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Wouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas? Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?
by IsTom 2y ago
Wouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas? Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?
- ladams 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bee_rider 2y agoReading the intro I was expecting g something totally impossibly expensive but > Xenon is extremely expensive — a single 30-second dose costs between $50 and $80 I mean, it just seems like a normal rip off, not even that exclusive.
- ttyprintk 2y agoKrypton is cheaper, and not yet banned in international competition. Xenon and argon are banned. There is no test for any of these.
- ungreased0675 2y agoWhat does Krypton do for you?
- ttyprintk 2y agoI don’t know. It’s the only other affordable noble gas heavier than air. Neon can float away. I would expect that would make neon safer. I’ve heard you have to stand on your head to expel argon, krypton, and xenon.
- schoen 2y agoIn the YouTube video linked elsewhere in this thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805461, someone breathing in a balloon-full of xenon gas clearly struggles to expel it afterward, remarking that he can feel its heaviness, but also visibly succeeds after just a few deep breaths. I guess this could still be dangerous if you were fully unconscious and breathing shallowly (and absolutely if you were unconscious and wearing a device that kept delivering more xenon over time), but it doesn't look like it's literally necessary to turn upside down to get it out of the lungs.
- lazide 2y agoSame with sulphur hexafloride, which is even heavier. Still not a good idea to do without someone around probably.
- bee_rider 2y agoInternational competition?
- ttyprintk 2y agoWorld anti-doping agency. I think hydrogen sulfide is also banned.
- k8sagic 2y agoketamine you get in germany for $50 which is enough for 4-8 hours. 'not that exclusive' for someone who is an addict and wants to do it regularly for sure. For someone to just try it out once but being poor (really poor), borderline.
- schoen 2y agoYeah, how can the body tell which noble gas it's breathing? As the article mentions, the xenon is exhaled in its original form without having been metabolized or having caused any chemical changes in the body!
- alan-hn 2y agoDifferent atoms have different sizes and if you look into how ion channels work you can see that there are many processes in biochemistry that are incredibly specific to size and charge
- idiotsecant 2y agoChemistry is a subset of physics, not the other way around. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10218445/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10218445/
- lpribis 2y ago> having caused any chemical changes in the body But it does cause chemical chsnges. Noble gasses can weakly interact. It does not need to form bonds to influence potential gradients, protein shapes, or other reactions.
- lpribis 2y agoNo, xenon is a NMDA antagonist meaning it has dissociative/anaesthetic effects like ketamine or nitrous oxide. TFA talks about the effects coming on "within seconds" of inhalation, so it is clearly not just hypoxia which takes tens of seconds or minutes to manifest.
- schoen 2y agoHow does it do that without forming chemical compounds? Is it like a catalyst for another reaction or something?
- teraflop 2y agoEven though xenon doesn't easily form "compounds" in the normal chemical sense, it does weakly interact with other molecules through van der Waals forces, which are strong enough to affect the functioning of various receptors in neurons. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6467505/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6467505/
- duskwuff 2y agoI'm not an expert on the biochemistry, but Wikipedia has a summary of some of the known interactions at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon#Anesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon#Anesthesia
- Luc 2y agoIt will still react through (weaker) non covalent forces, like van der Waals force.
- alan-hn 2y agoReactions don't need to happen, the magnesium ion is a single atom that interacts with the NMDA receptor to block it at specific potentials. When the postsynaptic neuron gets enough input at a synapse, there is enough change in the charge inside the cell where it allows the Mg2+ ion to be displaced from the pore to allow cations to pass through Our cells use single atoms, usually in the form of charged ions, on a regular basis and we would not survive without them
- digging 2y agoClearly the symptoms aren't the same as just holding your breath, which makes me think that it is not, in fact, completely nonreactive. (But I'm a total noob to biochemistry.) Similar to Nitrous Oxide, which definitely has a powerful psychedelic effect and is not at all simply hypoxia.
- janalsncm 2y agoI wouldn’t call nitrous oxide “psychedelic” although it is certainly psychoactive.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- digging 2y agoIt depends on your definition of psychedelic then, as I find different sources supporting either argument, but NO2 produces powerful hallucinations, euphoria, dissociation, and sometimes creativity much like typical psychedelics, but on a compressed timescale.
- alan-hn 2y agoMany people also consider ketamine a psychedelic and the primary mechanism of action is NMDA antagonism preferring the NR2B subunit
- mrob 2y agoIt's common to distinguish between "psychedelics", which primarily function via serotonin receptors, and "dissociatives", which primarily function via NMDA receptors.
- alan-hn 2y agoThe term psychedelic is describing specific subjective effects rather than a mechanism of action, what you're thinking of are the classic serotonergic psychedelics which are 5ht2a agonists but ketamine and other dissociatives can be considered dissociative psychedelics
- pengaru 2y agoI'm fairly certain when administered medically it's a controlled mix of oxygen and xenon, like nitrous at the dentist. They're not asphyxiating you, these molecules are psychoactive.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dyauspitr 2y agoI do the Wim Hof breathing exercise that involves up to 15 seconds of hypoxia. I get a pretty significant head change from it. Hopefully I’m not causing any permanent damage.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- meindnoch 2y agoYou're supposed to breath it mixed with oxygen.