Plaintiff appeals as of right the trial court’s order granting summary disposition to defendant. We affirm. The parties dispute whether decedent’s life insurance policy covers his death from auto-erotic asphyxiation. We agree with the trial court that intentionally depriving the brain of oxygen to generate a physical sensation constitutes a self-inflicted injury. Because the policy excluded death resulting from a self-inflicted injury, plaintiff may not recover. When an individual successfully attempts to deprive the brain of oxygen and death ensues, the death is the result of a self-inflicted injury, notwithstanding the fact that, through the employment of various safety mechanisms, the decedent had fully anticipated surviving.

In this case, decedent hung himself from his basement ceiling with a padlocked chain. He knew the risk of death, because a friend had died in a similar fashion. Decedent was apparently standing on his tiptoes on a board atop a stool when the stool broke, leaving him to hang to death. Although plaintiff argues that the broken stool caused decedent’s death, decedent was not using the stool to fix a ceiling fan or change a light bulb; he was using it to support, partially, his hanged body. Therefore, it was decedent’s own effort to deprive his brain of oxygen that ultimately led to his death.

Although the jurisdictions are split over the injury issue, we find the discussion in MAMSI Life & Health Ins Co v Callaway, 375 Md 261; 825 A2d 995 (2003), persuasive. Mechanically depriving one’s brain of oxygen is self-inflicted asphyxiation, a physiological impairment (injury) that, if prolonged, directly leads to loss of consciousness and death.1 As any asthmatic would *566agree, a lack of oxygen has instant, debilitating effects on the body, and even momentary deprivation is injurious from its onset to its alleviation.2 Here, decedent sought the sensations created by his self-induced hypoxia, and he used the chain as a noose for this purpose. His death resulted from his inability to extricate himself from the noose when his support gave way, so the death resulted from (and, more accurately, was an overextension of) his self-inflicted injury.

Affirmed.