HOME   HYGIENE LIBRARY CATALOG   CHAPTER 6

   Of all the components of our environment, air is probably the most essential because it contains oxygen without which no animal or plant life could exist.

   A continuous supply of oxygen is vital to your immediate survival and the health of every one of the countless millions of cells of which you are made.

   Apart from the constant requirements of the cells, oxygen is required for the combustion of fuel in the muscle tissues to produce mechanical energy for physical activity. The greater the activity, the more oxygen is required. Likewise the brain requires oxygen to function, demanding more with increased mental activity.

   The air consists of a mixture of 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen and minor traces of other gases. When you breathe pure air your lungs absorb oxygen which is carried off around the body by the red corpuscles in the bloodstream pumped by the heart. This circulatory system is called the cardiovascular system (cardio means heart, vascular means blood vessels). It is sometimes referred to as the oxygen transport system, or perhaps simply "the circulation". Every one of the trillions of tiny cells must receive oxygen, glucose and other nutrients to remain alive. Thus every function, every movement, every sense, every thought, depends on the efficiency of this blood circulation, right to the microscopic extremities among the cells.

   There is more than sufficient oxygen in the atmosphere for normal activity at sea level but the higher you go above sea level the less dense is the air, and a given volume of air will contain fewer molecules both of oxygen and nitrogen. Above 10,000 feet most people start to suffer from oxygen lack; this depends on their individual fitness, lung capacity etc. and activity. (Oxygen shortage does not occur in modern aircraft because the cabin is pressurized.)

   To maintain supply as the air becomes more rarefied, you start breathing deeper and more rapidly, and the heart pumps faster, just as it would to maintain supply during exercise. Extremely fit mountaineers have acclimatized to attitudes above 20,000 feet after several weeks, but most people would die, some within minutes at such an altitude. Some early attempts to scale Mt Everest (29,000 feet) were made without breathing from oxygen masks. These climbers spent weeks at base camps slowly acclimatizing to the rarefied air. (The body manufactures many more red blood cells to extract the maximum amount of oxygen from the reduced quantities available.)

   I once met Captain Noel who was the photographer on the early British Everest expeditions in the 1920s. He told me he set up a base camp once at about 24,000 feet. He was at first so weak that he lay in his tent in a sleeping bag for several days after which he regained normal capability. It is incredible that some of the climbers reached within a few hundred feet of the peak without using supplementary oxygen. In 1978 Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler were the first men to climb the peak and return without using bottled oxygen. Habeler described their exploit in his book Everest: Impossible Victory. No matter how well conditioned at sea level, athletes cannot perform their best at elevated places like Mexico City (7,300 feet) or Johannesburg (5,550 feet). They must spend as long as possible acclimatizing before they compete. Thus people with circulatory disorders are well advised to remain at sea level.

   In the Air Force in 1944, when aviation medicine was becoming important, pilots were detailed as a part of their training to do a High Altitude Course. One sequence of the course was a "trip" in the decompression chamber. About ten subjects at a time, with a doctor in attendance, were tested as the air was gradually pumped out of the seated chamber to simulate ascending to higher altitudes. In these tests the first signs of hypoxia are when fingernails turn blue and subjects get "tipsy", make errors and giggle etc. after a while at about 15,000 feet and above. (Only richly oxygenated blood is bright red, and of course, venous blood returning to the heart is dark in color, which is why people go "blue with cold" when their circulation is poor.) The "chubby" men are first to be affected, especially the smokers, but when fitted with an oxygen mask they instantly recover.

   Being slender and fairly fit I was last to be affected and made 25,000 feet feeling good, writing neat observations etc., and when after a while, the doctor started fitting the mask on my face, I resisted, thinking I could hold out longer. The others were amused and I was told I had been completely unconscious. My notepad displayed decline in accuracy of technical observations, finally becoming "I want to go to sleep" written over and over many times, declining into lines of scribble. I had no recollection at all of writing the last page and no awareness of any lapse in consciousness.

   Even at sea level, oxygen can be severely reduced in crowded, badly ventilated places. If there is smoke in the air it becomes far worse because carbon monoxide gas, when inhaled, has a much higher affinity with the red blood cells than does oxygen and will displace a high proportion of the oxygen available to enter the bloodstream. Carbon monoxide is therefore poisonous, and fumes from kerosene heaters or car exhaust pipes will quickly cause headaches and even unconsciousness or death. The carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke causes far more harm to the body than the effects of nicotine and tars.

