Why can't we breathe underwater? Deep breathing

The first doctor to be in low Earth orbit Soviet pilot-cosmonaut Boris Egorov once stated: “At a depth of over 500-700 meters, a person (at least in theory) has the opportunity to become an Ichthyander without using any technology! He will swim there like a fish and live as long as possible. You just need to...fill your lungs with water. At a depth of 500-700 meters, human lungs will apparently absorb oxygen directly from the water.”

At first glance, this idea seems incredible. Don't thousands of people die every year from drowning? sea water? Can water become a substitute for ordinary oxygen? Let us mentally transport ourselves to the laboratory of the Dutch physiologist Johannes Kielstra, where the scientist conducts his amazing experiments. Here's one of them.

The scientist fills a small transparent reservoir with water and adds a little salt there. Next, he seals the container and pumps oxygen into it under pressure through a tube. The vessel is shaken and soon a white mouse is allowed inside through the intermediate (airlock) chamber. She cannot rise - a net on the surface of the water prevents this. But... Half an hour passes, an hour, two. The mouse, strange as it may seem, breathes - yes, yes, it breathes water! But the mouse does not appear to panic. The animal's lungs act like fish gills, receiving oxygen directly from the water. Of course, there can be no talk of any decompression sickness - no nitrogen was added to the water. Similar experiments were carried out by scientists in the USSR, headed by Ph.D. medical sciences Vladlen Kozak.

So, the first step has been taken. And quite successfully. However, scientists are in no hurry to announce this. What if only small animals have the ability to breathe liquid? To dispel doubts, the method is tested on dogs. And what? In the first experiments, dogs breathed a salty solution saturated with oxygen for more than half an hour. Experiments have shown that not only dogs, but also cats can breathe liquid for a long time. Sometimes they remained under water for many hours at a time and then calmly returned to their usual way of breathing.

Is a person capable of breathing water? Encouraged by the success of experiments on animals, Johannes Kylstra made an attempt to clarify this issue. The first test subject was a diver with 20 years of experience, Frank Falezchik. When one lung was filled, he felt so good that he asked to fill the other one at the same time. “There is no need for this yet,” the scientist said. However, after some time, Kilstra decided on such an experiment.

Twenty doctors gathered in the laboratory to witness the amazing experience. The same Frank Falezhchik agreed to be the test subject. He was given anesthesia in his throat to suppress his swallowing reflex and had an elastic tube inserted into his trachea (windpipe). Through her scientist began gradually pour in a special solution. Liquid entered both lungs, and everyone tensely watched Falezhchik, who showed no signs of panic. Moreover, he showed with signs that he was ready to help the experimenters, and he himself began to write down his feelings. The man breathed liquid for more than one hour! However, it took a couple of days to finally pump it out of the lungs. “I didn’t feel any discomfort,” Frank Falezczyk said after the experience, “and I didn’t feel a heaviness in my chest, as I initially expected.” Reflecting on the results of these most interesting experiments, Dr. Kylstra expressed the belief that a person with lungs filled with water can descend half a kilometer completely painlessly and return to the surface in twenty minutes.

Many years ago, Jacques-Yves Cousteau made an interesting suggestion. “The time will come,” he wrote, “and humanity will breed a new race of people - “Homo aquaticus” (“underwater man”). They will populate the seabed, build cities there and live as on earth.” Who knows, maybe the prophecy of the brave captain, the recognized elder of underwater swimmers, will someday come true?

MOSCOW, January 27 - RIA Novosti, Olga Kolentsova. Although the fetus lives in water for nine months, and swimming is good for health, water environment dangerous for humans. Anyone can drown - a child, an adult, a well-trained swimmer... And rescuers don’t have much time to save a person’s life and sanity.

Overcome the tension

When a person drowns, water enters his lungs. But why can’t people live at least for a short time by drawing oxygen from water? To understand this, let's figure out how a person breathes. The lungs are like a bunch of grapes, where the bronchi branch, like shoots, into many airways (bronchioles) and are crowned with berries - alveoli. The fibers in them compress and decompress, allowing oxygen and other gases from the atmosphere into the blood vessels or releasing CO 2 out.

“To renew the air, it is necessary to perform a breathing movement, which involves the intercostal muscles, the diaphragm and part of the neck muscles. However surface tension there is much more water than air. Molecules within a substance are attracted to each other evenly due to the fact that there are neighbors on all sides. The molecules on the surface have fewer neighbors and are attracted to each other more strongly. This means that in order for the tiny alveoli to be able to draw water into themselves, an immeasurably greater effort is required from the muscle complex than when inhaling air,” says Doctor of Medical Sciences Alexey Umryukhin, head of the department normal physiology First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M. Sechenov.

