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Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
- dandare 4y agoAnybody else concerned about the ethics of scrubbing intestines, injecting gas into intestines, then suffocation the mammals to death? Are animals in these procedures routinely anaesthetised?
- odrekf 4y agoIf you eat meat you are probably financing worse things, like sentencing animals to a life in a house of horrors. Eg: piglets have their teeth and tails removed without anesthesia. Many simply die from shock. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming#Animal_welfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming#Anima...
- sweetheart 4y agoIf only human beings could live long, happy, healthy lives while avoiding animal products! Oh, wait. And it's not just meat, either. Milk, cheese, leather, gelatin, etc. We subject billions of animals to truly nightmarish torture and 99% of us don't ever really stop to consider it.
- peheje 4y agoCan milk be ethical?
- sweetheart 4y agoI personally don't think so, unless in life-threatening situations. The dairy industry is arguably the worst of factory farming: all the horrific aspects of the meat industry, but prepended with years of subjugation (forced insemination, illness, etc.) In the best case, a cow is treated like a pet, which A.) is never the case, and B.) still necessitates taking something from an animal without it's consent. Something that is specifically for it's newborn, as well. That's _always_ gonna be wrong, unless it's a matter of life and death for someone.
- belorn 4y agoAnimal trials usually involve a ethics committee. The big problem is that outside of mathematical/computer experiments, it is almost impossible to do medical testing in an ethical way. With exception to experiments done on brain dead (which still involve some measure of uncertainty), on who or what should test be conducted on. In the past we used war criminals or criminals sentenced to death, but that has an obviously ethically problem. We could use military recruits that volunteers, or poor people who would volunteer in exchange for monetary compensation, but how well understand is the consent and how ethical is it use people like that? We could use patients who are out of options, but how ethical is it to exploit people who has no realistic choices? It is hard to view animal testing as anything else than cruelty to animals. I can only hope that it was there was no other options, and that they indeed got anaesthetised. (Someone here mentioned experiments in breathing in oxygen-rich perfluorocarbons that used navy recruits. I have seen discussions about how much those consent should actually count considering the power balance and hierarchical culture that exist in the military).
- lm28469 4y agoIt would be funny, if it wasn't dramatic, that animal cruelty is so common that people are only triggered by these exotic and very small scale experiments. Killing a few mice or cloning a few sheep is barbaric but slaughtering millions of mammals every single day is business as usual. Obviously as soon as one points that out the cognitive dissonance kicks in and the downvote brigade shows up
- dandare 4y agoYou have my upvote.
- mbrundle 4y agoThis 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 viscosity) to scrub the intestines of mucus, to facilitate the oxygen diffusion process. [1] https://filmschoolrejects.com/the-abyss-breathing-fluid/?amp https://filmschoolrejects.com/the-abyss-breathing-fluid/?amp [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing
- 0des 4y agoI wonder what effects emerge from chronically removing intestinal mucosa
- pjerem 4y agoWhat could possibly go wrong ?
- LinuxBender 4y agoI've done it. Inflammation, sensitivity to bacterium, gut pain. The mucus regenerates but takes some time. I found that in my case diet cranberry juice and mastic gum helped until the mucus regenerated. Some people with severe IBS get to experience this often. I am thankful to not be one of them.
- 0des 4y agoThat sounds horrible
- tempcarbons 4y agoResearch on perfluorocarbons in humans progressed into several inventions. Being immersed is not one, but increasing air transfer within the lungs using a spray, reducing the impact of the bends through an injection, or reducing incidence of traumatic brain injuries due to swelling is a third. There's quite a large group of doctors out there researching them.
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- iratewizard 4y agoThis kind of makes me wonder if diving suits are going to include emergency buttplugs in the future.
- steve_adams_86 4y agoWait, yours doesn’t?
- Pinus 4y agoAt one point in time, they would have, had they existed at all: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31283950/ 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"
- selimthegrim 4y agoSurely horses from this time period were available to comment.
- Galxeagle 4y agoOne 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.
