Why does hypoxic air smell different than it did when I first got my system?

Users some­times notice that the oxy­gen smells dif­fer­ent from hypox­ic air at dif­fer­ent times dur­ing their session. 

Why does ‑O2 air smells different early in the LiveO2 session?

Dur­ing ear­ly train­ing, users notice that the +O2 air (high oxy­gen) smells very fresh and nice while the hypox­ic air is warm and less pleas­ant. Over time they notice that the sen­sa­tion of breath­ing the hypox­ic air changes to be more desirable. 

There are 3 rea­sons for this:

• Oxy­gen-rich air always smells fresh because it is processed by a mol­e­c­u­lar sieve which pre­vents all mol­e­cules larg­er than O2 from pass­ing. The fil­ter is lit­er­al­ly small enough to reject N2, or nitro­gen gas from pass­ing. This means all envi­ron­men­tal agents that can cause odor will be fil­tered out of O2 source;
• Breath­ing oxy­gen-rich air enables the scent-detec­tion organ in the nose to re-sen­si­tize. When you switch back to room air, you will notice odors that you could not notice before. When you switch to hypox­ic, these odors are slight­ly more con­cen­trat­ed than in ambi­ent, room, air.
• Any envi­ron­men­tal odor agents larg­er than a O2 mol­e­cule will con­cen­trate in the ‑O2 gas. This often enables the user to “smell” more from the envi­ron­ment because the air sep­a­ra­tion process con­cen­trates these substances.

Our nor­mal train­ing has begin­ner users breathe most­ly oxy­gen until they improve their gen­er­al con­di­tion­ing. This usu­al­ly means most users do not use the hypox­ic ‑O2 air source until the air sep­a­ra­tor unit has run for over 20 hours.

This run time enables the air sep­a­ra­tion unit to com­plete­ly flush out man­u­fac­tur­ing residue. Our man­u­fac­tur­ing burn-in is 5 – 8 hours. 

Why does ‑O2 air have an odor later in my session?

Some users report that while they train on ‑O2 in repeat­ing hypox­ic ses­sions, espe­cial­ly with the pre­mi­um mask (larg­er mask cav­i­ty), they note that the air has an increas­ing odor as their work­out progresses.

This is detox­i­fi­ca­tion. As the vas­cu­lar sys­tem opens up, blood reach­es areas of the body that for­mer­ly had poor cir­cu­la­tion. This occurs often to first-time users users have not nev­er trained, or not trained in a longer peri­od of time. 

Approx­i­mate­ly 1/2 of all LiveO2 new users will off-gas volatile tox­ins stored in their cells. 

There is the phys­i­o­log­i­cal scenario:

1. User starts work­out on oxy­gen only smells nor­mal or fresh;
2. First hypox­ic inter­val smells nor­mal — air smells warmer but has no par­tic­u­lar odor;
3. User pro­gress­es dur­ing ses­sion to more aggres­sive workout;
4. As exer­tion increas­es vas­cu­lar sys­tem opens up to restore blood flow to areas of the body which for­mer­ly accu­mu­lat­ed tox­ins — espe­cial­ly dur­ing hypox­ic ‑O2 exer­tion challenges;
5. Vasodi­la­tion and pulse pres­sure max­i­mize pulse pres­sure at dis­tal cap­il­lary ends, which dur­ing switch to oxy­gen open up;
6. Dur­ing the nor­mal series of hypox­ic switch­es — blood wash­es through for­mer­ly stag­nant areas of the body;
7. Volatile waste prod­ucts either absorbed from the envi­ron­ment, or cel­lu­lar waste prod­ucts, as yeast, or in extreme cas­es formic acid, where necro­sis (cell death) was under­way, are car­ried by the blood to the lungs;
8. Dur­ing inhale (vac­u­um in lungs), volatile sub­stances, from the blood cross the alve­o­lar mem­brane into the air, which is sub­se­quent­ly exhaled; A frac­tion of the volatile tox­ins per­sist in the mask body pri­or to next inhale;
9. User inhales resid­ual tox­ins which per­sist in the mask cav­i­ty, which when inhaled smell like: 
   • Yeast
   • DEET — bug repellent
   • Per­fumes
   • Gaso­line or fuel residue
   • Any volatile the user has come into contact
   • Death smell — When this hap­pens part of your body was decay­ing — It is unpleas­ant but you very likely 
   • User per­ceives odor — but it is part of detox­i­fi­ca­tion process;
10. User con­tin­ues work­out and as the for­mer body-tox­ins vent until the area clears.
11. Next use at same work­out lev­el does not pro­duce this effect, except for some­times a yeast smell

Solu­tion: Con­tin­ue work­out until smell clears. This restores blood flow and enables the body to restore opti­mal func­tion. These odors indi­cate that your body is return­ing to health. They will stop after your body elim­i­nates the sub­stances that cause them.