Over the
past few months DZ has made an effort to put more posts on this blog, after a
long period of neglect. But looking back over my more recent posts they all
look a bit repetitive, and stale. I’ve simply run out of things to say.
This
coincides with the fact that I have finally taken my retirement, and my
interest in medicine is changing in perspective, from provider to recipient.
And of
course blogging, as a form of communication is becoming distinctly passe.
And so this will be my last post, although I will leave the blog here for a while yet.
Wow, does someone from the international court read DZ blog???!!!
"International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Russian President Putin" on YouTube"
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
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.
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.
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!
