How to Measure Breathing

Measuring the breathing rate of a person is an important first aid and medical procedure that can be handy to know whether you're a medical professional or a person who wants to be ready in case of a medical emergency. It's also handy to know if you're into fitness and want to be able to measure your heart rate as it pertains to how many calories you're burning during exercise. To measure breathing rates, you don't need any special tools or devices except a clock or watch.

Things You'll Need

• Clock or watch

Show More

Instructions

• 1

  Decide whether or not you want to measure your breathing rate during exercise, after exercise or when you're being sedentary.

• 2

  Allow your body to breathe normally for two minutes using the clock to gauge the amount of time that's passed. Count the number of complete respirations during the two minutes. A complete respiration is defined as one breath in and one breath out.

• 3

  Perform Step 2 at least three times, for this example, we'll say that you've repeated the procedure five times.

• 4

  Add the total number of respirations for each two minute period. Following our example, you'll have the total number of respirations over a 10 minute period.

• 5

  Divide the total number of respirations by two, since you were measuring in two minute intervals, to obtain the average number of breaths, or respirations, per minute. This is also known as the breathing rate.