Hyperventilation

What is hyperventilation? Simply breathing too much too fast thus taking in too much oxygen.

Like anything that’s good for you, too much is detrimental. Like drinking enough water every day. Drink too much and you’re in serious trouble.

Laughing is great for many reasons, one being it oxygenates the body. People can come to the laughter club tired and leave energized from all that oxygen.

But if you start to hyperventilate, you actually are loosing oxygen to the brain. It’s called Bohr’s Law. There is a point where the scales tip. If you take in too much oxygen, the oxygen binds too tightly to the hemoglobin and circulates in the body without being released. Thus you get light-headed from the lack of oxygen to the brain. Not a good thing.

When people come to the laughter club and end up this way, I always know they’ve got breathing problems, whether they know it or not. It’s always the people who go around with their mouths open. Not the correct way to breathe. Chronic hyperventilation. Then they come and laugh and it’s far too much oxygen.

Lesson for today: If you’re not talking, laughing, kissing, singing or eating, your mouth should be shut, so you’re breathing through your nose, the correct way to breath. Because your nose is 3 times smaller than your mouth, this correctly regulates the amount of oxygen you take in.

Photo: stock.xchnge