10 ms·
Mammals can absorb oxygen through their intestines
- bluemania 5y agoScuba diving just became more interesting
- bobbylox 5y agobrb submitting the "Diving Suppository" to YC
- jandrese 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqfLxCFdXaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqfLxCFdXaE
- fsloth 5y agoI was thinking of the old aspiration of filling up the lungs of divers with the oxygen carrying fluorocarbon fluid (like in Abyss). It was deemed apparently impractical because it's too hard to breath. Well... you don't need to breathe with this.
- _nalply 5y agoI imagine a butt plug with two hoses, one for oxygenated fluorocarbon input, the other for output, and a cycle where fluid coming out from the butt will needed to be cleaned and re-oxygenated. The input hose could be long enough to reach the cecum (the end of the colon) and perhaps have additional holes to distribute the oxygenated fluid to the whole colon. TMI?
- standardUser 5y agoTwo things really stood out in this article. One is how brutal animal experimentation can be. The other is the opening line.
- annoyingnoob 5y agoIt was the picture that really stood out to me.
- justAnIdea 5y agoI don't think this is that bad as far as animal experimentation goes. Sadly, it can get a lot worse than suffocation.
- GordonS 5y agoI read a lot of medical research papers, and I've been thinking about this recently. Every time I read about a rat being "euthanized" or "sacrificed", when they have neuropathy induced by toxins, when they have limbs amputated, when they have their spine severed... I can't help but pause for a moment and think about that animal. I wonder if there are any good estimates of how many rats, rabbits, dogs and otherwise are maimed and killed each year for medical (or cosmetic) research. Is there, realistically, anything that would change this?
- keiferski 5y ago> It is estimated that the annual use of vertebrate animals—from zebrafish to non-human primates—ranges from tens to more than 100 million.[2] In the European Union, vertebrate species represent 93% of animals used in research, and 11.5 million animals were used there in 2011. By one estimate the number of mice and rats used in the United States alone in 2001 was 80 million.[3] Mice, rats, fish, amphibians and reptiles together account for over 85% of research animals.[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_testing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_testing
- newsbinator 5y agoAfter all this time, I still have no idea how I feel about tortuous animal testing for medical breakthroughs. It's a trolley problem with an unknown number of people on Track A and an unknown number of animals on Track B. I don't even know how I feel about replacing animals in these experiments with human violent offenders. Can we justify experimenting on a known serial killer if the experiment will save a million children's lives in the next 10 years? I don't know. If an alien species were using us for their medical experiments, under the same circumstances and conditions, then what would I say? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
- harveywi 5y agoSo this explains how my scrum master was able to speak about the Agile Manifesto without taking a breath.
- phkahler 5y ago>> So this explains how my scrum master was able to speak about the Agile Manifesto without taking a breath. Well no because to breath the intestines would need air and not be full of $4|7 ;-)
- f6v 5y agoI read it as “scrotum master” at first. Then realized there was no change in meaning.
- genericone 5y ago"My scrum master was just talking out of his ass"
- princesse 5y agoCan't wait to see this in effect during the next Tour de France.
- giardini 5y agoSeems like "exhalation" would become a problem for riders other than the race leader (at the head of the peloton), although perhaps that is already an unaddressed problem.
- jmagaro88 5y agoI guess "blowing smoke up your ass" will no longer have a negative connotation
- ectopod 5y agoIt started off as an allegedly positive thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema
- ihaveajob 5y agoIt's only a matter of time before this is used as a standard performance enhancement trick for endurance sports. Only saying this half-jokingly.
- Ralfp 5y ago„It was found that John Doe took liquid-oxygen enema before run, unfairly improving his performance.”
- huitzitziltzin 5y agoGiven that liquid oxygen boils at about -300 F, if John Doe can finish a race after a liquid oxygen enema he deserves first prize for something!
- chaorace 5y agoPerhaps a Nobel prize?
- pvaldes 5y agoWith an exploratory spirit and a bit of ambition, all records are beatable if you have LOx and a matchbox
- giardini 5y agoI'm stuck between "RocketMan" and a drunken Joe Mulroy lighting a fart in his dormitory room to escape a dead poker hand. Of course, everyone scattered, to avoid the persistent flame hanging onto Mulroy's shorts, if not the fart itself.
- FredPret 5y agoNow you can pant both ways when you run
- dEnigma 5y ago
- antender 5y agoThis article is like reading Gulliver's Travels Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, but as a real-life thing. Can't stop laughing!
- Robotbeat 5y agoDon’t know why you were downvoted; there’s a very similar part to this article in the book, except instead of pigs and mice, it’s dogs. Other parts of that book mention machine-generated texts (with hilarious results). Almost 300 years later, it’s remarkable how relevant much of the lampooning of the sciences (broadly considered) in this book remains!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ACAVJW4H 5y agoWhen can we reasonably expect the “cyclist gets banned from tour de france after committee finds athlete installed enteric oxygenation device in the saddle” headline?
- keiferski 5y agoJust wait until genetic modification becomes available on the black market. Then things will get really interesting.
