Breathing Oxygen Rich Air

[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Rugby_Owns wrote:
undeadlift wrote:
Rugby_Owns wrote:
Breathing pure oxygen is toxic and it will kill you if you do it for more than just a few shallow breaths.

I see college basketball teams using pure oxygen during games while the players are resting in the bench. They’re still alive with no adverse effects. Knowing this, I think it’s OK to inhale pure oxygen given that your body has a high demand for it and you don’t do it over prolonged periods.

How do you know its 100% pure? Like I said, short periods, like a couple breaths are okay, but anything longer can damage the lungs and cause brain bleeds also. There’s a reason that high alt pilots, divers and high altitude sky divers use a gas mix.

Divers only use a gas mix past a certain depth and they mix oxygen with helium. Otherwise they use pure oxygen. In hospitals, pure oxygen is used often for patients who are having trouble breathing. Your statements are false.[/quote]

You are right that the deeper the dives, the less oxygen. For example, the breathing mixture of dives below 80 meters consists of 90/95 % helium and 10/5 % oxygen respectively. But no one EVER dives on pure oxygen. In fact, pure oxygen becomes toxic below 13 meters. That’s not a deep dive at all. Most agencies certify even beginner recreational divers to dive down to 18 meters (60ft). But I do not think that pure oxygen at surface pressure is not toxic. That is why they can use it in hospitals.

[quote]Rugby_Owns wrote:
Breathing pure oxygen is toxic and it will kill you if you do it for more than just a few shallow breaths.[/quote]

This is extremely untrue. I have no idea where you came up with this, but it is very wrong. You could breathe pure oxygen for days on end. It isn’t good for you, and it can start causing excessive for radical damage if I recall correctly, but it won’t outright kill you, especially in a few shallow breaths.

I remember reading awhile back that a university was testing whether or not yawning had anything to do with a low blood oxygen level, so they had one group of people sit in a pure oxygen room, and a control sit in a room with regular atmospheric levels of oxygen. There was no effect on yawning, but by your logic the first group should have all been dead.

Oxygen is not toxic for you. Divers do breathe pure oxygen. Tech divers use it for decompression, and it becomes toxic at 19 feet, not 13 meters.

The only reason it becomes toxic is because its being breathed under pressure and the partial pressure reaches 1.6 ata, our bodies limit.

Divers will also breathe it on the surface if they are suspected of having decompression sickness.

That said, divers breathing nitrox and pure O2 do have to monitor their partial pressures and time to keep their oxygen exposure to their lungs to a safe limit. So yes, oxygen can potentially damage ones lungs when breathed under pressure, but its way longer than “a few shallow breaths.”

Patients in hospitals breathe pure oxygen if they need to. Athletes breathe oxygen on the sidelines to help them catch their breath if need be.

Where the hell did you read that breathing pure oxygen is toxic?

I never meant this thread to be a discussion on the toxicity of oxygen. Haha…

[quote]MC sp3 wrote:
Interesting. If you supplemented O2 would the homeostatic response be a diminished anaerobic capacity?[/quote]

Why do you think would it diminish anaerobic capacity? Maybe you meant aerobic capacity?

Check out Wanderlei Silva’s training. There is a link on the UFC 79 thread. He trains with a snorkel to limit his oxygen supply.

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Check out Wanderlei Silva’s training. There is a link on the UFC 79 thread. He trains with a snorkel to limit his oxygen supply.[/quote]

Interesting. Limited oxygen supply increases dependence on the anaerobic energy pathway. It’s for whole body anaerobic endurance I guess, not for annihilating muscle.

[quote]undeadlift wrote:
I never meant this thread to be a discussion on the toxicity of oxygen. Haha…

MC sp3 wrote:
Interesting. If you supplemented O2 would the homeostatic response be a diminished anaerobic capacity?

Why do you think would it diminish anaerobic capacity? Maybe you meant aerobic capacity?[/quote]

Nope I meant anaerobic. I was wondering if a greater Partial pressure of O2 would allow for the body’s use of aerobic metabolic pathways for tasks that normally exceed aerobic capacity and require anaerobic metabolism. If the first premise is true then the shift away from the anaerobic path for a task that typically relies on it (ie. high intensity weight training) could possibly diminish anaerobic work capacity through normal homeostatic response since that pathway is no longer being trained.

Sorry for the rambling answer. The whole question is academic and probably inappropriate for this thread.

BTW, regarding the earlier reference to blood doping; there are two common methods. One can either take EPO or the subject can centrifuge their blood separating the blood solids from the plasma. The concentrated blood solids (rich in red blood cells) is later re-injected prior to competition. Or one can do it the hard way and just train at high altitude. All of these methods will increase RBC’s. But blood doping is extremely dangerous. The chances of a fatal clot are very real and the risks are far greater than those for most other performance enhancing drugs.

