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The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#21

Post by jjk166 »

slau wrote: post #8
mholm wrote: post #4

A 10% increase in reaction time could be fairly significant in many sports. Could we start seeing football players, sprinters, or baseball players breathing from masks between plays?

While scuba diving, nitrogen narcosis stops the instant you ascend a bit (the typical recommendation is to reduce the ambient pressure by one atmosphere). I don’t think there is anything in this study that indicates the effect lasts more than a few minutes after exposure ceases.

Depending on exactly what one's doing, it's easily conceivable that the exposure can be concurrent with the activity. Maybe not football, where lugging around a compressed gas tank on the field is likely impractical if not dangerous, but a sport like Formula 1 or many E-sports would likely be quite conducive for an individual, and other sports like wrestling or swimming could probably be done entirely in a room with a modified atmosphere.

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#22

Post by Raidion »

mholm wrote: post #4

A 10% increase in reaction time could be fairly significant in many sports. Could we start seeing football players, sprinters, or baseball players breathing from masks between plays?

You already see this. Google "NFL oxygen masks". I'm sort of surprised I haven't heard about it in the context of shorter physical sports: I'd wonder what effect it would have on an 100m/200m/400m time or shotput distance to oxygen saturate like free divers do.

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#23

Post by Luc »

[1975]. Funny concluding paragraph: "Both theories of anesthetic action and the evidence cited in this report suggest that the nitrogen concentration in atmospheric air causes a measurable performance decrement in man, that the "nitrogen blanket" effect suggested by Miles[10] is a real phenomenon, and that human history has proceeded under partial narcosis. Perhaps this explains the current state of world affairs"

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#24

Post by dragonwriter »

convolvatron wrote: post #20
FriedPickles wrote: post #12

I wonder if there's a cheaper filler gas we could use besides He. Perhaps methane, hydrogen, or acetylene, though they're quite flammable.

I don't know if you've ever taken a good whiff of acetylene, but I would hate to have to live off it (maybe is it truly odorless, and its just common contamination?)

My understanding is that the characteristc smell of industrial acetylene is a result of sulfur compounds added as odorants (a common practice with odorless gases that create hazards, to make them noticeable.)

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#25

Post by FreeFull »

gorkish wrote: post #18
jlawson wrote: post #7

I wonder how much it would cost to fill my office with helium/oxygen mix to maximize my productivity. Would sound odd during calls, though!

Although it's clear you are being facetious, let's see where it goes. I would surmise the best and most economical gas mix to breathe long term at ambient pressure would be somewhere between 80/20 and 75/25 mix of Argon/Oxygen.

Argon wouldn't work, it has a stronger narcotic effect than Nitrogen

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#27

Post by kaibee »

mholm wrote: post #4

A 10% increase in reaction time could be fairly significant in many sports. Could we start seeing football players, sprinters, or baseball players breathing from masks between plays?

Forget sports. I want my surgeon to be on a heliox mix when he's doing a complicated operation on me.

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#29

Post by topaz0 »

superkuh wrote: post #3

The action potential is an electrical manipulation of reversible abrupt phase changes in the lipid bilayer. Normally the lipid bilayer is in a liquid phase but the the switching out of monovalent sodium for bivalent calcium ions changes the number of phospholipid carboxyl head groups each ion is electrostatically associated with. This changes the heat capacity and causes the lipid membrane to become a solid/gel phase…

Worth noting that, while this model has been around for a few decades, it does not have many adherents among neuroscientists. Which is not to say that it is wrong necessarily, just that I wouldn't want readers to get the wrong idea that this is a consensus view.
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