If you could patent and sell the idea of holding your breath before exercise to boost performance, it would be a bestseller. Not because it works, necessarily—the jury is still out on that. But because the logic is so good, the physiology is so fascinating, and the technique is so simple.
Instead, without a commercial imperative behind it, the idea has been floating around for years with no clear answers about whether it really works or not. Now a study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, from a team led by Yiannis Christoulas of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, offers the most encouraging sign yet that breath-holding might function as a legal form of do-it-yourself blood doping to temporarily enhance your endurance.
The idea is based on the mammalian diving reflex, which is the suite of physiological responses that automatically takes over when you dunk your head underwater. In a whole bunch of different ways, your body switches into oxygen-conserving mode to make sure you don’t run out while you’re submerged. For example, your heart rate slows down, and blood-flow to…
