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04 May 08 - 03:31 PM (#2332770) Subject: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Little Hawk Has anyone tried this? If so, what's it like? |
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04 May 08 - 04:12 PM (#2332795) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Peace It's like a breath of fresh air. |
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04 May 08 - 04:14 PM (#2332797) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Megan L He means afore the farmers start spreadin slurry |
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04 May 08 - 04:18 PM (#2332798) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Little Hawk I was hoping for more detail... |
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04 May 08 - 04:20 PM (#2332799) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Peace I often drove by a feedlot operation near one place I lived way back. At certain times of the year when the manure was spread, well, I expect you know. The cattle--all thousand of them--were magnificient at producing what many folks called "The smell of money." Oh, if you are breathing pure O2 for some reason, don't be lighting any matches, lighters or otherwise doing things that make sparks while yer on the tank or while the room is O2-rich. O2 supports combustion. It goes 'boom'. |
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04 May 08 - 04:22 PM (#2332802) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: JohnInKansas No particular sensation at all, unless you have some medical condition that causes you to need it, or are in a situation where there isn't any air. Then it's the difference between breathing normally - or near normally - and and not breathing at all. FAA regulations require (or did the last time I checked a few years ago) that in commercial airlines carrying passengers for hire at least one member of the cockpit crew must be breathing pure oxygen anytime the plane is above a certain altitude. There thus is frequent use, and the ones who are the designated breathers are no more (or less) crazy from it than the ones who breathe normally and rely on the pressurization. (That is so far as I've been able to tell, at least. You need to have enough exposure to aircrews to different the usual deviant personality traits from anything that might be the result of any variant exposure.) Breathing NO OXYGEN also produces, according to those who've done it, no "felt effects," so long as there is "another gas" to go in and out to "simulate breathing." Those wishing certification as "test pilots for hire" generally are required to pass "hypobaric chamber" training, and the usual procedure is to put a group in the chamber, run it up to "altitude," and have one of them remove the oxygen mask and tell a story. When the story-teller passes out, someone slaps a mask back on him/her. The "victim" usually denies having been unconcious, and usually continues the story, continuing in mid syllable of the word at which conciousness was lost. The refusal to accept that anything happened is often "adamant" so the schools nearly always tape the lesson for playback - mainly for the benefit of the victim. Any physiological difference (to make you feel different) would depend on your bloodstream being able to absorb more oxygen in a pure oxygen environment. Since most people can maintain 95 to 98% saturation1 of the hemoglobin they have even in "normal air" there's little room for much more to be absorbed to produce any "feeling." 1 The "normal range" for pO2 saturation of the blood goes somewhat below 95%, but most people can achieve that level just by taking a few deep breaths - in the absence of a physiological malfunction or a badly contaminated atmosphere. (Not a medical opinion, but based on lots of observation and some personal testing.) John |
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04 May 08 - 04:23 PM (#2332803) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Little Hawk Good point. I wonder if a static electric charge would set it off? Normal air is about 20% oxygen. |
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04 May 08 - 04:26 PM (#2332804) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Little Hawk Good information there, John. So I gather there are no unpleasant effects felt at all when passing out in an oxygen-starved environment? Not what I would have expected. |
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04 May 08 - 04:28 PM (#2332806) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Megan L it makes yer mooth go dry - - the O2 that is no the slurry that jist dries up yer nasal passages |
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04 May 08 - 04:29 PM (#2332808) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Little Hawk The 02 makes yer mooth go dry? |
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04 May 08 - 04:31 PM (#2332809) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Megan L Mind you the buddy whit telt me that is ayeweys kindo drouthy onyweys |
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04 May 08 - 04:52 PM (#2332825) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: bobad Oxygen is a non-combustible gas. Oxygen will not burn, and will not explode when exposed to a spark or ignition source. |