- rajin444 5y agoMaybe we'll finally start addressing real unearned privilege: genetic. Pro sports players didn't do anything to earn the genetic makeup which accounts for a significant portion of their ability, yet they aren't asked to acknowledge it and take steps to reduce its impact.
- criley2 5y ago>Pro sports players didn't do anything to earn the genetic makeup which accounts for a significant portion of their ability, yet they aren't asked to acknowledge it and take steps to reduce its impact. Big Harrison Bergeron vibes here. "In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic."
- visarga 5y agoIn the equality utopia the beautiful ones would have to wear masks, and the strong ones would have to wear weights. So everyone would be equal
- keiferski 5y agoThis sounds like the opening intro to a dystopian movie.
- ARandomerDude 5y agoI only exhale with my intestines.
- zerealshadowban 5y agobut where does the CO2 go? normally it's exhaled via the lungs
- FiatLuxDave 5y agoGood question. From the original Cell paper at https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(21)00153-7 https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(21)00153-7 Interestingly, the arterial pressure of CO2 tended to be decreased in the l-EVA group, presumably due to the excellent O2 - and CO2-carrying capacity of perfluorochemicals (50 mL O2/dL and 160–210 mL CO2/dL, respectively), while the arterial pH did not change in our experiment. These results indicate that perfluorochemicals also act as an adsorbent for elevated CO2, indicating a need for future follow-up studies of gas exchange mechanisms. So, they speculate that some of it is absorbed by the perflourodecalin.
- newsbinator 5y agoWould this somehow be more protective during suspended animation (e.g. during the re-warming stage) than providing a person oxygen via the lungs?
- geocrasher 5y agoI might get downvoted for this, but here it goes: Lets say that your life depends on intestinal ventilation, and you've got a steady flow of oxygenated fluids going into the uh... places... and you need to go number 2? Is it a race to see how quick you can "go" before you get hypoxic and die? Does the constant flow of oxygenated material flush out any waste? It's like wondering "how does Cat Dog go #2" I suppose. But... really. How does it?
- lallysingh 5y agoI suspect you're fed intravenously while sitting on your air
- stevecat 5y agoI'm a mammal.
- ravenstine 5y agoSo if you're performing CPR, could it increase the chance of survival if someone else performed mouth-to-anus on the person? Maybe in the future first aid kits won't just come with CPR masks but also anal dilators and a brush.
- barbazoo 5y agoOnly if the airway is blocked to a degree that ventilation through the anus would be more effective
- armatav 5y agoNow this is a quality comment on the speculation of new and advanced technology for saving peoples lives.
- harveywi 5y agoIt could be more hygienic than with mouth contact, for example if a bicycle tire pump were used.
- jandrese 5y agoSuch a kit would probably come with a oxygenated liquid enema if the article is to be believed. Even if this is effective it would probably have some pushback from CPR instructors. I'm thinking it would probably be more of a first responder tool. Something in the ambulance.
- swiley 5y agoThere are so many futurama jokes that this article would make possible.
- giardini 5y agoPerhaps some nose clips or a HAZMAT suit?
- SpinsInCircles 5y agoIn the UK we say I was so tired I was breathing out my arse. Maybe phrases come from a deeper understanding of ourselves than we imagine. Or Maybe not :-)
- encryptluks2 5y agoWho new the next-gen oxygen bars would be more akin to fecal transplants?
- pazimzadeh 5y agoI wonder if this causes blooms of facultative anaerobes in the gut (they can use oxygen https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4832419/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4832419/)
- root_axis 5y agoAm I weird for thinking this is a cruel experiment?
- bosswipe 5y agoI was thinking the same, asphyxiating pigs and mice to time how long until they die is just cruel.
- zardo 5y agoI don't understand how suffocating animals to prove they will die can pass an ethics review.
- cratermoon 5y agoNot to mention "intestinal scrubbing".
- Tade0 5y agoI wonder how effective this is in humans? Could someone with e.g. burned lungs be saved using this technique? If so, it sounds like a much cheaper alternative to ECMO in some cases.
- ordu 5y agoIn Russia there is a kid's joke about hedgehog who learned how to breathe with it's ass, then it sat down on a stump and suffocated. I think, kids knew something.
- ghastmaster 5y agoI'm curious which PFC they are using. A cursory search indicates that PFCs are hazardous to our health. Benzene in particular.
- Brentward 5y agoBenzene is not a PFC as it only contains carbon and hydrogen, not the fluorine that puts the F in PFC. According to Wikipedia [1], "fluoroalkanes are generally inert and non-toxic" and "do not bioaccumulate." That was surprising to me too, but apparently they have many established medical uses, including liquid breathing, which makes this application seem more reasonable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorocarbon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorocarbon
- ghastmaster 5y agoThanks! I misread the chart in the wiki, not realizing benzene was there as a comparison to hexaflourobenzene.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thereisnospork 5y agoI wonder if a surgeon could bypass and isolate from the digestive tract a sufficiently large section of the upper intestine to allow for a person to 'breathe' synthetically for a period of time. Ideally without overly disrupting the digestive process. Could be useful for people waiting for lung transplants or who otherwise can't breath conventionally for an extended period.
- anotherevan 5y agoNot sure if this passes the sniff test.