- azalemeth 4y agoIndeed. Something people always forget is that hypoxia is bad, but hypercapnia is worse (insert references here to the spiral of death, etc)
- kadoban 4y agoOf 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.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoNot 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.
- isoprophlex 4y agoSo... at high altitude, your piss is carbonated?!
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- im3w1l 4y agoIt's actually the opposite. At altitude you have to breathe more to get the same oxygen, and this makes your carbon dioxide lower than normal, this makes your blood too basic, so the body pisses out basic compounds to compensate.
- 0des 4y agoAnd here I've only been exhaling with them this entire time. This is a whole new world.
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- dotancohen 4y agoThe article actually starts with this gem: > On a good day, things exit through the anus.
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
- dotancohen 4y agoUnsolicited homosexuality (along with feigning abusive parents or depression) is a Reddit karma tactic.
- sph 4y agoWhatever "unsolicited homosexuality" is, this ain't it, chief.
- wmil 4y agoNew startup idea: an alternative to those awkward CPAP masks.
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- dataangel 4y agodumb 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?
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- ceejayoz 4y agoYes, it's entirely possible; it's called ECMO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygenation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygen... It's very risky and requires a nurse at the bedside 24/7, so it's a last-ditch sort of intervention.
- buryat 4y agowhy is it risky?
- PeterisP 4y agoYou need to treat lots of blood continuously, so you have to cut a bypass into the largest, irreplaceable blood vessels, unlike smaller operations like kidney dialysis where you can just "plug into" an arm. Mechanical pumping of blood is a problem as it damages blood cells. Infection is a severe risk. Any break in the operation or a temporary "plumbing issue" where the machine connects with the body can be fatal. So you need 24/7 monitoring capable of really rapid response.
- tibbydudeza 4y agoRed blood cells are meant to travel into capillaries so must deform but will shear easily when subjected to stress which activates clotting action - mechanical pumps still cannot replicate the pumping action of heart.
- gxt 4y agoHow has medical science never heard of bellows? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellows https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellows
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- tobyhinloopen 4y agoPoor mice
- sakerbos 4y agoMy thoughts exactly
- bredren 4y agoYes, and what about the pigs? The detached coldness in the writing about the experiments on these creatures dates all of us. I find it odd how this can float by while we pine over the potential sentience of a server at Google. The acceptance of the brutality is inherent to our false sense of modernism.
- SturgeonsLaw 4y agoFuture generations will look back on this era's treatment of animals as barbaric. They will have the benefit of being able to grow vat meat identical to any steak and perform drug testing purely in-silico, so they will not need to use animals in the way we do now, but still, when you remove the economic/scientific rationale and look at the fundamentals of our treatment of animals, you can't help feeling at least a little bit saddened by it.
- maximus-decimus 4y agoOr maybe they won't care and have less empathy for animals. If anything, it seems like if there were to be evolutional pressure, it would favorize humans sacrificing animals to improve humans' condition.
- XorNot 4y agoBoth of these issues have at their core the same question: are we gatekeeping "sentience" or I suppose, moral consideration, really - behind the rather utilitarian "so what's it done for us lately?"
- 4y ago
- taxicabjesus 4y ago> [...] 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.202005-405LE?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/10.1513/AnnalsATS.202005-405... https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilation.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat...
- DoreenMichele 4y agoBoth intestines and lungs are epithelial tissue covered in mucus. I'm not that shocked by this news. Edit: though I don't like the title. It's not breathing. It's absorbing oxygen. Breathing involves inhalation and exhalation.
- yellowapple 4y agoWell I think most of us have the exhalation part figured out by now.
