Guinness World Records announced on September 10 that Croatian man Vitomir Maričić just beat the world record for holding your breath.
Maričić held his breath for 29 minutes and 3 seconds.
How is that even possible?
Even as a kid, the best I could ever do was a little over a minute.
Maričić is a member of the Adriatic free divers.
Freedivers train their bodies to cope with reduced oxygen levels.
They prepare by taking deep, oxygen-rich breaths and relaxing the mind to trigger the mammalian dive reflex, which slows down the heart rate, redirects blood to vital organs and makes the spleen release oxygen-storing red blood cells.
The skilled divers also work hard to increase their lung capacity and tolerance for carbon dioxide.
It's the CO₂ building up in our system that creates the urge to breath. Too much CO₂ can cause hypoxia and cause someone to pass out and cause damage to internal organs.
And Maričić is no exception.
Around the 20-minute mark, he said,
[Everything] got worse and worse physically, especially for my diaphragm, because of the contractions. But mentally I knew I wasn't going to give up.
It's really crazy what the human body is capable of with enough discipline and training.
Watch Maričić pull the feat off here:
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