   However, the main cause of oxygen shortage to various parts of the body is caused by impairment to the cardiovascular system. A fuller description follows in the next chapter, but briefly, impairment is due to the following factors, sometimes all of them together:

1. Reduced lung capacity and reduced respiratory efficiency due to poor physical fitness.
2. Red blood cell aggregation (clumping) due to high blood fat levels This results in
   (a) reduced oxygen pick-up from lungs;
   (b) increased blood viscosity (blood thickens), and reduction of circulation;
   (c) inability of red cells to enter capillaries.
3. Increased blood viscosity due to stress situations (including the effect of smoking and caffeine).
4. Increased blood viscosity due to dehydration.
5. Coronary insufficiency--heart output restricted by poor blood supply due to blocking of arteries (atherosclerosis) in the heart itself. This is known as Cardiovascular disease (CVD) or more specifically, Coronary Heat Disease (CHD).
6. Poor circulation due to atherosclerosis elsewhere in the body, even in the tiny arterioles and capillaries (peripheral circulation).
7. Edema (excess fluid) among cells prevents oxygen delivery.
8. Smoke immobilizes red cells.
9. Reduced enzyme activity inhibits oxygen delivery. Alcohol immobilizes enzymes necessary for cell respiration.

   When mental lapses occur due to oxygen shortage to the brain, a person's trained reflexes continue and give the impression, at least for a while, that he is consciously performing. I have seen such lapses in performance of various flying sequences caused by the effect of stress on pilots in poor physical condition, lapses which they later strenuously denied simply because they had absolutely no recollection of them. In the cases I have observed and which I can substantiate, the stress level in the pilot was higher than normal because he was being "checked". All pilots undergo regular checks and they all feel this extra stress as they strive for best performance coping with simulated emergencies and so on. At the time of observing these lapses I was the examining pilot and had seen cases before of people "switching off" but did not know the cause. The lapse may last only a few seconds.

   Similar lapses can occur when blood viscosity increases for other reasons, such as dehydration. For instance, in 1965 a young Air Force pilot described how he conducted a practise gunnery flight at Darwin with the cockpit air selector in the wrong position. Throughout the mission he was sweating heavily in the tropical heat in his enclosed plastic canopy. Approaching to land his Sabre Jet fighter, he had great difficulty in flying the aircraft, he felt quite irrational and did not close the throttle for some distance before touchdown. He could not see if his landing gear indicator read up or down but landed safely. He said, "After shut-down I felt completely enervated, my legs weak, my hands were shaking and I could not concentrate on the simplest subject. I drank a large amount of water and reported to sick quarters where it was agreed I had apparently suffered from heat exhaustion. In an hour I had completely recovered". A less fit pilot would probably not have done so well.

   Vagueness and senility are common in old people because of oxygen lack when circulation to the brain deteriorates. Such people (not only old people) are easily irritated and are quickly affected by alcohol as the oxygen transport is borderline. Airline staff should be particularly tolerant of excited passengers. I have seen many cases of refined and cultured passengers behaving most irrationally, not due to alcohol, but the excitement and fatigue.

   Poor oxygen supply shows up in all parts of the body. Deteriorating eyesight requires reading glasses for most people over about 45 and hearing acuity declines as tiny blood vessels supplying these senses gradually close with atherosclerosis. Circulation may be so poor that "pins and needles" are felt in the limbs.

   Psychosomatic pain means pain that is thought to derive from the mind because inspection of the painful area cannot reveal a reason for it. However, psychosomatic pain occurs in association with high blood viscosity which leads to body tissue being deprived of oxygen, and such pain, like pins and needles, is a complaint by the tissues for more oxygen.

   The connection between high blood viscosity and poor oxygen supply is clear, and this I have emphasized in later chapters. In 1947, Doctor F. Windesch of Germany demonstrated that by intermittent withholding of oxygen, normal body cells could be changed into cancer cells. The association of tissue anoxia with cancer and other conditions of disease is explained in later chapters.

   Acute, severe oxygen deprivation to a part of the brain due to circulatory failure is called a stroke and if it persists for more than a few minutes, permanent damage will occur resulting in partial paralysis or impairment, or, depending on the severity, perhaps death.

   Similar severe impairment to the heart's function is called a heart attack, and wherever else in the body tissue is deprived of oxygen it will perish.

   It is interesting that people, apparently drowned, have been revived without brain damage after immersion for as long as 38 minutes. Dr M. Nemiroff of the University of Michigan, a diving specialist, reported this in a recent study. What saved them, he said, was the "mammalian diving reflex" combined with the coldness of the water (below 70 degrees F). This is the reflex that enables sea mammals to submerge for up to 30 minutes. In all circumstances the brain receives priority of blood supply while other body functions shut down. Cold water, he says, reduces oxygen requirements of the tissues.