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04 May 08 - 05:04 PM (#2332836) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Amos It does, however, greatly assist in burning other things. A |
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04 May 08 - 05:08 PM (#2332839) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Zen You would not want to do it for more than a couple of hours as pure oxygen is poisonous (air is about 21% oxygen). It is sometimes used in hyperbaric treatment chambers for the treatment of divers with "the bends" and for other conditions, e.g. hypoxia. While oxygen is itself not flammable it of course supports combustion very strongly. Zen |
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04 May 08 - 05:32 PM (#2332862) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Melissa I did Less Oxygen once while spending a winter in a tipi. Snow on the side of the lodge slid down to cover the bottom while I was flaring the fire. The flames got small and odd looking and I was going to light a candle so I could see better. The candle wouldn't light. The fire in the pit sort of burned, but the flames looked sort of transparent (can't really remember that part, just that they looked different) The candle wouldn't light, then matches wouldn't burn... My thought processes and movements got slow but I had a thought that maybe snow had slid down to cover the bottom of the lodge (air circulation) The lodge didn't fill up with smoke from the fire. I didn't feel like I couldn't breathe. It didn't hurt at all, just made me slow. When I opened the door and poked my head outside, I was perfectly ok after a couple breaths. |
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04 May 08 - 06:16 PM (#2332892) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: JohnInKansas During WWII as aircraft became capable of higher altitudes some pilots reported becoming "sluggish" after a time aloft (or maybe it was their buddies reporting on them). With current knowledge, this would be an expected consequence of prolonged low oxygen. Quite a number also reported pain like "the bends" on rapid ascents to altitude. While it was quite a while before on-board oxygen was supplied for sustained flight at high altitudes, it was common practice during a brief intermediate period for air crews to breath pure oxygen for an hour before takeoff. The pure oxygen allowed exhaling some of the nitrogen normally absorbed in the blood without it being replenished. It's the nitrogen bubbles that are primarily the cause of "bends." The blood carries only the oxygen that's absorbed into the hemoglobin, so it's not released as readily as the nitrogen, which is simply "dissolved gas," when ambient pressure is reduced. US astronauts have commonly used the same "pre-exposure" to pure oxygen prior to EVA activities, to reduce the susceptibility of bends. I don't know that it's still the practice, but suspect that it is. Some early US and Russian space trips used pure oxygen continuously for the duration of the "flights." Pure oxygen is not "poisonous" in any real sense of the usual uses of the word. In some people, prolonged breathing of pure oxygen can cause imbalances in other absorbed gases and in electrolytes in the blood and tissues, and those imbalances can have "toxic" effects. Most people can get along just fine on pure oxygen for almost any length of time, although it's seldom used therapeutically since a 30 - 50% O2 (compared to the ~20% in common air) concentration is sufficient to get as much pO2 saturation of the hemoglobin as is "useful." John |
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04 May 08 - 06:18 PM (#2332893) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: folk1e Your breathing reflex is triggered by CO2 levels rising. If you are breathing O2 through a mask you will not notice any diference (assuming you are healthy to begin with). If you are in a closed environment with O2 as you breath you convert O2 to CO2 and trigger your reflex (start to pant). Elevated CO2 levels will result in your body running anarobicaly. Muscles will produce latic acid and you will feel pain, similar to cramp without the spasm. You will have dificulty in concentrating and in motor co-ordination. You will turn a bluish hue and eventually die. If you receive O2 early enough you will recover but may have side effects such as headaches or memory loss, or even brain damage if you were starved of O2 long enough. Elevated levels of O2 do not cause problems unless you are under pressure when you may suffer from Oxygen Narcosis. This will lead to death! Marvelous stuff O2 .... too much and we die .... too little and we die. |
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04 May 08 - 06:21 PM (#2332897) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Rowan Pure oxygen also does nasty things to eyes, so make sure you're breathing it through a mask. And while it's not combustible, a high concentration (OK, "Partial Pressure") of oxygen will increase the floammability of other things that are relatively nonflammable at normal temperatures and concebtrations. Cheers, Rowan |
