Bag Breathing Vs. Baking Soda?

Bag breathing, Sodium bicarbonate, or both?

  • Bag breathing

    Votes: 8 18.6%
  • Sodium bicarbonate

    Votes: 6 14.0%
  • Both

    Votes: 29 67.4%

  • Total voters
    43

Uthmin

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I'd like to know whether I should add bag breathing to my routine. I've understood that I'll get the same positive effects from sodium bicarbonate, but I'd like to know which is best for me. So I guess this is a poll of sorts.

1 - Bag breathing
2 - Sodium bicarbonate
3 - Both

Thanks in advance!
 

charlie

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I went ahead and added a poll for you if that is ok.

Both are very powerful so go slowly. If you are getting plenty of sugar and fruit that will bring up your CO2.

When I was doing a ton of bag breathing I got a kidney stone. It's the only kidney stone I had in my life that I know of. I don't know if it was the bag breathing that did it, but it was at the time that I was definitely over doing the bag breathing.
 

chris

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I said both as they both have benefits and a potential important place. The sodium from baking soda is nice and I enjoy the immediate effect from bag breathing.
 

Mittir

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Charlie said:
When I was doing a ton of bag breathing I got a kidney stone. It's the only kidney stone I had in my life that I know of. I don't know if it was the bag breathing that did it, but it was at the time that I was definitely over doing the bag breathing.

How much bag breathing did you do everyday? how many times a day? how long?
I have read that sodium bicarbonate is used to control kidney stones that are formed
in acidic PH. Sodium bicarbonate prevents stones from forming and dissolves existing stones.
Stones are formed when urine PH is either too high or too low. Bag breathing increases
acidity of the blood. Here is a quote from RP, he does not say anything about kidney stone related to PH.
"But increasing carbon dioxide doesn’t necessarily cause acidosis, and
acidosis caused by carbon dioxide isn’t as harmful as lactic acidosis."
--http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/protective-co2-aging.shtml
 

charlie

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Mittir, I would say at least a couple of hours worth. lol 15-20 minutes worth each time a few times a day when I was doing it heavy.

I do have a theory that I actually had that kidney stone for a long time and the bag breathing caused it to dissolve and push it out.
 
OP
U

Uthmin

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I have a history of kidney stones, unfortunately. One episode involved a stone that was too large to pass. Had to undergo lithotripsy for that one.

Charilie, if bag breathing got rid of a kidney stone for you, why do you say you were "over doing" it? Seems to be a long-term benefit, in spite of the enormous pain. Are there other signals / signs of overdoing either bag breathing or baking soda I should be aware of? One of my points of confusion with much of the Peatitarian Way is that I don't know how much is enough and how much is too much of anything.
 

charlie

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Uthmin, I am not sure if the bag breathing caused the kidney stone, or, helped dissolve the kidney stone, or, maybe it had nothing to do with it at all. Those are my theories. :toiletclaw
 

4peatssake

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Charlie said:
Uthmin, I am not sure if the bag breathing caused the kidney stone, or, helped dissolve the kidney stone, or, maybe it had nothing to do with it at all. Those are my theories. :toiletclaw
I'd say you are on to something "Boss." ;)

I stumbled across an interesting article on baking soda Using Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda) for Kidney Cancer

Everyone knows (or should know) that taking sodium bicarbonate orally or bathing in a tub saturated with it results in a shift of the body’s pH to less acidic and more alkaline. That’s because baking soda is an electron donor and turns into carbon dioxide in the stomach. Bottom line, as the pH rises, so does cellular voltage as well as cellular oxygen levels. I will be publishing a lot about this in the next few weeks because one of the great secrets of life is found on this axis of O2, CO2, pH and cell voltage.

We increase cell voltage when we take sodium bicarbonate. It’s amazing but it’s true—when we take simple baking soda we raise the energy and performance level of cellular activity. This is good for the cells and helps them shake off infections and cancer. Baking soda has long been known as an excellent medicine for the kidneys, and dialysis units use bicarbonate regularly but they, like everyone else, don’t want to brag about it. The medical effects of sodium bicarbonate administration make it obvious that carbon dioxide is a nutrient with an instant and positive effect and this has been known for a long time.

“Carbon dioxide is, in fact, a more fundamental component of living matter than is oxygen. Life probably existed on earth for millions of years prior to the carboniferous era, in an atmosphere containing a much larger amount of carbon dioxide than at present. There may even have been a time when there was no free oxygen available in the air,” wrote Dr. Yandell Henderson from the Cyclopedia of Medicine, 1940. He also said “Carbon dioxide is the chief hormone of the entire body, it is the only one that is produced by every tissue and that probably acts on every organ.”

According to Henderson, carbon dioxide exerts at least three well-defined influences:

(1) It is one of the prime factors in the acid-base balance of the blood.
(2) It is the principal control of respiration.
(3) It exerts an essential tonic influence upon the heart and peripheral circulation.

Because carbon dioxide is absolutely crucial to life and because it is an absolutely essential component of protoplasm, and because therapeutic increase of carbon dioxide is the most effective means of improving the oxygenation of the blood and tissues, we need to finally learn about sodium bicarbonate and why we should use it so much in general medicine, cancer treatment, and as a frontline medicine against the new antibiotic resistant pathogens that are spreading out from hospitals now into people’s homes.

Sodium bicarbonate can prevent the formation of uric acid kidney stones and can help dissolve existing uric acid stones. Sodium bicarbonate makes the urine less acidic, which makes uric acid kidney stone formation less likely. Kidney stones develop when urine concentrations of minerals and other dissolved substances get so high that the minerals can no longer remain dissolved. Stones can also form if the pH (acid-alkaline balance) of urine is too high or too low. In all cases, the minerals form insoluble crystals and precipitate, or drop out, of the urine, exactly the same way too much sugar drops to the bottom of a glass of iced tea. The crystals collect in the kidney ducts, slowly solidifying into stones.
 

charlie

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Well wouldn't that be something if I actually dissolved the stone via massive bag breathing. I think I was also doing a bit of baking soda at the time.

