Ask HN: Could an oxygen concentrator increase my productivity? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Could an oxygen concentrator increase my productivity?

29 pointsnathan-wailes71 comments

Has anyone here tried using an oxygen concentrator to increase their productivity? I can get the CO2 level in my room to around 580 with a comfortable temperature, but I never feel quite as clear-headed as when I'm working outside. I'm wondering if getting an oxygen concentrator that gets my effective CO2 level to ~400 would carry any risks or downsides that I should know about. For example, one thing I'm learning is that these machines can be loud, so I'd need to consider whether the productivity gain from increased oxygen would be offset by increased ambient noise.

Update: Here are a list of things I think I'll try based on comments: 1. oxygen cylinder, 2. CO2 scrubber, 3. oxygen concentrator, 4. air exchanger.

View on HN

Do not do this. Was CTO of Healthcare company that focuses on heart failure. In the course of my work I learned that if you're in the hospital, they only give you just enough to keep your SpO2 in the desired range. If they give you too much oxygen, you can get oxygen toxicity. Your body will also get used to trying less hard for air, so when you go off your SpO2 drops dramatically. You have to slowly titrate off. This isn't a thing you want to fuck with.

Very well written and explained, thank you.

Cleaning and recirculating your environments air can achieve a big improvement in its own

Thank you for the warning. What do you think about CO2 scrubbers?

seems like a much more reasonable approach. In fact, the CDC (iirc) just released a warning about long term, habitual use of an N95 as your CO2 levels rise significantly. In fact, any time that a person is at risk of death from limited air availability (submarines, space flight, etc), you won't run out of oxygen before the CO2 build up kills you.

Don't get me wrong, if you go to the mall or whatever to get oxygen treatment, I'm sure you'll be fine. It's not super concentrated and you're only on it for an hour. Different beast than an oxygen concentrator long term.

With the CO2 scrubber, you might be fighting a bit of a losing battle with it if you have a whole house air exchanger, but that seems like a cheaper/easier solution to keeping CO2 in sync with ambient environment. A whole house air exchanger is also a fantastic way to mitigate radon (mostly a midwest issue, but is a problem in central eastern states and appalachia) and your radon is borderline between safe and unsafe. I have such an air exchanger, a radon monitor, and no radon mitigation. When the air is particularly cold, sometimes I'll turn off my air exchanger and my radon levels go from 3pCi/L to 4.0-4.5 (4 is usually when they recommend you get mitigation system. If it is borderline like that you can get a passive system that exposes your sump well to ambient environment. And at higher levels you should get an active one where a fan will draw vacuum on your sump 24/7)

thank you for the advice!

As for downsides: I wouldn't be surprised if your body adapted to the higher oxygen levels that you provide it with the concentrator, resulting in reduced productivity when you're not connected to it.

Just like people who live at high altitudes adapt to the lower oxygen levels, except in reverse.

I actually had the same thought. For that reason I wasn't going to aim for higher-than-normal oxygen levels, I just want the equivalent of what I get when I'm out hiking in the forest, because I feel like that's the best air I've ever breathed.

Maybe try spending time "on high altitude" when you are not working. Some athletes do this to increase their oxygen uptake. If you are not already doing physical training, you could probably increase your oxygen uptake by a lot just doing something that gives you a pulse of 130 bpm or more for 15-60 minutes or shorter intervals, start with 2-3 times per week.

Idk, but maybe you can experiment with an oxygen cylinder and one of those nose pieces they give to sick people. If that doesn't help, an oxygen concentrator might also not help. The experiment should be relatively inexpensive.

Good idea, I didn't realize that getting an oxygen cylinder by itself might be a cheaper way to test it. I'll look into it further.

Compressed oxygen is a major fire hazard. Obviously it doesn't burn, but makes other things burn much more.

Also oxygen toxicity is a thing, when breathing oxygen at surface pressure it is usually mild, and worth it for people short of it! But it's not candy.

Yeah I'm starting to get scared of the possibility of an accident.

