The Affect of Breath Holding for Various Times on Heart Rate

Garav Gill
Mr. Armstrong
March 1, 2011
Word Count: 932
Introduction
 Breathing is an autonomic process but can be controlled by the

individual if necessary. Heart rate is also an autonomic process however it

cannot be controlled regardless of the necessity. What effect does holding

one’s breath for various amounts of time have on the heart rate of the

individual? As the time that the breath is held increases, the heart rate will

decrease. When one holds his breath, there is a negative suction pressure in

the thorax and this causes the organs to inflate and thus the heart takes a

longer period of time to fill up and this causes the rate of pumping to

decrease due to the longer amount of time it takes to fill the heart. Although

more blood is now being pumped, the heart does not pump blood as fast

because it takes a longer time to the fill the heart and so the rate of pumping

decreases.

Variables

Dependent - Heart Rate

Independent - Amount of time breath was held
Fixed - temperature of the surrounding
Controlled
environment
Uncontrolled - Anything in surrounding that might raise

the heart rate (loud noises, class

distractions, etc.)

Materials

– Stopwatch
Method

To being the investigation, the individual being tested would find a

pulse in the common Carotid Artery and count the number of beats within 10

seconds (time measured by stopwatch). This value was then multiplied by 6

in order to get the initial heart rate as a control value. Next the same

individual held his breath for 20 seconds while someone else kept track of

the time on a Stopwatch. After 20 seconds, the person would find the

common Carotid Artery again and count the number of beats within 10

seconds again. The process of breath holding and then counting the number

of beats within 10 seconds and multiplying the value by 6 was repeated after

the person held his breath for 40 and 60 seconds. Then the same process

was repeated for the other 4 test subjects where breath was held for 0, 20,

40, and 60 seconds and the number of heartbeats within 10 seconds was

counted and multiplied by 6.

Observations

Data Collection

Trial 1

Table 1

Time (s) Jatherson Garav Alex Austin Peter

0 60 60 78 78 72
20 66 72 60 78 66
40 78 72 78 84 78
60 84 84 84 90 90
Trial 2

Table 2

Time (s) Jatherson Garav Alex Austin Peter

0 66 66 72 72 68
20 66 72 78 90 78
40 72 84 84 90 72
60 78 72 72 108 78

Trial 3

Table 3

Time (s) Jatherson Garav Alex Austin Peter

0 60 66 72 72 78
20 66 66 78 78 78
40 84 78 84 102 84
60 72 78 102 96 84

Average

Table 4

Time (s) Jatherson Garav Alex Austin Peter

0 62 64 74 74 72
20 66 70 72 82 74
40 78 78 82 92 78
60 78 78 86 98 84
Figure 1 - Effect of Breath Holding on Heart Rate (Average)

Results

Although there were instances of the heart rate increasing after the

individual held his breath for a longer period of time, generally the heart rate

tends to increase as the time that breath is held increases.

Conclusion

Although the hypothesis states that heart rate will decrease as the

time that breath is held increases, from the data collected it is clear that

breath holding increases heart rate. This is seen in Figure 1 for all individuals

that were tested where when breath was held for 60 seconds resulted in the

heart rate being the highest. This shows that the hypothesis was wrong in

this case, because the heart rate of the individuals increased as the amount

of time breath was held increased.

Evaluation

On average, the heart rate of everyone that was tested increased as

the time that breath was held increased. The reason why this may have

happened could be because the investigation was done in a classroom that

had many other people doing other investigations, and so there was a lot of

noise and excitement in the room. This could have caused the heart rate of
the individual to increase because he could have been distracted by what

was happening in his surroundings. In order to improve the results, the

person being studied could be in an empty room with just one more person

with a stopwatch to keep track of the time. Another source of error could

have been due to the fact that not everyone held their breath in the same

position, some sat with their legs crossed, some with their feet on the ground

and one while standing. The change in position could have also affected the

data, so in order to improve this; everyone should be seated in the same

manner (both feet on the ground).