CRYOTHERAPY, CRYONICS AND MUCH MORE
Uses for liquid nitrogen include cooling of MRI magnets, bartending special effects
Liquid nitrogen is a fascinating substance.
Under ordinary conditions nitrogen is a gas, making up about 78 per cent of the air we breathe. When that air is compressed under high pressure, it becomes a liquid from which nitrogen gas can be distilled by virtue of liquid nitrogen having a lower boiling point (-196 degrees C) than liquid oxygen (-183 degrees C). This means that as liquid air is warmed up, nitrogen becomes a gas while oxygen stays a liquid. Once the nitrogen is separated, it can be compressed back to a liquid that has numerous uses.
Superconducting magnets as used in MRIs require liquid nitrogen cooling. Liquid nitrogen is used by food processors to quickly freeze food and by doctors to remove warts and treat other skin lesions.
“Liquid nitrogen ice cream” is a favourite science demonstration in which the cold liquid is added to a mix of cream, sugar and flavouring to instantly produce a smooth ice cream. Sometimes bartenders will add liquid nitrogen to a cocktail to produce a smokey effect. This happens because the liquid nitrogen quickly evaporates, producing cold nitrogen vapour that cools the surrounding air and causes water vapour to form liquid droplets creating “smoke.”
There are also two uses of liquid nitrogen that are controversial. One is its use in cryonics, which is more than controversial, it is bizarre. The other is its use in cryotherapy, certainly a less controversial process than cryonics.
Both terms stem from the Greek “cryo,” meaning cold. Cryonics refers to the process of freezing a body after death and storing it at an extremely low temperature with hopes that sometime in the future science will eventually find a way to “reanimate” the person.
Cryotherapy is the use of cold temperatures in medical therapy and can refer to something as simple as the local application of an ice-pack to “whole-body cryotherapy” in which a person is exposed to extreme cold for a few minutes, mostly to reduce soreness and inflammation after an athletic event. There are also claims that it can reduce injuries, increase energy and even help with sleep.
Alcor is a company located in Scottsdale, Ariz., that has made cryonics a commercial enterprise. People sign up to be frozen as soon as possible after death and be subsequently stored in special liquid nitrogen-cooled containers, waiting for science to advance enough for reanimation to occur.
It is not a cheap business and the company wants payment up front. But preserving the whole body may not be necessary. The head can be frozen for the bargain price of $40,000. If indeed future scientists find a way to bring frozen tissues back to life, they will certainly have also found ways to clone the body from cells. But not the brain. This is where our memories, hopes, fears and bizarre thoughts about immortality lie. Accordingly, a number of the Alcor subjects, including Ted Williams, baseball’s famed “splendid splinter,” are just “neuros,” the term used for heads with no bodies.
Whole-body cryotherapy is certainly more reasonable than cryonics, but still controversial. Some athletes, like top soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, swear by it. They stand in a chamber where the air is cooled to about -110 degrees Celsius for about three minutes and claim that they come out feeling energized and that their muscles recover faster from exertion. But this kind of evidence is anecdotal. Players of England’s Leicester City soccer team that won the Premier League title against odds of 5,000-1 in 2016 were regular users of cryotherapy and stories circulated about this being their secret weapon. The next year the club finished in 12th place and nobody talked about cryotherapy, which one assumes the players were still keen on.
What do scientific studies say about cryotherapy? Not much. Some trials do show somewhat faster recovery from injuries, but others don’t. There are suggestions that the cold temperature activates the body’s “fight or flight” mechanism causing the release of adrenalin that can mitigate pain and cause feelings of exhilaration.
Blood vessels do get constricted by the cold, so that blood flow to the extremities is reduced, delivering fewer inflammationcausing substances to soft tissue injuries. Of course, there is also the possibility of a placebo effect.
There are also claims that whole-body cryotherapy can help with arthritis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, depression, back pain and even weight loss, but unfortunately, there is no corroborating evidence.
Moreover, some athletes claim that just sitting in cold water for eight to 10 minutes has the same effect as cryotherapy. Doesn’t sound like a pleasant process, though.
But let’s not relegate cryotherapy to the junk science heap just yet. I haven’t seen Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website promote it, so it hasn’t been given the icy kiss of death.