Anyone have the straight dope on oxygen bars? They just opened one in my city. The bar ran an add claiming that people simply don’t get enough oxygen and pretty much stated that if you came to their bar to get more oxygen, great things would happen. There was a big, long list of supposed benefits (with nary a cite to be found) that stopped just short of saying higher oxygen levels cure cancer and AIDS.
Does breathing more oxygenated air have any medically proven benefits or is this just more new age hogwash?
People who “simply don’t get enough oxygen” tend to turn blue and die. These people may well benefit from an oxygen bar slightly before the dying stage.
Otherwise, they could try breathing faster and deeper. I don’t even have to think about it, it happens all by itself when e.g. I run up the stairs. Makes me suspect that my body knows how much oxygen it needs and takes care of it.
As for medical benefits, I don’t know. But several million years of evolution has adapted you and me to the current, free, untaxed oxygen supply. And military divers who use pure oxygen can have a toxic reaction to it before they even get into the water, so it doesn’t sound that healthy to me!
From what I heard, the blood that flows through the lungs usually get saturated with oxygen anyway. Inhaling more oxygen doesn’t increase the amount of oxygen in the blood. So how can it do any good?
In fact, I’d be more worried about possible problems. Not that I’ve heard of any problems, but oxygen is a powerful oxydizer, and we haven’t evolved to withstand 100% 1-atmosphere oxygen.
If any of you guys have seen the movie “Fight Club” Tyler Durten explains it all when it comes to airplane crashes. He pulls out a book and points out how serene the passengers look in their moment of death. They look so serene due to the oxygen masks that drop down. They suck in the oxygen and get high! So they are in a euphoric state and don’t really care so much that their death is immenent. (don’t quote my spelling) Hence forth, the benefits from such oxygen bars are more than likely a psychological type thing. Like sugar pills. Because they are lead to believe these things (maybe not so outlandish) they actually make it happen… Then again, I pretty much base all my knowledge out of movies and the discover channel.
You usually feel pretty good after scuba diving & thanks to partial pressures, , which doesn’t sound logical, since you’ve just been using a lot of energy & carrying heavy dive kit around, but you get a higher amount of oxygen then.
BTW, if you’re diving on compressed air, oxygen gets toxic around 70-80 metres depth, technically it’s about 2 atmospheres of pressure (so pure oxygen would be toxic at 10m water depth, app 30 feet), but this is only approximately since I don’t have my dive books in front of me…so don’t go diving on these figures! Navy divers (in the UK at least) usually use a nitrox mix, not pure ocxygen & at great depths, 300m or thereabouts, an oxygen-helium mix is mentioned.
Oxygen is used for certain medical conditions, but you have to be really careful with it. As an extra for my scuba training, I did the oxygen-administration certification & there are al ot of factors to consider.
Having said that, if you’re lungs are stressed anyway (eg low-grade asthma (ie not bad enough to go to doctor to get it checked), smoking too much etc), oxygen might give you a boost.
Main use in diving is for burst lungs & ther bends (nitrogen poisoning) whilst waiting for paramedics/airlifft out…
I’ve never tried it, but I suppose it could give you a kind of high. In one of Aldous Huxley’s books (maybe Doors of Perception, but I’m not sure) he mentions inhaling 7 parts oxygen to 3 parts carbon dioxide (actually I don’t remember it exactly) can produce an effect.
I’m trying to find a cite online, but I read an article last year about these places which really took to task the underlying lack of science in their claims.
One thing that was pointed out is that oxygen, to most things, is a deadly poison, especially in its pure, unadulterated state. Even to humans, too much oxygen is a big problem. The article discussed all sorts of potential problems involved with introducing that amount of pure oxygen into the bloodstream, including increased cancer risks and strokes.
BTW, before I kill anyone, don’t try the rapid breathing thing while driving, or doing anything that could be considered dangerous if you were to pass out.
