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Researchers in Canada have found that hyperventilation can dramatically increase the rate at which the body metabolizes alcohol, a breakthrough that could save thousands of lives.
Three million people worldwide die from alcohol-related deaths each year, and emergency room physicians have few effective tools to treat acute alcohol poisoning.
In a proof of concept article published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, a group of Toronto researchers describes how hyperventilation in a device that regulates carbon dioxide levels can remove alcohol much faster than conventional treatments.
The device is the size of a briefcase and delivers carbon dioxide to users from a tank, ensuring that CO2 blood levels remain constant thus preventing dizziness and nausea when hyperventilating.
Principal researcher Joseph Fisher, anesthesiologist and principal scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute said hospitals are often powerless in cases of alcohol poisoning. Currently, the only intervention to rid the body of excess ethanol is dialysis – a largely inefficient process.
“[Patients] are unconscious and heavily intoxicated with alcohol, so they are difficult to examine… And there is nothing you can do. You have to wait for their liver to metabolize it, ”Fisher told The Canadian Press.
On the assumption that the lungs could play a vital role in removing ethanol, the team asked a group of five adults to drink half a glass of vodka twice.
After the first drink, it took participants between two and three hours to remove half of the ethanol from their bodies, according to the Breathalyzer results. The second time around, they were asked to hyperventilate. With each exhale, Fisher says, the alcohol that has evaporated from the blood is released.
The body was able to metabolize ethanol at a rate three times faster than waiting for the liver to process it. Fisher cautions that the sample is small and requires additional testing.
But the peer-reviewed developments are nonetheless promising.
“I was an emergency doctor and I know they have big problems with patients who – on top of everything else – are also addicted to alcohol,” Fisher said, adding that it could save life as well. life of young children who accidentally ingest alcohol. . “Usually these kids are broken down, but that can be an approach.
Treatment is unlikely to be repackaged as a hangover cure: researchers have found the process to be most effective for high levels of intoxication.
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