I wonder how you got this idea. If you want to increase your output nothing works better than starting the day with a 30 minute walk. Every 2 hours do some exercise for 5 to 7 minutes. This is also cheaper. I recommend doing a few squads as it is the best exercise.

I got the idea from noticing that the CO2 level can make it harder for me to think, so I wondered what would happen if I went in the other direction (more oxygen).

Buy a $20 SpO2 monitor, and realize that your blood is already saturated with O2. You'll find that you're generally between 97%-99% to begin with, so what is adding oxygen going to do? The amount of oxygen that reaches your tissues is a function of the carrying capacity of your erythrocytes, and unless you're very sick or in an extreme environment, that isn't driven by ambient O2 levels.

how are measuring this “harder to think” feeling to avoid confirmation bias?

yeah that's a great point, I need to come up with some way to measure it.

You might try one of those boost oxygen cans - they are primarily meant for hiking at altitude, but they do provide a mental clarity boost with each 'puff' that lasts a minute or two. They cost like $10 at Walmart.

Thank you for the tip! I'd never heard of that before, I'm going to check it out.

Increased alertness, coupled with greater O2 use = greater CO2 production from the increase in respiration - not a straight line as the body will use what it needs and will ramp consumption only if there was a prior deficiency. Increase in CO2 produced also drive faster respiration as the body has detectors for extra CO2 = homeostasis.

I definitely feel like I'm not breathing the same quality air when I'm in my room vs when I'm in the woods. I'm not sure how much of an issue it is, though. It might just be me getting hung up on every little annoyance. But I do suspect I'd think better if I was in a slightly more oxygen rich environment than my room.

Well, in the day's sun = higher O2 and at night progressively higher CO2 and lower O2 as plant respiration/decomposition. I am sure this has been measured and is online - where? There is also a chance that the intangible 'scent' of freshness, similar to after a shower might sway your senses?

I feel like I can sense the "stuffiness" (CO2) in a room apart from the scent, but I do think it would be worth an experiment to make sure. I agree it's a potential confounding(?) variable.

If you're still checking this thread: See what trees/plants you're near in the woods.

Pinene, for example, is a significant bronchodilator.

Wow, I never knew that. My memories are based mostly on being in the woods in Maine, which is mostly pine trees IIRC. I wonder if I could get the same benefit from putting pine needles in my room or something.

Oh cool, glad you're still here!

You may want to look for a really nice source of essential oils, or terpenes, and put it in a diffuser.

I won't go so far as to recommend it, but I personally learned about this in the context of vaporization (not "vaping") of hemp/cannabis, but the related oils are found in plenty of other plants, and/or as concentrates for putting into the air, or into you in various ways.

A greater partial pressure of oxygen != lesser partial pressure of CO2.

Can you elaborate? I'm unfamiliar with the science here. To use an extreme example, if an oxygen concentrator was blowing out 98% oxygen, wouldn't that necessarily mean there was less CO2 than otherwise?

Depends what the volume of the room is and turnover with normal air. If your room is 98% oxygen then yes, probably. But if that concentrator is bumping the typical 21% up to 30% or so, vast majority of the difference is going to be made up from a decrease in the 78% of air that is N2 with a pretty small dent in CO2 (which at en elevated 1000 ppm is still only 0.1%).

You wouldn't want the room to be 98% O2 though, that's just asking for oxygen toxicity. You wouldn't want CO2 really low either, that's just asking for hypocapnia. So unless you have specialised equipment to control the gas mixture you are breathing, why not just increase ventilation a bit if you'd like to decrease CO2 levels?

Yeah, the more I look into this, the more complicated it seems. I didn't realize the balance of the gases was so important, I thought I just needed more oxygen. A CO2 scrubber would seem to have the same issue, right?

I agree I could just increase ventilation, and that's what I'm doing now. But I recently realized that many extremely-productive people are getting their productivity from using stimulants like caffeine, and so now I'm wondering what other things I could modify in my life to be more productive. I'm just trying to optimize everything.

