If I understand correctly, hypoxic training (done by endurance athletes) works by forcing the body to adapt to low oxygen concentrations, i.e., improve oxygen metabolism. For this, athletes go to higher altitudes or use special machines (“hypoxicators”) that change the air they are breathing.
Could a similar effect be achieved simply by being in a (small enough) closed room for a long enough time, such that the oxygen concentration is as low as desired?
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It’s been a while since I’ve done exercise physiology, but let’s see if I can remember it. If I’m wrong, someone will correct me.
Air is made up about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and about 1% carbon dioxide, with some other stuff thrown in there. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, be it on Everest or in a jungle, it’s about that mixture. What changes is the pressure.
When you are at sea level you have all the air above you pushing down and creating pressure. Kinda like in water, the deeper you go, the more pressure due to the water above you. The air you breathe works on a gradient, from high to low. So the oxygen is forced through the lungs membrane by the atmospheric pressure. As you go higher, there is less air above you and less pressure to push the oxygen into your body. The mixture remains the same.
When you are at sea level, your red blood cells (RBC) are about 99% oxygen. But as you go higher, with less oxygen being forced into your body, the RBC might only be about 80% oxygen. To accomodate this, you will start breathing faster and heart pump faster. What this does is make your body create more RBC to help transport the little oxygen around.
Now your idea of a hypoxic chamber would have a similar effect of high altitude, but as you are changing the levels of oxygen, you’d be putting the athlete at risk. For instance, a study found that taxi drivers have very high hematocrit (RBC), because they are breathing in fumes in a low oxygen environment because they are around cars in a city all day suffering from low levels of carbon monoxide exposure. It would be safer to place them in a hypobaric chamber. But as someone else mentioned, it’s the living at altitude that makes the difference, not the training.
There is another, and arguably more effective method, and that would to train in heat, which essentially dehydrates the body, reducing blood volume (blood is mostly water). The body adapts by creating more blood.
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