Centurion News
Optimizing respiratory function and racing performance
The horse is the ultimate athlete, having evolved as an organism designed to run, and to run fast, and to run for quite significant distances. As such, the ability of the horse’s lungs to deliver fully oxygenated blood for delivery to the horse’s musculature is an absolute requirement for optimal racing performance.
When running at full speed, the horses respiratory rate is directly linked to its stride rate, and a top speed the horse breathes in and out about once per second, and each breath moves 1800 liters of air into and out of his lungs. And anything that interferes with this rapid movement of air into and out of the horse’s lungs, or the rapid transfer of oxygen across the microscopically thin lung tissue membranes and into the pulmonary blood vessels will obviously interfere with the racing performance of the horse.
It has long been known that in racing horses, airway inflammation is clinically associated with poor performance, and this effect is thought to be due to a combination of infection and environmental contaminants in stables, resulting in increased concentrations of inflammatory mediators excessive mucus secretion in affected lungs. And recent work by my colleague, Dr. Robinson, has shown that accumulation of mucoid secretions in the airways of racehorses is clearly associated with reduced racing performance, and accumulation of mucoid secretions can be associated with either increased inflammatory responses in the lung, or simple exposure to particulate matter, or, and more likely, both of these factors working in concert.
So, if we could reduce inflammatory responses in the lungs of a horse, while at the same time accelerate the removal of mucoid secretions, we would have a mechanism of optimizing pulmonary function in any horse with any trace of a sub-clinical inflammatory responses in the lungs or a similarly sub-clinical excess of mucoid secretion associated with exposure to stable or race track particulates or associated microorganisms.
And since these adverse changes in an affected lung consist of at least two components, the increased inflammatory response associated microorganisms, and the resultant excessive mucus secretion, the optimal response would consist of both reducing the inflammatory response and increasing the removal of excessive amounts of mucus. And let us first look at a simple but highly effective mechanism of facilitating the removal of mucus from the equine lung, namely the Centurion Equine Transpirator
The Centurion Equine Transpirator is an instrument specifically designed to assist the horse in removing mucoid material from the lung. Its is based on a Transpirator originally used in human therapeutics, where the goal was to introduce warm moist air into the lung, thereby reducing the viscosity and increasing the mobility of mucous secretions. The Centurion Equine Transpirator is designed for use with all breeds of horses, and delivers air deep into their lungs at 105° + or -3° , slightly above body temperature, and saturated to 100% relative humidity. In horses with excess mucus, this treatment reduces the viscosity of the mucus and the increased hydration in the fluid immediately under the mucus, the peri-ciliary fluid, allows the cilia to beat more rapidly and effectively, thereby moving the mucus up the tracheobronchial tree and out of the horse’s lungs.
The actions of the Transpirator itself therefore, a primary related to the introduction of water into the respiratory system, optimizing the mechanical removal of mucus. And obviously, since sub-clinical inflammatory responses also contribute to the generation of mucus, and thereby to interference with respiratory function, anything that we could add to the Transpirator to give it an anti-microbial action would also assist in optimizing pulmonary function. And such an agent should ideally be broad spectrum, and locally and rapidly active, and silver is just such a substance, as we will now set forth.
Reviewing the anti-microbial actions of silver for the standard medical text, Goodman and Gilman's "The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics” the author, Dr. Stuart Harvey, notes that "distilled water becomes markedly bactericidal after contact with metallic silver". This is despite the fact that it the concentration of silver ions in the water are relatively low, reaching only 1 part per 20 million, but Dr. Harvey notes that "even heavy suspensions of bacteria succumb within a few hours". Silver shares this action, which is called the oligodynamic effect wth a number of other heavy metals, many of which were historically used prior to the advent of antibiotics in the treatment of various infectious diseases. Although the mechanism of this oligodynamic effect is unknown, it is remarkably broad-spectrum, acting on all living cells, and as such it includes algae, molds, spores, fungi and viruses, that is just about any undesirable living thing [from the horses’ point of view] that you might find in horse barn.
Thomas Tobin
MVB,M.Sc. Ph.D. MRCVS, DABT
Veterinarian, Pharmacologist and Toxicologist