Hyperventilation: Definition and Clinical Facts

By Dr. Artour Rakhimov, Alternative Health Educator and Author
- Medically Reviewed by Naziliya Rakhimova, MD
- Last updated on August 9, 2018

Define hyperventilation

Hyperventilation is breathing more air per minute than the medical norm. Normal minute ventilation at rest for a 70-kg person is 6 L/min.

Hyperventilation causes alveolar hypocapnia (a lack of CO2). This reduces O2 transport to all vital organs and promotes chronic diseases.

Overbreathing is common in people with chronic diseases, as this Table shows.

For more details about hyperventilation, you can visit this highly-intelligent article from Wikipedia that assumes that overbreathing appears due to panic or some other situations, like those on the Moon: click here.

Hyperventilation Prevalence Table (Historical changes)
at rest for normal subjects

Condition	Minute ventilation	Age	N. of subjects	References
Healthy Subjects	6-7 L/min	-	>400	Results of 14 studies
Normal breathing	6	-	-	Medical textbooks
Normal subjects	4.9	-	5	Griffith et al, 1929
Normal males	5.3+-0.1	27-43	46	Shock et al, 1939
Normal females	4.6+-0.1	27-43	40	Shock et al, 1939
Normal subjects	6.9+-0.9	-	100	Matheson et al, 1950
Normal subjects	9.1+-4.5	31+-7	11	Kassabian et al, 1982
Normal subjects	8.1+-2.1	42+-14	11	D'Alonzo et al, 1987
Normal subjects	6.3+-2.2	-	12	Pain et al, 1988
Normal males	13+-3	40 (av.)	12	Clague et al, 1994
Normal subjects	9.2+-2.5	34+-7	13	Radwan et al, 1995
Normal subjects	15+-4	28-34	12	Dahan et al, 1995
Normal subjects	12+-4	55+-10	43	Clark et al, 1995
Normal subjects	12+-2	41+-2	10	Tantucci et al, 1996
Normal subjects*	11+-3	53+-11	24	Clark et al, 1997
Normal subjects	8.1+-0.4	34+-2	63	Meessen et al, 1997
Normal females	9.9	20-28	23	Han et al, 1997
Normal males	15	20-28	47	Han et al, 1997
Normal females	10	29-60	42	Han et al, 1997
Normal males	11	29-62	42	Han et al, 1997
Normal subjects	13+-3	36+-6	10	Tantucci et al, 1997
Normal subjects	12+-1	65+-2	10	Epstein et al, 1996
Normal subjects	12+-1	12-69	20	Bowler et al, 1998
Normal subjects	10+-6	39+-4	20	DeLorey et al, 1999
Normal seniors	12+-4	70+-3	14	DeLorey et al, 1999
Normal elderly*	14+-3	88+-2	11	DeLorey et al, 1999
Normal subjects	17+-1	41+-2	15	Tantucci et al, 2001
Normal subjects	10+-0.5	-	10	Bell et al, 2005
Normal subjects	8.5+-1.2	30+-8	69	Narkiewicz, 2006
Normal females	10+-0.4	-	11	Ahuja et al, 2007
Normal subjects	12+-2	62+-2	20	Travers et al, 2008
Condition	Minute ventilation	Age	N. of subjects	Reference

The references for the above Table can be found here.

For details related to the prevalence of chronic overbreathing in the modern population (more than 90%), visit the Homepage of this site. An extended analysis of too fast and heavy breathing is provided on this page: hyperventilation.