After I passed the stone I immediately stopped all bag breathing and baking soda. I might pick it back up and see what happens.
 

jyb

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I'm doing 5-10 minutes, 2 or 3 times a day. I quite like it, it normalizes my breathing rhythm and other things, I regret not doing this earlier.

I often read that brain cells die if deprived of oxygen for minutes. I wonder if 5 minutes isn't excessive? In my experience, I don't feel uncomfortable after 5 minutes, I mean not more than after 2 minutes.
 

Dan W

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jyb said:
I often read that brain cells die if deprived of oxygen for minutes. I wonder if 5 minutes isn't excessive? In my experience, I don't feel uncomfortable after 5 minutes, I mean not more than after 2 minutes.

My (very fuzzy) understanding is that you're increasing the efficiency of oxygen uptake when exposed to more carbon dioxide. I would guess that cells don't end up deprived of oxygen.
 

Parsifal

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Would not it be better to try Pranayama instead of bag breathing? My concern is that with bag breathing you will absorb other gazes that are not very good but with Pranayama you might mostly raise CO2 levels in the blood and have the same benefits as bag breathing?

Also my father started to drink carbonated water 2 weeks ago and his recent blood test showed that he had too much creatinine in the blood, he believes that the baking soda in the water is doing that. I've read that it acted as a diuretic, or is the kidney insufficiency because of too much phosphate?
 

tara

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Parsifal said:
post 100939 Would not it be better to try Pranayama instead of bag breathing? My concern is that with bag breathing you will absorb other gazes that are not very good but with Pranayama you might mostly raise CO2 levels in the blood and have the same benefits as bag breathing?
I think pranayama training and other controlled breathing exercises are a great idea. Some of them you can do in all sorts of situations where a paper bag might be awkward. But I don't see a problem with breathing into a clean brown paper bag, and it has the advantage that it doesn't take a lot of learning to do it. Breathing into a bag that is giving off other toxic chemicals or dust might not be great.

I think it may be wise to have an idea where your pH is before embarking on very intensive bag-breathing or baking soda. If I've understood it right, they will likely have opposite effects on ph: baking soda will raise it; bag-breathing, pranayama, etc, will lower it (by increasing blood CO2 level).
So someone with an average UpH of 7 or higher would probably benefit more from bag breathing/reduced breathing, but not from baking soda (and too much baking soda along with lots of supplemental calcium can in the extreme lead to milk-alkali syndrome).
Someone with UpH of 6.0 might benefit from baking soda. Or they might benefit in a more sustained way from increasing intake of other alkaline minerals, eg Ca, Mg. And those supplements might improve the ability to reduce breathing.
I'm not entirely confident about my picture of this, but it's my current working theory.

The people who are bag-breathing for 5-15 minutes must have either have larger or leakier bags than I have. :) I think Peat has said 1-2 minutes is usually a reasonable time, but several times a day should be fine.
 
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Giraffe

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Both bag breathing and baking soda can increase CO2 and decrease pH.

I have not fully understood the pH thing yet, but what I do grasp is that looking at pH only is misleading. Both lactic acid and CO2 will lower pH, and a lower pH will promote the dissociation of oxygen from hemoglobin to the tissue, allowing the tissue to obtain oxygen (Bohr effect), but ...

Lactic acid doesn’t vaporize as the blood passes through the lungs, so its effect on the lungs’ ability to oxygenate the blood is the opposite of the easily exchangeable carbon dioxide’s.- RP Altitude and Mortality

Lactic acid is the result of stress, and it is inflammatory and cancer promoting. You want to have the Bohr effect from CO2.

Alkalinity vs Acidity 2012, KMUD : The Herb Doctors
RP: Because that's the very thing that stress does, shifting to the alkaline and making lactic acid, the cells are in danger of getting into a chronically activated state. The panic attack is a typical thing where the body too easily shifts over into making lactic acid instead of making carbon dioxide. And so the person feels that they're suffocating but in the long run that same thing can lead to degenerative diseases or cancer in which the cells are stuck in a panic attack condition. And if you think of the original state of the cell as being the protein acid with fats and minerals to neutralize the acid, you can restore that condition with carbon dioxide. Just rebreathing it, getting your percentage of the acidic carbon dioxide dissolved in the blood up where it should be, you can stop the production of lactic acid, reverse the stress processes and restore the cell to its relaxed unpanicked condition.

...

Herb Doctor: So it really is a de-stressor not only for the mental state but for all the other cellular states that are panicking.

RP: Yeah. Every cell or tissue that you look at, it's protected if you restore the proper amount of carbon dioxide and the carbon dioxide in the gaseous form. It's easier if you think about the pH acid base balance of the organism. If you think of it as being pushed by a few factors, one of which is the amount of dissolved or gaseous carbon dioxide. So that breathing in a bag is one of the most powerful ways to restore the proper balance. If you need more bicarbonate, the gaseous carbon dioxide will allow you to make more bicarbonate and that will help you regulate your minerals and even help you retain more of your alkaline minerals. It will help correct your balance either in the acid or base direction. Taking sodium bicarbonate, for example, will actually acidify cells that are in need of more carbon dioxide because when the bicarbonate has been deficient and a cell is exposed to the bicarbonate it will convert it into the acidic carbon dioxide and be able to lower its pH even though you've taken the alkaline baking soda.
 

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