You can quote several words to match them as a full term:
"some text to search"
otherwise, the single words will be understood as distinct search terms.
ANY of the entered words would match

How carbon dioxide improves your health

How carbon dioxide improves your health

CO2 is typically thought of as nothing more than a harmful waste product of respiration, but it’s actually a driver of mitochondrial energy production, and it improves the delivery of oxygen into your cells.

One of the simplest ways to optimise your CO2 is by breathing properly. Most people tend to over-breathe, which causes you to expel too much CO2. Proper breathing involves breathing less and breathing slower. Both of these allow CO2 to build up, and that appears to be part of why breathwork has such wide-ranging benefits.

To have sufficient CO2 production, you need healthy mitochondria because CO2 is produced exclusively in the Krebs cycle in the mitochondria. If you have mitochondrial dysfunction, if you’re hypothyroid or have high levels of inflammation, then you will not be producing enough CO2.

When your CO2 is too low, your body reverts to an “emergency” vasodilator, nitric oxide (“NO”). Drawbacks of elevated NO include peroxynitrite species formation and pseudohypoxia. NO also damages the polyunsaturated fats in your cells, and inhibits energy production.

CO2 combats cancer development by lowering the pH of the cell, thereby allowing extra water to be excreted. This is the opposite of linoleic acid and oestrogen, both of which suck water in and cause the cell to swell. Cellular swelling is a feature of cancer cells.

Let’s not lose touch…Your Government and Big Tech are actively trying to censor the information reported by The Exposé to serve their own needs. Subscribe now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox…

The Underappreciated Role of Carbon Dioxide in Health

The following is based on Georgi Dinkov’s interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola on 13 December 2023.  You can watch the interview HERE and a transcript is attached below.

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

In this interview, repeat guest Georgi Dinkov reviews the role of carbon dioxide (CO2) in health. CO2 is typically thought of as nothing more than a harmful waste product of respiration, but it’s actually a driver of mitochondrial energy production, and it improves the delivery of oxygen into your cells.

While this may come as a shock to most people, of all the strategies I know of to increase life extension, CO2 is one of the most effective longevity interventions available. There really isn’t anything that comes close, other than a low linoleic acid diet and reducing oestrogen dominance.

Unfortunately, virtually no doctors understand this. The now-deceased Ray Peat, a biologist and physiologist who developed the bioenergetic theory of health,1 was one of the few who understood it inside and out and actually recommended its clinical use.

I wrote an article about this that featured his lecture on CO2, which I watched six times as it catalysed my interest in the topic. At the time I found his video, there were fewer than 2,000 views on YouTube. You can find it by going to YouTube and typing in Ray Peat CO2.

Proper Breathing Is Important for Optimal CO2 Levels

One of the simplest ways to optimise your CO2 is by breathing properly. Unfortunately, bad advice is rampant in the breathing arena as well. The problem is that most people tend to over-breathe, which causes them to expel (breathe out) too much CO2, resulting in respiratory alkalosis. Chronic CO2 deficiency will also contribute to premature death.

In a nutshell, “proper” or life-extending breathing involves breathing less and breathing slower. Both of these allow CO2 to build up, and that appears to be part of why breathwork has such wide-ranging benefits.

“As it turns out, carbon dioxide, even though medically it’s mostly viewed as a waste product of respiration, is actually the thing that protects us from oxygen’s well-known toxicity,” Dinkov explains.

Forgotten Truths

It’s rather surprising that the benefits of CO2 have become forgotten considering its historical use. Asian cultures, for example, have a long history of using carbonated water for its health benefits.

The Romans recommended taking baths in naturally carbonated water for all kinds of ailments but especially arthritis, infertility and psychiatric ailments, and this practice extended well into the Middle Ages when monks prescribed it. To this day many visit natural hot springs, and the likely benefit in many of these springs is the CO2 content of the water.

In the 20th century, Russian scientists did loads of research on CO2, and to this day, many Russian clinics offer CO2 baths and other CO2 treatments. There’s even a suit that can be filled up with CO2, which then diffuses into your tissues. You’ll start feeling hot very rapidly and this is a sign of vasodilation, which is one of the cardiovascular effects of CO2.

It’s been shown that CO2 can, over the long term, even reverse arterial calcification. It can also reverse many other signs of and damage caused by the ageing process.

Mitochondrial Dysfunction Inhibits CO2 Production

The key, though, is that in order to have sufficient CO2 production, you need healthy mitochondria, because CO2 is produced exclusively in the Krebs cycle in the mitochondria. If you have mitochondrial dysfunction, if you’re hypothyroid or have high levels of inflammation, then you will not be producing enough CO2.

When your CO2 is too low, your body reverts to an “emergency” vasodilator, nitric oxide (NO). There are three types of nitric oxide:2 neuronal nitric oxide synthases (nNOS); endothelial NOS (eNOS); and inducible NOS (iNOS). Low CO2 triggers iNOS. The problem with that is that now you’re overproducing NO, which is not ideal. Dinkov explains:

Another significant problem associated with elevated NO is pseudohypoxia because you have oxygen in the cells but it cannot be utilised because NO impairs Complex IV in the electron transport chain.

CO2 prevents this by dissociating the covalent bond between NO and Complex IV. Hence, oxygenation is optimised when sufficient CO2 is present. So, to summarise, CO2 keeps your blood vessels supple without the drawback of blocking Complex IV.

