Not very fun fact! They're is such a thing as suicide bags, it's when you place a bag over your head with a tube pumping helium in attached. Supposedly the helium may be mistaken by your brain for oxygen thus not giving the normal response. The result is unconsciousness within moments sometimes and death with considerably little pain (supposedly)
Technically that's not quite right. The brain registers concentration of CO2, not O2, because CO2+H2O creates carbonic acid which your body doesn't like. If you're breathing anything, you're removing CO2 from your system so your brain thinks everything's fine and dandy. Therefore, if you breathe any oxygen displacing gas such as nitrogen (used in executions sometimes), helium, hydrogen, whatever, you won't realize that you're actually suffocating.
CO works by a different mechanism. It binds with hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying molecules about 300x stronger than oxygen does so it's literally a chemical block against your body receiving oxygen.
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