How I held my breath for 17 minutes

TED Talks - Most Popular

As a magician, I try to create images

that make people stop and think.

I also try to challenge myself

to do things that doctors

say are not possible.

I was buried alive

in New York City in a coffin,

buried alive in a coffin

in April, 1999, for a week.

I lived there with nothing but water.

And it ended up being so much fun

that I decided I could pursue

doing more of these things.

The next one is I froze myself

in a block of ice

for three days and three nights

in New York City.

That one was way more difficult

than I had expected.

The one after that, I stood

on top of a hundred-foot pillar

for 36 hours.

I began to hallucinate so hard

that the buildings that were behind me

started to look like big animal heads.

So, next I went to London.

In London I lived

in a glass box for 44 days

with nothing but water.

It was, for me, one of the most difficult

things I'd ever done,

but it was also the most beautiful.

There was so many skeptics,

especially the press in London,

that they started flying cheeseburgers

on helicopters around my box to tempt me.

(Laughter)

So, I felt very validated

when the New England Journal of Medicine

actually used the research for science.

My next pursuit was I wanted to see

how long I could go without breathing,

like how long I could survive

with nothing, not even air.

I didn't realize that it would become

the most amazing journey of my life.

As a young magician,

I was obsessed with Houdini

and his underwater challenges.

So, I began, early on,

competing against the other kids,

seeing how long I could stay underwater

while they went up and down to breathe,

you know, five times,

while I stayed under on one breath.

By the time I was a teenager,

I was able to hold my breath

for three minutes and 30 seconds.

I would later find out

that was Houdini's personal record.

In 1987 I heard of a story

about a boy that fell through ice

and was trapped under a river.

He was underneath,

not breathing for 45 minutes.

When the rescue workers came,

they resuscitated him

and there was no brain damage.

His core temperature

had dropped to 77 degrees.

As a magician,

I think everything is possible.

And I think if something

is done by one person,

it can be done by others.

I started to think,

if the boy could survive

without breathing for that long,

there must be a way that I could do it.

So, I met with a top neurosurgeon.

And I asked him, how long

is it possible to go without breathing,

like how long could I go without air?

And he said to me that anything

over six minutes

you have a serious risk

of hypoxic brain damage.

So, I took that as a challenge, basically.

(Laughter)

My first try, I figured

that I could do something similar,

and I created a water tank,

and I filled it with ice

and freezing cold water.

And I stayed inside of that water tank

hoping my core temperature

would start to drop.

And I was shivering.

In my first attempt to hold my breath,

I couldn't even last a minute.

So, I realized that was completely

not going to work.

I went to talk to a doctor friend --

and I asked him, "How could I do that?"

"I want to hold my breath for a really

long time. How could it be done?"

And he said, "David, you're a magician,

create the illusion of not breathing,

it will be much easier."

(Laughter)

So, he came up with this idea

of creating a rebreather,

with a CO2 scrubber,

which was basically

a tube from Home Depot,

with a balloon duct-taped to it,

that he thought we could put inside of me,

and somehow be able to circulate

the air and rebreathe

with this thing in me.

This is a little hard to watch.

But this is that attempt.

So, that clearly wasn't going to work.

(Laughter)

Then I actually started thinking

about liquid breathing.

There is a chemical

that's called perflubron.

And it's so high in oxygen levels

that in theory you could breathe it.

So, I got my hands on that chemical,

filled the sink up with it,

and stuck my face in the sink

and tried to breathe that in,

which was really impossible.

It's basically like trying

to breathe, as a doctor said,

while having an elephant

standing on your chest.

So, that idea disappeared.

Then I started thinking,

would it be possible to hook up

a heart/lung bypass machine

and have a surgery where it was

a tube going into my artery,

and then appear to not breathe

while they were oxygenating my blood?

Which was another insane idea, obviously.

Then I thought about

the craziest idea of all the ideas:

to actually do it.

(Laughter)

To actually try to hold

my breath past the point

that doctors would

consider you brain dead.

So, I started researching

into pearl divers.

You know, because they go down

for four minutes on one breath.

And when I was researching pearl divers,

I found the world of free-diving.

It was the most amazing thing

that I ever discovered, pretty much.

There is many different

aspects to free-diving.

There is depth records,

where people go as deep as they can.

And then there is static apnea.

That's holding your breath

as long as you can

in one place without moving.

That was the one that I studied.

The first thing that I learned

is when you're holding your breath,

you should never move at all;

that wastes energy.

And that depletes oxygen,

and it builds up CO2 in your blood.

So, I learned never to move.

And I learned how to slow

my heart rate down.

I had to remain

perfectly still and just relax

and think that I wasn't in my body,

and just control that.

And then I learned how to purge.

Purging is basically hyperventilating.

You blow in and out --

(Breathing loudly)

You do that, you get lightheaded,

you get tingling.

And you're really ridding

your body of CO2.