[quote]MC sp3 wrote:
undeadlift wrote:
I never meant this thread to be a discussion on the toxicity of oxygen. Haha…

MC sp3 wrote:
Interesting. If you supplemented O2 would the homeostatic response be a diminished anaerobic capacity?

Why do you think would it diminish anaerobic capacity? Maybe you meant aerobic capacity?

Nope I meant anaerobic. I was wondering if a greater Partial pressure of O2 would allow for the body’s use of aerobic metabolic pathways for tasks that normally exceed aerobic capacity and require anaerobic metabolism. If the first premise is true then the shift away from the anaerobic path for a task that typically relies on it (ie. high intensity weight training) could possibly diminish anaerobic work capacity through normal homeostatic response since that pathway is no longer being trained.

Sorry for the rambling answer. The whole question is academic and probably inappropriate for this thread.

BTW, regarding the earlier reference to blood doping; there are two common methods. One can either take EPO or the subject can centrifuge their blood separating the blood solids from the plasma. The concentrated blood solids (rich in red blood cells) is later re-injected prior to competition. Or one can do it the hard way and just train at high altitude. All of these methods will increase RBC’s. But blood doping is extremely dangerous. The chances of a fatal clot are very real and the risks are far greater than those for most other performance enhancing drugs. [/quote]

It’s not too academic. In fact, it can help develop training as we know if a study about it is made.

Anyway, as far as I have learned, the body will deplete its anaerobic energy sources before tapping into aerobic metabolism. In that sense, I don’t think increased oxygen intake would have an effect on anaerobic endurance.

However, I think it would have an effect on aerobic endurance. Because the lungs, blood and heart have to work less in order to bring the same amount of oxygen to the body, they will “slack off” so to speak. A possible side effect of training like this could be decreased RBC count, ultimately leading to lesser aerobic endurance. Decreased oxygen intake would force the body to increase its RBC count, and this could be seen in athletes (as you mentioned) who train in high altitudes.

Knowing these, I think increased oxygen intake is not good for long-term benefits in aerobic endurance, but it is a good tool to use when you need to increase your work capacity at the moment. That’s my two cents for now. Anyone wanna discuss?

“Anyway, as far as I have learned, the body will deplete its anaerobic energy sources before tapping into aerobic metabolism. In that sense, I don’t think increased oxygen intake would have an effect on anaerobic endurance.”

I believe the inverse is true. I’ll have to double check to be sure. Human A&P was a long time ago.

And all any of you had to do was google.

Question - Could humans breath (survive) in at
atmosphere containing pure oxigen?

Yes they could…for a while and then they would begin suffering from oxygen
toxicity which causes a number of serious problems not the least which are
some pretty serious neurological damage.

PF

Sure. At normal atmospheric pressure, it’s fairly dangerous, as ordinary
substances such as clothing become extremely flammable under those
conditions. In the short term, the human body has no problems with a high
concentration of oxygen. In fact, exposure to elevated oxygen pressures is
sometimes even used as a treatment for some diseases, such as gangrene.
Over the long term, some tissues may suffer oxidative damage. I don’t
really know what the long-term health effects are, though.

Richard E. Barrans Jr., Ph.D.
Assistant Director
PG Research Foundation, Darien, Illinois

Breathing pure oxygen is stupid. We need a mix of the gases, not a pure hit of one only. If someone can show me some concrete proof that there is ANY benefit, then I will look at it, but to me it seems like a fad for the foolish and easily led.

Here’s a link that some of you might find interesting.

Cool link Sxio. However, I wanted to keep oxygen toxicity out of the discussion and just focus on increased oxygen intake during training. One can inrease oxygen intake by having a higher ratio of oxygen (ie. 60%) and it doesn’t have to be 100%.

Anyway, I don’t know any studies concerning training with increased oxygen, but it would be interesting if one will be made in the future. They experimented once with steroids. I don’t see why they can’t do the same for oxygen.

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
Oxygen is not toxic for you. Divers do breathe pure oxygen. Tech divers use it for decompression, and it becomes toxic at 19 feet, not 13 meters.

The only reason it becomes toxic is because its being breathed under pressure and the partial pressure reaches 1.6 ata, our bodies limit.

Divers will also breathe it on the surface if they are suspected of having decompression sickness.

That said, divers breathing nitrox and pure O2 do have to monitor their partial pressures and time to keep their oxygen exposure to their lungs to a safe limit. So yes, oxygen can potentially damage ones lungs when breathed under pressure, but its way longer than “a few shallow breaths.”

Patients in hospitals breathe pure oxygen if they need to. Athletes breathe oxygen on the sidelines to help them catch their breath if need be.