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04 May 08 - 08:50 PM (#2332969) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: GUEST,Zen John... there are many scientific and medical articles relating to pure oxygen toxicity especially in relation to CNS toxicity. Although the exact mechanisms are not clear, enzymatic disruption and free radical formation are implicated. Zen |
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04 May 08 - 09:00 PM (#2332975) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: GUEST,Chief Chaos I can answer the static spark question. Yes it will. I'm not informed enough to know if anyone is actually breathing what would be considered "pure oxygen". Probably more along the lines of breathing a supplementary oxygen supply in specific situations (medical or altitudinally caused). I am (or rather was, it's been a few years) a hazardous materials first responder. Below 19.5% Oxygen = bad. Above 21% Oxygen also = bad although not for the same specific reasons. I know a fellow that decided to smoke a cigarette after using a military Oxygen Breathing Apparatus (OBA) during a fire fighting drill. I've seen smoke come out of a persons nose. That was the first and only time I've seen flames (as he was lighting it he left the lighter flame up as he exhaled). |
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04 May 08 - 09:19 PM (#2332985) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: GUEST,Chief Chaos Oops! Forgot to add that Oxygen is definitely needed and can not be supplemented by any other gas. No Oxygen (for periods in excess of four minutes) means death! There are exceptions such as when a body is placed in "suspended animation" by exposing it to hypothermic conditions. Any other time you hear of someone going longer than four minutes they probably "supercharged" their bodies with oxygen or through a deep breathing regimen prior to holding their breath which isn't exactly the same as having no oxygen. |
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05 May 08 - 12:22 AM (#2333062) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: katlaughing Hmmm...I posted a rather long reply to this and don't see it now. It was right after folk1e. Well, maybe when I have more time I'll try to remember what I said, from experience. |
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05 May 08 - 12:56 AM (#2333071) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Teribus Used as a therapeutic gas in diving to treat bends from a chamber depth of 18m or 60ft, or to assist in normal chamber decompression. You breath in pure oxygen which transfers to your bloodstream via the lungs. Transported round the body there is a gas exchange between the gas mixture that you have been breathing (Oxygen/Nitrogen or Oxygen/Helium), O2 goes in Air or Oxy-Helium comes out. Used as a breathing medium in closed circuit diving sets, not recommended below an in water depth of 33 ft or 10m as O2 is considered "toxic" below that depth in water (in actual fact this effect is something that is down to individual person's tolerance which can change day to day - there were reported instances of Italian "Charioteers" during attacks in WWII breathing pure O2 at some horrendous depths and still surviving) When breathing pure O2 you should not breath it continously for more than 20 minutes at a time, so O2 decompression stops are broken by 5 minute air breaks, it reduces the dryness that MeganL mentioned and reduces a thing called accumulated Units of Pulminary Toxicity Dosage (UPTD), although this comes more into play while breathing mixtures with higher O2 partial pressures. Too high a UPTD count and you reduce your lung capacity - you burn your lungs out from the inside. Breathed on the surface it is also great as a hang-over cure. |
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05 May 08 - 01:25 AM (#2333077) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Slag Oxygen reacts with virtually everything. Oxidizers, are what promotes the violent reaction in rocket fuel which propels the rocket. Anything that burns, burns because of the presence of oxygen. The more O2 the greater the rate of burning. When I was in the USAF, I would service the F-4s with LOX (Liquid oxygen. This is what the pilots would breathe. I also served some other purposes but that was the main purpose. No, No, No! It was converted into its gaseous form first! Then the pilot would breathe it. We had to be careful handling it because of the low, cryogenic temperatures involved. Inevitably big drops would spill onto the flightline and our entertainment was to stomp on it with our boot heels. You had to have oily boot heels to do this. The pure O2 in great quantity would cause the oil to explode and it was like a firecracker going off under your heel! Cheap thrills! Somehow we kept them flying! Water is known as the Universal Solvent. Anything, ANYTHING will dissolve in water, given a sufficient length of time and this is because of the oxygen component in H2O. Interesting stuff, this Oxygen. |
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05 May 08 - 01:26 AM (#2333078) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Teribus "When breathing pure O2 you should not breath it continously for more than 20 minutes at a time," Apologies that should read: "When breathing pure O2 under pressure you should not breath it continously for more than 20 minutes at a time," |
