Friday 16 September 2011

Sucking Fumes

OK, just to prove that my sabbatical has not been non-stop fun and games, here's a new technique I'm learning for measuring total hemoglobin (the molecule in your blood that actually carries oxygen) mass here in Finland. The principle is to use carbon monoxide (CO) rebreathing, where you use CO as a "tracer" in your body. A tracer is a substance that normally is not in the body, so that it can be easily detected and distinguished from what is normally already in your body.

CO works well as a tracer because it has a really high affinity for binding to hemoglobin (the same site where oxygen normally binds, which is why CO poisoning can be lethal), and it normally is at (hopefully) a pretty minimal level in your body. Lots of baseline testing has also given a time course for the rate at which CO is taken up by the body and the rate at which it binds to hemoglobin. Therefore, if you breathe in a known volume of the gas and let it settle in your body, and take blood samples before and after at a set time, then the amount of CO in the blood sample is a good estimation of the total hemoglobin in your body. The amount of CO is based on your sex, size, and fitness, but is usually at a level less than 1 cigarette (66 mL in my case).

You also need to measure how much CO is in your expired breath too at these time points, so that you can subtract the amount of CO that hasn't gotten into your bloodstream. The "rebreathing" comes from the fact that you breathe in and out of a small 3 L bag of pure oxygen for the 2 min, which the CO is mixed into. The rebreathing is needed to make sure you breathe in the CO without it escaping.

The most important thing with this test is that it clearly demonstrated my absolute lack of athletic potential, as getting any performance is like squeezing blood from the proverbial stone given my ridiculously low hemoglobin results!

6 comments:

  1. Bonjour! I have no idea what you are doing as far as break thru science in your lab. It looks to me like you are smoking a state of the art bong. Perhaps some Bob Marley or Toots and the Mandelas in the back ground will help the experiment along. And some dorrittos. HAHAHAHAH So now that you know beyond reasonable doubt what your fitness level is does this mean you should be on my Zombie Apocalypse Team? Fitness and brains should at to our survival rate but I should warn you, if you get the virus we kill you and recycle your skins for leather and weapons holsters.

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  2. Yea daddy posted this for his students (and everyone else) to know that he is actually doing some work in Finland not beaching like in Greece!

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  3. Daddy is not working. He is on sabbatical which is latin for "SLACKER". Just because daddy gets on his bike and "works" up a sweat does not mean he can claim he is working. Working is the thing you do where you get up every morning L-O-N-G before your body actually wants to and never feel you are getting paid enough to do so:-) Work involves a certain degree of pain and discomfort and since your dad has become the Darth Vader of the exercise physiology world he is therefore incapable of experiencing such things. Therefore, you daddy does not work - he merely dictates to his minions how the laboratory death star shall be run under pain of cold immersion or even death if circumstances require it. xoxox

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  4. Hahaha well daddy is on his computer most of the day and when he takes us to gym he doesn't have a nap on the mats he has his computer out. So you don't think that he is getting up early when he has his 8:00 meeting?

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  5. Napping on the gym mats? Why didn't I think of that?!

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  6. You didn't think of it because you were SLEEPING!!!!

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