Breathing Enriched O2 for health

[MikadoWu]

On a general 100 foot dive for 60 minutes, I surface with 900 lbs of 32%. I always thought, hey all the rest of that is going to waste. So couple years ago, I started sipping down on the tank, during my surface intervals. A couple months ago, a doctor was a the boat with me and said that was a pretty smart idea.

So It got me thinking, why not sip the tanks down close to empty while I am chilling at home. There are a lot of O2 therapy chambers out there that people pay for. Our Enriched air is already paid for.

The real question is, is there really any benefits to breathing 32-40% (my typical blends)?

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Thank fully I live in Central Florida, where the air is pretty clean. If I lived back in LA, I think this would be a mute question.

 

[Jeepster]

My DM instructor had some health issues from being slightly bent once rescuing somebody, and used up partial nitrox tanks at the bottom of their pool on a regular basis. I can't prove it helped, but he claimed it did.

 

[boulderjohn]

Breathing enriched air or oxygen on the surface after a dive has been a practice used by many people as a means of enhancing off-gassing during a surface interval. It is mentioned in some technical diving texts. I know an instructor who has his students (and he himself) breathe oxygen for 5 minutes after every dive.

I don't know if it has any other benefit.

 

[Blasto]

So It got me thinking, why not sip the tanks down close to empty while I am chilling at home. There are a lot of O2 therapy chambers out there that people pay for. Our Enriched air is already paid for.
The real question is, is there really any benefits to breathing 32-40% (my typical blends)?

It's certainly good for the surface intervals.

As for breathing it at home... You are already breathing oxygen enriched air when diving, even on air - it's ppO2 that counts, not the %. No one seems to have conclusively connected any health benefits to breathing compressed air in diving so far.

The health effects of ppO2 have been studied and there's no knowledge of health gains from high ppO2 for the general population. High CO2 is bad already at 1.8 times the current open air level (so all but the best-ventilated rooms degrade your mental capabilities), and high ppCO2 often goes together with low ppO2. But on its own, slightly lower PPO2, e.g. in the mountains, can temporarily reduce aerobic performance, but works just fine long-term.

I have some familiarity with oxygen/ozone treatments. They are not part of general medical practice. The opinion is very split on their clinical effectiveness. As far as they go, the name of the game is concentration, from 20-40 mg/L O with what is common, and seems to be a placebo, to 1,000 mg/L with R&D/experimental, which has perceivable physiological effects.

Any of that is far more powerful than the all-O2 oxygen contained in EAN. If there was an effect, you would probably have to stay on EAN full-time over years to measure it. So far there's no conclusive evidence that it would do anything.

 

[scubadada]

Under normal circumstances, hemoglobin is nearly full saturated with oxygen at the usual alveolar pO2 of 100 mmHg. Breathing supplemental oxygen would not be expected to have any beneficial health benefit.

 

[lowviz]

...//... The real question is, is there really any benefits to breathing 32-40% (my typical blends)? ...

@scubadada makes a good point. Continuing that thought, 21% has been around long enough for humans to have evolved in it. So my suspicion is that we have become optimized to that concentration. Permanently changing to a different concentration is likely to have unintended consequences. However, the occasional use of left-over gas seems highly unlikely to cause any harm whatsoever. Have fun.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy | Johns Hopkins Medicine Health Library

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

On a general 100 foot dive for 60 minutes, I surface with 900 lbs of 32%. I always thought, hey all the rest of that is going to waste. So couple years ago, I started sipping down on the tank, during my surface intervals. A couple months ago, a doctor was a the boat with me and said that was a pretty smart idea.

So It got me thinking, why not sip the tanks down close to empty while I am chilling at home. There are a lot of O2 therapy chambers out there that people pay for. Our Enriched air is already paid for.

The real question is, is there really any benefits to breathing 32-40% (my typical blends)?

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Thank fully I live in Central Florida, where the air is pretty clean. If I lived back in LA, I think this would be a mute question.

Hi MikadoWu,

It probably won't hurt you to breathe down your nitrox at home but if you're otherwise healthy, it probably won't be of any benefit either.

Re the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve referenced above: increasing the fraction of inspired O2 won't increase O2 saturation beyond 100% but will increase the partial pressure of dissolved oxygen in the blood.

Be careful what you read about the O2 therapy chambers out there. There are legitimate, evidence-based uses of hyperbaric oxygen therapy but there are also a lot of charlatans. The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society website is a good resource:

HBO Indications - Undersea & Hyperbaric Medical Society

The FDA's stance on medical ozone therapy is linked below.

CFR - Code of Federal Regulations Title 21

Best regards,
DDM

 

[TrimixToo]

It's worth asking someone like @Duke Dive Medicine or Simon Mitchell, but as I understand it I'd want to keep an eye out for the pulmonary toxicity limits, a topic that is rarely if ever interesting for recreational (including technical) divers. O2 can be hazardous out of the water, too...

 

[boulderjohn]

It's worth asking someone like @Duke Dive Medicine or Simon Mitchell, but as I understand it I'd want to keep an eye out for the pulmonary toxicity limits, a topic that is rarely if ever interesting for recreational (including technical) divers. O2 can be hazardous out of the water, too...

According to the old DSAT tables, if you breathe 60% nitrox on the surface, you can only do so for 3 days, after which things start getting risky.

 

[TrimixToo]

According to the old DSAT tables, if you breathe 63% nitrox on the surface, you can only do so for 3 days, after which things start getting risky.

Now, suppose someone is on a week's dive vacation...worth checking the PT tables for repeat exposures over, say, a week if they're going to do this every day? (I have them, somewhere, but it would take an hour to find them.) You never know who's reading this stuff or under what conditions they'll try something. There was a time (happy to go into it privately) when I had to worry about the PT limits for reasons I won't go into in public.