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- dredmorbius 4y agoBoth are also essentially diffusion surfaces for transfering vital substances into (and in the case of lungs, also out of) the body. The surface area of the lungs is commonly compared to that of half a tennis court, about 80--100 m^2. Checking just now, the surface area of the human digestive tract is about 32 m^2: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24694282/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24694282/
- azalemeth 4y agoOne other "fun" use of perflurocarbons (like fluorinated crown ethers or cyclo-alkanes) is that, containing large amounts of 19F, they are MRI visible. So, you can directly image the compound in the lungs leading to some really striking images [1, 2] while they are in the gaseous phase, or indeed in the liquid phase when one lung is partially inflated. I think that some compounds like these have been proposed for use in patients who have inhaled hot or burning gasses (viz: most likely blast/explosion/deflagration victims) and suffered an internal lung injury. Oedema can impair oxygen availability at the surface of the lung and it's my understanding that there is at least one or two research projects using PFCs as an intensive life-supporting measure as a consequence . [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmri.26292?casa_token=0lpTuudfneAAAAAA%3AXTLcBf3NdahQv0-azJ2vOzX6gSi3zEzqwJqCpT7cgKP4VkCpawTKLgz9z_px462yopkoZI1lpzyMd3A https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmri.26292?... [2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mrm.28270?casa_token=1cdpIyck4SAAAAAA%3ASH6HAsM1j3BwWwAw-r7Z421DTMCJWYHVrDV6G6feJpSYjTR-bEwsTeDjspAxtJWcQST8pKR2HCYp3F8 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mrm.28270?c... [3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mrm.10008?casa_token=93aE3rFzrzkAAAAA%3AgdPLxZxqBncYw0uQxZxHa1-0uRZYxGWA_gCtLki51lGAccx3P-oeS5pj5wdUw9cf3EpUZNty4ilg8J0 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mrm.10008?c...
- pfdietz 4y agoOne can also do that with nuclear spin polarized 3He or xenon. The nuclei of these isotopes are sufficiently shielded from the environment that polarization (induced with circularly polarized light scattering off alkali vapor mixed with the inert gas) survives for quite a long time. The polarization is orders of magnitude stronger than that induced by magnetic fields in ordinary NMR.
- azalemeth 4y agoAnd then you get the chemical shift differences of the dissolved phases when imaging with 129Xe as well – got to love SEOP and hyperpolarisation techniques in general! :-)
- throw93232 4y agoAre there any implications for next winter? If regulations says we should cover breathing holes...
- noduerme 4y agoYeah, Joe Rogan will have to burn his panties in the name of liberty.
- throw93232 4y agoIf gov mandates everyone wears panties, he propably will ;)
- Oarch 4y agoThis is from 2021, no updates from last year's story. Can we add the year tag to the title?
- whoomp12342 4y agothis is a great idea. dont let hacker news be like reddit!
- jamesrom 4y agoThis sounds like the plot of an unaired episode of House.
- herodoturtle 4y ago> unaired
- aquarin 4y agoIsn't that the mechanism for breathing before the human is born?
- elevaet 4y agoNo, before being born, in mammals the blood is oxygenated across the placenta.
- pazimzadeh 4y ago> Because they are highly dense, perfluorocarbons can also help flush mucus out of the intestine > Introducing oxygen to the intestines would probably kill the microbes involved in digestion Combining these two for any significant amount of time seems like a recipe for microbiota dysbiosis. It would be interesting to somehow determine if most of the oxygen is absorbed in the small or large intestine. Mucus is what keeps bacteria from reaching the intestinal epithelium, especially in the large intestine (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0803124105 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0803124105), and oxygenating the gut will cause a bloom in facultative aneorobes including E. coli and Salmonella, while killing anaerobic commensals like Bacteroidetes.
- MrBuddyCasino 4y agoPeople have no idea how important the microbiome is to their health. At the very least, one should make a "backup" of the microbiome so it can be repopulated later in case something goes pear-shaped. Messing with stuff can cause all kinds of endotoxin / auto-immune issues.
- falsaberN1 4y agoI'm no medical science person, but I had surgery a year ago for some type of severe gangrene, and while I miraculously came out whole, I'm still suffering horrible digestive issues that had nothing to do with it, presumably from the antibiotics needed to nuke the bad bacteria (because of intolerance to the one that was more efficient they had to use more indiscriminate solutions). It didn't specifically cause the issues you mention, but it sure caused some.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y agoI had antibiotics induced digestive problems too. I saw a specialist and the treatment was another cocktail of antibiotics. It worked immediately after taking the first dose.
