Jolly Roger: Oxygen Bars

At The Jolly Roger Corner, you get a glimpse into Drake's oldest high school newspaper The Jolly Roger. Check out more articles, photos, reviews and insight into our local school at drakejr.com.

BY EMMA WHEELER

Do you remember when hookahs weren’t in common use? Probably—however, they've been around for centuries. The same goes for a lesser-known yet newly-hip pastime; inhaling oxygen at a bar. 

An early reference to recreational oxygen use can be found in Jules Vern’s 1870 novel Around the Moon. In this novel, people used oxygen to stay alive longer. 

Another reference came in the 1971 popular cult film Harold and Maude (anyone remember the strange contraption Maude used to inhale bizarre scents?). The world’s first official oxygen bar opened in Canada in 1996, surprisingly late when the idea had been floating around for more than a century. More popular on the far east and west coasts (New York, California), oxygen bars can be found in a multiplicity of social settings, from nightclubs to spas, restaurants to airports, yoga studios to concerts.

So how does an oxygen bar even work? Cylinders full of scented and sometimes colored water are part of an apparatus where oxygen is fed through tubes. The tubes (called nasal cannula) are fastened to the ears and inserted into the nostrils. For around a dollar a minute, customers can enjoy an extended breath of fresh air, and leave feeling more sober and alert than they were before coming in (unlike a regular bar).

But is an oxygen bar healthy for everyone? Is it helpful at all? Connoisseurs of the oxygen bar claim many health benefits from their use, which are reportedly chock full toxin-removing, cancer-curing, stress-reducing, hangover-ridding, immune-strengthening goodness. However, these benefits, which remain unproven could be just as likely a placebo as legitimate.

Also, sitting around with tubes inserted in your nose can be just plain awkward.  Think about it, would you rather strike up a conversation with someone sitting next to you on a barstool or someone with a weird contraption up their nasal canal? Something about sticking things up your nose has a weird kind of connotation within itself.

So, oxygen bars sound kind of weird, but are they dangerous? Technically, they haven’t been proven helpful or harmful, so it’s hard to say. Supposed benefits aside, there are also some possible negative (and equally undocumented) effects. They include but are not limited to too much oxygen in the bloodstream, chemicals used to create scents, the fact that pure oxygen is qualified by the FDA as a prescription drug, etc. “Oxygen bars that dispense oxygen without a prescription violate FDA regulations,” said Linda Bren, staff writer for FDA Consumer, in an article on the topic. Some oxygen bars have been shut down for this reason, but for the most part, the prescription rule seems to be un-germane to bar use.

And if you really think about it, effectiveness and legality probably aren’t widely documented or studied for a reason—if someone wants to spend money to go breathe, which they would already be doing anyway, why not let them do it? It may seem frivolous, strange, or downright creepy to some, but hey if it makes people happy, why not? A Kansas University study claims to have proven that an oxygen bars’ effectiveness is simply a placebo. However, since many placebos work just as well as real medication, believers might as well keep going to get the benefits, whether or not they are derived from their imaginations or the oxygen itself.

Should we get oxygen bars in Ross Valley?