Oxygen bars and recreational oxygen inhalers promise to improve your well-being. Find out if they really deliver.

A new wave of oxygen bars is popping up across the country. Originally popular in the 1990s, these bars essentially market and sell air, and some make health claims for their inhaled product.

Claims for canned, inhaled oxygen are intoxicating, to say the least. Who doesn’t want to relieve stress, ease muscle aches, increase energy, concentrate and focus more effectively, sleep better, slow the aging process, and recover quickly from jet lag and hangovers?

If all of that sounds too good to be true, it undoubtedly is, which is why you should cast a doubtful eye on these oxygen products. Here’s what you need to know before you inhale.

Recreational oxygen therapy rests on a relatively simple premise: By delivering higher concentrations of oxygen than you would normally get from the air around you, you reap the above health rewards.

Just how much more oxygen do you get? While the air you breathe is made up of 21 percent oxygen, many oxygen bars and canned oxygen products claim to give you about 95 percent oxygen.

In reality, most of these products, especially those offered in oxygen bars, deliver only about 35 percent to 40 percent oxygen, says Frank LoVecchio, DO, MPH, co-medical director of the Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center at Banner Health and professor of emergency medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix.

While that’s still more oxygen than you get from the air around you, the truth is that healthy people just don't need the extra oxygen. “Humans have evolved to live in an atmosphere with 21 percent oxygen,” says Jason Turowski, MD, pulmonologist with the Cleveland Clinic Respiratory Institute in Ohio.

“Once your blood gets enough oxygen, you can’t load any more onto your red blood cells,” Dr. Turowski says. He likens it to trying to squeeze more people onto an already-packed New York City subway car.

The one exception for otherwise healthy individuals? Athletes doing vigorous exercise, like football players; they might have just run 70 yards for a touchdown and then suck oxygen on the sidelines. “That oxygen will make that athlete feel better, but it won’t do anything for the average individual,” says Norman H. Edelman, MD, senior scientific advisor with the American Lung Association and professor of preventive medicine, internal medicine, and physiology and biophysics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The numerous health claims these oxygen bars tout simply don’t hold merit, some experts say. “The reason for your hangover or muscle pain has nothing to do with hypoxia, a condition in which your body is deprived of oxygen, which is why it doesn’t make sense to give oxygen for these conditions,” Turowski notes.

Why then do so many people report feeling better after going to oxygen bars? “Blame the placebo effect,” Dr. Edelman says. It may be all in your head.

Oxygen bars and the like may not pose major health threats for healthy people. “It might be better than going to a bar to drink,” Edelman says. But there are some aspects of recreational oxygen use that could pose health risks.

First, the cleanliness of breathing devices at oxygen bars needs to be considered. “Unlike medical-grade oxygen therapy where we provide sterile tubing, I’m not sure oxygen bars are subjected to any oversight, whether the tubing is exchanged between users, and how the non-medical grade oxygen concentrator is maintained or whether humidification is provided,” Turowski says.

Without fresh tubing or devices to sterilize that tubing, mold and bacteria could grow, which could be troublesome for people with existing lung problems. In fact, if you have medical conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, chronic bronchitis, cystic fibrosis, sarcoidosis, scleroderma, or congenital heart or vascular disorders, it’s best to avoid oxygen bars. This is especially true if you’re using medical-grade oxygen.

“You could increase the likelihood of developing an unintended but possible complication like infection or exacerbation due to circumstances related to cleanliness and lack of standardization of equipment,” Turowski says.

Many oxygen bars infuse the oxygen with scents that aren’t designed to be in your lungs in high concentrations. Although the consequences of these scents aren’t known, there could be potential ill effects on your lungs, especially for people, like those with asthma, who might react to strong smells, Turowski says.

Although certainly trendy, oxygen bars and inhaled oxygen products may be little more than hot air for healthy people who aren’t climbing Mount Everest, where supplemental oxygen is required.

A better option? Take a walk through the woods and get a real sensory journey while inhaling Mother Nature’s fresh — and free — oxygen.

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