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05 May 08 - 01:38 AM (#2333088) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: The Fooles Troupe JiK "US astronauts" As I remember, the early (Gemini?) capsules were designed for pure O2 at 1/5 normal atmospheric pressure. There was a fatal fire, and the design concept was changed away from pure O2 - I seem to remember the fuss from when I was but a young lad.... :-P |
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05 May 08 - 04:30 AM (#2333142) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: JohnInKansas In the context of "breathing oxygen" in a normal earth surface (or higher) environment, as I took the meaning of the original question, the commonly accepted rule is that oxygen is not toxic for most people. Premature infants, given pure O2 are prone to damage to central nervous system, lungs, and to eyesight. In this case the oxygen was typically forced under slight positive pressure, usually in a breathing apparatus resembling a mini-iron lung. The infants who need assistance, and who are most likely to suffer adverse consequences, generally have "undeveloped" lungs and other organs. The use of pure oxygen for neonatal care was discontinued in most places at least a couple of decades ago, primarily due to oberved damage to the eyes which was more obvious than other adverse results that have been documented since. Under hyperbaric (high pressure) conditions, as in treatment chambers1 for "bends" or during actual activity under water beyond fairly moderate depths, there are well known adverse effects of using pure oxygen, or even of use of simple compressed air. For avoidance of bends, the critical factor is the removal of Nigrogen from the mix, and for deep underwater activities there are a number of other gaseous mixtures, some proprietary, that are generally used. Quite a few cases have been cited for use of Helium/Oxygen mixes, but other gases have been developed that give better results with fewer problems. No diving requiring any of these "special provisions" should ever be done without qualified medical observers and immediately available "decompression facilities." My prior reference to lack of "toxicity" of pure O2 were not intended to reflect hazards that might occur under abnormal or extreme conditions, or to include all possible medical uses,as that was not a condition I interpreted the original question to include. Foolestroupe is correct about the use of pure O2 in early US space vehicles. An original primary reason was to avoid the necessity of carrying an additional "diluent" gas. The Russians reportedly continued using pure O2 internal atmospheres in their space vehicles for some years after the US switched, and contention over that use was significant when the first "joint missions" were considered. At least for a time, in some early joint missions, the US accepted the Russian usage when US astronauts were onboard Russian vehicles. I don't know what Russian astronauts are using now, or whether it's different for their own missions than it is for shared missions. Clinical research on the use of pure (or "enriched") O2 as a "hangover cure" have found little physiological benefit, and most who've been involved in such tests apparently believe that any effects are "mostly psychological." IF you are suffering from low pO2 a moderate "better feelingness" might be noticed. A low pO2 could be caused either by reduced absorbtion of O2 or by presence of other "contaminants" not fully removed by normal renal processes. Some byproducts of alcoholic ingestion can reduce the carrying capacity for O2 in the blood and some others can inhibit both/either normal absorbtion or release of O2 by the hemoglobin. In either case, to get more oxygen to the tissues, you'd have to change the amount of hemoglobin available to carry it. Adding more oxygen in the lungs doesn't make a significant difference in normal people. Inhaled O2 in any concentration won't "burn out the crud" and according to test results I've seen has no significant effect on the rate at which "afterproducts" are removed from the system. Oxygen enriched breathing might help if your breathing is "depressed," but in that case you don't have a hangover, you're still drunk. 1 Hyperbaric O2 treatment has been used some for treatment of a few special conditions not related to "bends" or other underwater problems. A most notable usage has been for treatment of very severe burns. While I haven't seen many detailed studies of the effectiveness, treatment facilities using them claim good results. Adoption of the method has been rather less than I would have expected if the results were as much better than more conventional treatments as claimed; but it's been some years since I've seen good numbers. Any use of this kind must of course be under the supervision of qualified specialists. John |
