Could this completely obviate tracheotomies and ventilators?
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And yeah, it turns out that mammals can absorb oxygen through their butts. Weird
My vague understanding is that oxygen intake is a big limiting factor in aerobic activities hence measurement of things like vo2max in sports science. ‘Blood doping’ has similar benefits though it’s also about having more blood period.
It seems unlikely that one could take a big enough suppository to help in a meaningful way in a marathon, but in a middle distance race lasting only a few minutes…
Different story for apnea sports like freediving where a little bit of extra oxygen goes a long way.
Edit: goodells explained it better!
Anecdatally, I have encountered multiple people with congenital capabilities re enteral locution via anus.
Wishfully, training astronauts for enteral ventilation via anus during extravehicular activities that involve writing an ongoing Prince song would be called “EVA EVA 4EVA.”
DOI: 10.1016/j.medj.2025.100887
But oxygen dissolved or otherwise absorbed in a material is fair game. Even without anything fancy, water can contain about 1% free oxygen, which is 8x what you could do with gaseous oxygen (which is in turn 5x what atmospheric mixture has).
And there are a lot of chemical reactions that can produce oxygen much better than 1%. The trick is going to be avoiding heat changes.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-secret-to-turtle-hi...
Much better in every way.
This is being talked about in the ballpark of partial assistance during severe respiratory failure so more like delaying organ damage during a crisis than boosting peak athletic performance.
> “This is the first human data and the results are limited solely to demonstrating the safety of the procedure and not its effectiveness,” said co-author Takanori Takebe of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the University of Osaka in Japan. “But now that we have established tolerance, the next step will be to evaluate how effective the process is for delivering oxygen to the bloodstream.”
If it’s proven to be effective and can help avoid ventilators for (at least some) people, it would be a huge breakthrough and improvement in the quality of life for the patient and for their close ones.
Which sounds like a fake urban legend, but I would never discount want an addict is capable of doing.
most of this was just done because drinks were too expensive or hard to get for high schoolers and they had to optimise their alcohol supplies
Wow. TIL...
Now I'm wondering if I should get certified to dive with an anal rebreather too.
So this is about oxygen delivery specifically, but I can't help but wonder if whoever came up with the old idea was onto something...
In this case it's high schoolers, half of whom most likely have no sexual experience but are fully willing to explore their anal cavity, having access to alcohol but not that much access.
They can get drunk off small amounts of alcohol, but it's such a small ration that they are freezing and destroying their limited amount of beer (which most high schoolers hate) to shove up their butts, to get drunk slightly faster? How much frozen beer can one butt fit? Is it really that much better than holding your nose and pounding it in front of your friends? Are high schoolers really going to parties with beer in their butts to maybe get a buzz of two beers from one butt beer because they only have access to one twelve pack, instead of just telling everyone how they are so wasted instead?
one time when i got salmonella, i started reading up on it (believe me, i had nothing better to do) and i postulated a hypothesis: the bacteria starts out being able to (barely) survive in your normal gut biome, but creates sulfur gas in order to thrive, and then once it does, losing that atmosphere kills it.
so i started swallowing massive amounts of air, and laid down so that my head was the lowest point of my body. low tech? yes. stupid? who knows. but i was feeling better on the next day - and normally it takes a week or two to clear out.
n=1, take it with a lump of salt. hopefully sharing this helps someone in some way in the future.
- what's the actual oxygen carrying capacity? If they're up to human trials then I imagine they've already validated this step in animals
- can it also scrub CO2?
Without doing more research, I'm putting most of the probability mass into it being be a small but significant oxygenation aid. Not enough to let us survive without working lungs, but enough to push the odds in emergency situations, while also being harmless. Something like 5% extra survivability for a $100 cost and a sore butt. Well worth it, but not a revolution.
There are also chemoreceptors for oxygen concentration in the circulatory system as well.
I think everything you have said is correct, I just wanted to add a few more details for anyone who is interested.
Additionally, the thoracic stretch receptors are important for respiratory drive, where the lack of expansion of the chest will promote respiration. When a healthy young person holds their breath for short periods, say 30 seconds or so, their blood CO2 and O2 are not much different, but they still will have to fight the instinct to breathe!
On the other hand, maybe it would be fine. The oxygenated fluid would just come out extra dirty sometimes. Also, if you're butt chugging oxygenated fluid all of the time, it's not like solids are going to have time to collect in the colon.
Will oxygenating the otherwise anaerobic environment cause issues with the gut microbiota?
All that apart, I'm guessing this would be used in emergency situations, where a patient is likely already unconscious and could be kept under sedation until transferred to ECMO. Is CO2 buildup dangerous on its own? If so, in what kind of time-frame? What's the upper limit on the additional minutes this therapy could buy?
There is eVNS; external Vagus Nerve Stimulation.
Stimulating the phrenic nerve causes the diaphragm to contract. Stimulating the VNS causes airways to contract.
What devices exist for "diaphragm pacing" and wouldn't that be lower risk than mechanical ventilation?
Makes me wonder if free divers could possibly already cheat by swallowing air, perhaps even pure O2, before dives, to slightly increase maximum time submerged through gut gas exchange. Althought this probably would mess with buyoancy a bit.
In an acute situation where oxygenation isn't sufficient, the imminent threat of anoxic brain injury and end-organ dysfunction is the concern. Measures would obviously be taken to correct that, up to and including rapidly sedating and paralyzing a patient in order to mechanically ventilate them with an increased fraction of inhaled oxygen and/or additional pressure (PEEP) to increase the surface area in the alveoli available for gas exchange.
Respiratory acidosis (i.e. the accumulation of CO2 and acidification of the blood due to inadequate breathing) is generally not harmful on its own, the concern there is just adequate oxygenation. However there are metabolic causes of acidosis, usually due to lactic acid accumulation, which lead to end-organ dysfunction because lots of enzymatic reactions in the body expect a very narrow pH range to work effectively. This occurs over a period of days, though.
If they had this, the would have been able to keep him oxygenated and alive long enough to repair the lung and he might have survived.
I'm sure many others might benefit from this option in an emergency in the future, so I'm glad it's being examined.
So, it sounds like if this works (big if, of course, at this point), sedation + an enema could be a better "bridge" to mechanical ventilation than CPR. That would be amazing (if it works); science fiction stuff.