The Hague

Wow, does someone from the international court read DZ blog???!!!

"International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Russian President Putin" on YouTube"

Thin air scam

 

DZ is going to continue his little thread on Oxygen, and combine it with two of his other favourite themes, scams and lazy journalism.

They’re all together in this little article I came across today about a pseudo medical therapy called “thinAir adaptive oxygen therapy”, described in the article as “groundbreaking”. So what is it? The article doesn’t enlighten. The journalist, Kelsey Maxwell doesn’t seem to have asked that rather important question, or anything else for that matter. Despite describing herself as a “chief  reporter” all she has done is given the providers of the therapy free rein to simply promote it without question.

I’ve had little success in getting this information on the web either, but it seems to involve getting the gullible mark to breathe air which can alternate in Oxygen levels between hyperoxic and hypoxic levels. So what is it supposed to achieve. Everything apparently. Here is a list that I’ve copied.

What are the benefits of thin air?

Restoring health for everybody

• Assists with reducing inflammation in the brain and body.
• Uses all of your oxygen more efficiently.
• Repairs damage to the body (physical and mental wellbeing)
• Regenerates the body on a cellular level.
• Slows the ageing process on a cellular level.
• 100% safe and zero risk to health.

At first glance this looks like a load of steaming, pseudo scientific bullshit, but let’s not be too judgemental. What’s the evidence? Well there isn’t any. At all. A number of sites promoting and selling the therapy have a fair few testimonials from satisfied patients, but, as we all know, these anecdotes don’t constitute evidence, even if they’re genuine. To give a flavour of these testimonials one male claims that the therapy enables him to continue playing football in his forties. Hardly an achievement. Many sports, including quite vigorous sports, have active veterans including people in their 80s. And the thin air practitioners use a lot of sciency words to impress the gullible. So my first impression is correct. It is, in fact, a load of steaming, pseudo scientific bullshit.

In particular I’m sceptical of the claim that the therapy is “100% safe and zero risk to health.” There are, scattered on the slopes of Mount Everest some 200 unretrieved frozen corpses of climbers whose deaths were caused by a combination of hypothermia and hypoxia

 And ask any anaesthetist how they would feel about giving their patient less than 21% Oxygen, even if their very expensive machine would permit them to do such a thing.

To summarise. Human respiratory and cardiovascular physiology is very good at optimising the body’s Oxygen level and delivery, having evolved systems that are sensitive, responsive, robust and, when studied, actually quite beautiful. Those selling this product are totally ignorant of these systems. Or of the potential harmful effects of thin air therapy.

ThinAir adaptive oxygen therapy is undoubtedly a blatant scam, and it’s only a matter of time before someone with a genuine medical condition comes to harm as a result of it. Avoid.

War criminal

 DZ read this article today. How on Earth can it be that Putin is allowed to leave Russia and walk freely in other countries? He's a war criminal, with the blood of thousands on his tyrannical KGB hands. He should be arrested the instant he steps off the plane.

Coincidence?

DZ today came across this article, saying almost exactly the same thing about high Oxygen levels as he wrote in his most recent article. Compare these statements;

"You can kill anything with enough Oxygen"  DZ 7 March

"At high levels, oxygen is toxic to every form of life"  Phys org, 9 March

I'm not saying I've been plagiarised. I am fully aware that the work that went into the article has been months at least in preparation, but it's a coincidence nonetheless.

It seems that hyperoxia is more harmful than moderate levels of hypoxia. DZ is always amused when he observes the degree of panic induced in his anaesthetic colleagues when the patient's saturation drops below 90% despite the fact that everyone in Mexico city walks around on a daily basis with saturations hovering around 80%. And those who make it to the summit of Everest without using bottled oxygen will have saturations as low as 40%, the sort of level that would induce apoplexy in an anaesthetist.

Perhaps Oxygen is over rated!

Hyperbaric Oxygen

If the only hope for the ending of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is dependent on the death of Vladimir Putin, then there is hope that Putin himself may be expediting this with his own stupidity.

This article appears to indicate that Putin is using a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to rejuvenate himself. Oh dear. As Paracelsus pointed out 500 years ago "All things are poison. It is in the dose that they become poisonous". And Oxygen is no exception. Oxygen is nasty toxic stuff, and living organisms live in an uneasy truce with this substance, having evolved mechanisms over the aeons to protect themselves from it's toxicity. You can kill anything with enough Oxygen. This is why Hydrogen Peroxide is an effective bactericidal. 

Ask any intensivist how comfortable they feel when patients require high levels of Oxygen, even at just atmospheric pressure. As far as DZ is aware there are only two therapeutic indications for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, gas gangrene and carbon monoxide poisoning. Other than this the only effect on lifespan with this practice is to likely shorten it. The lethal dose for humans is not well documented, but 3 atmospheres of 100% O2 is probably a very bad idea, potentially causing convulsions and death. Despite this there are however various sites on the internet extolling the virtues of this therapy, which they offer commercially to a gullible public seeking "wellness"

And the consequences of generating a spark in a hyperbaric Oxygen chamber don't bear thinking about.