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05 May 08 - 05:54 AM (#2333175) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Slag I grew up in the welding business and some of the guys would come in in the morning, presumably after a "big night" and turn on the O2 side of the acetylene torch and take several deep breaths to clear out the cobwebs. O2 and caffeine, what a combination! Well, why not! I hadn't tied one on but a little pick-me-up in the AM couldn't hurt, could it? Until one morning when I nonchalantly turned on the acetylene instead of the oxygen! No, it isn't really poisonous (which I read later) but the taste was excruciatingly bitter. Beyond that, as you may know, it is extremely explosive. I was lucky. No sparks were flying at the time. Needless to say, I curtailed my morning hits of O2! Many years later I read of some kids in a high school welding class who, while the instructor wasn't looking, were taking mouthsful of acetylene and blowing it out over an open flame. Great fun, huh? Well, one kid goofed up somehow and sucked in and burned his lungs and died from it! As I remember, this was over in the Sacramento areas in the 1990's. If you are going to be breathing anything other than God-given air you ought to know what you are doing or have professional direction. Lung are pretty irreplaceable. |
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05 May 08 - 06:37 AM (#2333184) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: The Fooles Troupe JiK A while ago it became 'cool' for some Aussie footbrawlers who play professional thugball to have morning after sessions in a hyperbaric chamber. |
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05 May 08 - 08:24 AM (#2333214) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Little Hawk Well, I didn't realize how many interesting directions this subject could go in. Thanks for all the contributions to the thread. |
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05 May 08 - 02:01 PM (#2333411) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: JohnInKansas I don't know what the current common specifications are for oxygen you'd get for the welding shop, but do know that for medical uses (breathing) your medical advisor will send you to different sources who provide "medical oxygen." For portable or temporary "emergency" use, a backup bottle of compressed oxygen will usually be provided, but even at lowest common "dosages" the most common size (portable) bottle provides only about 4 hours use, down to an hour or two per bottle for people who need the maximum common rate of O2. Not long ago, it was common for long term home use, to have liquid O2 delivered and stored in fairly large cryogenic dewars. Obviously, this requires a rather substantial installation and some rather complex controls, filters, and temperature conditioners. Liquid oxygen (LOX) supplies may still be in use at some hospitals where they pipe O2 to all the rooms, but I haven't asked anyone what local facilities are doing. Most long term individual users now will use a "concentrator" that extracts oxygen directly from the air. The (US Medicare) spec for these devices is that they provide at least 98% pure O2 output. Full-face masks are almost never used if the treatment is just to supply supplemental O2, with just a small "nose piece" inserted about a quarter inch into each nostril, so you still mix a significant amount of ambient air with what you breathe. Common concentrator "doses" start at about 2 Lpm and the most commonly used machines top out at about 5 Lpm. The concentrator blows air through a "diatomaceous earth" filter that absorbs the nitrogen, with pure oxygen as the remaining output. Back-flushed at a different pressure and flow, the nitrogen is swept out for the next cycle. Most machines use two filters and switch them between filter and flush cycles for constant O2 delivery, resulting in a mildly annoying characteristic noise - sort of a "Grrrrrrr-poof" in 3 to 5 second cycles. The filters appear quite durable, with manufacturers recommending replacement at about 5 year intervals. Some people have reported using "salvaged" concentrators for generating welding O2. The capacity of most machines would be too low for useful "shop welding" but might be good for jewelry work. Concentrators with a supplemental compressor to charge "bottles" are available, but are about double the (retail) price of the more common kind. Portable units are also available, and are quite compact, but I don't have any reliable reports on battery life between charges. Full-face masks are used for treatment of apnea, but the machines used for this typically use just compressed air, to provide "forced positive pressure breathing" during sleep. Systems that provide "oxygen enrichment" may be availabe, but I haven't seen one with that feature. Anyone actually needing 100% O2 for medical treatment would have to be using a full-face mask, and would probably be in a hospital or otherwise under very stringent medical supervision. Even in this use, most "medical grade" masks retain some exhaled air and mix it with the incoming O2, so that "less than 100%" effective mixtures can be provided (and so that CO2 levels needed to regulate voluntary breathing aren't depleted). So when does Little Hawk's Oxygen Bar open? And has the market analysis shown that the critters in the back yard can afford to spend enough there to support a profitable business? John |
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05 May 08 - 05:09 PM (#2333563) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Little Hawk The critters in the backyard are notoriously short of funds, so I am figuring on this as a non-profit operation. |
