Does drinking oxygenated water and sucking from an oxygen tank like pro athletes do cause oxidation and cell damage? - PaleoHacks.com

Does drinking oxygenated water and sucking from an oxygen tank like pro athletes do cause oxidation and cell damage?

2011-05-10T15:00:33Z

It's all the rage. Molecularly bound oxygen water. Oxygen tanks. Oxygen rooms. Athletes do it. Celebrities do it.

We all know that oxidated cells can be damaging.

So why do people believe in intentionally sucking in more oxygen other than just breathing.

Are they wrong? Or is it safe because that oxygen intake does not reach the cellular level?

For reference, here are some links that promote oxygen water:

http://perfectwaterreviews.com/

http://www.atmayogi.com/node/938

http://www.livestrong.com/article/29289-oxygen-water-benefits/

Answer by Olivia for Does drinking oxygenated water and sucking from an oxygen tank like pro athletes do cause oxidation and cell damage?

2011-05-10T15:20:49Z

I wouldn't worry about oxidative damage from oxygen supplementation. Generally, inhaling oxygen at a higher-than-normal concentration is ineffective at best as extra oxygen won't make a difference in the amount of oxygen available to your body (in healthy people, at normal atmospheric pressure, etc.). Oxygenated water is a complete scam, unless you have gills I suppose. Having said that I suppose it is possible that there might be in increase in oxidative cell damage, I won't make a definitive statement because I have never seen information regarding this. Nothing i know about the dangers of too much oxygen has mentioned that effect, however.

Answer by miked for Does drinking oxygenated water and sucking from an oxygen tank like pro athletes do cause oxidation and cell damage?

2011-05-10T17:16:40Z

1 - Oxygenated water is a scam. What does "molecularly bound oxygen water" mean? Water is H2O, and that's it. The amount of oxygen dissolved in water is just a function of the Keq(T) which is shown here (http://docs.engineeringtoolbox.com/documents/841/oxygen_solubility_fresh_sea_water.pdf) 1 bar is about the pressure at sea level. You can see there that room temperature (20C) there's about 1 mg of oxygen dissolved in every liter of water. If you increase the pressure, you can get more in there, but as soon as you open the water bottle it'll come out. It's the same phenomenon when you open a bottle of soda, all of the dissolved CO2 comes out when it's open to atmospheric pressure. So that's a complete scam.

2 - There are two ways to breath more oxygen, one is to take oxygen like you say with a mask (e.g., what paramedics give you or what would fall down from the ceiling in an airplane). What this does is give you a locally more concentrated amount of oxygen, however the pressure of oxygen is the same, it's whatever it is outside (sea level, e.g.) so what matters is the Keq(P) of binding oxygen in your lungs to the hemoglobin in the blood. I don't have that plot handy, so I can't put it here, but when breathing oxygen the only thing that matters is the pressure which changes the equilibrium of bound/non bound hemoglobin.

The other way to get more oxygen is to go into a hyperbaric chamber which physically increases the pressure so that you can get more oxygen bound to hemoglobin. This will bind more oxygen to your hemoglobin. I used to work for a company that made the oxygen sensors they put on your fingers when you're in the hospital (pulse oximeter). They often needed subjects to calibrate the sensors, so we would go into a room wearing a pulse oximeter on each finger and then they'd change the pressure and measure how much oxygen was bound to hemoglobin. I live at 5,000 ft, so at that low pressure, 95% of my hemoglobin is bound to oxygen. At sea level it's 98%, and then they'd simulate pressures until I got down to 70% (which, for me, was about 15,000 ft equivalent) - kinda fun to get all light headed at work!. But anyway, I'm just mentioning that to illustrate how pressure changes the amount of oxygen bound to hemoglobin. Not local concentration of oxygen.

Now, back to your oxidative damage question. It's kind of a bad terminology that we use the term oxidative damage or "oxidation". The reason that the term is there is because of history. The first chemicals that were discovered that did "oxidation" was oxygen. And that was really oxygen radicals (O), not the air we breath, molecular oxygen (O2). However in the 100 plus years we've discovered that many more things are stronger oxidizers than oxygen, however the term "oxidation" has stayed. So oxidation is a type of reaction (loss of electrons) and many things can be oxidizers, oxygen being only one of them.

So what does all of this nonsense mean? Breathing in more molecular oxygen (O2) is going to have negligible effect on how much oxygen is bound to hemoglobin in your blood, so you won't really have more oxygen in there. Oxygen is probably not the main cause of oxidative damage in your body. And finally it's more effective to not have compounds that can be oxidized (PUFA's, e.g.) than it is to attempt to minimize the amount of oxidizer (O2) in your body.

I fear that this isn't as clear as it could be, but I'm at work and can't spend the time to really organize my thoughts. Feel free to ask questions on what's not clear, and I'll try my best to explain it.

[/END CHEMIST RANT]

Answer by bradworks for Does drinking oxygenated water and sucking from an oxygen tank like pro athletes do cause oxidation and cell damage?

2011-05-21T10:24:44Z

What about a non-healthy body? Someone with Congestive Heart Failure. Every time I fly an airplane I am left exhausted for days and even weeks immediately after the trip. I am exhausted and have to sleep asap, for a couple of hours. And this goes on for several days after the flight as well. It has been going on since I got my pacemaker 18 months ago. Ambient air is 21% oxygen, where airplane air has been measured at 16-15% oxygen. Wouldn't this lower level of oxygen have a negative affect on heart patients? Would using a POC on flights help at all? Would this present more oxygen for haemoglobin's to attach to and thus help with this lack of oxygen problem?

Let me know what you think. Brad

Answer by steve for Does drinking oxygenated water and sucking from an oxygen tank like pro athletes do cause oxidation and cell damage?

2012-10-09T22:49:58Z

In my opinion oxygen can be absorbed by the stomach. And water can have more or less oxygen in it. Cooking foods causes more oxygen to evaporate from it. Raw foods contain more oxygen. And there are many ways to oxygenate water. link text