So, when you hold your breath,

it's infinitely easier.

Then I learned that you have

to take a huge breath,

and just hold and relax

and never let any air out,

and just hold and relax

through all the pain.

Every morning, this is for months,

I would wake up

and the first thing that I would do

is I would hold my breath

for, out of 52 minutes,

I would hold my breath for 44 minutes.

So, basically what that means

is I would purge,

I'd breathe really hard for a minute.

And I would hold, immediately after,

for five and a half minutes.

Then I would breathe again for a minute,

purging as hard as I can,

then immediately after that I would hold

again for five and a half minutes.

I would repeat this process

eight times in a row.

Out of 52 minutes, you're only

breathing for eight minutes.

At the end of that

you're completely fried, your brain.

You feel like you're walking

around in a daze.

And you have these awful headaches.

Basically, I'm not the best person

to talk to when I'm doing that stuff.

I started learning

about the world-record holder.

His name is Tom Sietas.

And this guy is perfectly built

for holding his breath.

He's six foot four. He's 160 pounds.

And his total lung capacity

is twice the size of an average person.

I'm six foot one, and fat.

We'll say big-boned.

(Laughter)

I had to drop 50 pounds in three months.

So, everything that I put into my body,

I considered as medicine.

Every bit of food was exactly

what it was for its nutritional value.

I ate really small controlled portions

throughout the day.

And I started to really adapt my body.

[Individual results may vary]

(Laughter)

The thinner I was, the longer

I was able to hold my breath.

And by eating so well

and training so hard,

my resting heart-rate dropped

to 38 beats per minute.

Which is lower than most Olympic athletes.

In four months of training,

I was able to hold my breath

for over seven minutes.

I wanted to try holding

my breath everywhere.

I wanted to try it

in the most extreme situations

to see if I could slow

my heart rate down under duress.

(Laughter)

I decided that I was going

to break the world record

live on prime-time television.

The world record was

eight minutes and 58 seconds,

held by Tom Sietas, that guy

with the whale lungs I told you about.

I assumed that I could put

a water tank at Lincoln Center

and if I stayed there a week not eating,

I would get comfortable in that situation

and I would slow my metabolism,

which I was sure would help me

hold my breath

longer than I had been able to do it.

I was completely wrong.

I entered the sphere a week

before the scheduled air date.

And I thought everything

seemed to be on track.

Two days before my big

breath-hold attempt, for the record,

the producers of my television special

thought that just watching somebody

holding their breath, and almost drowning,

is too boring for television.

(Laughter)

So, I had to add handcuffs,

while holding my breath, to escape from.

This was a critical mistake.

Because of the movement,

I was wasting oxygen.

And by seven minutes I had gone

into these awful convulsions.

By 7:08, I started to black out.

And by seven minutes and 30 seconds,

they had to pull my body out

and bring me back.

I had failed on every level.

(Laughter)

So, naturally, the only way out

of the slump that I could think of was,

I decided to call Oprah.

(Laughter)

I told her that I wanted to up the ante

and hold my breath longer

than any human being ever had.

This was a different record.

This was a pure O2 static apnea record

that Guinness had set

the world record at 13 minutes.

So, basically you breathe pure O2 first,

oxygenating your body, flushing out CO2,

and you are able to hold much longer.

I realized that my real competition

was the beaver.

(Laughter)

(Laughter ends)

In January of '08,

Oprah gave me four months

to prepare and train.

So, I would sleep

in a hypoxic tent every night.

A hypoxic tent is a tent

that simulates altitude at 15,000 feet.

So, it's like base camp, Everest.

What that does is, you start building up

the red bloodcell count in your body,

which helps you carry oxygen better.

Every morning, again,

after getting out of that tent,

your brain is completely wiped out.

My first attempt on pure O2,

I was able to go up to 15 minutes.

So, it was a pretty big success.

The neurosurgeon

pulled me out of the water

because in his mind, at 15 minutes

your brain is done, you're brain dead.

So, he pulled me up, and I was fine.

There was one person there

that was definitely not impressed.

It was my ex-girlfriend.

While I was breaking the record

underwater for the first time,

she was sifting through my Blackberry,

checking all my messages.

(Laughter)

My brother had a picture of it.

It is really --

(Laughter)

(Laughter ends)

I then announced that I was going

to go for Sietas' record, publicly.

And what he did in response,

is he went on Regis and Kelly,

and broke his old record.

Then his main competitor

went out and broke his record.

So, he suddenly pushed the record up to

16 minutes and 32 seconds.

Which was three minutes

longer than I had prepared.

It was longer than the record.

I wanted to get the Science Times

to document this.

I wanted to get them to do a piece on it.

So, I did what any person

seriously pursuing scientific

advancement would do.

I walked into the New York Times offices

and did card tricks to everybody.

(Laughter)

So, I don't know if it was the magic

or the lure of the Cayman Islands,

but John Tierney flew down

and did a piece on the seriousness

of breath-holding.

