“Air” – how does a resident of a metropolis breathe?

Of all natural resources, air seems to be the most accessible. So far, there is enough of it on the planet for the needs of mankind, but questions about the quality of what we breathe are arising more and more often.

Over the past centuries, people have learned to use the knowledge of the air in a wide variety of areas of life, from firefighting to deep-sea diving. We masterfully manage carbon dioxide to disperse rain clouds, use oxygen in flame cutting and welding of metals, and prolong the life of products and medicines with nitrogen. At the same time, the most basic need – breathing – began to be satisfied worse. According to WHO estimates, only 1 out of 10 inhabitants of the Earth has enough clean air. What’s stopping the other 90%? Pollution from transport, incomplete combustion of fuels, use of stoves and open flames for cooking, and prolonged exposure to poorly ventilated areas. We deal with whether there is enough air for you, along with a book by Natalia Golubeva, an engineer-designer of ventilation systems.

Hypoxia

Hypoxia is a condition in which the body lacks oxygen. It can be acute and chronic. Short term and long term. Light and heavy. In advanced cases, it leads to death. There are many reasons for its occurrence, the main of which is hypoxemia – a decrease in the amount of oxygen in the blood. This can occur for various reasons, for example, when the heart and blood vessels do not work properly, with diseases of the respiratory system, with a lack of oxygen in the surrounding air, as well as with suffocation or ingestion of various objects, including food particles, into the respiratory canal.

Signs of acute hypoxia: rapid breathing and palpitations, shortness of breath, pale skin and blue lips, loss of consciousness. With such symptoms, it is necessary to immediately provide the victim with medical assistance. Signs of chronic hypoxia are more diverse, I will talk about them a little later.

How else can you determine that a person has developed hypoxia? Earlier I mentioned a special device that measures the amount of oxygen in the blood, an oximeter. Normal indicators for a healthy person is the saturation of arterial blood with oxygen by 95-100%. If this figure drops below 94%, a doctor should be consulted. With a decrease to 90% or less, the situation is considered critical, the patient needs emergency medical care.

Now let’s talk about chronic hypoxia in a mild form. For this, it is not necessary to be seriously ill. Chronic lack of oxygen is quite common in everyday life, especially among residents of large cities. Oxygen deficiency negatively affects the functioning of the body, especially the brain, as well as your appearance and quality of life.

I propose to learn and eliminate the main factors of deficiency. If you can live better and feel great, why not start doing it right now?

Causes of lack of oxygen that you might not know about:

• Life in the metropolis. Inhabitants of all large cities do not have enough oxygen in principle. Its content in the air is decreasing due to transport and industrial emissions.
• Violation of the respiratory system. Because of anything, starting with a common cold, in which the nose is blocked, and ending with bronchial asthma and bronchospasm. For many people, the lungs do not work at full capacity due to a sedentary lifestyle and poor posture. Just imagine: you spend your whole day in an armchair where you constantly slouch. Your respiratory muscles and diaphragm are in constant spasm and cannot expand. The chest and lungs live as if in a vise, forgetting what deep breathing is.
• Hypodynamia and a sedentary lifestyle. It’s not only the “squeezed” chest that prevents us from breathing. The circulatory system is responsible for oxygenating the body. The intensity of the blood supply changes on demand – it is “turned on” by physical activity. If you don’t move much, your body tissues don’t get enough blood, which means they don’t eat as well as they could.
• Circulatory problems. Vessels may not work properly for serious reasons, such as blood clots. They can also act up due to constant stress or muscle tension. For example, tight neck muscles can be one of the causes of cerebrovascular accident.
• Anemia. A pathology in which the content of red blood cells and, as a result, hemoglobin in the blood decreases. And since there is no one to supply oxygen to the cells – as a result, hypoxia. Often it develops with extensive blood loss, in pregnant women and people who eat poorly.
• Smoking. Tobacco contains nicotine, which has a vasoconstrictive effect. The blood vessels of a smoker are in constant spasm. A smaller diameter of the vessels means less blood passes through them: hello, hypoxia.

