Treatment for Covid-19 Using Ethanol Vapor Inhalation | Hacker News Reader

Treatment for Covid-19 Using Ethanol Vapor Inhalation

clinicaltrials.gov

35 pointsNiceWayToDoIT39 comments

Wow !

As fast remedy for blocked sinuses or sore throat, moreover to clean airways - detoxing from smoking (alcohol dissolve oils.. and lipds) I'm inhaling peppermint tincture (ethanol 90%, mint oil 5%) heating the spoon or by burning a bit of alcohol. Olbas oil doesn't work so good as this, to clean lungs and infections.

In this study aspirin is taken oral. There was a study (2011) 'Aspirin inhalation treatment for COPD patients' https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/p825.abstrac... - I wonder once about it ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24946135 ).

I have completely and continuously destroyed sinuses from 2 decades of severe perennial allergies. Basically 24/7/365 of runny, stuffy, itchy nose.

Anecdotally, I can say that drinking a glas of Aspirin Complex (Bayer, aspirin + pseudoephedrin) will instantly bring relief as I bring up the glas of water to my mouth. The powder is still dissolving and causing bubbles/sparkling water to throw some aspirin-water vapor into its immediate vicinity and while breathing you can't really avoid to inhale a bit of it.

I found opinions that the best decongestant for sinuses - and inhaler - is Benzedrex, not available in UK. Benzedrex contains propylhexedrine 'which has similar structures and properties as pseudoephedrine'. Aspirin, anti-inflammatory .., is invented and best made by Bayer obviously (that bubbles.. ;).

So trump wasn't entirely wrong about disinfecting the inside?

Yeah, next is to try something with a powerful light/laser!!!

it's been done before https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29124710/

This may be a joke comment - but this is not the idea of the study. From the introduction:

  the idea is to use alcohol inhalation as it reduce surface tension on the alveoli and markedly decrease sputum formation with improvement on oxygenation beside its cytolethal effect on virus lipid bilayer.

They're also looking to investigate:

    Also the investigator will use it as a prophylaxis for health care workers to disinfect the virus as soon as possible while it is present in nasal mucosa and upper airway.

So the comment you replied to isn't _totally_ off the mark.

Needles to say, injections are next.

He probably heard of a similar related trial in a meeting and interpreted it as a 100% cure, due to his chronic stupidity.

that way the next will be our old method of "hot potato vapor inhalation" - actually a pretty successful method of getting well in flu-like cases used in childhood - you cover your head with a blanket over the pot of freshly boiled potatoes and breath for several minutes. Kind of sauna effect limited to the upper torso and the insides of the throat/lungs (potatoes also contain some natural biologically active substances, antibiotics, etc., including even ethanol and some toxins, so may be that had some effect too). Of course starting upper teenager years it became just sauna with hot tea (on couple occasions 2-3 hours in hot sauna ("banya") got me back from flu like condition of around 39 C degree body temp back to normal by the end of the day) and in the latter years some ethanol (drinking, not inhaling :) was added into the mix too.

Note: IANAD, all of the above is just anecdotes from personal experience, don't try at home, etc. Even Russian Internet is full of recommendations where hot boiled water isn't removed from the pot before the inhalation - that is a different approach and carries major risks of getting burned and whatever else. Sauna (especially with alcohol) carries its own bunch of risks too.

I used to spend far too long (in my opinion anyway) hovering under a towel over a bowl of hot water with some menthol-bearing substance added (exactly what varied over the years) when I was a kid. It worked though, really eased the congestion in the nasal passages... just don't be dumb enough to stick your nose in the water!

Reminds me of: https://vaportini.com/

Inhalation must hit pretty hard, any alcohol vape for recreational use would have to be some form of micro-dosing.

A small hit if alcohol vape might be a nice anxiety reducer. A functional alcoholics dream, no smell, no bloat, fuck - no calories. Wish it wasn’t addictive.

Definitely think this needs more exploration. Could we just make better drugs already. Give me the pill or vape, why must I drink 700 calories and smell like it? Oh, and could I buy it at the grocery store and not have to goto a doctor (dealer) too? Promise to be responsible.

> A functional alcoholics dream, no smell, no bloat, fuck - no calories

The biggest problem with inhaling your alcohol is you lose access to your body's mechanism for getting rid of excess in the case of overconsumption.

In my younger days, puking probably saved me from alcohol poisoning a couple of times. Breathing it in, you lose that safeguard. It's probably fine for having 1 or 2 drinks, but I'd be wary of an inhales alcohol binge.

