Huffing for your Health
While water is an essential element to life that can be found for free most everywhere you look that does not stop industry from turning it into a profitable commodity. There is a whole aisle at the store dedicated to bottled water in a variety of forms and while some of us are too cheap to splurge on fancy water it still manages to be a 283-billion-dollar global industry. With that in mind it was only a matter of time before we circled fully around an went full Spaceballs selling air in a can.
Boost Oxygen is the most popular brand of OTC pure oxygen in a can. I have noticed these popping up at a variety of retailers during covid. Compressed pure oxygen available in a variety of flavors and small enough to fit in your purse.
Oxygen as a medical treatment has been around forever and is incredibly effective in patients who have trouble breathing or maintaining their oxygen saturation on room air. Normally a prescription is needed to supply Oxygen tanks which can be large and obtrusive while also a fire hazard. To improve access modern portable oxygen concentrators have been developed and now are small enough to fit in a backpack. Monitoring of your oxygen saturation can be accomplished quickly and easily by using a pulse oximeter or smartwatch. This is an excellent tool to use especially when sick at home with a respiratory illness and wondering when to seek professional care, being unable to maintain a steady oxygen saturation is your seek medical care now sign.
Like all therapies under the proper conditions oxygen makes a ton of sense, but how about just as a supplement or to enhance athletic performance? Oxygen supplementation is routinely used by mountain climbers when exploring extreme elevations so if it’s good enough for them why not for you? One man’s stairs are another man's mountain, and the thing oxygen supplementation has been shown to do is increase the V02 Max for a brief period. Still the human respiratory system is designed to match your oxygen supply with demand and if you need more oxygen your respiration rate increases to provide it and auxiliary oxygen should only be necessary in extreme environments. For the average healthy person oxygen concentration is not the rate limiting step and if the athletic benefits were that great, we would see it all over the sidelines of professional sports. They are missing a big marketing angle here and a NASCAR sponsorship practically writes itself.
The reality is that if you truly need supplemental oxygen the concentrators are your best bet, but these O2 cans are a perfectly safe and interesting product. They may have a diagnostic function as well to help identify elderly patients who are not currently receiving therapy but may benefit from it. Hyperbaric Oxygen therapy has always had a place in the training regimen for world class athletes, but recent studies are showing its effectiveness against a variety of age-related cognitive concerns.
Jacob Hyatt Pharm D.
Father of three, Husband, Pharmacist, Realtor, Landlord, Independent Health, and Medicine Reporter
https://substack.com/discover/pharmacoconuts
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Further reading and references
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32548235/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11581334/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32630465/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36018403/
https://www.verywellhealth.com/top-portable-oxygen-concentrators-915001