   Breathing pure oxygen can sometimes effect an improvement in some of these cases, but only, of course, if the "oxygen transport" system is working. It is no use giving someone pure oxygen if they are not breathing or if their heart is not beating properly.

   People can be administered pure oxygen instead of air by means of an enclosed "tent" or by wearing an oxygen mask or just by inserting a tube into a nostril.

   Dr Finney of Baylor University in Dallas infused oxygen directly into the arteries of diseased monkeys and cleared arterial plaques (diseased growths in an artery lining) in eight weeks. Dr Wissler of the University of Chicago also demonstrated rapid reversal of cardiovascular disease in monkeys breathing oxygen.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy

   By placing a patient in a special sealed chamber or capsule and pressurizing the chamber with air or pure oxygen, it is possible to increase the amount of oxygen taken up by the bloodstream from the lungs and thereby improve the condition of patients with various diseases. Although first employed in Europe and North America over 100 years ago, this form of treatment has only recently started to arouse much interest in medical circles.

   Normally almost all the oxygen in the blood is carried by the hemoglobin of the red cells which is almost fully saturated (98%) with oxygen, with only a trace in the blood plasma. However, by increasing the oxygen pressure in the hyperbaric chamber to three times normal atmospheric pressure the plasma will absorb a great deal of oxygen, sufficient to sustain life in the complete absence of red cells.

   The beneficial effects are obviously not permanent, but good results have been obtained in a number of disease conditions including senility and multiple sclerosis (see Multiple Sclerosis Chapter 21).

Negative ion generators

   These are machines which process air to produce negatively charged electric ions in the air molecules. Breathing negatively charged air has been found to produce great benefit such as relief from migraine headaches, rapid healing of burns and wounds and all-round improvement of wellbeing, alertness and creativeness, by the improved oxygenation of the body.

   The claims seem well substantiated, and ionized oxygen equipment has been installed in some hospitals including Eden Hospital in Castro Valley, California, Chico Memorial Hospital, California and the Valley Medical Hospital in Fresno, California. The way it works is twofold. Firstly the negatively charged ions of air attach to air impurities causing them to gravitate to the ground, thus purifying the air. Secondly, and of course more important, they say that the ionized oxygen in the air is absorbed more quickly into the bloodstream, giving the effect of breathing pure oxygen.

   There is little technical information available on the negative ion generator. One advertiser claimed that the generator restored the correct natural ionization of oxygen molecules in polluted city air. In this event no benefit would be derived in an unpolluted area.

   Later, reading Dr Earle Hackett's book Blood, the Paramount Humour, I discovered a link between negative ions and oxygen transport by the blood cells: "Now in healthy blood all the red cells carry a similar small negative electric charge. Bodies with the same electric charge repel, and so the cells tend to remain apart from one another. These charges on the red cells can be weakened or neutralized by abnormal protein becoming stuck to the cell surfaces, or by the appearance in the blood of an excess of large molecule proteins either deriving from tissue breakdown somewhere in the body or the result of an infection and the release of foreign material into the bloodstream. When this happens the red cells in non-flowing blood tend to stick together by their maximum-contact surfaces which means they become arranged like piles of coins or dinner plates--called 'rouleaux' by the hematologists."

   It would appear feasible then that inhaled oxygen, already carrying a negative electrical charge, would continue to do so when picked up by a red blood cell and so enhance the cell's ability to repel others, thereby preventing aggregation or "rouleaux".

   Research by Professor Albert Krueger at the Air Ion Research Laboratory, University of California, Berkley, and Professor Felix Sulman, Hebrew University, Israel, suggests that negatively ionized air prevents excessive production in the body of the neurohormone, serotonin, high levels of which are followed by complaints such as migraine, respiratory troubles, insomnia and many others. If this is the case, another link is established, because serotonin can cause blood to "sludge" or thicken. This was noted by Dr Melvin Knisely, then of the Medical College of South Carolina over 20 years ago, in his paper titled Intravascular Erythrocyte* Aggregations (Blood Sludge).

*Red blood cell.

   The idea is acceptable then that the negative ion generator can give benefit to people with "sick" blood, but like supplementary vitamins, it would be entirely superfluous to a fit person on a correct diet.

   Many people following the average lifestyle and diet live in a fairly reasonable state of health for many years with only a marginal supply of oxygen to most organs of their bodies. In middle age and sometimes earlier, as further degeneration of the body occurs, the oxygen supply becomes less than marginal, and the more serious diseases occur.

   Do not despair, inhale deeply and keep on reading.