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05 May 08 - 05:27 PM (#2333580) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: PoppaGator My wife is suffering from a rare form of early-onset frontal-temporal dementia, for which conventional neurology can offer no treatment and no hope. She's undergoing daily one-hour hyperbaric oxygen treatments which seem to be helping (although it's too early to expect or to observe any significant reversal of symptoms). If you're interested in this topic, I strongly suggest you refer to this website: http://www.harchhyperbarics.com/ If you want a really complete explanation, you should buy Dr. Harch's book "The Oxygen Revolution" (available on his site, also Amazon, etc.) but a no-charge perusal of the website will provide the essentials of his message. I would strongly recommend that you watch the before-and-after video of a 17-year old brain-injured young man. Twenty minutes of pure O2 under pressure is by no means toxic; Peggy has been breathing 100% oxygen under about 1-1/2 atmospheres of pressure for a full hour once a day for a couple of weeks now. It definitely makes her feel good, if nothing else, and is undoubtedly having some healing effect upon the oxygen-starved areas of her brain. Whether or not hyperbarics will prove to do enough to bring Peggy back to her former self, I am absolutely convinced and have seen with my own eyes what it can do for some patients with severe brain problems and injuries, especially young children. Of course, kids have more resilient tissue through all parts of their bodies than do adults. Even so, for a ten-year-old whose skull was crushed in an auto accident, and whose parents were told her only future was to live a few years in a vegetative state, to regain near-complete normalcy, even to skip the grade that she missed upon returning to school less than a year after the acccident ~ it's astounding . If it were not for the fact that her skull remains a bit misshapen, with her eyes not lining up exactly across from each other, you would never guess that anything amiss had ever happened to this kid. Hyperbarics was first developed about 100 years ago and, as mentioned above, was first succesfully used to treat divers suffering from decompression illness, aka "the bends." It soon became apparent that highly concentrated oxygen under pressure could help many seemingly unrelated conditions, until some experiments conducted in the 1930s seemed to debunk many claims, leading to widespread dismissal of hyperbarics as "quackery." Dr. Harch points out that those experiments all used the relatively high pressures (3 atmospheres and up) used for treating divers; more recently, lower pressure settings have proven to work much better for brain injuries, stroke recovery, dementia, etc. Medicare/Medicaid and insurance companies have gradually added to the list of conditions for which HBOT is "approved" (i.e., paid for), and the list includes many seemingly-unrelated problems. There many more applications that can and should be approved, and it's an uphill battle in which progress in just beginning to gain momentum. |
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05 May 08 - 06:07 PM (#2333617) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Slag My sympathies are with you and yours, Poppagator. I don't know if your MD is combining treatment with other known therapies or if it is experimental it may have binds upon it so as to not skew the results. Which ever way it goes I wish your wife the best. The welding shop had a large cage where we started the oxygen bottles and quiet a few O2 patients would come in and buy O2 and swap bottles, sometimes the big 5 ft' tall ones. We bought our O2 from a gas processing plant in Bakersfield. Our family Dr told us that medical and welding all came from that same plant and there was absolutely no difference. The sad thing is that many of the customers used the product for only a short period of time. This was in the 60's and early 70's. They were apparently buying short reprieves from their ailments. If you are on O2 for the long term I would imagine that something pretty serious and irreparable has happened. I had an Uncle with a weird blood condition that made oxygenation very difficult. He lived about 5 years on O2 then passed on. He would not have lived 4 months beyond diagnosis without O2. |
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05 May 08 - 06:37 PM (#2333631) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: GUEST,Chief Chaos I guess I stand corrected about breathing pure O2! A little thread drift - re: the diatomacious earth that is used as a filter, the diatoms are also whats responsible for red tides. |
