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"Airnergy" activated oxygen therapy

godlovesatrier

Senior Member
Messages
2,545
Location
United Kingdom
Hi all,

I recently came across this device after a UK Dr suffering from FM and ME made a full recovery using it along with diet and supplements etc. This therapy is not the same as an oxygen concentrator (which concentrates oxygen in the ambient air)) and it is different to bottled oxygen, breathed in through a mask.

The science is that singlet oxygen is an activated form of oxygen. You can read more here

As it is singlet oxygen is actually really bad for you. If it were to accumulate in tissues it would just cause damage.

However as it changes state it turns into energised oxygen (which sounds like a scam but scientifically the oxygen is being agitated to change states from triplet oxygen (in normal air) to singlet oxygen)). As it changes state and is breathed into the body, this type of oxygen is meant to be highly available and metabolised into tissues far better. Although I am struggling with scientific citation around this which does make me a bit sceptical. Not sure if anyone knows how this bit works?

I'm interested to know firstly if anyone's tried it and secondly if you did what machine you used? The UK machines are listed here https://www.activatedoxygentherapy.com/activated-oxygen-devices/

These machines are made by SOEMAC in the UK (soemac) and this technology is mainly a german innovation that appeared around 2008. Youtube has some scant videos on this stuff, although some more recent pre covid videos show them explaining how it works with their latest devices.

I'm currently trialling one of the devices on a rental basis, but the healing reactions are brutal. Testimonials from ME patients are very thin on the ground. This technology and therapy is targeted at COPD patients, those with asthma in particular, macular degeneration and to a lesser extent arthritis and the like. There's some evidence it can be used for migraines too. It seems like ME patients have the worst reactions to the device. Which makes me think we all share the same sort of hypersensitivity (as we do with almost everything) to activated air that we do with most other things.

It's interesting technology as it's basically a box with some lights in it and that's it, no pump, nothing else. These light sources agitate the ambient oxygen so it is delivered in the altered state. Fancier models pass it through a h2o medium to attach the energised oxygen to water molecules which are then breathed in as hydrated oxygen.

More information on the specifics of activated air for ME/CFS here:
Why is oxygen important in ME/CFS?

SOEMAC also have a cheaper device around £400 which is aimed I guess at every day people. Who can put it on at night to get health benefits. I expect these are a con because the amount of activated air breathed in would be so low per cubic volume of air in the bedroom that the effects would surely be worthless - even if there were any.

--

I've been told this healing reaction is the usual thing we expect - dead cellular material that cannot be expelled quickly enough. But I don't understand how that can last longer than 3 days. I am on day 4 currently and suffering very badly. The only thing I can take that gives me any relief at all is Andrographis Paniculata (to the rescue as usual). But I think the reason why it works is because it's reducing oxidative stress created by the energised oxygen, or it's reduced inflammation caused by a ramping up of viral load). My symptoms are/were, severe air hunger, aches and pains, weakness, malaise, fatigue in the tissues of the muscles as opposed to just feeling the muscles unable to recover from exertion, disorientation whereby you walk into walls and are super clumsy.
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Singlet oxygen is a very reactive form of the normal O2 oxygen molecule. It is considered a reactive oxygen species.

Singlet oxygen is actually created when hypericin (from the herb St John's Wort) is exposed to light. This is why sometimes people taking St John's Wort develop a skin rash when they are exposed to the sun. The hypericin generates singlet oxygen in the skin as the sunlight hits it.

The herb St John's Wort can also cause damage to the eye's cornea lens, leading to cataracts, if this herb is taken in combination with exposure to bright light. Again it is the singlet oxygen which does the damage.

It's interesting that the antiviral effects of hypericin are increased by 100-fold when light is introduced, because light + hypericin generates singlet oxygen.

Singlet oxygen can also be generated by exposing methylene blue to light.



In terms of breathing in singlet oxygen from a machine, this likely is not going to reach the body, as the half life of singlet oxygen in water is just a few microseconds. So no way for the singlet oxygen entering the lungs to travel in the blood to reach other part of the body.

Even in air, the half life of singlet oxygen is very short, around 50 milliseconds. So as far as I can see, very little of the singlet oxygen generated in the machine would even reach the lungs (which may be a good thing, given how reactive it is).
 
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Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,684
Location
Alberta
From the wiki page: "In normal organic solvents, the lifetime is only a few microseconds whereas in solvents lacking C-H bonds, the lifetime can be as long as seconds." From that, I would guess that inhaled singlet oxygen would react with organic compounds in the lung membrane, and the number of molecules surviving a few mm past the membrane would be approaching zero. I really doubt that ME's core dysfunction resides only in lung membrane cells. I also note that they're including their own research as key supporting evidence for their product; kind of a conflict of interest there.

What I see from their page is some research findings suggesting that there is reduced blood flow in some PWME, to which they suggest that somehow enhancing the quality of oxygen per blood cell would logically improve health, but they seem to be missing the evidence showing that breathing in activated oxygen results in benefits in actual cells throughout the body. Where's the data showing that cells in the brain or liver or wherever are in any way different in a patient who breathes air treated with $$$ and normal, everyday air?
 

godlovesatrier

Senior Member
Messages
2,545
Location
United Kingdom
Thanks for the science Hip.

So I've been told that yes your correct. No singlet oxygen leaves the machine. That's where I'm a bit dubious as to what is supposed to be going on or why it's beneficial. So as I understand it your breathing in oxygen that's in a non singlet state but was very recently. That's as far as I've got. My first very low duration and intensity session left me feeling god awful. I think due to high levels of oxidative stress thereafter. So it's definitely in an altered state. It's just not exactly clear what.
 

geraldt52

Senior Member
Messages
602
I've been told this healing reaction is the usual thing we expect - dead cellular material that cannot be expelled quickly enough.
This isn't a criticism aimed at you, godlovesatrier, but I've grown really weary of the mantra "you'll get worse before you get better". I've found that in the vast majority of cases the mantra could stop at "you'll get worse", and it'd be a lot more accurate.

