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I've just been reading this longer article from 2020 which has a lot more about his life: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/26/last-iron-lu...

It says he went out with friends, saw movies, and even flew on planes while "frog-breathing", as he called it. He couldn't do it while unconscious so he still had to sleep in the lung.

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> The technique had a technical name, “glossopharyngeal breathing”. You trap air in your mouth and throat cavity by flattening the tongue and opening the throat, as if you’re saying “ahh” for the doctor. With your mouth closed, the throat muscle pushes the air down past the vocal cords and into the lungs. Paul called it “frog-breathing”.

So, to state it in computing terms, this wasn't a fix for not being able to breathe, it was a workaround. But it seems to have worked really well: at 40, he was "able to spend most of his day outside the machine that still kept him alive".

That's incredibly interesting. I'm attempting what I believe to be the technique described at the moment. If I'm doing it correctly I can see why he nicknamed it 'frog-breathing.'

It sounds like scuba diving, having enough in the tank to go for dives in the outside world at a time before returning to sleep in the lung.

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