When you drink alcohol, your blood level can increase even after you stop drinking (alcohol is still transferred from intestines to blood). With inhalation, you have almost instantaneous response and can stop before you pass out.

You'd really need to microdose that properly though. I've cleaned my shower with aerosolised alcohol spray. Even with an open window and a cloth on my nose, I got quite tipsy / giggly and ended up with strong headache. I was definitely not functional afterwards, or at least not safe to work.

I'd much rather drink a beer.

Edit: I misremembered. The product I used was Isopropyl Alcohol, which is not what's mentioned here. Still, leaving as a warning if anyone thinks of trying.

IPA poisoning is dangerous and can be fatal. Be careful!

Actually isopropanol is pretty non-toxic. It will get you drunk and is metabolized to acetone, which is a ketone body that is also produced from metabolizing body fat, so your body is well equipped to handle it.

Not saying you want to consume isopropanol. Apparently it won’t kill you but you’ll feel like you were poisoned.

I was disinfecting something with an aerosolized 70% ethanol in the early days of covid, accidentally got a whiff (through a surgical mask, no less) and was short of breath for a week starting immediately (clearly from the ethanol vapor, also had a negative covid test a few days later)

Any of you HNers aware of this ? I was unable to find anything online.

It may be related to the vomit-inducing agent they put in store bought ethanol (by law, in most places). Or the ethanol itself - but I couldn’t find any description of what I endured.

Are you sure it wasn’t methanol?

Almost sure. It was 70% rubbing alcohol, which is almost exclusively ethanol around here. (Bought it in a pharmacy, and they're not supposed to sell pure methanol at pharmacies here)

Most bottles labeled rubbing alcohol sold here are a mix of ethanol and isopropynol(i think mostly to discourage drinking it). Isopropynol vapours can cause respiratory irritation.

https://www.msdsonline.com/2015/02/20/isopropyl-alcohol-safe...

It is supposed to be 70% ethanol with up to 0.1% “other stuff” that is supposed to discourage drinking, and when I checked 10 years ago I think it wasn’t isopropyl but I might be misremembering or thing have changed.

Thanks! Will look into that.

It could just be something here. There's a lot of restrictions on ethanol here. It's pretty hard to buy. Most of what you can find in general tends to be isopropynol or methyl hydrate.

For the past few years I’ve mostly been in Israel (the “here”) and basically only Ethanol is sold in pharmacies for medical use; you CAN get e.g. isopropyl for cleaning whiteboards, but not in a pharmacy.

I've seen food grade ethanol sold here in extremely tiny amounts at pretty high prices for perfume making. Other than that you need a license to acquire it. I'm fairly certain there's different licenses for different applications too. Pharmaceuticals falls under a different category than distillers and stuff with different rules. Alcohol in general is highly regulated here so it falls under those same regulations.

I stumbled on this article, so needed to hear your opinion, as I could not believe it ... any medical personnel on HN is this a real thing?

For what it’s worth, the spelling and grammar mistakes don’t inspire confidence. Anyway chances are they’re going to have a hard time finding subjects for their last phase in 2022.

Thanks, English is my third language, I will try to improve it.

I think GP was referring to the grammar and spelling in the article, not yours. (The article authors are likely not writing in their first language(s) either, but what they wrote was certainly understandable.)

I hold a scientific article to a different standard than a comment on a web forum. It isn’t that much effort to run an article through a spell checker or have it corrected by a native speaker.

I take your point, but:

1. This looked more like an early-results announcement than a scrubbed, peer-reviewed paper. Given the pandemic-related subject matter, it seems as though it'd be more important to publicize possibly-lifesaving results as soon as possible than to fix immaterial problems with grammar and spelling.

2. Assuming that we want English to continue being competitive as a global lingua franca (as do I, for selfish reasons), it behooves us native speakers to be tolerant of "aberational" usage by non-native speakers, as opposed to invidiously looking down on those whose usage doesn't conform to our notions of correctness.

(In fact, it'd be good to allow a simplified grammar and spelling to evolve, akin to what I understand used to be the role of Koine Greek, as opposed to Attic Greek, in the days of the Roman Empire.)

The results will come in 2022. No need to rush.

That's a long time for a vapor inhalant to be effective.

The typos in the study summary alone are enough to scare the hell out of me...

It was probably originally written in Arabic and then translated. All of the English errors I noticed seemed likely to be from that.

I can't help but wonder whether threading an optical fibre down into the lungs and introducing some UV light might help. Half-baked idea, and there's some risk to the lungs, however.

a new application for vaping

I prevented covid so far simply by drinking ethanol. My prescription says, 'frequent use of diluted 35% ethanol.'

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