Where the hell did you read that breathing pure oxygen is toxic?[/quote]

Oxygen is certainly not toxic at surface pressure. Who actually dives on pure oxygen and why? As opposed to being treated with it at surface for suspected decompression sickeness. Just curious. Nothing I’ve heard of and I’m a certified dive master. Sorry to the OP for the tangent.

[quote]jsbrook wrote:
Oxygen is certainly not toxic at surface pressure. Who actually dives on pure oxygen and why? As opposed to being treated with it at surface for suspected decompression sickeness. Just curious. Nothing I’ve heard of and I’m a certified dive master. Sorry to the OP for the tangent.[/quote]

Are you a tech diver as well?

[quote]undeadlift wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
Oxygen is certainly not toxic at surface pressure. Who actually dives on pure oxygen and why? As opposed to being treated with it at surface for suspected decompression sickeness. Just curious. Nothing I’ve heard of and I’m a certified dive master. Sorry to the OP for the tangent.

Are you a tech diver as well?[/quote]

No. This is why I’m curious. Most technical diving seems to be done at deeper depths. I had thought oxygen toxicity occurs at 13 meters. If it indeed occurs at 19 ft as someone said, it would seem even less useful for tech diving. I suppose some applications of technical diving might be done closer to the surface. But most technical divers also use rebreathers which allows you to stay under almost indefinitely. Certainly much longer than air, nitrox, or pure oxygen would allow. So, I really can’t imagine a useful application.

Incresed oxygen means more free radicals and more genetic damage to mitochondria who are highly sensitive to free radicals.

More mitocondria damaged means less ATP output… less ATP, less muscular contraction.

I remember that someone cited a study showing lack of oxygen in the muscle as a step or condition to muscle growth.

On another note… i think tabatas are supposed to make you feel this way arent they?
I mean if you are ok after tabatas or twenty rep squats was it really a effort that elicits physiological change?

[quote]jsbrook wrote:
undeadlift wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
Oxygen is certainly not toxic at surface pressure. Who actually dives on pure oxygen and why? As opposed to being treated with it at surface for suspected decompression sickeness. Just curious. Nothing I’ve heard of and I’m a certified dive master. Sorry to the OP for the tangent.

Are you a tech diver as well?

No. This is why I’m curious. Most technical diving seems to be done at deeper depths. I had thought oxygen toxicity occurs at 13 meters. If it indeed occurs at 19 ft as someone said, it would seem even less useful for tech diving. I suppose some applications of technical diving might be done closer to the surface. But most technical divers also use rebreathers which allows you to stay under almost indefinitely. Certainly much longer than air, nitrox, or pure oxygen would allow. So, I really can’t imagine a useful application.[/quote]

To answer your first question: no one actually “dives” on pure oxygen, they decompress on pure oxygen.

Yes, almost all tech diving is done at deeper than recreational diving. You obviously wouldnt use nitrox going deeper than 130ft, so you would either dive air (not the best idea) or trimix (your best option for open circuit diving.)

Deep diving obviously has smaller no decompression time limits than shallow diving, and keeping your dive mix the same (lets use air: 21% oxygen, 79% nitrogen) you’re going to build up a decompression requirement faster at a deeper depth than at a shallow depth.

Tech divers plan their dive knowing that they’re going to pass no deco time limits. After their “dive,” they ascend into shallower waters to decompress and let the nitrogen dissolve out of solution in the blood. Tech divers carry their primary dive gas blend usually in doubles on their back, and then deco stage bottles filled with a gas blend higher in oxygen content. An example would be 50% oxygen/50% nitrogen, that they’ll breath at say 60 feet for X amount of time, then will ascend to ~15 feet and breath 100% oxygen to get rid of nitrogen even faster.

A rebreather is just a whole new ballgame. The things are unbeleivable. Its basically diving with a nitrox blending station on your back, and a seemingly bottomless air supply.

I really dont mean to be a dick, and I dont intend to… but you’re a certified DM and havent heard of accelerated decompresion?

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
undeadlift wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
Oxygen is certainly not toxic at surface pressure. Who actually dives on pure oxygen and why? As opposed to being treated with it at surface for suspected decompression sickeness. Just curious. Nothing I’ve heard of and I’m a certified dive master. Sorry to the OP for the tangent.

Are you a tech diver as well?

No. This is why I’m curious. Most technical diving seems to be done at deeper depths. I had thought oxygen toxicity occurs at 13 meters. If it indeed occurs at 19 ft as someone said, it would seem even less useful for tech diving. I suppose some applications of technical diving might be done closer to the surface. But most technical divers also use rebreathers which allows you to stay under almost indefinitely. Certainly much longer than air, nitrox, or pure oxygen would allow. So, I really can’t imagine a useful application.