The adult lungs contain 700-800 million alveoli. Their total area- about 90 square meters. It is not easy to tear apart even two smooth glasses if there is a layer of water between them. Imagine how much effort you need to make when inhaling to open such a huge area of the alveoli.

By the way, it is the force of surface tension that poses a huge problem in the development of liquid breathing. You can saturate the solution with oxygen and select its parameters so that the bonds between the molecules are weakened, but in any case, the force of surface tension will remain significant. The muscles involved in breathing will still require much more effort to push the solution into the alveoli and expel it from there. You can hold out on liquid breathing for several minutes or an hour, but sooner or later the muscles will simply get tired and will not be able to cope with the work.

It won't be possible to be reborn

The alveoli of a newborn are filled with a certain amount of amniotic fluid, that is, they are in a stuck together state. The child takes his first breath, and the alveoli open - for life. If water enters the lungs, surface tension causes the alveoli to stick together, and it takes enormous force to pull them apart. Two, three, four breaths in water is the maximum for a person. All this is accompanied by cramps - the body works to the limit, the lungs and muscles burn, trying to squeeze everything out of itself.

There is such an episode in the popular series "Game of Thrones". A contender for the throne is consecrated king in the following way: his head is held under water until he stops floundering and shows signs of life. Then the body is pulled ashore and they wait for the person to take a breath, clear his throat and stand up. After which the applicant is recognized as a full-fledged ruler. But the creators of the series embellished the reality: after a series of inhalations and exhalations in water, the body gives up - and the brain stops sending signals that it is necessary to try to breathe.

The mind is the weak link

A person can hold their breath for three to five minutes. Then the level of oxygen in the blood decreases, the desire to take a breath becomes unbearable and completely uncontrollable. Water enters the lungs, but there is not enough oxygen in it to saturate the tissues. The brain is the first to suffer from lack of oxygen. Other cells are able to survive for some time on anaerobic, that is, oxygen-free, respiration, although they will produce 19 times less energy than in the aerobic process.

"Brain structures consume oxygen in different ways. The cortex is particularly "gluttonous" cerebral hemispheres. It is she who controls the conscious sphere of activity, that is, she is responsible for creativity, higher social functions, intelligence. Its neurons will be the first to use up their oxygen reserves and die,” the expert notes.

If a drowned man is brought back to life, his consciousness may never return to normal. Of course, a lot depends on the time spent under water, the state of the body, individual characteristics. But doctors believe that on average the brain of a drowned person dies within five minutes.

Often those who drown become disabled - they lie in a coma or are almost completely paralyzed. Although the body is formally normal, the affected brain cannot control it. This happened to 17-year-old Malik Akhmadov, who in 2010 saved a drowning girl at the cost of his health. For seven years now, the guy has been undergoing rehabilitation course after course, but his brain has not fully recovered.

Exceptions are rare, but they do happen. In 1974 five year old boy in Norway he stepped onto the ice of a river, fell through and drowned. He was pulled out of the water only after 40 minutes. Doctors performed artificial respiration, cardiac massage, and resuscitation was successful. The child lay unconscious for two days, and then opened his eyes. The doctors examined him and were surprised to note that his brain was absolutely normal. Maybe, ice water slowed down the metabolism in the child’s body so much that his brain seemed to be frozen and did not need oxygen, like the rest of his organs.

Doctors warn: if a person has already gone under water, the rescuer has literally a minute to save him. The faster the victim removes water from the lungs by causing a gag reflex, the more chances for full recovery. It is important to remember that a drowning person rarely betrays himself by screaming or actively trying to stay afloat; he simply does not have enough strength for this. Therefore, if you suspect something is wrong, it is better to ask if everything is okay, and if there is no answer, take measures to save the drowning person.

Holding your breath in water is not a simple matter for a person. Human beings cannot breathe underwater like fish, but they can hold their breath for short periods of time. When children play in the pool, on the lake, or even in the bathtub, they hold their breath as a competition to see who can go the longest without breathing underwater.

Holding your breath underwater is not just a child's game. Extreme athletes known as freedivers regularly compete to set new records. This practice is known as static apnea. Apnea is a temporary cessation of breathing and is practiced by freedivers to increase the amount of time they can remain underwater without resurfacing.

IN Currently, the Frenchman Stefan Mifsud has a breath-hold record of 11 minutes 35 seconds for static apnea.

In fact, there have been people who have held their breath for even longer than 11 minutes. The Guinness Book of Records has a special category for those who could hold their breath underwater. Unlike freedivers, who practice static apnea, who register Guinness World Records, they allow the competitors to breathe pure oxygen within 30 minutes before your attempt.