The CO2 scrubber, would do the trick, I was thinking about hypocapnia but that probably isn't affected by inhaled CO2 but the rate at which you purge metabolic CO2. So not sure there is a downside to pushing it too far the other direction the way there is with O2. But I think a real scrubber based solution would be cost prohibitive and perhaps finicky and noisy compared to a ventilation based solution that would do 95% of the job.

Got it, thank you for your opinion.

Most of the US is currently blanketed with wildfire smoke. Are you sure CO2 is the problem? Are you testing for PM2.5, PM10, VOCs, humidity, etc?

Yeah, I have an AQI meter too, and my CO2 meter also tracks humidity. I'm pretty sure it's the CO2. It's admittedly a minor annoyance, I'm just trying to make the perfect work setup.

I'd be worried about side effects.... I doubt more oxygen is exactly the same as less Co2, isn't oxygen toxicity a thing?

I wouldn't be willing to tolerate even a very small amount of toxicity just for increased productivity if that is the case.

Yeah that's the kind of thing I'm worried about, that's what I'm hoping to learn from the people here. I don't want abnormally high oxygen levels, I just want the same quality of air that I get when I'm walking through the forest. Or, in another case, I once went into an employees-only bathroom at a CVS and was astounded at how good the air quality was, I don't know why it was so much better but I never forgot about it, and always thought, "If I have a lot of money one day, I want air like that all day every day."

It is way cheaper to hyperventilate. Enjoy the dizziness.

I was actually wondering about that. I feel like there must be a difference between hyperventilating and breathing lower-CO2/higher-O2 air, but I'm not sure. Can you point me to any information on this? I Googled the issue and came across [this article][0]: "The problem in hyperventilation is not 'too much oxygen' - whatever is unabsorbed by the lungs is simply exhaled again. The problem [is the relative] deficit of CO2. Production of CO2 is normally in equilibrium with 02 intake. This equilibrium is important..." "Hyperventilation is functional as long as muscle use follows closely after; the resulting reserve of oxygen and loss of CO 2 permit a head start if danger should materialize. "

[0]: https://respirasbreathing.com/documents/breathing/Hyperventi...

To back up what you're saying about CO2 levels – I used to work in a small office with about 40 other devs. In the winter when the windows were closed the room was basically sealed off. The only fresh air we'd get was when someone occasionally entered or left the room.

I was always sceptical of how useful CO2 monitors are, but I was barely functional in that office. A colleague of mine regularly worked in the corridor because he got such bad headaches while in the office. For me I just got drowsy and couldn't focus.

I've never tried to actively increase oxygen, but I do carry a CO2 monitor now and I think if you're going to be doing mentally demanding tasks in a confided space it's useful to think about.

Personally I wouldn't want to increase O2 concentrations beyond levels you'd generally find outdoors though... Perhaps if you occasionally want a short burst of focus it wouldn't be too harmful, but I'm guessing its effects will be a bit like caffeine in that if you consume it constantly your body will just adjust to a new baseline and you'll find it hard to cope without it.

Very unlikely to be helpful. Oxygen saturation is maintained very well within the body and is under normal circumstances outside of disease and high altitude not a product of the environment.

What's your opinion of the other comment in this thread pointing out the NIEHS study "Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant?", which concluded that even going from 600ppm to 1000ppm made a difference?

I'm curious: would a few leafy house plants do the trick here?

I don't think it would make meaningful difference, unless we're talking about a jungle

I think getting a good sleep in a well ventilated room with fresh air will do way more for productivity (or lack of it).

tl;dr: No

A suggestion from someone who has built three different CO2 monitors - don't chase the numbers. 420/800/1200 ppm has no meaningful difference, and if you don't have a good way to calibrate your CO2 sensor, such as a pure nitrogen environment or taking your sensor outside at least weekly and forcing a calibration, you can easily be 500 ppm out of true.

