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Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
21–30 of 177 posts
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#22dumb question -- is it not possible to just directly oxygenate blood? like what stops having a special IV that takes blood out, oxygenates it, and puts it back in?
Not a dumb question. What you've just described is an ECMO machine ("extracorporeal membrane oxygenation", related to the surgical machines oft known as a heart-and-lung machine). The act of putting the patient on it is called putting them "on bypass" and involves cutting through some of the most major blood vessels in the body, administration of large doses of heparin as a blood thinner, and a team of about ten to twenty people to ensure that they don't die. It's a major operation. After a while the mechanical stress of the pump causes blood cells to be sheared and lyse, causing haemolysis, which would otherwise be fatal if not replaced.
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#23One limitation I’ve seen on this is that the same mechanism can’t remove carbon dioxide, so this is limited to supplemental oxygen in like a surgery or emergency scenario vs a long-term alternative to say a tracheotomy.
Indeed. Something people always forget is that hypoxia is bad, but hypercapnia is worse (insert references here to the spiral of death, etc)
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#24This kind of makes me wonder if diving suits are going to include emergency buttplugs in the future.
At one point in time, they would have, had they existed at all: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31283950/ "Intra-rectal tobacco insufflation as a resuscitation method for drowning victims: A gold-standard in the 18th century"
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#25Poor mice
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#26> [...] to help save human lives when standard ventilation methods are unavailable, as for example, during the recent coronavirus pandemic.
The tragedy of our era is how Science forgot about the antidote to oxygen toxicity in the 1950's.
While sometimes oxygenation and ventilation are useful, long-term use always accelerates deterioration. I knew a guy who lasted about a month on the breathing machines before giving up his ghost.
https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/10.1513/AnnalsATS.202005-405...
https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat...
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#27One limitation I’ve seen on this is that the same mechanism can’t remove carbon dioxide, so this is limited to supplemental oxygen in like a surgery or emergency scenario vs a long-term alternative to say a tracheotomy.
Indeed. Something people always forget is that hypoxia is bad, but hypercapnia is worse (insert references here to the spiral of death, etc)
Of particular note: hypoxia is painless, only hypercapnia (too much CO2 in the blood) hurts.
This is why inert gasses can be quite dangerous to be around, you won't get the "I'm suffocating" feeling at all, you just get lightheaded and die.
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#28This reminds me of the scene in The Abyss where the rat is forced to breathe in oxygen-rich perfluorocarbons[1]. I think this idea of introducing oxygen through perfluorocarbons has been explored but not sure it’s made much headway in humans to date [2]. This paper seems like a clever idea to introduce the liquid anally where oxygen can diffuse through the linings, and to also use same liquid (because of its viscosit…
I had the exact same though - this could make the suits a reality - providing that the traveller does not need to take large doses of morphine to deal with the pain or are dosed with amyl nitrite.
I bet you would be "gassy" for weeks on end - with a dangerous combination of both pure oxygen and methane - sounds like a party to me.
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#29dumb question -- is it not possible to just directly oxygenate blood? like what stops having a special IV that takes blood out, oxygenates it, and puts it back in?
I'm not advocating it, but intravenous ozone is a treatment offered by some alternative medical practitioners, as is rectal ozone.
After some research, it seems like ozone is a last resort treatment in non-evidence-based medicine when vitamins and magical crystals can not cure the cancer or HIV. At least, that is what the first page of Google results tells me. So I would also not advocate it.
Re: Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
#30One limitation I’ve seen on this is that the same mechanism can’t remove carbon dioxide, so this is limited to supplemental oxygen in like a surgery or emergency scenario vs a long-term alternative to say a tracheotomy.
Not necessarily as limiting as you might think. At altitude, people urinate more starting well before you are in any danger of altitude sickness because the air is too thin to breathe out waste gasses rapidly enough and the body compensates by shunting them out through the kidneys.