![]() ![]() specifically, it is quite possible to call one's self a skeptic but reject ideas because one believes they should be rejected. change in pulse) yet the Mythbusters concluded that covering one's body in gold paint can't (eventually) kill you speaks to the nature of modern skepticism. The fact that the Mythbuster guy exhibited the early signs of asphyxia (e.g. Skin surface respiration would be because the skin is in direct contact with O2 bearing air. Everything will be OK if we have a bit of space for at least part of the skin to "breath through." In the faulty understanding, the surface of our skin is roughly equivalent to our nostrils. The fact that in order to avoid asphyxiation, Shirley Eaton's body was not 100% covered (a patch of bare skin remained on her stomach) belies a faulty understanding of the premise. It does have NO/NOx effects, but those are complex and not fully understood, but it is understood that they are not through prompt NO release. The one thing I don't like about this paper is that nitroglycerine really isn't a âNO donorâ. It decouples hypoxic sensing from O2 delivery and utilization. This global hypoxia signal can be integrated over a large area and over a long time without subjecting critical tissue compartments (supplied by the heart and lungs) to low O2 levels. Because it is close to the external atmosphere and is large in area, there is a big signal to trigger responses to hypoxia. This can be seen in the graph of O2 levels in the paper Boris cited. The skin is actually the tissue compartment that has the lowest O2 level. In at least some mammals, the response to hypoxia is partially mediated through O2 sensing in the skin. Hemoglobin is the sink for NO, so with the external skin hemoglobin-free, NO can diffuse into the plasma (the external skin is perfused by plasma) and attach to albumin forming S-nitrosoalbumin, the most abundant S-nitrosothiol in the blood. This is actually quite important in NO physiology, and why the skin is the organ that sets the basal NO level.īecause the external skin gets O2 from the external air, there is no hemoglobin in the external skin (obvious because the external skin is transparent) except when it is hyperemic. I was going to cite the paper that Boris did. In truth, the best answer to the question "do humans breathe through their skin?" is probably something like "Please re-phrase that question so I know what strange and inappropriate things will happen in your brain depending on the answer" So the answer "no" isn't really acceptable. Even plant cells "breathe" in O2 and "breathe" out CO2. Nonetheless, while "the widely held mis-belief" that humans "breathe through their skin" is a potentially dangerous concept, it is also simply true that all typical normal living eukaryotic cells respirate. Imagine the stupid Darwin-Award wining tricks people might think up to do with this factoid. I'm pretty sure that the answer to the question "do humans absorb Oxygen through their skin" - which is clearly a yes or no question - is "yes." But perhaps this leads to concerns that some of the dumb-ass humans will misuse this information thinking that we actually breathe through our skin in any meaningful way. Human beings cannot usefully absorb oxygen through their skin." Which is not really an answer to that question, is it? I wasn't asking about "usefully." Jeesh. ask the Internet if humans or mammals absorb any oxygen through their skin, you get an interesting result, an oft repeated phrase: "No. The problem is that when you "google it". If you do, state so in the comments and provide a reference that you've actually read recently and can verify, please!) (Warning: I don't know this to be a fact. So of course some of the cellular respiration in mammals is surface diffusion. O2 and H2O both diffuse freely across cell membranes. But then I realized that the epidermis absorbs water. But I wondered if the fact that the epidermis is adapted to be a barrier might mean that it would not. This question came up, and I assumed yes. This may not seem like a very important question to you.
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