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Comment by meindnoch | Hacker News Reader

Xenon is used by athletes to increase their endogenous erythropoietin production. As it's a noble gas, it leaves no trace in their body, so post-hoc detection of this doping method is impossible.

But as a recreational climber, why bother with xenon? Just inject EPO.

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Why not both? Also detection?!? That’s crazy. Everybody should be doing this. The raison d’etre for these sorts of bans is their perceived negative health consequences.

You almost certainly safer using whatever PED you can get your hands on if you’re trying to climb Everest.

> Why not both?

Because if you can inject EPO then you don't need xenon. With EPO you can generate as many red blood cells your body can handle.

Including too much, people have died from this.

The point remains though, this is recreation so why not just hire Dr Ferrari and take cera or epo

> why bother with xenon? Just inject EPO.

As a recreational anything I'd say avoid wrecking your body to make some arbitrary numbers nobody will ever care about go up (or down)

Given that the odds of dying on Everest are so high, a bit of ill-advised drug use seems like a minor concern.

Are they?

I thought nowadays the sherpas practically carry you up there so it's of low risk to you.

Both wikipedia [1] and an expedition company [2] seem to put the deaths per year as <10 with it being dominated by people from Nepal who are presumably the sherpas doing all the work.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_died_climbi...

[2]: https://www.climbing-kilimanjaro.com/mount-everest-deaths/

"The percentage of deaths to successful attempts is around 4%."

4% chance of death sounds very high to me.

I mean, pick a dangerous surgery with a high death %. It's still safe to be the surgeon in that case.

The people dieing are by far the sherpas which you aren't one of.

>The people dieing are by far the sherpas

Not according to this graph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_died_climbi...

> As a recreational anything

Most recreational activities don't come with an existing risk of death: PEDs likely reduce this relative risk in many riskier physical endeavors.

I guess it feels different to people to stimulate their bodies production of a hormone rather than injecting it.

More recently it was CO use to simulate altitude training

Hmm, that sounds like it could go bad easily.

Breathing in an inert gas is easier and much safer than injecting something into your body.

Casually breathing in an anaesthetic gas for prolonged periods is easier and much safer than injecting a widely used medicine? Are you out of your mind?

When you put it that way it sounds like something you'd hear from a hippie crack user

yea, thinking about it I've been inhaling too much Xenon myself...

Epo injections are safe and effective, and side effects are very rare and usually mild

Xenon acts like an anesthetic so it's possible to OD on.

True, but they did it ahead of time in a controlled way.

In a hospital with an anaesthesiologist?

> In a hospital with an anaesthesiologist?

Well, from the article:

> The men wore masks hooked up to ventilators as an anesthesiologist slowly introduced higher levels of xenon into their systems.

The doctor named in the article seems to be[0] the head of the Department of Anesthesiology at Limburg hospital.

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Fries-3

Anesthetic gasses are applied in a lot of environments outside of hospitals.

It’s inert, how bad could it be? /s

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