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Comment by jkingsman | Hacker News Reader

I've had this described to me as basically the combination of neuro+psychological effects of hyperventilation (respiratory alkalosis) in a peaceful/positive environment (as opposed to anxiety-attack-driven or etc.), plus the meditative effects of deep breathing, plus the meditative/brain-entrainment effects of rhythmic movement of a major central/core muscle (diaphragm). Together, those often cause euphoria, altered states of consciousness, and cognitive shifts not too far off from psychedelics.

Could someone who is more familiar with it affirm, adjust, or deny that as a general (medically-grounded/secular) summary of breathwork?

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I have a degree in building science, so maybe I can chime in. Note of caution: you will find yourself breathing heavily after reading this. It's normal.

We do a terrible job at ventilating our indoor spaces. As a cave-dwelling species our brains are quite comfortable with tuning out bad smells and tolerating stale air -- but the effect of it on our mode and well-being is almost immediate. You don't notice the effect, but it is there.

That's why they tell you if the airplane's cabin depressurizes, put on your own mask first. People who don't manage to that quickly enough their eyes stay open, they don't even feel anything is wrong, but they are physically unable to put on their masks until they pass out.

If not eating proper food kills you in 3 weeks, not breathing proper air kills you in 3 minutes. Yet, people spend thousands of dollars on a new diet, but have no idea what kind of stuff are going into their lungs.

The situation is not life and death. It's feeling nice versus feeling low. People end up with indoor air that is often stale and full of volatile compounds. We often make it worse by using essential oil diffusers and not using the vent hood when cooking.

When you do a breathing exercise, all of a sudden you are giving your starving brain a dose of what it could be like. When you have a walk in the nature, you do the same.

So yes, breathing exercises are great, but it's even better if we fix our indoor environments to feel great at all times.

How do you measure indoor air quality? CO2 levels?

Buy an air quality monitor. There are tons on Amazon. Here’s an example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZHJSQ7Z/

I'ver heard the Aranet4 is quite good for this but haven't yet been able to justify buying one. I do try to open windows frequently, though.

I don't get why they're so expensive. You can buy the ndir co2 sensor on AliExpress for around $10. And yet they want $180 for that thing. And measuring humidity and barometric pressure is a component that costs $4 or $5 for you or I to buy.

Quality CO₂ sensors are pricey. I previously had two from AliExpress, but both were unreliable and eventually broke. I finally got an Aranet4, and it’s been flawless for over a year so far.

They’re not using a $10 sensor. They’re being very careful which $40 sensor they use. And they’re calibrating the rest of the device to produce an accurate reading across its range.

Measure VOCs, PM2.5 particles, and CO2

Our current understanding is that no amount of CO2 is dangerous as long as everything else is fine, but in reality CO2 acts like the canary in the coal mine. When it climbs, it shows accumulation of stuff you don't want to deal with.

Measurement of compounds is best done using a monitor like Aranet, but incidental bumps in different values don't mean much. Long trends matter. If Radon is an issue in your region, a detector for that. Mold testing kits are readily available in market indicating moisture issues and you can get lead and other hazmat testing done diy/professionally

Aren't there several studies showing markedly worse performance at tasks at CO2 levels easily reached in a home? Or you just mean you won't die as the meaning of not dangerous?

Studies have shown correlation with CO2 levels and performance but pinpointing the effect to CO2 alone hasn't been established. In fact, CO2's presence chemically helps with the oxygenation of the blood.

CO2 is an indicator. I don't let it climb in my home, and you shouldn't either. The problem is when people fixate on the CO2 levels. For example, you paint your walls with high VOC compounds, your flooring/furniture off-gas a lot, your vacuum cleaner doesn't have the proper filtration but you don't recognize your issues because your CO2 monitor shows 700ppm. That 700ppm can be a lot worse than a 700ppm your see in a home that has all of those considered.

You say, "Our current understanding is that no amount of CO2 is dangerous as long as everything else is fine," but I don't think that is correct. Like any other non-oxygen gas, carbon dioxide is an asphyxiant, and it is routinely used as such to kill rats, but it has significant toxicity even at much lower levels. NIOSH says:

> Signs of intoxication have been produced by a 30-minute exposure at 50,000 ppm [Aero 1953], and a few minutes exposure at 70,000 to 100,000 ppm produces unconsciousness [Flury and Zernik 1931]. It has been reported that submarine personnel exposed continuously at 30,000 ppm were only slightly affected, provided the oxygen content of the air was maintained at normal concentrations [Schaefer 1951]. It has been reported that 100,000 ppm is the atmospheric concentration immediately dangerous to life [AIHA 1971] and that exposure to 100,000 ppm for only a few minutes can cause loss of consciousness [Hunter 1975].

(https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/124389.html)

100,000 ppm is 10%, so at that point the carbon dioxide has reduced the oxygen in your air from 21% to 19%, far from asphyxiation conditions.

Even at much lower levels, carbon dioxide can produce drowsiness and mental impairment.

On the other hand, reaching 5% or 10% carbon dioxide by oxidizing carbon with oxygen from the air, for example by breathing or having a fire, will reduce the oxygen content of the air to an extent that is more dangerous than the carbon monoxide. So carbon dioxide toxicity is generally not the thing to worry about with respect to indoor air safety. But that doesn't mean it's not real.

It's good to keep in mind that in your home the CO2 usually ranges from 400ppm to say 2,000 ppm. Getting to something like 100,000 ppm is not really plausible for a typical home. I get how in a submarine the conditions are different.

