Please note that wearing a mask can also harm your health! Wear it when you should, take it off sooner when you don’t!

In the 2022 Women’s Volleyball Asian Cup group match between China and Iran on August 25th, Beijing time, the Chinese women’s volleyball girl wore a mask in the first game and lost.

In the next three rounds, the girls took off their masks and played the game before winning by a large margin.

Why is this happening?

This involves a problem. You may not know that wearing a mask can also harm your health.

The higher the protection level of the mask, the worse the ventilation and the greater the harm.

In other words, N95 masks are more harmful to people than surgical masks.

Three years of the epidemic, wearing masks has played an extremely important role in our prevention of new coronavirus infection.

Universal wearing of masks has also significantly reduced the prevalence of influenza.

But we should note that masks should only be worn when they must be worn.

In general, masks are used to block airborne droplets and your aerosols from entering our airways.

The droplets and aerosols exhaled by people infected with the new coronavirus may contain the new coronavirus.

Current basic research has confirmed that in a confined space, the farthest distance that a person infected with the new coronavirus can spread the virus by exhaling aerosols and droplets will not exceed 1.5 meters.

That is to say, in a confined space with no ventilation, if the distance between people exceeds 1.5 meters, it is safe.

In the outdoors with good ventilation, the droplets and aerosols exhaled by people infected with the new coronavirus are quickly diluted by the air, and it is safe as long as a distance of 1 meter is maintained between people.

Therefore, usually, we do not need to wear masks when we are outdoors with good ventilation.

Usually, we only need to wear masks in closed indoor public places with high crowds.

These indoor confined places include, but are not limited to, shopping malls, movie theaters, hospitals, buses, trains, airplanes, and more.

We wear masks, which not only cost money, but also bring some health-threatening side effects to ourselves.

In the process of breathing, we first inhale fresh air, some particles in the air will be blocked by the airway cilia, and then the air is exchanged in the alveoli, the oxygen in the air is combined with the hemoglobin in the blood, and release carbon dioxide. Finally, the exhaust gas containing carbon dioxide is exhaled.

We wear masks, especially N95 masks, which cause exhaust to circulate within the mask and between the lungs.

This will cause the air inside the mask, which we can inhale into the lungs, to have a lower oxygen concentration than the air.

Therefore, although wearing a mask can block the virus, it can also cause hypoxia in the human body, resulting in harm to human health.

Some people may not understand this.

We can imagine that we have closed the doors and windows of the car, and the engine and fan of the car are turned off. At this time, the car is a closed space.

Aren’t we all going to get uncomfortable very quickly in this kind of car?

We are uncomfortable because the oxygen in the car is consumed by us because of breathing. The concentration of oxygen in the car is lower than the concentration in the air.

Therefore, wearing a mask for a long time will also have side effects, which will lead to hypoxia, arrhythmia and other problems.

This is especially true in some older adults with poor lung function.

When a person wears a mask, it will inevitably lead to hypoxia, but our usual activities do not consume much oxygen, and the human body can compensate.

Therefore, usually, when we wear masks, the feeling of hypoxia is not obvious.

As long as we increase the amount of exercise, the problem of hypoxia caused by wearing a mask will immediately become prominent, and people will be in danger due to brain hypoxia.

In the early days of the epidemic, many schools required students to wear masks during physical education classes, and there were cases of students passing out on the spot while running.

I have encountered such patients.

Because of wearing a mask for running, the oxygen consumption of the human body increases sharply, and the oxygen concentration of the air inhaled in the mask is not enough, resulting in brain hypoxia and fainting.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, people in various places have also observed cardiac arrest or sudden death when running wearing N95 masks.

We can find quite a few cases of this sudden death in medical journals. Since the outbreak, it has happened all over the world.

By now, everyone should know that we cannot wear masks, especially N95 masks, when we are exercising vigorously outdoors.

Let me put it in a more simple way. People wear masks. Inside the masks, a local environment with thin oxygen is artificially created, which is equivalent to letting people go to a plateau.