While he was there,

I tried to impress him, of course.

And I did a dive down to 160 feet,

which is basically the height

of a 16 story building,

and as I was coming up,

I blacked out underwater,

which is really dangerous;

that's how you drown.

Luckily, Kirk had seen me

and he swam over and pulled me up.

So, I started full focus.

I completely trained to get

my breath-hold time up

for what I needed to do.

But there was no way to prepare

for the live television aspect of it,

being on Oprah.

But in practice, I would do it

face down, floating on the pool.

But for TV they wanted me to be upright

so they could see my face, basically.

The other problem

was the suit was so buoyant

that they had to strap my feet in

to keep me from floating up.

So, I had to use my legs to hold my feet

into the straps that were loose,

which was a real problem for me.

That made me extremely nervous,

raising the heart rate.

Then, what they also did was,

which we never did before,

is there was a heart-rate monitor.

And it was right next to the sphere.

So, every time my heart would beat,

I'd hear the beep-beep-beep-beep,

you know, the ticking, really loud.

Which was making me more nervous.

And there was no way to slow

my heart rate down.

Normally, I would start

at 38 beats per minute,

and while holding my breath,

it would drop to 12 beats per minute,

which is pretty unusual.

(Laughter)

This time it started at 120 beats,

and it never went down.

I spent the first five minutes underwater

desperately trying to slow

my heart rate down.

I was just sitting there thinking,

"I've got to slow this down.

I'm going to fail."

And I was getting more nervous.

And the heart rate

just kept going up and up,

all the way up to 150 beats.

Basically it's the same thing that created

my downfall at Lincoln Center.

It was a waste of O2.

When I made it to the halfway

mark, at eight minutes,

I was 100 percent certain

that I was not going

to be able to make this.

There was no way for me to do it.

I figured, Oprah had dedicated an hour

to doing this breath-hold thing,

if I had cracked early,

it would be a whole show

about how depressed I am.

(Laughter)

So, I figured I'm better off just fighting

and staying there until I black out,

at least then they can pull me out

and take care of me and all that.

(Laughter)

I kept pushing to 10 minutes.

At 10 minutes you start getting all

these really strong tingling sensations

in your fingers and toes.

And I knew that that was blood shunting,

when the blood rushes away

from your extremities

to provide oxygen to your vital organs.

At 11 minutes I started feeling

throbbing sensations in my legs,

and my lips started

to feel really strange.

At minute 12 I started

to have ringing in my ears,

and I started to feel my arm going numb.

And I'm a hypochondriac, and I remember

arm numb means heart attack.

So, I started to really

get really paranoid.

Then at 13 minutes, maybe

because of the hypochondria,

I started feeling pains all over my chest.

It was awful.

(Laughter)

At 14 minutes,

I had these awful contractions,

like this urge to breathe.

(Laughter)

(Laughter ends)

At 15 minutes I was suffering

major O2 deprivation to the heart.

And I started having

ischemia to the heart.

My heartbeat would go from 120 to 50,

to 150, to 40, to 20, to 150 again.

It would skip a beat.

It would start. It would stop.

And I felt all this.

And I was sure that I was going

to have a heart attack.

So, at 16 minutes what I did

is I slid my feet out

because I knew that if I did go out,

if I did have a heart attack,

they'd have to jump into the binding

and take my feet out

before pulling me up.

I was really nervous.

I let my feet out,

and I started floating to the top.

And I didn't take my head out.

But I was just floating there

waiting for my heart to stop,

just waiting.

They had doctors with the "Pst,"

you know, sitting there waiting.

And then suddenly I hear screaming.

And I think that there

is some weird thing --

that I had died or something had happened.

And then I realized

that I had made it to 16:32.

So, with the energy

of everybody that was there,

I decided to keep pushing.

And I went to 17 minutes and four seconds.

(Applause)

(Applause ends)

As though that wasn't enough,

what I did immediately after

is I went to Quest Labs

and had them take every blood

sample that they could

to test for everything

and to see where my levels were,

so the doctors could use it, once again.

I also didn't want anybody to question it.

I had the world record and I wanted

to make sure it was legitimate.

So, I get to New York City the next day,

I'm walking out of the Apple store,

and this kid walks up to me

he's like, "Yo, D!"

I'm like "Yeah?"

He said, "If you really

held your breath that long,

why'd you come out of the water dry?"

I was like "What?"

(Laughter)

And that's my life. So --

(Laughter)

As a magician,

I try to show things to people

that seem impossible.

And I think magic,

whether I'm holding my breath

or shuffling a deck of cards,

is pretty simple.

It's practice, it's training,

and it's -- (Sobs)

It's practice, it's training

and experimenting,

(Sobs)

while pushing through the pain

to be the best that I can be.

And that's what magic

is to me, so, thank you.

(Applause)