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Comment by mholm | Hacker News Reader

A 10% increase in reaction time could be fairly significant in many sports. Could we start seeing football players, sprinters, or baseball players breathing from masks between plays?

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You already see this. Google "NFL oxygen masks". I'm sort of surprised I haven't heard about it in the context of shorter physical sports: I'd wonder what effect it would have on an 100m/200m/400m time or shotput distance to oxygen saturate like free divers do.

Elsewhere in the thread, someone claims that oxygen has a similar narcotic effect. Does the NFL use a helium-oxygen mixture, or pure oxygen?

I think an NFL lineup would be significantly less intimidating with their lungs full of helium. It's a pretty funny thing to imagine. (referring to the effect of helium on voices)

It is not uncommon for drivers to take supplemental oxygen for the pike's peak hill climb event.

You don't see NFL players using oxygen masks much anymore. Some people used to believe that it accelerated recovery from hard exertion but experiments have shown that it makes no significant difference. It's a placebo effect if anything.

Disc: Generally speaking, not spesific to the oxygen mask thing.

> Some people believe it but experiments have shown that it makes no significant difference. It's a placebo effect.

I cannot count the amount of times I heard this on medicines and treatments. A too high percentage of them turn out to be not plasebo after a short amount of time. I believe “the experiments shown <anecdatolly working and commonly practised treatment> is plasebo” is the the first line of defense of the medical status quo against change.

Forget sports. I want my surgeon to be on a heliox mix when he's doing a complicated operation on me.

If your operation has reached the point where milliseconds matter..something likely has gone wrong.

I'd be curious to see data on how other cognitive metrics change in absence of atmospheric nitrogen. Abstract reasoning / mental math abilities / etc. It's possible some actually improve, just like I might rush and make more errors while doing something after drinking a few coffees.

While scuba diving, nitrogen narcosis stops the instant you ascend a bit (the typical recommendation is to reduce the ambient pressure by one atmosphere). I don’t think there is anything in this study that indicates the effect lasts more than a few minutes after exposure ceases.

Depending on exactly what one's doing, it's easily conceivable that the exposure can be concurrent with the activity. Maybe not football, where lugging around a compressed gas tank on the field is likely impractical if not dangerous, but a sport like Formula 1 or many E-sports would likely be quite conducive for an individual, and other sports like wrestling or swimming could probably be done entirely in a room with a modified atmosphere.

I've always wondered if fighter pilots ever had a system to pump different gases into their masks whenever they encounter a high-stakes situation.

Here comes the juice!

Copeng - even the inyalowda scientists can't think properly on their own planet, sa sa ke?

Would be awkward for moving sports. My first thought upon seeing this was that it would be a real improvement in the Melee reaction tech-chasing meta.

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