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05 May 08 - 07:29 PM (#2333667) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: JohnInKansas Chief C - I haven't found a lot of information about the filter material. It apparently was originally "mined" from mineral deposits, but now seems to be mostly "manufactured" using industrial methods and starting from basic chemical components. There are a variety of uses, and it's apparently the structure of the grains that has much to do with how a particular material behaves, although chemical composition is of course important. A problem with the natural "mineral product" was that a desired structure could be obtained only by filtering and sorting to separate the different grades/kinds that occured in the raw product; but methods now can (sort of) make-to-order a fairly specific product. Even the term/name may be sort of a stretch for the currenly most used products, since the pore sizes (basic to the performance) are now produced by controlling process rates rather than by leaching out the diatoms to create pores in a sediment. Many reports do call the filter media just "zeolites" and that's possibly a more accurate name for the current products. Grain/pore sizes for most purposes are quite small, but probably not legitimately what could be called "nanoparticles." A lot of the current "buzz" about nonoparticles probably does have a heritage back in the study of how structure and size affect chemical behaviour, as was/is being done for materials of this type. John |
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05 May 08 - 07:50 PM (#2333679) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: GUEST,Chief Chaos Synthetic Diatomacious earth! Will wonders never cease. Yeah, the originals were mined from what used to be sea bed deposits but the critter's cousins are still alive and well. We were always told never to use the O2 from the Oxy-Acetylene set-up to clean up the work space (blow down) because it would ignite any oil it went across. I heard about, but can't confirm, a large spill of LOX during a traffic accident involving a tank truck. Supposedly it caused the asphalt to liquify. A policeman standing on the asphalt supposedly sank into it and had his leg was damaged from the cryogenic affects. Probably an urban legend. |
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05 May 08 - 07:52 PM (#2333681) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Rowan Diatomaceous earth is the sediment formed from the deposition (over aeons) of the skellies of dead diatoms. Said skellies are essentially silica but the fine structure (often referred to as "decoration") varies according to the species of diatoms. Those of you who have "serious" microscopy in your background may have experienced the test slides made by mounting specimens of dead diatom skellies, from selected species, on a microscope slide. The species were chosen so that you could test the resolving power of microscope objectives; the higher the resolution of the lens, the finer were the decorations you could discern. Enough thread drift. Cheers, Rowan |
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05 May 08 - 10:26 PM (#2333771) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: The Fooles Troupe The Diatomaceous earth was sold here for cat liter - still got a bag here. You could put it on the garden after use. 'Oxygen bars' were a fad a few years ago, even in Queensland. One franchise had the O2 bubbled thru various liquids to give scents, eg, lemon, lime, etc. Some Coffee shops added them for a while. Don't know of any still extant. |
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06 May 08 - 12:32 AM (#2333820) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: Teribus The difference between Industrial and Medical O2 is purity and in the cleaning standard for the storage bottles. Its been quite some time but IIRC Industrial O2 is about 96% pure while Medical is just over 99%. |
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06 May 08 - 02:33 PM (#2334218) Subject: RE: BS: Breathing pure oxygen From: PoppaGator I had forgotten all about the most common medical use of O2, namely for patients with severe breathing difficulties due to emphesema (sp?) and/or advanced age, etc. My mother-in-law spend her last months in a nose mask, sitting next to an oxygen tank, so I should have remaind aware. But my current involvement with HBOT (hyperbaric oxygen therapy) ~ something decidedly different ~ is intense enough to block out other memories, I suppose. In our case, we never had to make an "either/or" decision to go with HBOT to the exclusion of anything else, because we had no other real alternative. Peggy's neurologist "prescribed" large does of a non-prescription supplement, Co Q-10, as a kind of "can't hurt" attempt, an effort that has recently seemed promising for treating different but similar neuological problems ~ and we have NOT discontinued the Co Q-10 when starting the HBOT. In fact, Dr. Harch never recommends that any other treatment be discontinued, and always offers the HBOT as an additional effort. HBOT is not technically "experimental" for neurological applications, but it is unapproved for reimbursement as treatment for many such conditions. The term used in this situation if "off-label" rather than "experimental." The kind of large-scale double-blind testing generally required for Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement is unlikely to be easily done, because it is so expensive, and no drug company is likely to finance the research because there is no potential large-scale profit: you can't take out a patent on oxygen! There is a similar problem in the UK in regard to approval/reimbursement from National Health. In his book, Harch tells about a group of patients in Scotland who have pooled their resources and now own an HBOT clinic where a staff of MDs are their employees. This gets around some bureaucratic red tape ~ the doctors would not be allowed to own and operate such clinics in the UK, but they are allowed to work at them. |