Researchers have developed a “game-changer” in rescue therapy for severe alcohol intoxication, or for just "sobering up".
A team, led by the Canadian University Health Network’s (UHN) Dr. Joseph Fisher, presents a proof of concept of a simple method that could revolutionise damaging alcohol consumption.
The principle behind the UHN team's approach is simply to recruit the lungs to breathe out the alcohol.
The harder the breathing, it was reasoned, the more alcohol is eliminated.
The team found that indeed, hyperventilation eliminated the alcohol at least three times faster than through the liver alone.
But you can't just hyperventilate, because you would become light-headed and pass out.
They used a device that allows the patient to hyperventilate off the alcohol while returning precisely the amount of carbon dioxide to the body to keep it at normal levels in the blood.
"It's almost inexplicable why we didn't try this decades ago," says Dr. Fisher.