#141

I think it was £33 per 1-h session. But that was a discount for first-time users. And other places were way more expensive. I stopped after 3 sessions as I didn’t feel good during the third session at 15% FiO2. I wonder if the sensor had an issue. The clinic was also far from my home. I need to find one that is closer and try again.

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#142

If this really works and has profound benefits, isn’t there some kind of home device option? Do you need a nurse to be always present?

#143

There are many home devices: Oxygen, hypoxia and hyperoxia - #86 by adssx

You don’t need a nurse, they’re super easy to set up and they automatically stop if anything goes wrong.

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#144

That’s very expensive. But in the end it’s only money. I mean big improvements are worth almost any money.

#145

Hypoxico is the main supplier in the US it seems, and their machines are on the order of $2000-4000. They do not appear to have the option for hyperoxia, so a separate machine would be needed if you wanted to go that route.

They also have a nice chart of oxygen percentage as a function of altitude. The spreadsheet version on their website also has values for the partial pressure of oxygen at each altitude.

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#146

Hyperoxia at normobaric pressures is quite cheap.

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#147

Hmm. At that price it looks tempting. I kind of think exercising at high altitude might be healthy.

#148

Yes there are cheaper ones for instance for €2.6k (used in the PD trial): Altitude generator | Altitude training at home | b-Cat High Altitude

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#149

It seems that inhaling low levels of carbon monoxide (CO) is much more efficient at eliciting hypoxic responses than normal hypoxia due to better binding to hemoglobin than O2. [paper].

Carbon monoxide (CO) is an important endogenous molecule that can also be inhaled (Prabhakar, 1998). It has long been established that CO has an Hb binding ability greater than that of O2. Therefore, when an individual inhales CO, this can be considered to induce mild hypoxia in vivo, as carboxy-hemoglobin (HbCO) is incapable of carrying enough O2 and there is reduced amount of O2 bound to Hb and delivery to active muscle. As persistent CO inhalation reduces Hb ability to carry O2, acute exposure to small doses of CO could, in theory, induce similar performance benefits to that of altitude training. Previous research showed that increased ventilation in mild exercise rapidly removes CO from the blood in humans (Zavorsky et al., 2012). The clearance half-time in males is slower in comparison to their female counterparts due to their larger tHb (Zavorsky et al., 2014). If CO can enhance sporting performance, a sample of well-trained male individuals, who can have up to a 37% higher tHb in comparison to untrained athletes, (Kjellberg et al., 1949) is a suitable subject population as CO can remain in the blood for prolonged periods of time. Hence, it is hypothesized that an appropriate dosage of inhaled CO might have sufficient time to provoke mild hypoxia before clearance, causing similar physiological adaptive responses to that of altitude training.

For it to work, it may require combination with exercise:

Since a periodic inhalation of small amounts of CO at sea level might have potential to simulate the hypoxic effects of altitude and increase tHb mass and enhance maximal aerobic power, it is worthwhile to investigate if CO inhalation could offer a more convenient and less expensive method of improving exercise performance. In a study, by Fröscher and Uhlmann (2016) 10 days of intermittent, low-dose CO inhalation at rest did not lead to improvements in Hb mass or aerobic peak power, but to the best of our knowledge combined inhalation of CO and exercise training intervention has not been performed. Consequently, the aim of this study was to examine the effect of inhaling a small amount of CO on EPO secretion and total hemoglobin mass (tHb), running economy and maximal aerobic power in a combination with treadmill training in well trained young adults.

The protocol only requires 2 minutes (!) of breathing low-dose CO:

Twelve male college student athletes, who were well-trained soccer players, participated. They performed a 4-week treadmill-training program, five times a week. Participants were randomly assigned into an experimental group with inhaling CO (INCO) (1 mL/kg body weight for 2 min) in O2 (4 L) before all training sessions and a control group without inhaling CO (NOCO). CO and EPO concentrations in venous blood were first measured acutely at the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th hour after INCO, and total hemoglobin mass (tHb), running economy and VO2max were measured before and after the 4 weeks training intervention.

They got an impressive 40% increase in EPO, and an increase in VO2 max:

HbCO% increased from 0.7 to 4.4% (P < 0.05) after 1 h of CO inhalation and EPO increased from 1.9 to 2.7 mIU/mL after 4 h post CO inhalation (P < 0.05) acutely before the intervention. After the training, the tHb and VO2max in the INCO group increased significantly by 3.7 and 2.7%, respectively, while no significant differences were observed in the NOCO condition. O2 uptake at given submaximal speeds declined by approximately 4% in the INCO group.

This paper shows similar results:

For more typical hypoxia protocols, this compares to intermittent and continuous protocols that take anywhere from 45-120 minutes to complete:

  • 8x4 minutes hypoxia at 80% SaO2 (45% increase in EPO)
  • 1 hours continuous hypoxia at 80% SaO2 (85% increase in EPO)

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10.1152/japplphysiol.00941.2020

Here’s a nice article about the controversy of CO rebreathing in cycling:

CO rebreathing machine. It does not look cheap:

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#150

Yes, that’s why smokers have significantly lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. There is an ongoing trial of CO in PD. Some hypoxia trials also combine it to CO. What are other (healthier) ways than smoking to get 2 min of low-dose CO?

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#151

The thing about breathing CO is that it reacts with haemoglobin to create carboxyhemoglobin that leads to tissue hypoxia for a while. I am not myself a fan of hypoxia although I recognise that it has some positives. If I were to try hypoxia I would prefer to use a mask rather than disabling haemoglobin.

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