If we've proven anything here at Not the Bee, it's that a lot of people (especially politicians) talk out their backsides.
But that kind of idiomatic speech doesn't require breathing out the rear end too. In point of fact, I doubt anyone has ever even considered using their rear end to breathe.
Until Now!
According to Science News, medical doctor and stem cell biologist Takanori Takebe recently performed the first human trials of "butt breathing."
When his father caught pneumonia and was put on a ventilator, Takebe was aghast about how awful ventilators were and figured there must be another way.
And while some scientists are working on oxygenating blood intravenously, Takebe envisioned a more circuitous route:
Inspiration struck when a graduate student brought a book into Takebe's lab that described how various animals get oxygen through their skin, genitals or guts.
With his background in gastroenterology, Takebe knew that the human intestinal tract is rich in blood vessels. That's why enemas can deliver medicine to the bloodstream. Takebe suspected that perhaps oxygen could pass from the intestines into the bloodstream, too.
Takabe used perfluorodecalin, which can carry oxygen into the body and carbon dioxide out, and animal tests were successful.
Each 400-milliliter dose boosted pigs' blood oxygen levels for about 19 minutes at a time.
And now, he's tested the fluid on people too. Overall, the process was well tolerated, except for the group getting the largest dose: A whopping 1.5 liter enema.
Most of that cohort had to stop because of stomach pain.
However, not being able to tolerate the high does is a problem.
John Laffey, a clinician and researcher who specializes in acute respiratory distress syndrome at the University of Galway in Ireland, says,
‘A liter of perfluorodecalin carries 500 milliliters of oxygen. We use 250 milliliters per minute …. A back-of-the-envelope calculation here would tell you it's just very hard to see how this would work.'
Researchers should focus on improving treatments that support the lungs rather than enlisting other body parts to do lungs' job, Laffey says. ‘The lung, even an injured lung, will always exchange gas way better than any other organ, because that's what it's designed for.'
On top of that we'd have to completely rethink chairs if we needed our butts to breathe.
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