The higher the protection level of the mask, the higher the altitude of the plateau and the thinner the oxygen.

Oxygen is scarce on high altitudes, and some people experience altitude sickness.

Altitude sickness is essentially cerebral hypoxia. If people with altitude sickness can be sent to the hospital for oxygen in time, the symptoms can be relieved immediately.

Not everyone experiences altitude sickness.

That is, not everyone who wears a mask will feel a lack of oxygen.

In addition, we wear masks, which create a locally warm and humid environment.

Facial skin covered by masks is prone to eczema and skin infections, and the skin covered by masks is prone to acne.

Wearing a mask is a lesser of two evils, just as we operate on a patient.

If we are in an environment where there may be a virus and we need to wear a mask to help keep us out of it, wearing a mask will bring great benefits, then we should wear a mask.

On the contrary, if there is no virus in our environment, and there is no need to wear a mask, in order to avoid the side effects of the mask, we should take off the mask in time.

Take off the mask and let us get a good breath of fresh air!

Surgical masks have a three-layer structure, which can block nearly 90% of droplets. Compared with N95, the protective effect is not too far behind.

However, the ventilation performance of surgical masks is much better than that of N95 masks.

Wearing a mask can cause hypoxia to the human body, and surgical masks are much lighter than N95 masks.

When we put on the N95 mask, we can immediately feel a little suffocated and stuffy.

But when we put on a surgical mask, and if we don’t exercise vigorously, this feeling of suffocation is not obvious.

For another example, we put on surgical masks and just went to a relatively low plateau, such as the urban area of ​​Lhasa. Most people can adapt to it and will not suffer from altitude sickness.

When we put on N95 masks, it is equivalent to going to a higher plateau, such as Mount Everest Base Camp. Many people experience altitude sickness.

So ordinary people, in public places, can wear a surgical mask, there is no need to wear an N95 mask.

The epidemic has been going on for three years, and there are still people wearing N95 masks to play games, which really made the doctors feel frightened. When the women’s volleyball team was playing, I was thinking, are they dying?

You can think about it, what would be the consequences of letting the women’s volleyball girls play at the Everest Base Camp?

In fact, we can notice that in the first game of the match against Iran, the girls of the Chinese women’s volleyball team took off their masks from time to time to breathe.

I noticed that they were gasping for breath as they took off their masks.

This shows that the players wearing N95 masks to play games have indeed caused them breathing difficulties and caused them to lack oxygen during exercise.

Thinking of the patients who died suddenly while running wearing N95 masks, I am very worried about the safety of the women’s volleyball girls.

While the competition was still in progress, a large group of our university classmates, that is, a group of nearly 300 doctors, were discussing this matter.

We are all medical professionals, and we know the dangers of women’s volleyball girls wearing N95 masks to play games.

Fortunately, no women’s volleyball girls fell on the field.

When the women’s volleyball girls wearing masks to play games caused heated discussions on the Internet, many Internet celebrities were saying that this is not the first women’s volleyball team, and there are also many foreign athletes wearing masks.

The above is the diagram they used to demonstrate. This picture has appeared in the comments on my Weibo many times.

I admire them for having the courage to question medical professionals when it comes to medical views.

In fact, most of these athletes are not wearing N95 masks, but surgical masks, and even some masks, not even surgical masks, just ordinary dust masks with better ventilation .

These masks they wear have much better ventilation than N95 masks.

Therefore, heWhen we play games wearing these masks, the risk of danger is much lower.

As I said earlier, the N95 masks worn by women’s volleyball girls have poor ventilation performance, and are more likely to suffer from hypoxia during the game.

Yesterday, the Chinese Volleyball Association was able to respond to this, which is good!

I hope they can study hard every day and improve their athletes’ health in the future.

Human life is precious, even if it is a daughter of gold, it is not as important as the health of athletes to get a place in the competition.

Why let athletes compete if they are afraid of getting infected?

Finally, I call on us to take off masks in time when wearing masks for a long time can also cause harm to people’s health.

I hope that each of us can breathe fresh air freely!