as I was told from early education that the air we currently breathe in contains 21% oxygen and 77-ish% of nitrogen and the rest are other particles.
So I have a dumb question on what the body uses nitrogen we breathe in for?
In: 387
It has a slight narcotic effect.
See [The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure (1975)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1130736/):
> Nitrogen has recognized narcotic potential at hyperbaric pressures. No narcotic effect of helium has been demonstrated at any pressure. We evaluated the effect of nitrogen in air at one atmosphere on human performance by comparing it with helium-oxygen using a four-alternative divided-attention task that requires rapid response to auditory and visual signal changes. There was a 9.3 per cent decrease in response time when subjects breathed helium-oxygen, a signigicant change (P less than 0.001). This change could not be ascribed to practice since the order of presentation of gases did not have a significant effect. It concluded that the **nitrogen in ambient air slightly but measurable impairs human performance compared with a non-anesthetic gas such as helium**.
Latest Answers