Hyperventilate yourself sober — a simple new device could help treat acute alcohol poisoning

A Canadian scientist who developed technology to reverse carbon monoxide poisoning by inducing safe hyperventilation has just shown this technology could also work to reduce alcohol poisoning. 

Dr. Joseph Fisher, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Toronto and senior scientist at the University Health Network, came up with the device.

He said this technology works for the same reason you can smell alcohol on people's breath: alcohol evaporates out of the blood, into the lungs.

His original thought was that if he could induce patients to increase their amount of breathing, it might help the alcohol evaporate faster. 

Hyperventilation is something generally humans try to avoid as it results in dizziness and other unpleasant symptoms.  This, said Fisher, is because hyperventilation reduces the level of carbon dioxide in the blood, upsetting our blood chemistry. 

The device he developed feeds back some carbon dioxide into the lungs as it forces a person to hyperventilate. 

When he tested the device on volunteers who had consumed alcohol, it took only about 40 minutes for them to cut their blood alcohol level in half, which would have taken three to four hours to do at the rate we naturally metabolize alcohol.

Fisher thinks that now that he's shown this device works for alcohol, as well as carbon monoxide, that it could potentially work for any volatile poison.

The study was published in a recent issue of the journal, Scientific Reports.

Produced by Sonya Buyting and Mark Crawley. Written by Sonya Buyting.