The Herx reaction is an antibiotic thing, but strikes me as nonsense when applied elsewhere. If something makes you feel worse right off, that's probably going to be the end result as well.
 

godlovesatrier

Senior Member
Messages
2,545
Location
United Kingdom
That's my feeling as well @geraldt52 however I was curious as to the effects of higher initial oxidative stress, until the body gets used to the oxygen. But was struggling to see in my head how that could be really very beneficial long term. As surely it would just makes things worse long term?

I think a herx can be any number of things. In this case I am convinced it's ramping up oxidative stress levels, as it is the only way to explain symptoms I haven't had in months appearing suddenly and lasting well over 3 days. I won't feel better until maybe Monday I reckon.

But as Hip says you can't expect there to be much of anything leaving the machine, yet I am definitely breathing something in. Suffice to say I am down to only tolerating about 60 seconds a session at the lowest setting, possibly even less than that. As long as it doesn't make me feel even worse than I have this week, I will give it a go.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
So I've been told that yes your correct. No singlet oxygen leaves the machine. That's where I'm a bit dubious as to what is supposed to be going on or why it's beneficial. So as I understand it your breathing in oxygen that's in a non singlet state but was very recently.

That's right: singlet oxygen is created by a special alignment of the spins of the electrons orbiting around the oxygen atom. That special alignment makes the oxygen atom much more reactive, in effect like an oxygen-based bleach. Singlet oxygen still has the same chemical formula of O2, just like regular oxygen. It's the electron alignment that makes singlet oxygen highly reactive.

But within milliseconds of being created, that special electron alignment falls back to the standard alignment of ordinary oxygen, and so in this way singlet oxygen rapidly turns back to regular oxygen.

In this context, half-life is an averaged time, so although the average half-life of singlet oxygen in air is 50 milliseconds, a small number of singlet oxygen molecules will last for longer, eg, 500 milliseconds — which would be long enough to get from the machine to your lungs. So I think your lungs will be hit with a low level of singlet oxygen. But most of the singlet oxygen will revert back to normal oxygen before reaching your lungs.

It may be that your symptoms of air hunger are actually caused by some lung damage; so I would be very careful if I were you.



When I first got ME/CFS, I read about singlet oxygen, and was actually considering building my own singlet oxygen generating machine, which would be very easy to make with some methylene blue dye and a light source.

I thought that singlet oxygen might be an alternative to say ozone therapy. However, once I learnt that the half life of singlet oxygen in the blood would be microseconds, I realized it was not going to work. Furthermore, even if you could somehow surmount the issue of that extremely short half life, the high bleach-like reactivity of singlet oxygen would be quite toxic to tissues, so you may be doing more harm than good.
 
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Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,684
Location
Alberta
I've been told this healing reaction is the usual thing we expect - dead cellular material that cannot be expelled quickly enough.

I'm a bit bothered by that claim too. As I understand it, dead cells effectively get deconstructed--torn back down to amino acids and other building blocks--rather than getting 'expelled'. I suppose there could be slowdowns in the deconstruction process, which could cause symptoms, but the inaccuracy of the claim bothers me.
 

godlovesatrier

Senior Member
Messages
2,545
Location
United Kingdom
Yeah I see your point Hip. It was my first thought too but I was won over by the testimonials. One directly from the Dr who I have rented the device from.

Hard to say what's going on really unless someone other than the manfacturer does a concrete physical test on the device to measure what is coming out of it when turned on. Which must be so easy to do. But something is. Must be singlet oxygen or why would it make you feel so horrendous? I'm not sure but my hopes weren't exactly very high. Just the reaction at the lowest dose (they told me to go slow and low so I did) has just been god awful.

It's the more harm than good bit however that truly concerns me. We're already sick enough as it is. What surprises me is that it seems to work fine for a lot of people and they can go about there lives normally. One girl describes getting very bad headaches from the machine for weeks. So she reduces down to 2 minutes a day for a few months. This girl had ME. She was 16 so not yet severely afflicted but not far off.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Must be singlet oxygen or why would it make you feel so horrendous?

I suspect a small amount of singlet oxygen is getting into your lungs, but because this molecule is so chemically reactive, a small amount may have a big impact, possibly leading to tissue damage. So perhaps you might be getting inflammatory responses in the lungs, in order to repair the damage.

If antioxidant levels are low in the lungs, then the tissue damage might be higher. Because ME/CFS patients may be low on antioxidants anyway, perhaps this singlet oxygen machine might hit the lungs of ME/CFS patients harder. Or because ME/CFS patients suffer from inflammation anyway, if singlet oxygen is causing an inflammatory response in the lungs, then it may ramp up overall inflammation.
 

godlovesatrier

Senior Member
Messages
2,545
Location
United Kingdom
Yep. What your saying makes sense. That's all I can think of. I couldn't find any mention of these machines on PR. So still interested to see if anyone's tried one.

But my air hunger yesterday was extreme and due to bcaas and other supplements I haven't had actual muscular tissue fatigue essentially not working at all for a very long time. The only thing that's helping really is your magnesium spray and the andro.

I've certainly realised my oxidative stress levels are very high after exertion. Which is interesting as I didn't realise that's what it was called.
 

godlovesatrier

Senior Member
Messages
2,545
Location
United Kingdom
Is this where they basically put oxygen into your blood? I thought that caused tissue damage, but maybe I've misunderstood. How long did you crash for? I think I might be coming out of my crash finally.