Xenon: What You Need To Know

Xenon is an element that has anesthetic, dissociative, neuroprotective, and performance enhancing effects. It has mainly been researched as an anesthetic agent, though research has shown it could also be useful for neuroprotection.

It's an expensive substance which can be found at a very low concentration in the air. While it could be used as a recreational drug like nitrous oxide, it is almost never used in that way.

Xenon = Xe
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Feel free to ask questions!

[typeunknown]

Shitty governments: *alright, gotta ban air then*

[schism]

Mood lift-pain reduction-muscle relaxer-anxiety relief-euphoria and perceptual changes? Sounds like a great mix to me.

[abcz]

I had no idea Xe had any effect on humans (human brain).

[keyboard-commentator]

imagine if xenon became the new lean just because it's the most expensive, most exotic drug you can buy.

[themegalithicmast]

Who else is here because of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia?

We all need some Xenon in our lives.❤️

[bearcatben]

Its a drug? you learn something new every day

[factenter]

One bizarre side effect of Xe inhalation is a very deep voice temporarily like inhaling sulfur hexafluoride. Both gases are extremely heavy and displace oxygen so you must ventilate well after inhaling them. A youtuber Cody demonstrated the effects of inhaling the noble gases (no, not radon!) LOL. The effects of unintentional radon exposure are well known. It decays to polonium in the lungs and may cause cancer. Many of the uranium miners in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland died of radon exposure and their families were affected too because the work clothes they brought home had uranium ore dust on them. Most of the men also smoked tobacco which made the situation much worse.

[DrBilly]

The vial of xenon pictured is Xe-133, used for nuclear medicine lung ventilation scans. I believe this is reactor produced (from uranium fission). Most prevalent decay mode is beta decay to Cs-133, which then has a gamma emission at 81 keV. The gamma photon is what's used for imaging. I think the "740" on the vial is the activity level at production, 740 MBq, which is 20mCi. That's enough for 3-4 lung ventilation scans, which use about 5 mCi/scan. Xe-133 half life is about 5 days.
Xe-129 is used in MRI research. It's nucleus can be hyperpolarized in a magnetic field, and produces lovely MRI images of lung ventilation. I don't believe it's radioactive.
Xe-135 is a fission product and is responsible for "xenon poisoning" in nuclear reactors. Xe-135 is very effective at neutron capture, has a half-life of about 9 hours, and was why the operators at Chernobyl couldn't get the reactor to restart after they powered down for the planned tests. Since, as everyone "knew" RBMK reactors cannot explode (I'm joking), they pulled most of the control rods trying to restart, producing an extremely unstable situation. When the Xe-135 boiled off with the control rods removed, there was nothing to absorb the neutrons, and the chain reaction took off. While not a true atomic bomb, the energy release was catastrophic. If a reactor becomes xenon poisoned, a 3-day wait (about 8 half-lives of Xe-135) is needed for enough of it to decay away for a safe restart.
I'd guess that xenon used for anesthetic or neuro-protective applications doesn't need to be isotopically pure, but is almost certainly not radioactive. Likely it's produced by cryogenic fractionation/distillation of air.

[howardhurtt]

You might mention that because xenon is heavier than air, a rec user could asphyxiate with inadequate clearance.

[wenaolong]

Something for the uptown trendy hipsters to huff on.

[flaplaya]

I'm impressed you mentioned the glycine binding site and xenon's role as an N-methyl-D-aspartate antogonist.

[Hlazun]

We have xenon therapy centers in Ukraine when you can take sessions (30min) under the anesthesiologist babysitting/ Price starting from 50euro per session. So, you're welcome.

[paeoniaxrysikou]

Writing a paper on doping, I have no medical background(law) and this really helped!! Thank you!!

[happymonkeyfish]

I never would have thought you could use Xenon as a drug

[Petertheconcertpianist]

So let's say this was available in the U.S. in the OR. Would it be administered in a vaporizer, like Volatiles such as Sevoflurane, Isoflurane, Desflurane, and Enflurane, and other former anesthetics? Or would it be controlled in a Flowmeter, as a driving gas, like N2O, O2, and Air are?

[DjSuess]

So glad i have access to this...can't wait.

[saifmohsin]

Hi, I have enjoyed your videos so far please could you do a video about cyclopropane. It's an interesting gas with interesting effects but most people are put off by its flammable and explosive effects.

[CaligariDr]

I read that noble gasses were so expensive that they could be used instead of precious metals to back up money (if it wasn't a gas that's had to store)like silver and gold.
But there are gold and platinum based drugs like cisplatin for cancer derived from platinum.
How expensive is Xenon gas?

[KyleOfTheNorth]

Good video man, as always. Keep em up!

[benfrancois]

I definitely need some of this magic gas