He died as he practiced holding his breath underwater. It happens more than you think
Lifeguards knew 39-year-old Gabriel Crowther liked to practice holding his breath in the pool. The man was doing just that on the morning of March 24 at the Kearns Oquirrh Park Fitness Center in Kearns, Utah when something went very wrong, KUTV reported.
Lifeguards had been keeping an eye on Crowther, but shortly before 9 a.m, they saw him go under and not return, according to the Deseret News.
They rushed into the pool and pulled him out. They performed CPR. They waited for paramedics. It didn’t matter - Crowther died at the scene, the paper reported.
Police shut down the pool and investigated, but concluded that Crowther had died when he lost consciousness while practicing holding his breath for an extended period of time, reported Fox 13.
“That’s the risk you take when doing that type of stuff,” Lt. Brian Lohrke of the Unified Police Department told the station.
A GoFundMe page for Crowther says he left behind a wife and four children, and was a man who “brought the best out of people and left them better than he found them.”
What appears to have happened to Crowther has happened many times before. Extended breath-holding has led to the demise of experienced swimmers, divers, and even military personnel.
In 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study that looked at 22 cases of “dangerous underwater breath-holding behaviors” that resulted in death.
The CDC eliminated six cases where some other medical condition may have been the real cause of death. Of the others, 15 happened in an ordinary pool, and all but one occurred with a lifeguard on duty who attempted a rescue attempt. Most also occurred while a companion was with the victim.
Some of the cases involved swimmers with decades of experience. One was a teenager training to join the Navy SEALs. In another case, not included in the study, two active duty Navy SEALs died doing a breath-holding contest.
The CDC looked at what happened in each case and found a pattern.
People who try to lengthen the amount of time they can spend underwater usually start by breathing in-and-out rapidly. This decreases the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood, which decreases the urge to come up and breathe to get rid of it, according to the CDC.
But it also can lead to what the scientists call a “breath-hold blackout,” where the lack of oxygen leads to a rapid loss of consciousness. When you lose consciousness from holding your breath, the body’s immediate response is to inhale. And if you’re underwater when this happens, you inhale water.
Rhonda Milner, whose son died in a family pool while training to hold his breath for three minutes, even created an organization to raise awareness of the risks.
“It's something that comes on with really no warning,” she told NPR.
The organization, called Shallow Water Blackout Prevention, received endorsements from Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and his coach Bob Bowman.
This story was originally published March 26, 2018 at 8:29 AM with the headline "He died as he practiced holding his breath underwater. It happens more than you think."