I suspect that you probably feel more clear-headed outside because there is wind and nature and distractions that aren't an LED screen.

That said, I think an interesting experiment would be to use a CO2 scrubber to remove carbon dioxide, instead of trying to overpower it with more oxygen. Otherwise, just get a tank of oxygen and face mask and see how it works for you.

Thank you for the reply! I've had two different CO2 monitors and feel like I definitely notice a difference between when the level is 1000 and when it's 400-600. In fact both my girlfriend and my father have noticed the difference in "stuffiness" when I have the windows open vs closed, and that was in separate houses/apartments. But I think I pay way closer attention to it than most other people.

"I suspect that you probably feel more clear-headed outside because there is wind and nature and distractions that aren't an LED screen."

I definitely agree that those things make a difference in how I feel, but I think that the CO2 makes a difference even at those lower levels. I'll say this: if I drink coffee, I can power through it / not notice it. But if I'm not using caffeine, I'm a lot more sensitive to it.

"I think an interesting experiment would be to use a CO2 scrubber to remove carbon dioxide"

Thank you for that idea! I didn't know a CO2 scrubber was a thing, so this is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to get from the HN crowd.

The sense of stuffiness can be due to humidity, mold, or probably just various household smells.

If your sensors are able to do remote logging, you can do your own double blind test and cover up the displays for a week and log what you feel like the CO2 level might be, and then at the end of the week compare it to the logged levels.

Either way, you might consider an air exchanger - either commercial or homemade[0] that can efficiently move air from outside to inside, without much heat loss.

[0] https://www.loudawson.com/17884/how-to-build-air-cross-flow-...

Good ideas. "Air exchanger" is another thing I'd never heard of before. And I've written down the idea to do an experiment: I think maybe what I could do is cover up my Aranet4 CO2 monitor's front screen with some tape, take it with me to different venues around where I live, write down what I think the CO2 level is at that venue, and then look at the logs afterwards.

Can recommend Panasonic ERV/HRV. With it air in my office is better than the air outside: CO2/O2 levels are practically the same, but on the way in air gets filtered.

Thank you for the tip!

I used to use this window-mounted model from PuriFresh: http://www.purifresh.com/erv.html Having fresh indoor air in the winter was amazing.

Unfortunately my current home has non-standard windows so it doesn't fit anywhere. If you are in the Boston area I'd be glad to gift it to you.

Wow, thank you for the tip! I'm going to look into the Purifresh, that sounds like exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Unfortunately I'm not in the Boston area but thank you for the offer!

Does your place, by any chance, have paint that isn't made out of non-toxic materials? I recently moved and went back to the old place after a few days, noticing how much different the air was. The new place had certified paint used and it was quite noticable.

I'm not sure, but this CO2 issue is something I've noticed in many different situations, including just being in a car with air recirculation turned on. Once I became attuned to CO2 I started noticing its effects everywhere. It's similar to how, once I experienced my first major earthquake (Washington DC in 2011) I suddenly started noticing all of the very minor quakes that happen all the time but that most people never notice.

> 420/800/1200 ppm has no meaningful difference

That claim contradicts the results of the NIEHS study "Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant?"[1], which has found that "Relative to 600 ppm, at 1,000 ppm CO2, moderate and statistically significant decrements occurred in six of nine scales of decision-making performance."

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160305212909/http://ehp.niehs....

Yeah, that matches up with my experience.

In the higher end of co2, 1000+ I definitely notice and will get more tired and less able to concentrate. Definitely buy a good meter and not the cheapest on Amazon. Aranet is pretty reliable for me but the calibration does slip over time and you hinted at, although not weekly.

how do you measure productivity?

One measure I use is what percentage of my time I'm actually working vs. doing other stuff (e.g. Twitter), another is how many distracting/annoying things I find myself thinking about (e.g. being hungry/thirsty, cold/hot, etc.).

I deal with oxygen concentrators daily after I put together a family of heart failure patients. I think we have 4 working concentrators, plus bottle oxygen.

