Page 11 - IAV Digital Magazine #629

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
“Butt Breathing” Might Soon Be a Real Medical Treatment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ujC6monUrM
Imagine gulping air through your backside to survive. It sounds like a prank, but nature's already on board— and human medicine is catching up fast.
Turtles, loaches, and even piglets do it via cloacal or intestinal breathing, absorb- ing oxygen through their intestines when lungs fail.
Inspired by this, researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Osaka University, led by Takanori Takebe, proved in 2021 that mammals— including mice and pigs— could too, using perfluoro- carbon (PFC) liquids super- saturated with oxygen. Their quirky discovery snagged the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize in Physiology: "for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus."
Now, "enteral ventilation" or butt breathing has leaped to humans. In a ground- breaking Phase 1 trial pub- lished October 20, 2025, in Med, 27 healthy Japanese men (ages 20-45) received escalating doses of non- oxygenated perfluorode- calin—up to 1.5 liters—rec- tally for one hour. Twenty endured the full session; the rest tapped out early.
Results? Safe and tolera- ble. Mild bloating and dis- comfort were the only gripes—dose-dependent and vanished without inter-
vention. No bloodstream absorption or serious issues. "This first-in-human study demonstrates... it is safe, feasible, and well tol- erated," the team reported.
Why revolutionary? For ARDS, severe pneumonia, or ventilator shortages (think COVID), lungs need a break. Rectal oxygen could bypass damaged air- ways, delivering life-sus- taining O2 via the gut's vast vascular network—poten- tially staving off death.
Next: Efficacy trials with oxygenated PFC to meas- ure blood oxygen boosts. Takebe: "Now that we have established tolerance, the next step will be to evaluate how effective... for deliver- ing oxygen to the blood- stream."
From Ig Nobel joke to potential lifesaver, butt breathing proves science thrives on the absurd. Lungs resting? Butts step- ping up. The future smells... promising.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine