It has been made hip by countless celebrities but will we Brits really be rushing to the nearest store to pay for the latest fad to hit the streets – a machine that dispenses oxygen.

It isn’t as silly as it sounds. Did we ever think we’d end up paying for bottled water? Who could have imagined that millions of us would ever pay for water rather than drinking it free from the tap!

We need oxygen to breath and it’s free in the atmosphere so why pay £2 for a 10 minute shot?
Well oxygen therapy has been researched extensively and the benefits are scientifically proven.
A recent study reported that feeding the brain with extra oxygen can improve mental performance.
Brain power can be increased by up to 20 per cent when people take extra supplies of oxygen, according to researchers at the Human Cognitive Neuroscience Unit of the University of Northumbria.
Volunteers remembered up to 20 per cent more words from a list after they were given a short blast of oxygen through a facemask.
A dose of oxygen also improved performance when playing the computer game Tetris when the game was at its hardest level.
Experts believe that the more oxygen in the body and brain the better your system will function.
Some of the benefits are it: boosts energy, enables recovery more quickly after exertion, gets rid of headaches and hangovers, relieves stress, increases concentration and enables you to feel more relaxed and revitalised.
Oxygen bars have been around for years in Asia and America. Cheers and Natural Born Killers star Woody Harrelson who’s also a hemp impresario and Hollywood’s man with a social conscience, opened an oxygen bar in LA where hip customers sniff medical grade oxygen to relieve stress and get rid of their hangovers.

 

Athletes take oxygen before competing, and so do rock stars such as Mick Jagger. Michael Jackson also purportedly favours napping in his personal oxygen chamber.

Now Britain’s airheads can inhale extra oxygen from machines installed at night-clubs, bars, gyms and high street stores such as Selfridges and Harvey Nichols which launches an oxygen bar later this month. Oxygen machines will also be available to rent for the office or home.
The specially designed machines supplied by O2Live are simple to use. You put a pre-purchased card into apparatus and oxygen is pumped out via a jetmask, which covers the nose and mouth.
Alternatively you can chat with friends if you opt to use a live wire which is a plastic tubing which pumps oxygen just up the nose.
A minimum of five minutes is needed to start to feel benefits. Three 20 minute sessions per day is the maximum recommended.
Dominic Simler, is Managing Director of O2Live, which patented the oxygen machine, now available at 260 sites across the UK.
He believes that tens of thousands of people are already enjoying the benefits of an extra oxygen boost.
He said: ‘Of course with anything that is new or a bit odd or crazy people are going to pass it off as a fad which only celebrities can afford.
‘But the same could be said about buying bottled water. If you had asked the same question of people 20 to 30 years ago about would they pay 70p for a bottle of water when it is free out of the tap? They would have said no but now bottled water is brought by millions of people.
‘It’s essentially a lifestyle choice just as it is with drinking bottled water which you perceive to be purer and healthier.
‘There is a hell of a lot of animosity from people to start with but they are eager to try it and once they do they invariably like it and feel the benefits.’
How extra oxygen works?
Oxygen is at saturation level in the red blood cells even when breathing normal air. Extra oxygen is absorbed into the blood by increasing it partial pressure, driving more oxygen into the tissues.
The O2LIVE oxygen system plugs into a normal wall socket and uses minimal electricity.
It works by drawing in air which contains 21 per cent oxygen, 78 per cent nitrogen and one per cent other gases, filtering out the impurities through molecular sieve beds and pumping out up to 95 per cent pure filtered oxygen.
The user breathes an entirely safe mixture of 95 per cent pure oxygen and the surrounding air, which contains 21 per cent oxygen. This means they get between 50 to 100 per cent more oxygen than they would get from the normal sea level air.

A fragrance can be added to enhance the pleasure of breathing a scented, oxygen enriched air mixture.
The aromatherapy scent cartridges include: energy, eucalyptus, passion, relax, lemon and orange.
The system uses an oxygen generator to produce the oxygen because of the advantages it has over cylinders, which have been used in oxygen bars.

Cylinders have to be regularly refilled, have an additional fire risk and have limited oxygen capacity within the cylinder. The length of time you stay on the O2Live depends on you and the benefits you are looking for.

My own verdict on this new phenomenen having had a 10-minute shot of oxygen from the O2Live was that it was refreshing and did make me feel relaxed. I enjoyed the eucalyptus scented cartridge but I couldn’t say I felt any long lasting benefits from my 02 blast but I would definitely try it again.

For more information about O2Live contact 020 7431 8585.