So I’m on Zoom discussing a research article with collaborators, and one of them, Patrick Chuang, presents this beautiful figure he created for the article. It shows systolic blood pressure across 1 minute of time: 30 seconds before and after the end of a period of breath holding. The data shown are from 7 subjects who underwent 221 total breath hold periods.

Anyway, when I saw the figure, my brain exploded, and for two reasons. First, I just find it beautiful. I mean, it’s easily more appealing than most of the stuff I’ve seen over the years in hotels, professional offices, and yes, art museums. And that has nothing to do with its scientific content! That’s the fun of art!

Speaking of scientific content, that’s the second compelling thing about the figure. Remember, it shows blood pressure during (left half of image) and after (right half) a breath hold, measured a bunch of times. Everyone knows that holding your breath is stressful, and that stress raises blood pressure. So, you’d expect blood pressure to rise during breath holding, and decrease after. But, the opposite happened! Pressure went down during breath holding, and up when people started breathing again! There are actually valid physiologic explanations for why this occurs, but the point is, the finding is not at all what would be expected. That’s the fun of science!