1. Check your blood oxygen saturation with several pulse oximeters. They are not reliable enough to only use one.

1.1 You can buy sleep study watches that monitor your oxygen levels constantly and record / graph it, but they involve things that clip on your finger tip. It is hard to work with one on.

1.2 Most oxygen monitoring activity trackers are fake. Even brand names do not read the same as medical pulse oximeters and sleep study watches.

2. Open a window. If outside air is better, breathe outside air.

3. Monitor your air. You seem to have a CO2 meter. Get a second one and check if it is reliable. If they disagree, buy a third unit as a tie breaker. Compare your inside air to outside air, which should be below 400 ppm CO2.

3.1 Buy several oxygen meters and check the oxygen in your outside air (should be 20 percent, plus or minus 1 percent.) Check the inside air Oxygen meters can usually be calibrated.

4. If you use an oxygen cylinder, be aware of what can happen if you drop it. A mount that is screwed to a wall or a good stand is not optional.

4.1 if you use an oxygen cylinder, make sure it is medical oxygen and not contaminated with welding gasses.

4.2 if you use an oxygen cylinder, make sure you calculate the cost with a regulator, tubing, cannula, and frequency refills. They do not last long.

4.3 If you use an oxygen cylinder, make sure not to get too much oxygen in the room. Remember the Apollo 1 fire.

4.4 If you buy or rent oxygen cylinders, there are different sizes.

5. If you consider an oxygen concentrator, they are cheaper used, but bring your own tester and check them out. Many used ones are broken. Selling a broken oxygen concentrator can kill heart failure patients, but it happens.

5.1 If you buy an oxygen concentrator, it separates oxygen from surrounding air. That gives oxygen through a tube and oxygen depleted air around the concentrator. Keep a window open and a fan on for at least an hour a day.

5.2 If you buy an oxygen concentrator, do not put it in a box or closet to muffle the noise. It sucks the oxygen out of that area and then can not get any more oxygen.

5.3 If you buy an oxygen concentrator you will need tubing and cannulas.

5.4 I can imagine someone plugging in an oxygen concentrator without a cannula. It would separate oxygen from room air and dump them out 2 exit points, allowing them to recombine. This would be useless.

5.5 Oxygen concentrators heat up the room. Be prepared for as much heat as an extra PC workstation produces.

6. Oxygen toxicity is real, but I have no experience with it.

7. There are legends of guys putting several oxygen concentrators in a well ventilated out building / storage building and flooding a room in the main building with oxygen. This takes us back to the Apollo 1 fire and to oxygen toxicity.

Thank you for all the advice! I think this discussion has given me a healthy fear of oxygen cylinders and concentrators. I'm not sure I'll be experimenting with them now.

I was the CTO of a healthcare company that focused on patients with heart failure. We did buy a bunch of "non-medical use only" O2 saturation monitors during covid because it is all we could get our hands on. They're notoriously unreliable and variable compared to something that doesn't have a CLIA waiver. Since you have family with heart failure, I'd highly recommend you acquire a more expensive device to get the most accurate readings. Also change up which fingers you use as that tends to drive differences in SpO2 (at least on my personal experimentation with the cheap SpO2 monitors)

Changing the fingers absolutely changes the readings on a pulse oximeter. They also take at least 30 seconds to settle down. (At least mine do.) I use 3 at a time in the mornings when I check my vitals and when they read within 1% (e.g., 97%, 98%, 98%) I record the lowest reading.

I use concentrators for gas torches. They are not to be trifled with. Enriched oxygen is terrifying.

Yeah thats some scary boom boom material right there.

thank you for the warning! I wasn't planning to set it to pure oxygen, just ~22% (if I can even set them that low), but now I'm scared of the possibility of an accident.

Open a window and get a fan.

any chance you can put plants around your home OP?

greens brings comfort to the eyes, tending to them eases you out too. walking around or exercising gives you better oxygen circulation too.

No. (Thanks Betteridge).

What or who is Betteridge?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com