especially in underwater sports, is rewarding and fun. trying hold one's breath a single time for a long time is goofy as other commenters have pointed out.

Are you playing underwater hockey at MIT or is it a much more widespread sport than I ever realized before?

(I have a friend who's a big fan of the game. I've held out so far, but one of these days...)

ok...Am i the only one ? How is this HN stuff...For me it should be in digg...

It's a body hack. HN is about being clever, and this is sort of clever, that's my guess.

To go the longest without breathing, I'd be most interested in the nanotech robotic blood 'vasculoid':

http://jetpress.org/volume11/vasculoid.html

Will it be available anytime soon? I'm not holding my breath.

David Blaine and Tim Ferriss, united. The BS in that room must have been so thick you could cut it with a knife.

The primary thing you need to know about holding your breath is... there is no breath.