OXYGEN DILEMMA: Is Oxygen Poisonous?

Oxygen is vital for life—without it, severe brain damage may ensue in as little as three minutes.

So doctors routinely treat traumas such as heart attack or stroke by providing victims with more oxygen. Mounting evidence suggests, however, that resuscitating with too much of the gas may actually have a harmful effect. The culprit in brain damage may not be a lack of oxygen but rather its reintroduction into the body.

Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas reported in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism on March 12 that resuscitating baby mice with pure oxygen caused more brain damage and cerebral palsy–like coordination problems, as compared with mice that breathed air during resuscitation.

The following article may help you.

With the best wishes

Mr Rezaei Ahvanooei.

Your answer reminds of the adage: "Excess of anything is bad!", Martin Burtscher.

I completely agree with your viewpoint. Thank you.

Regards.

Thank you so much for attaching the link for further information Mohamadreza Rezaei Ahvanooei. Yes, I agree without oxygen any living being won't be able to survive for long. But, my question was is oxygen ultimately killing us? See, we breathe in air, but, at some point in our lives, we do die, right? Why do we die if oxygen is the essential element which is keeping us alive?

Anyhow, I appreciate your participation and thank you so much!

Regards,

Dear Sahar

Technically, if one could isolate the brain and provide it with oxygen and nourishment (e.g. glucuse), one would be considered 'alive'.

One has to look at the clinical definition of death. Clearly, without oxygen, the brain dies.

On the other hand, if there is no neurological activity, then one is considered 'brain dead', but the other organs could be kept alive 'artificially' for some time. One could oxygenate the brain, but if the brain cells have ceaesed to function, and are decaying, then the brain is dead, and one is dead.

Respected Mohamadreza Rezaei Ahvanooei,

I got your point. Your answer is more focused towards the clinical aspect of it. I agree with this point in entirety! But, why would I isolate the brain at the first place? :/

Let me take an example to explain my point to you. Suppose, I am a healthy septuagenarian (age b/w 70-70), with no ailments at all. I am all perfect, but, what is I suddenly fall for death? No cardiac arrest, no stroke, no brain hemorrhage, nothing doing. I just breathed my last oxygen.

How would you look to this situation then?

Everything in excess or extreme deficiency is harmful; in this case the Oxygen in excess for the human being, does damage and in extreme deficiency also. Example: Children with neonatal hypoxia have brain injury at birth; On the other hand, premature children subjected to an extreme environment of heat and oxygen in the incubators, can develop hyperthermia and optic atrophy (blindness).

Water also excess water (floods) harms a population; but also the lack in arid zones, it produces death of all type of life.

Returning to the issue of oxygen, as he says that we are poisoned and killed little by little, has no support in all cases; not at least in the average human being.

Now that if we talk about physiology and physiopathology, reactive oxygen (H3O2) or hydrogen peroxide, causes an immunological reaction that destroys pathogenic micro-organisms and neoplastic cells; but in large quantities and not regulated by enzymes such as peroxidases, they cause diffuse tissue damage.

This is a bang-on answer José Luis García Vigil Sir. Thank you for your contribution.

Best regards,

Oxygen is killing us. While its role as the breath of life is well known, the destructive nature of oxygen is more clandestine, slowly chipping away at our health until symptoms emerge.

Oxygen can break down the very cells that make up our tissues and organs, our bones and blood. It can damage DNA and critical enzymes. It can injure and stiffen our cell membranes, making the movement of nutrients in and out of cells more challenging while ruining our receptors for various hormones including testosterone, insulin, and thyroid.

We can hold our breaths for as long as we wish, but that would probably create an even bigger problem. Darned if you do. Darned if you don’t.

How does oxygen kill? The same way metal rusts and a half-eaten apple turns brown, by a process termed oxidation or oxidative stress.

The need for energy is something that we all have in common. The process of producing energy is called metabolism and is dependent upon the food we consume as well as the presence of oxygen. I’ll spare you the complicated details, but you likely already know where this process occurs. Flashback to sixth grade science class! Energy production takes place in the “powerhouse of the cell”, the mitochondria. The end result is the energy molecule ATP.

According to Dr. Russell Blaylock in his book Health and Nutrition Secrets that Can Save Your Life, “about 95 percent of the oxygen that enters our cells goes to the mitochondria…but 3-5 percent of this oxygen escapes in the form of free radicals”. As the name implies, free radicals are in fact free. Free to create havoc as they act like a packet of lit firecrackers burning the vital cellular apparatus including:

DNA: Tells your cells how to function. If your cells are getting the wrong instructions, malfunctions including cancer may occur.

Enzymes: The proteins that drive the chemical reactions within the cells. Some enzymes are responsible for damaging DNA. When free radicals oxidize DNA, these enzymes are responsible for coming to the rescue. If the enzymes are oxidized themselves, the DNA is left to fend for itself.

Membranes: Not only are cells enclosed within a fatty (lipid) bilayer, but the organelles within, such as the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum, also have their own fatty acid-composed membranes. Free radicals burn these membranes. This process is called lipid peroxidation and is present in over 200 different diseases including cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS.

Oxidative stress is an unavoidable part of life. However, degenerative disease does not have to be our inevitable fate. The key is to find out why our bodies may be generating excess free radicals and also to take the proper measures to neutralize them.

Oxygen is infact an "essential poison"..

1.You cannot live without oxygen.. It's essential.

2.Nor can you manage on pure high pressure oxygen for long.

3.Its the oxidative wastes generated in the body during energy extraction that eventually hamper the cells' ability to continue infinitely. This by the way does not make Oxygen the culprit.. More responsible are the food we eat.

