1st EWOT experience… spacey and high
After a couple of weeks of waiting a new oxygen concentrator arrived to replace the defective one. Yay! While I was waiting, I injured my knee badly enough to require surgery (and the GOOD KNEE). Boo!!!
My beloved spin bike now sits idle, functioning only as a sturdy brace I use to pull myself out of my work chair. But it’s doing a damn fine job!
So how was I going to use EWOT therapy with one leg out of commission?
I got online and discovered “chair aerobics” videos. Ok, I thought, it’s not the same as spinning, but it’s something.
After much deliberation, I also decided there is just nowhere to hang a 4×6 bag of air in a 400 sqft studio. Plus, I’m in no condition to be standing one-legged on a chair with a crutch screwing hooks into the ceiling.
So I laid the bag across my bed and began filling it from the oxygen concentrator. This is dangerous because I have cats and sure enough my Siamese began to climb onto it to investigate. Yikes! The good thing about crutches in a 400 sqft space is I merely had to wave one around while yelling to quickly dissuade him of that notion.
The sites say you have to use a 10 ml oxygen concentrator to fill the bag but honestly the 5 ml is fine. Yes, it takes longer, but it’s only three hours and the machine is quiet, making a rhythmic little huffing noise.
Soon enough the bag was filled, I had the mask adjusted, and a chair aerobics video fired up on my computer. It was time for my first, long-awaited EWOT session, injury and all!
When I put the mask on and ran the oxygen, it smelled like I was sticking my head in a paint bucket. Although the bag is made from surgical-grade, high-quality, phthalate-free material that is used in implants, I found the smell to be quite strong. My intuition advised me to run a load of air through it just to help it off gas, but I was too impatient. (Intuition is SO BORING sometimes.)
My intuition also told me not to do the full 15-20 minute session but to ease in with just a five-minute session to start. Did I listen? No, I did a full 20 minutes of chair exercises, which was a surprisingly good arm workout.
After the bag was empty I pulled off the mask and evaluated. Well, my arms were tired. But also I felt high and spaced out, not energized as promised. It took 10-15 minutes to get back to normal.
I think for athletes and healthy people, they probably do feel energized and clear-headed right away. But if you’re recovering from mold illness like me, or some other chronic condition, it makes sense to ease in gradually. Plus, no telling if VOCs from the bag had anything to do with it. I took a big shot of liposomal glutathione for good measure. If you’re chemically sensitive i would advise letting the bag off gas and maybe running oxygen through it without breathing it the first time or two.
But sometimes unpleasant symptoms are a good sign. It means something happened and maybe it was just too much of that something. The mostly deflated bag is wadded on top of a small wardrobe for now and I’m going to try again tomorrow for 10 minutes, flailing and punching my arms through another chair aerobics video to get my heart rate up.
I’m also going to investigate building my own device to switch back and forth from low oxygen to high oxygen using a CO2 scrubber. This pushes oxygen deeper into tissue. I had thought holding my breath would take the place of the $5,000 advance adaptive contrast EWOT machines, but turns out that raises CO2. So I need to add a CO2 scrubber. I don’t even know, another thing to figure out for this beleaguered right-dominant brain.
All I can say is thank goodness I did not spend $5,000 on an EWOT machine because my surgery deductible is going to be $8,000, sob! The good news is hopefully the bike and the EWOT will help ensure an excellent recovery and injury comeback.
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I used a polyethylene mattress encasement for mattress. Just tape zipper to seal. No Vocs. No smell. I open zipper after every use to air out. Good luck