u/HEPOXTech

I built a portable hypoxia device because altitude camps and tents were out of reach for me. Beta users now include national road/gravel/and mtb champions, a recently crowned world road champ, and 2026 Tour de France riders. I’m David the founder of HEPOX, an engineer and a former pro domestic road cyclist.

It lowers inspired oxygen while you sit at rest in short/daily sessions and is adjusted to reach a target hypoxia zone utilizing an oximeter to stimulate the adaptive affects associated with acclimation. Athlete use is encouraging; our 18 day pilot study at CU-Boulder was on a women's team training for the Tour de France Femmes is still unpublished but has an encouraging preliminary performance benefits in the metrics we measured. In addition to a Tour de France Femmes team using HEPOX, a few men's riders also had HEPOX throughout the Tour de France in 2026. I’m raising our first round to develop Gen 2 with sensing, session tracking, acclimation identification, and further validation.

I am pursuing future manufacturing capabilities. But what would you need to see (from evidence, case-studies, or rider usage) before that felt worth it or before mainstream non-pro riders would use it? What other endurance and non-endurance related athletes might be a primary market?

The current beta device is $400 with one filter; replacement filters are $30. The device is at hepoxtech.com if you want to look at the design.

Feel free to ask any questions about this device, the protocols we're see that are most effective, or where we think the science is going next!

A compact evidence brief on the data behind the device and intermittent hypoxia shows that the main variables behind effective intermittent hypoxia use are hypoxia severity, exposure time, and frequency of exposures:

• Wojan 2021: experiments with six participants each compared brief protocols targeting 80% arterial oxygen saturation. Eight four-minute bouts increased EPO; five-minute bouts did not. This was a small acute physiology study, not a HEPOX trial or a test of race performance.
• Nagel 2020: 19 participants received hypoxia or normoxia. One session of five four-minute bouts targeting 90% saturation did not significantly increase EPO or hemoglobin mass.
• Harding 2025: four days of fifteen 90 second hypoxic intervals did not increase hemoglobin mass; a separate group showed no significant acute EPO increase. Repetition and strong hypoxia therefore do not guarantee a blood response. This is a published study separate from the HEPOX athlete pilot.