- justinc8687 4y ago
- beardyw 4y agoSorry if this is a stupid question, but isn't breathing out carbon dioxide important?
- GekkePrutser 4y agoVery. Too much CO2 is deadly.
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- trhway 4y agonot surprising, as methane and hydrogen produced by bacteria in the gut and detected at elevated levels in the exhaled by breath air (i.e. gut->blood->lungs) is an actual diagnostic test for SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth)
- kukx 4y agoOk, so if mouth to mouth does not work, flip over...
- kkfx 4y agoI wonder if this kind of studies came out just as a way to justify something seen recently from rectal nutrition (Guantanamo) to anal swab covid tests (China)...
- dandare 4y agoThat reminds of one of the "enhanced interrogation" technique used in Gitmo where suspects were "forced hydrated via rectum" to cause often urination and defecation.
- pettycashstash2 4y agoIt seems all types of human cells absorb oxygen. Skin to a certain extent. The interesting part is researching and documenting oxygen intake per cell type. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2290093/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2290093/
- mike_hock 4y agoSounds like the premise to a South Park episode.
- mjlee 4y agoI think the Dutch knew about this back in the late 18th Century - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema It's where the phrase "blow smoke up your arse" comes from.
- residualmind 4y agoThat explains this smell.
- hifikuno 4y agoIn a funny light, I can see this being used as a performance enhancing drug in free-dive competitions. I wonder if the one's with perfluorocarbons had to have the perfluorocarbons constantly cycled out, or if it was just an injection of a certain amount. Imagine a free diver being able to go down deeper with an extra tank of oxygen in the trunk.
- Jemm 4y agoLots of talk about absorbing oxygen but little discussion about releasing carbon dioxide, or if releasing CO2 is even required with anal ventilation. Also, as anyone who has had a colonoscopy can tell you, inflating the colon is on the painful side of uncomfortable.
- whoomp12342 4y agoserious question, how does one exhale through their intestine? like do they have a scuba gear like machine?
- harveywi 4y agoNot sure, but taking such a "breather" would be a good time to catch up on Hacker News.
- elromulous 4y agoLots of folks asking where the CO2 is expelled from. I speculate, due to the lack of information, it's still being expelled through the lungs the usual way. Although, I suppose it's possible the CO2 is diffusing out the intestines and into the perflurocarbons.
- sk8terboi 4y agooh shit
- virgildotcodes 4y ago> To find out, Takanori Takebe, a gastroenterologist from Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and his colleagues tested several approaches to ventilating the intestines of mice and pigs that were deprived briefly of oxygen. In one group of 11 mice, four had their intestines scrubbed to thin the mucosal lining and improve oxygen absorption. Next, the researchers injected pure, pressurized oxygen into the rectums of the scrubbed mice and four of the seven unscrubbed ones. > Then, the researchers withdrew oxygen from the animals, making them "hypoxic." The three unscrubbed mice that received no intestinal oxygen survived for a median of 11 minutes. Mice with unscrubbed intestines that received oxygen through their anuses lasted 18 minutes. Only the ventilated mice with brushed intestines lived through the hourlong experiment, with a survival rate of 75%, the researchers report today in Med. This is fucking horrifying.
- krageon 4y agoSome ethics board out there looked at this proposal and thought "well, that looks fine to me!". That thought is almost as horrifying as the torture these scientists visited upon these defenseless mice.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoYeah not sure the ends justify the means here, that's for sure.
- niemandhier 4y agoThey do. If this can be extended to humans, the resulting technology would have saved hundreds of lives during Covid alone, not to think of burn victims.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoI mean maybe eventually some method is discovered, but this doesn't have an immediate human application. I don't think we're going to start scrubbing intestines to treat covid anytime soon.
- 4y ago
- johnklos 4y agoThe phrase, “blowing smoke up your ass” comes from the practice of using bellows, like from a fireplace, to inflate, if you will, a drowned person rectally.
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