To answer your first question: no one actually “dives” on pure oxygen, they decompress on pure oxygen.

Yes, almost all tech diving is done at deeper than recreational diving. You obviously wouldnt use nitrox going deeper than 130ft, so you would either dive air (not the best idea) or trimix (your best option for open circuit diving.)

Deep diving obviously has smaller no decompression time limits than shallow diving, and keeping your dive mix the same (lets use air: 21% oxygen, 79% nitrogen) you’re going to build up a decompression requirement faster at a deeper depth than at a shallow depth.

Tech divers plan their dive knowing that they’re going to pass no deco time limits. After their “dive,” they ascend into shallower waters to decompress and let the nitrogen dissolve out of solution in the blood. Tech divers carry their primary dive gas blend usually in doubles on their back, and then deco stage bottles filled with a gas blend higher in oxygen content. An example would be 50% oxygen/50% nitrogen, that they’ll breath at say 60 feet for X amount of time, then will ascend to ~15 feet and breath 100% oxygen to get rid of nitrogen even faster.

A rebreather is just a whole new ballgame. The things are unbeleivable. Its basically diving with a nitrox blending station on your back, and a seemingly bottomless air supply.

I really dont mean to be a dick, and I dont intend to… but you’re a certified DM and havent heard of accelerated decompresion?

[/quote]

What do you mean? Of course I know all about decompresion and nitrox and trimix. And tech divers are not the only ones to used staged decompression, either. We also use multiple decompression stops for deep dives. I did not know the exact percentage of mix common in use for tech diving, but I knew that it was higher that the 36% nitrox we often use for commerical diving. My only question was ‘who dives on pure oxygen and for what purpose?’ And apparently the answer is nobody. Apparently, some tech divers breathe pure oxygen at their last decompression stop. So, while, I know about decompression diving obviously, I guess I don’t know about accelerated decompression in the sense you are talking about. This is interesting to me and why I asked the question. But it has no real application for my own diving. Tech diving and commerical diving are very different animals.

[quote]irongutted wrote:
Incresed oxygen means more free radicals and more genetic damage to mitochondria who are highly sensitive to free radicals.

More mitocondria damaged means less ATP output… less ATP, less muscular contraction.

I remember that someone cited a study showing lack of oxygen in the muscle as a step or condition to muscle growth.

On another note… i think tabatas are supposed to make you feel this way arent they?
I mean if you are ok after tabatas or twenty rep squats was it really a effort that elicits physiological change?[/quote]

Aren’t the free radicals thing long-term effects? They don’t happen overnight right?

I think CT (in his “3 ways to grow” series) mentioned the study on less oxygen increasing muscle growth. The key here is to keep tension in the muscle you wanna hit so blood will not flow in it, not to hold your breath, making it more applicable to isolation stuff. He also in another instance (in his “Gironda” article maybe) says that work done and training density also have effects on growth, so an increased oxygen intake may help especially in long compound sets.

As for Tabtas, you’re right. Tabata is meant to condition aerobic capacity and anaerobic endurance, so increased oxygen intake will defeat the purpose. In 20-rep squats, I’m not sure because it’s more of a whole-body hypertrophy exercise than a conditioning exercise. In this case, increased oxygen intake might help finish them faster, increasing training density.

Hang on, wouldn’t doing the OPPOSITE be more beneficial to make you a better athlete?

By breathing in air of a LOWER oxygen content you and training your body to become much more efficient. Athletes use this trick all the time by training a high altitude, hypobaric chambers etc.

Or for a far easier solution, why not just train your cardiovascular system more so you WON’T run out of breath doing 20-rep squats and drop-sets etc? After all, that is making you a better athlete rather than relying on external oxygen supply.

[quote]IBMS wrote:
Hang on, wouldn’t doing the OPPOSITE be more beneficial to make you a better athlete?

By breathing in air of a LOWER oxygen content you and training your body to become much more efficient. Athletes use this trick all the time by training a high altitude, hypobaric chambers etc.

Or for a far easier solution, why not just train your cardiovascular system more so you WON’T run out of breath doing 20-rep squats and drop-sets etc? After all, that is making you a better athlete rather than relying on external oxygen supply.[/quote]

What you’re saying is right, but in a different context. What I’m trying to bring here is using increased oxygen intake to increase muscular work capacity for the moment. I mentioned before that lowering oxygen intake during conditioning sessions (even conditioning in general) is the way to go, and it will definitely help 20-rep squats in the long run. Hence, increasing oxygen intake should not be a conditioning technique but a work-capacity-for-the-moment-technique, similar to NOX in a drag race (not the perfect analogy though).