With preliminary breathing of pure oxygen, the current Guinness World breath holding record under water belongs to Ricardo Bahia from Brazil for whole 20 minutes 21 seconds!

Breathing underwater

Most people in good health can hold their breath for about two minutes. Experts believe that a little more practice can increase this period of time quite a bit. However, they also warn that depriving your body of oxygen can cause a lot of damage. negative consequences, so don't make a habit of holding your breath for very long! When a person holds their breath, carbon dioxide (a gas that is normally exhaled) accumulates inside the body. Eventually, this gas must be released and the reflex causes the respiratory muscles to spasm. These spasms usually cause a person to choke within just a couple of minutes. If without training he can hold out even longer without air, the lack of oxygen can change and he can die. When Guinness World Record candidates breathe pure oxygen, they do so to force maximum removal carbon dioxide from your body. Extra oxygen helps them go longer without it physiological process.

While underwater, the body exhibits a natural reaction to holding its breath. Like dolphins and whales, our bodies instinctively conserve oxygen when exposed to air. This reaction, called the diving reflex, helps preserve oxygen in the body and allows you to stay without this physiological process longer.

Scuba gear for the physiological process underwater

Divers who want to spend a large number of time under water, scuba gear is usually used. Scuba was originally an acronym for "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus." Today, scuba gear is used as ordinary word to refer to the practice of using special equipment to naturally process underwater without the need to hold your breath while diving.

The first scuba gear was developed during World War II for American combat divers. Combat swimmers use devices called rebreathers to stay underwater for long periods time for underwater military missions. Today, scuba divers use compressed air cylinders that are attached to their backs. Scuba divers receive air through a mouthpiece connected to the cylinders through a regulator. It takes some time to adjust to breathing underwater this way.

This is why people who want to become scuba divers must have special training before being certified to dive.

Russian Foundation advanced research began testing liquid breathing technology for submariners on dogs.

Deputy General Director of the Foundation Vitaly Davydov spoke about this. According to him, full-scale tests are already underway.

In one of his laboratories, work is underway on liquid breathing. For now, experiments are being carried out on dogs. In our presence, a red dachshund was immersed in a large flask of water, face down. It would seem, why mock an animal, it will choke now. But no. She sat underwater for 15 minutes. And the record is 30 minutes. Incredible. It turns out that the dog's lungs filled with oxygenated fluid, which gave her the ability to breathe underwater. When they pulled her out, she was a little lethargic - they say it was due to hypothermia (and I think who would like to hang around under water in a jar in front of everyone), but after a few minutes she became quite herself. Soon experiments will be carried out on people, says the journalist." Russian newspaper"Igor Chernyak, who witnessed unusual tests.

All this was similar to the fantastic plot of the famous film "The Abyss", where a person could descend to great depths in a spacesuit, the helmet of which was filled with liquid. The submariner breathed it. Now this is no longer fantasy.

Liquid breathing technology involves filling the lungs with a special liquid saturated with oxygen, which penetrates the blood. The Foundation for Advanced Research approved the implementation of a unique project, the work is being carried out by the Research Institute of Occupational Medicine. It is planned to create a special spacesuit that will be useful not only for submariners, but also for pilots and astronauts.

As Vitaly Davydov told a TASS correspondent, a special capsule was created for the dogs, which was immersed in a hydrochamber with high blood pressure. On this moment dogs can breathe for more than half an hour at a depth of up to 500 meters without health consequences. “All test dogs survived and feel good after prolonged liquid breathing,” assured the deputy head of the FPI.

Few people know that experiments on liquid breathing on humans have already been carried out in our country. They gave amazing results. Aquanauts breathed liquid at a depth of half a kilometer or more. But the people never learned about their heroes.

In the 1980s, the USSR developed and began to implement a serious program for rescuing people at depth.

Special rescue vehicles were designed and even put into operation submarines. The possibilities of human adaptation to depths of hundreds of meters were studied. Moreover, the aquanaut had to be at such a depth not in a heavy diving suit, but in a light, insulated wetsuit with scuba gear behind his back; his movements were not constrained by anything.

Because the human body consists almost entirely of water, then the terrible pressure at depth in itself is not dangerous for it. The body just needs to be prepared for it by increasing the pressure in the pressure chamber to required value. the main problem in a different. How to breathe at a pressure of tens of atmospheres? Fresh air becomes poison for the body. It must be diluted in specially prepared gas mixtures, usually nitrogen-helium-oxygen.

Their recipe - the proportions of various gases - is the most big secret in all countries where similar studies are underway. But very great depth and helium mixtures do not help. The lungs must be filled with fluid to prevent them from rupturing. What is the liquid that, once in the lungs, does not lead to suffocation, but transmits oxygen to the body through the alveoli - a mystery of secrets.

