These climbers would be Mount Everest in record time. Did Closing Xenon help?
British climbers recently reached the top of Mount Everest in record time. Xenon gas inhaled before the trip. But was that the decisive factor?
Part of the Himalayan mountains, Mount Everest is considered the highest point on Earth, reaching a height of more than 8.8 kilometers.
Feng Wei Photography/Getty Images
Last week, a quartet of British climbers arrived at the top of Mount Everest, and spent a week on the round trip from London. That is the ferwer of the week of what is generally needed to acclimatize at high elevation, climb the highest peak in the world and return home.
Your guide, talk to the New York TimesHe accredited his achievement with a secret advantage: before the trip, the climbers inhaled the Xenon gas, which may have made their acclimatization to the low oxygen environment or Everest is easier. But experts in Xenon’s medical uses are not sure that it was a decisive factor.
“Maybe there is something there. We just don’t know,” says Andrew Subudhi, professor of Human Physiology and Nutrition at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, who studies human performance in low oxygen environments. “Of scientific evidence, I can’t see anything that is definitive or proof of concept still.”
About support for scientific journalism
If you are enjoying this article, consider support our journalism awarded with Subscription. When buying a subscription, it is helping to guarantee the future of shocking stories about the discoveries and ideas that shape our world today.
How does xenon work in the body?
Xenon is a noble gas: colorless, initiated, inert. But it affects the body. It has been used as anesthetic sometimes since the 1950s, says Robert Dickinson, a professor of Medicine at Imperial College London. Dickinson has long studied another intriguing aspect of Xenon: gas has shown neuroprotective effects after a brain injury, such as a stroke or a traumatic blow to the head. This protection quality has been demonstrated in many studies in animals and in a handful of small human essays, says Dickinson.
The neuroprotective effects anesthetic and potential occur because they can join brain receptors called N-Methyl-D-Spartate receptors (NMDA). The activation of these receptors has an exciter effect on neurons, but Xenon reduces NMDA activity. After a brain injury, NMDA receptors can be overexcored, causing more cell death, so silence thesis receptors can avoid additional damage.
Those are the best effects of Xenon on human health. But gas has also aroused interest in the world of sports medicine because it can increase the production of erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that is known to stimulate bone marrow to increase its production of red blood cells. The red blood cells transport oxygen, which is, or course, in shortage of the icy slopes of Mount Everest.
Can Xenon really acclimatize someone at high elevations?
Before trying the Everest Summit, the climbers must hang out in Katmandú, Nepal and the Everest base camp for weeks, so that they do not fall prey to the evil of altitude, which is marked by fatigue, headache, nausea and confusion. In severe cases, lungs are filled with fluid or brain, which can quickly lead to death. The Air in the Everest base camp contains approximately half of the oxygen as it is present at sea level, and the air at the summit contains only 33 percent.
Xenon, a noble gas, is receiving attention in the world of sports medicine for its potential to increase the production of red blood cells with oxygen.
Phil Degginger/Alamy Stock Photo
Xenon’s potential to increase the production of red blood cells, which increases the ability of blood transports oxygen, raises the question of whether it could provide performance or prevent altitude height in athletes that climb the highest in the world. The problem is: nobody really knows if Epo Boost Provid By Xenon is enough to make a real difference in how, some manages a great elevation. Davide Cattano, anesthesiologist at the McGovern Faculty of Medicine at the Center for Health Sciences of the University of Texas in Houston, did some of the animal research that has shown that xenon increases a blood factor called inducible factor by hypoxia 1-ealfa) is skeptical that recent estate climbers would see many benefits. “The HIF level that you are inducing does not justify this superhuman capacity,” says Cattano.
A 2019 study published in the Applied Physiology Magazine He tried 12 runners who were randomly assigned to inhale the air containing 70 percent of xenon or a simulated gas for two minutes every day for several weeks before they ran three kilometers. The runners who inhabited Xenon saw an EPO increase in their blood, but showed no improvement in the physical state or sports performance, measured by their career speed and heart rate and breathing that verified the exercise.
Even the dosage of people with EPO directly with injections may not prevent altitude disease or improve performance at high elevation, says Subudhi. In a study that is currently under review for publication in a scientific journal, he and his colleagues tested EPO injections in a small group of mountain climbing athletes, and these subjects did not see any benefit. It is possible that a different dose or a longer treatment course can make a difference, says Subudhi, but “my enthusiasm for chasing that is much less when I didn’t see anyone to have a measurable benefit.”
Why did the Recent Evrest climbers reach the top so fast?
It is possible that Xenon improves the oxygen transport capacity of the climbers when promoting their EPO, experts say. It is also possible that the anesthetic and analgesic effects of gas improve the pains or pains of climbers or altitude fatigue, Cattano speculates. Only the act of breathing a heavy gas such as xenon could also lead to some change in lung capacity, he says, even if the EPO effect is small.
But the athletes also did something else: they slept in hypoxic tents for a week before traveling to the mountain. These tents create a low oxygen environment, which definitely increases EPO production and red blood cells. This pre -consclimation, plus the intensive training regime of climbers, may have made the trick. It is not clear if Xenon added any benefit on hypoxic tents, says Dickinson.
Xenon is exempt, which has limited its use as anesthetic and in athletics. But more people are probable for gas for gas, since the reference cost of the climbing of Mount Everest is so expense and bets are so high, says Subudhi.
“People are literally fighting for their lives at great altitudes, and if you are doing things that can give you a small possibility of improving your success rate, yes, it could be worth some people,” he says. “Not everyone will sit there and make a consistent scientific decision about their life.”
]