Fasting occasionally allows the body to recuperate from oxidative stress and increases longevity. :)

Everyone knows how important Oxygen is to the body: we will die without it within moments. However, Oxygen is also a known toxin to the body, instigating chains of chemical reactions inside the body that can produce numerous Free Radicals, super-reactive molecules that wreak havoc inside human cells. That is why our doctors advice for Antioxidants nutrients including vitamins like E and C that prevent or slow oxidative damage throughout the body.

During Respiration, Oxygen is used by the body to begin a set of reactions in which several Free Radicals like the SuperOxide Radical, Hydrogen Peroxide, and the Hydroxyl Radical can be formed. These free Radicals produced by Oxygenic reactions in the body as unstable molecules “in search of stability.” Due to this harried search for stability, most of these Free Radicals are highly reactive chaos-causers. Sometimes this chaos can take the form of chain reactions that have been linked to cancer.

The Hydroxyl Radical is probably the most dangerous as it is a ferocious molecule that is among the most reactive substances known. Promiscuous to the Nth degree, the Hydroxyl Radical will react with pretty much the first molecule it comes in contact with, usually staying single for only a few billionths of second. Unfortunately for us, the Hydroxyl Radical is always looking for love in all the wrong places—in otherwise stable and productive components of our cellular metabolism. The other two Free Radicals, Hydrogen Peroxide and the SuperOxide Radical are less reactive, but they can become dangerous when they come in contact with metals in the body, especially Iron. Therefore, says Lane, the body has to keep such reactive metals “well-caged” inside proteins.

SuperOxide Radicals escape into the body in one or two out of a hundred Oxygen reactions inside of cells. The production of SuperOxide Radicals actually increases during vigorous exercise, with SuperOxide Radicals escaping in up to one out of ten oxygen reactions. When Free Radical outbreaks increase beyond the capacity of the body’s Anti-Oxidant protections to contain them easily, the body is said to exist in a state of Oxidative Stress. Oxidative Stress can be triggered by several different mechanisms, not just Oxygen reactions. If this Oxidative Stress increases in future, Oxygen will be poison to us, the humans.

During Earth’s early days, when Oxygen levels were beginning to rise, the increased production of oxygen set Earth's original atmosphere off balance, organisms like Cyanobacteria, were extremely vulnerable to Oxygen toxicity, for large numbers of anaerobic organisms had not yet built-up any specifically anti-Oxygen defenses. However because these organisms had long been dealing with the Oxidative Stress caused by ultraviolet radiation, they already possessed the basic tools to combat the increased levels of Oxidative Stress due to Oxygen intake.

Oxygen IS poisonous. At 1 atmosphere pressure 14.7 psi it's safe for us but at 3 atmospheres 14.7x 3 it's lethal. It's hey highly corrosive poisonous gas. Need proof? Just looked at a piece of iron that's been exposed to water for a while see that red Slinky rust? That's oxidation - exposure to oxygen in the water and that oxygen literally eats away at the iron or metal and it really doesn't take a very long time for the effects to start showing planet Mars is known as the red planet because it is covered literally in Rust any and all Iron that may have been president on the planet's surface or in the planets interior has oxidized leaving a rib powdery residue of “dissolved” iron. Why doesn't it kill us at 14.7 PSI when we breathe it? Because we have evolved to be able to use oxygen as part of our metabolic processes. Isn't that weird? Not so much, plants have evolved to use carbon dioxide to fuel their metabolic processes and produce oxygen a WASTE product I guess technically we are breathing plant poop

Is it harmful to breathe 100-percent oxygen?

OMG! , so many answers!

Thank you for your wise answers.

Best Regards,

Sahar

Yes it is in reperfusion damage.If a tissue deprived of oxygen suddenly get it, the tussue is going to be poisoned by a phenomenon known as reperfusion damage

Thank you for your contribution Borden Mushonga Sir.

Regards,

Sahar

Dear Sahar Qazi ,

Such a death in healthy people without problems, Less seen. But nevertheless, We are influenced by genetics and the environment (Environmental effects such as: waves, air pollution, nutrition, etc.), as well as the interaction between the two, Perhaps these factors may interfere with gene expression at the cell surface and these effects cause death.

In such a way that the person does not seem to have any problems. But the truth is hidden.

Perhaps my answer is not helpful.

But nevertheless, I use comments. Thanks

With the best wishes

Mr Rezaei Ahvanooei.

Dear Shar Qazi. When faced with trivial or superficial questions, similar answers

Dear Sahar,

I am completely agreed with my colleague Dr. Borden answers.

Yes if it reaches saturation level it is poisonous.

Regards

Dr. Kamath Madhusudhana

My fellow RG colleague Mohamadreza Rezaei Ahvanooei,

No answer is a useless one. I appreciate each and every answer given by my fellow RG colleagues.

Thank you so much for your contribution. I know, my questions are a little different, or, rather shall I rephrase it, I ask questions like a small kid does! :) I have so much going on in my mind, that I can't resist myself from querying.

Anyhow, thank you.

Best regards,

José Luis García Vigil Sir, I agree.

Regards,

Madhusudhana Kamath Sir,

Yes, thank you for your answer.

Regards,

with my respect to your question, you have to rearrange your question ( without O2 what will happen ? ) .

Regard ..

Respected @Alaa J Mahrath,

I guesstimate you misunderstood what I asked. My query was, is oxygen slowly poisoning us? Although, it is considered to be keeping us alive, but, if it were doing so, then why do we ultimately die?

You posse an interesting question. More and more benefits are coming up from living at high altitude and low oxygen levels.

Please read our article : Extended longevity at high altitude: Benefits of exposure to chronic hypoxia.

Available here in Researchgate and also online.

Incidentally The 7th Chronic Hypoxia Symposium is coming up. http://zuniv.net/symposium7.

There we will discuss about oxygen and the benefits of living at high altitude.