How can you live in a state of being strangled and not notice it? The fact is that our body is very flexible. He knows how to adapt to any circumstances, including lack of air. Therefore, yes, you may not even guess that there could be more oxygen around and inside you. However, in the not too distant future, such oxygen starvation will necessarily affect the mood, the functioning of internal organs and the whole body as a whole.

Air is important not only for a healthy, but also for a happy life. Any deficiency, and even more oxygen, our body regards as stress. Under stress, the nervous system is exhausted, which means that weakness, lethargy and apathy appear. We don’t seem to have the strength to just live. The most sensitive to oxygen starvation is the main organ of our body – the brain. He is responsible for everything, including emotions. It is in the brain that “happiness hormones” are produced: serotonin, dopamine, endorphin and oxytocin. If the brain is not getting enough nutrition, it will definitely affect your mood.

Hypercapnia

A special case of hypoxia is hypercapnia. This is the name of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the tissues of the body and arterial blood, in other words, carbon dioxide poisoning. It can happen to a person in a stuffy enclosed space, in pressure chambers with poor ventilation, when exhaling is held under water, as well as during space flights or diving in a submarine. In a mild form, hypercapnia does not have a serious effect on the body.

Hypercapnia is chronic and acute. One of the manifestations of chronic hypercapnia is depression: the accumulation of carbon dioxide causes fatigue and weakness. Acute hypercapnia is manifested by shortness of breath at rest, while the skin and mucous membranes acquire a blue tint, dizziness, and vision deteriorates. How much carbon dioxide in the air causes problems? 6% is the limit, above which the condition and performance of a person noticeably worsens. The lethal concentration of carbon dioxide in the air is 30-35%. Let me remind you that in fresh atmospheric air it is only 0,03%. Hypercapnia is treated with fresh air and oxygen therapy. In severe cases, artificial lung ventilation is used.

How to increase the amount of oxygen in your own life?

A doctor should treat pathologies, including hypoxia. Be sure to contact him if you have health problems. I, as an air engineer, will give just some universal tips that will help make your life better.

• Take care of air exchange. Ventilate! Leave the window open at night. Trite and simple, but this is the most effective way to saturate your daily life with oxygen.
• Be outdoors more often. Walk in parks, go to nature, take air baths, after all!
• Monitor your hemoglobin levels. Make it a rule to take a general clinical blood test at least twice a year. Especially if you practice vegetarianism or eat few foods that contain iron.
• Learn to relax. Stress and muscle spasms, poor posture can impair the body’s blood circulation. Massage and reflexology come to the rescue. I can’t imagine my evening without a rug with plastic thorns – Kuznetsov’s applicator. At first, it is difficult to imagine that you can relax while lying on the spikes. However, this is true: blood rushes to the skin and the muscles relax. Another great way to work out muscle clamps is myofascial release, “rolling” the body on a special roller or ball with pimples. All this can be done at home, so you do not need anything but desire.
• Exercise, get moving. Hypodynamia is the main cause of hypoxia. Drive blood through your body! By the way, have you noticed that when life is active, you can’t be sad at all?

Systematic hypoxia caused by adverse factors only causes harm. However, there are situations when it is necessary and beneficial. Believe it or not, there is a “beneficial” hypoxia or hypoxic training. It is carried out on purpose, with the help of aerobic exercise in conditions of low oxygen content in the air. This may be training in mountainous areas at different heights or, for example, in a pressure chamber with a low oxygen content, about 9-14% at normal pressure. Our body is able to adapt to difficult conditions and develop in such a way as to compensate for the lack of O². Hypoxic training is carried out to improve the endurance and performance of high-class professional athletes.

The second direction of “useful” hypoxia is the experimental treatment of diseases of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. The principle is the same: short-term oxygen deficiency in order to force the body to compensate for it. However, the sick are not athletes, and they will not be able to rush through the mountains for health reasons. To do this, they came up with hypoxic therapy, the alternation of breathing with depleted and oxygen-enriched air. It is carried out in a calm state. The result is an improvement in blood circulation and an increase in the body’s adaptation to various stress factors.