That is why all work with aquanauts in the USSR, and then in Russia, was carried out under the heading “top secret”.

Nevertheless, there is quite reliable information that in the late 1980s there was a deep-sea aquastation in the Black Sea, in which test submariners lived and worked. They went out to sea, dressed only in wetsuits, with scuba gear on their backs, and worked at depths of 300 to 500 meters. A special gas mixture was supplied under pressure into their lungs.

It was assumed that if a submarine was in distress and lay on the bottom, then a rescue submarine would be sent to it. Aquanauts will be prepared in advance for work at the appropriate depth.

The hardest thing is to be able to withstand filling your lungs with fluid and simply not die from fear

And when the rescue submarine approaches the disaster site, divers in light equipment will go out into the ocean, examine the emergency boat and help evacuate the crew using special deep-sea vehicles.

It was not possible to complete those works due to the collapse of the USSR. However, those who worked at depth were still awarded the stars of Heroes of the Soviet Union.

Probably even more interesting research were continued in our time near St. Petersburg on the basis of one of the Navy Research Institutes.

Experiments were also carried out there gas mixtures for deep-sea research. But, most importantly, perhaps for the first time in the world, people there learned to breathe liquid.

In terms of their uniqueness, those works were much more complex than, say, preparing astronauts for flights to the Moon. The testers were subjected to enormous physical and psychological stress.

First, the body of the aquanauts in the air pressure chamber was adapted to a depth of several hundred meters. They then moved into a chamber filled with liquid, where the dive continued to depths said to be almost a kilometer.

The hardest thing, as those who did have the chance to communicate with the aquanauts say, was to withstand the filling of the lungs with liquid and simply not die of fear. This does not mean cowardice. Fear of choking is a natural reaction of the body. Anything could happen. Spasm of the lungs or cerebral vessels, even a heart attack.

When did a person understand that the fluid in the lungs does not bring death, but gives life for enormous depth, completely special, truly fantastic sensations arose. But only those who experienced such a dive know about them.

Alas, the work, amazing in its significance, was stopped for a simple reason - due to lack of finance. The aquanaut heroes were given the title of Heroes of Russia and sent into retirement. The names of the submariners are classified to this day.

Although they should be honored as the first cosmonauts, because they paved the way into the deep hydrospace of the Earth.

Now experiments on liquid breathing have been resumed; they are being carried out on dogs, mainly dachshunds. They also experience stress.

But the researchers feel sorry for them. As a rule, after underwater experiments they are taken to live in their home, where they are fed delicious food and surrounded with affection and care.

08.06.2018 - admin

The first time people learned about a man who could breathe underwater was from the novel “Amphibian Man,” written by the Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev. And according to Dr. Boris Egorov, the first scientist to be in space, people can actually dive to great depths and breathe oxygen obtained directly from water. To do this, it is necessary that a special liquid be pumped into his lungs.

Currently, successful experiments are being carried out with animals by the Dutch scientist physiologist Johannes Kihlstrom. Experiments are carried out on mice, and they confirmed the words of the astronaut doctor. A special slightly salted liquid containing a lot of oxygen is pumped into the lungs of the mouse. The mouse is then placed in a container of water from which it cannot escape. The animal begins to swim like a fish in water, and it is not visible that it panics.

Scientist, candidate of medical sciences Vladlen Kozak conducted similar experiments back in the Soviet Union. After conducting experiments with the mouse, Johannes Kylstr set similar experiment with a dog, and quite successfully. Then experiments were carried out on cats and many other animals that breathed underwater with lungs into which a special liquid was previously pumped. The animals voluntarily swam like fish for several hours, after which they calmly began to breathe air again.

When the question arose about conducting an experiment on humans, the first volunteer, a diver with twenty years of scuba diving experience, Frank Falezchik, volunteered. To avoid unpleasant and dangerous surprises, scientists decided to first fill only one lung of a volunteer with liquid. The diver assured of his excellent health, so the researchers decided to conduct a full-fledged experiment, which went brilliantly.

Twenty scientists and doctors observed this miracle. But the subject was not worried, but, in order to help the researchers, decided to write down everything he felt. For several hours the man remained underwater, swimming like a fish and breathing oxygen obtained from the water through his lungs.

Johannes Kylstr proved that if a person fills his lungs with a special liquid, he breathes underwater, descending to great depths (at least 500 meters).

Our users are probably interested to know if something like this exists in our country? There is a laboratory in Sevastopol in which it studies and applies liquid breathing.

Many have probably heard about the great French conqueror of the oceans and seas, Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He invented lightweight scuba gear. The researcher wrote that the time will come when a new human race, which will live under water, will build cities under water, and will appear. The brave captain, it seems, was right.