From 9:50 onwards of this video explains what I meant: https://youtu.be/CkGDN85I29U?t=590

The point is that in the scenarios you described CO2 increases at the cost of oxygen, which is obviously not good, and that's what GP was referring to as "everything else is fine". It would be interesting to see what happens if instead some of the nitrogen in the air is replaced by CO2. But that's obviously not what usually happens. And there are far more damaging air contents to worry about. Like mold spores.

A crucial difference to CO is that CO2 doesn't cause permanent damage as long as oxygen supply is restored in time. Compared to that, hemoglobine touched by CO becomes essentially useless for the body since CO has a similarly high binding affinity to hemoglobin as oxygen. Recovering from that pretty much requires replacing the affected red blood cells.

> It would be interesting to see what happens if instead some of the nitrogen in the air is replaced by [CO₂].

Well, if you think it would be interesting, click the NIOSH link I provided and read the references, because that's pretty much what they're talking about.

> A crucial difference to CO is that [CO₂] doesn't cause permanent damage as long as oxygen supply is restored in time.

This is not correct; CO₂ poisoning can cause permanent injuries, including death, even when oxygen supply is never cut off, much less when it is restored in time. The comment you are replying to explained this in some detail and provided (abbreviated) references.

> [hemoglobin] touched by CO becomes essentially useless for the body since CO has a similarly high binding affinity to hemoglobin as oxygen. Recovering from that pretty much requires replacing the affected red blood cells.

This contains two major errors. First, CO binds much more strongly to hemoglobin than oxygen, about 240× as strongly; if it didn't, CO levels would have to be almost as high as oxygen levels to have an effect, but in fact 0.4% CO in the atmosphere is enough to kill you in half an hour. The second error, contradicting the first, is your claim that recovering from CO poisoning requires replacing the affected red blood cells. While CO binds to hemoglobin more strongly than oxygen, it isn't that strong; the carboxyhemoglobin thus produced can in fact release its CO and become functional hemoglobin again, with a half-life of about 5 hours. If replacing the affected red blood cells were required, it would be eliminated in about 30 days rather than about 5 hours. If, on the other hand, CO had a similarly high binding affinity to hemoglobin as oxygen, as you said it did, then it would be eliminated in about a minute rather than 5 hours.

Both particle measures and co2 sensors are somewhat affordable especially if buying raw sensors.

The up shot of it is ventilate frequently and dry heat cooking that browns anything (think steak in pan) releases a shit ton of particle so hood and open window

People seem fixated on measuring CO2 specifically and often purchase expensive sensors ($$+) or devices ($$$) to measure CO2 levels.

There are inexpensive sensors ($) that detect a variety of VOCs but cannot distinguish between them and CO2. They'll never give you exact concentrations but they are consistent, broad spectrum, and will alert you of change. IMO these are a better option.

Sounds like you’re just making the argument for moving to the wet tropics

The FAA puts on workshops around the country with a portable reduced oxygen training enclosure (PROTE). You sit in the enclosure (looks like a sealed vinyl tent), they reduce the available oxygen and simulate hypoxia. You've got a clipboard with some basic math problems, a maze to trace, etc. The trainers continually engage you for 3-4 minutes as you slowly get more hypoxic.

As a pilot, it was eye opening to see first-hand what happens to me when experiencing hypoxia. The trainers were talking to me, and I was replying, but was unable to tell them what 17 minus 4.5 was. My pulse oximeter was in the low 70s. Two sips of oxygen from a mask and I was right back to normal. I learned that my first symptom (the clue that something is really going wrong in the cockpit) is tunnel vision.

Destin from Smarter Every Day (YouTube) has a wonderful video demonstrating this effect [0]. I’d recommend watching the whole thing, but you can see how much of an effect it has starting around the 6:00 mark.

[0] https://youtu.be/kUfF2MTnqAw?si=LRDtSJSy7jiTIpzy

>Together, those often cause euphoria, altered states of consciousness, and cognitive shifts not too far off from psychedelics.

It must vary between people, because no matter the environment if I breath too eager, whether on purpose or accidentally (like working out) it just becomes really hard to think, everything starts to tingle and all my muscles lock up. A very not-fun time. Also dangerous with weights.

The tingles and muscle cramps (tetany) are a normal byproduct (basically your neurons on your smallest muscles and under your skin get more excitable due to a molecular rube goldber machine set off by lower CO2 balance in your blood). It's uncomfortable, but unless you are suffering from epilepsy not dangerous and there's no lasting effects.

I did a longer writeup on the physiological effects here if you're interested: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RuDv_E9osM1CCFWZMywMru9J...

Very much on point.

That said when facilitate breathwork sessions i trade the peaceful hippie music for edm (and it actually works better because it encourages people to stay with the rhythm and get into the same mildly trance-like state you might get into while exercising to repetitive music).

What you described is indeed true. There are breathing sessions at the Lifetime gym provide exactly the condition. People involved were amazed by the effect on their metal state.

I'm a philosopher, not a medical professional. But I can tell you that philosophy and deep breathing are inextricably linked. Breathing deeply in of itself is a philosophical exercise, one that centers and grounds oneself in the here and now of the universe that surrounds you, and the universe that lies deep within you. It's a cosmic balance between the metaphysical and the empirical. As a philosopher, one must be able to breathe deeply, so one can breathe in, hold, and spew out the deepest and most esoteric pearls of knowledge unto the masses.

Ah yes, the philosopher’s breath: inhale the cosmos, exhale epistemology. Repeat until the loop collapses or you do.

This made me laugh out loud; thank you haha

Put on a five-minute song and start hyperventilating. You can tell pretty quick.

Your summary is exact. Medical personnel here

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