The Bohr Effect

Needless to say, optimal delivery of oxygen is crucial for good health. Oxygen from the air binds to haemoglobin when you inhale and enter your blood circulation. This bond is relatively strong. To break that bond and deliver the oxygen where it’s needed, you need CO2. This is known as the Bohr Effect.

Basically, the Bohr Effect describes the process in which CO2 weakens the bond between oxygen and haemoglobin so that the oxygen can separate and enter into the tissues.

As the haemoglobin releases the oxygen, it binds to the CO2 instead. The CO2 is then expelled through your out-breath. Without enough CO2, you will not be able to liberate sufficient amounts of oxygen from haemoglobin.

A Note on Oxygen Saturation

On a side note, a pulse oximeter measures the amount of oxygen in your blood. However, if your CO2 is extremely low, it could still read 100% saturation because you’re not dissociating the oxygen. It’s circulating in your bloodstream but cannot be used.

The major factor that determines your tissue oxygenation is how much CO2 you’re producing. If you’re hypermetabolic, if your mitochondria are not working, then you’re oxidising mostly fats, which produces less CO2 per molecule, so you’ll be deficient in CO2.

In the past, going back 100 years ago or so, the test for seizure susceptibility was hyperventilating. The doctor would instruct you to breathe through your mouth very quickly for 30 seconds, and if seizure symptoms emerged, it was a sign that you have insufficient CO2, as that’s what causes the seizure activity.

How CO2 Can Combat Cancer

Another important aspect of CO2 is that it lowers the pH of your cells, thereby allowing extra water to be excreted. This is the exact opposite of linoleic acid (LA) and oestrogen, both of which suck water into your cells which causes the cells to swell. Cellular swelling, aside from being the cause of oedema, is also a feature of cancer cells. So, you don’t want your cells to retain excess fluids. Dinkov explains:

Respiratory Alkalosis and Cancer

Cells can only produce a certain amount of CO2 per unit of time, so when you breathe too fast, you overwhelm your cells’ ability to maintain an appropriate level of CO2. As a result, you’ll have excess oxygen circulating in your bloodstream, but because the CO2 production cannot keep up with the amount of CO2 you exhale, you end up with respiratory alkalosis.

Respiratory alkalosis also increases intracellular water uptake, as just described, and as the pH of the cell increases, it causes overproduction of several inflammatory mediators, including lactate, which is another hallmark of cancer cells.

“Cancer cells are highly alkaline, they’re overproducing a lot of lactate and they have a very high uptake of water,”Dinkov says. “In fact, I think the word tumour is a Latin word which meant swelling.  You can reduce the swelling of the tumour to a tremendous degree simply by either increasing delivery of CO2 around the tumour, if it’s on the surface, or increasing uptake of CO2 through a CO2 bath or drugs that increase the levels of CO2 in the blood.”

Drugs that increase CO2 include carbonic and hydrate inhibitors such as acetazolamide, which decrease the degradation of CO2, allowing more CO2 to build up in your blood.

CO2 Benefits Your Entire Body

A nearly 150-year-old medical book describes the many uses and health benefits of CO2 that were known at the time. It basically included the entire body, and an extensive list of ailments of the day, including:

“Really, every condition you can think of, both physiological and mental, can be remediated, and in many cases cured, by increasing endogenous CO2 production and decreasing degradation,” Dinkov says. Migraines are another common ailment that can be addressed with CO2. In many cases, migraines are due to over-breathing causing a lack of CO2 that constricts the blood vessels in your brain.

Exogenous CO2 Delivery Methods

While it’s obviously important to optimise your endogenous (internal) production of CO2, exogenous delivery or supplementation will definitely produce the greatest benefits as you can deliver far greater amounts than your body can produce. Such strategies include:

One of our readers, LSquare, shared their experience with bag breathing in treating their hypertension a few days ago and I thought you would enjoy their story in case you did not see it in the comment section.

A book written in 1905 by Achilles Rose, M.D., discusses various methods of delivery including inhalation, irrigation and rectal insufflation. It contains case reports of it being used for asthma, whooping cough, dysentery, colitis, rectal fistulas, rhinitis and ear infections. It is a fascinating read.

 Sources and References

About the Author

Dr. Joseph Mercola is the founder and owner of Mercola.com, a Board-Certified Family Medicine Osteopathic Physician, a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a New York Times bestselling author.  He publishes multiple articles a day covering a wide range of topics on his website Mercola.com.

The Expose Urgently Needs Your Help..

Subscribe now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox…

.

Can you please help power The Expose’s honest, reliable, powerful journalism for the years to come…

Your Government & Big Tech organisations
such as Google, Facebook, Twitter & PayPal
are trying to silence & shut down The Expose.


So we need your help to ensure
we can continue to bring you the
facts the mainstream refuse to…


We’re not funded by the Government
to publish lies & propaganda on their
behalf like the mainstream media.


Instead, we rely solely on our support. So
please support us in our efforts to bring you
honest, reliable, investigative journalism
today. It’s secure, quick and easy…

Just choose your preferred method
to show your support below support

Read the full article at the original website

References:

Subscribe to The Article Feed

Don’t miss out on the latest articles. Sign up now to get access to the library of members-only articles.
jamie@example.com
Subscribe