Thanks for that from Telluride. This helps give some more useful information on the subject. The equivalent flow rate and response of headache sounds legitimate, but of course are both of limited time duration. I do not have personal experience with canisters , nor seen others use it, but have my knowledge based in traditional O2 usage.
I wonder how long it will take to find the optimal use for canisters? I do have concerns about what seems to be this: taken intermittently with a few canisters, the hiker's headache improves, they go higher and higher, or they sleep at an altitude higher than tolerable, and so by not truly acclimatizing they either (A) get over the hump (which some AMS cases do), or more typically they risk exacerbation with even worse complications if the treatment allows them this extra tool to get into more trouble. This is exactly what one risks using dexamethasone which covers up the AMS only to have it worse as one ascends rather than the preferred recommendation that altitude specialist Peter Hackett famously said was, "descent, descent, descent."
One could modify the above rule by saying that on a moderate altitude mountain and a single day push (such as Whitney) one might get away with it, and as you say, it works for you. Part of my experience has been seeing, treating, and evacuating cases of AMS, HAPE, HACE, and altitude death, so makes me slower to jump on the canister bandwagon yet.
Here is an interesting quote:
Be thou not by whom the new is tried,
nor the last to lay the old aside.
