What Is Oxygen Water Therapy?

With so many different products on supermarket shelves promising improved performance throughout your day and digestible short-cuts to the exercise results you want, it is easy to get lost in the maze of advertising and guarantees. Oxygen water is one of those products with such claims--but before you go out and buy yourself a six-pack, take a look at the facts behind the so-called supplement.

Explanation

Oxygen water makers claim their product enhances athletic performance by increasing the body's amount of oxygen, which it uses to fuel itself. It has been proven that increasing oxygen intake through breathing improves athletic performance so much that it is illegal in most sports. The benefits of digesting oxygen, however, are less certain. Oxygen water supposedly increases the amount of oxygen available to your body by mixing oxygen in with the water.

Benefits

Oxygen levels are essential to athletic performance. The better an athlete's body is at taking in, absorbing and using oxygen, the more efficient it will be over prolonged periods of time. Some professional athletes are convinced that oxygen water improves their athletic performances. According to The Facts About Fitness website, a study conducted by the Texas Women's University in 2001 showed athletes run five kilometer time trials faster when drinking oxygen water than when drinking tap water.

MIsconceptions

In reality, increasing oxygen in water is very hard to do, and the results are marginal. Dr. Howard G. Knuttgen told The Facts About Fitness website that, "Very little oxygen can be forced into water under pressure--less than that contained in a single breath. Most of the oxygen in the water would escape into the atmosphere when you open the container. Additional oxygen would be absorbed into the cells of intestinal walls. All of this would happen before any oxygen would reach the blood, much less the muscles."

Considerations

Although the study by the Texas Women's University showed an improvement in performance, those results were not published. This tends to happen when the results of a test do not yield the result the testers hoped it would have--because the study was unpublished, it is likely that other factors contributed to the faster times. Other published studies from multiple labs and universities have failed to show oxygen water's ability to improve performance.

Expert Insight

Don't expect any gain from drinking oxygen water. Athletes draw oxygen through their lungs, rather than their stomachs, and even if oxygen were drawn through the stomach and into the bloodstream, it wouldn't make a noticeable difference. When it comes to taking in oxygen, there is only one piece of equipment that can help you go farther--a pair of healthy lungs.