Unlimited Oxygen Intake Is Crucial But Taken For Granted Until Your Lungs No Longer Provide It

[Blossom]

Thanks for the clarification. I think it would be helpful until you get the mucus under control just because it could help prevent you from having low oxygen at night, not knowing it and suffering the negative effects from it being low. If it is low during sleep that will impede healing. In an ideal world you wouldn’t need it of course but you are trying to get yourself back to a better baseline and are currently not in an ideal situation from how it sounds so I think it is temporarily going to be more of a positive in this situation. If you wear it while sleeping and wake up feeling more refreshed/better then you know it’s the right choice. You could always do some breathing exercises during the day as tolerated to help maintain good co2 levels. Correcting low oxygen seems pretty crucial right now. A setting of 2 liters brings the oxygen percentage breathed from 21% in normal room air up to approximately 28% so it’s still not a lot. Every 1 liter brings the oxygen up by 3-4% from room/ambient air so 3 liters would be about 31%, 4 liters about 35% ect. It’s not precise because depending on the rate and depth of breathing a person will entrain a little more or less ambient air and mix with and slightly dilute the pure oxygen being delivered. I hope that I explained that adequately.

 

[yerrag]

Thanks for the clarification. I think it would be helpful until you get the mucus under control just because it could help prevent you from having low oxygen at night, not knowing it and suffering the negative effects from it being low. If it is low during sleep that will impede healing. In an ideal world you wouldn’t need it of course but you are trying to get yourself back to a better baseline and are currently not in an ideal situation from how it sounds so I think it is temporarily going to be more of a positive in this situation. If you wear it while sleeping and wake up feeling more refreshed/better then you know it’s the right choice. You could always do some breathing exercises during the day as tolerated to help maintain good co2 levels. Correcting low oxygen seems pretty crucial right now. A setting of 2 liters brings the oxygen percentage breathed from 21% in normal room air up to approximately 28% so it’s still not a lot. Every 1 liter brings the oxygen up by 3-4% from room/ambient air so 3 liters would be about 31%, 4 liters about 35% ect. It’s not precise because depending on the rate and depth of breathing a person will entrain a little more or less ambient air and mix with and slightly dilute the pure oxygen being delivered. I hope that I explained that adequately.

Thanks for your well thought out response.

The first month after my ER visit, I rented a big tank but ended up not using at night and thought what a waste that I rented that tank. But that betrays my ignorance of the importance of being fed oxygen when one's lungs are compromised.

But as I observe and thought more on what my monitors on oxygen saturation and heart rate are showing, I began to suspect there is more going on inside our body that is highly dependent on oxygenation. The occasional hardness of breathing merely scratches the surface.

When I add oxygen or carbogen, I would see even more drops in spO2 at night, which would seem odd. But looking more closely into the charts, I would confirm these drops are not due to low oxygen supply, but high oxygen demand in the body (If it were due to low oxygen supply, the drops would stay low and not fluctuate from low to high in a short time). The high oxygen demand would come from the respiratory burst of phagocytosis- our immune cells doing their job, as they should. If the action was intense, marked by long hours (say from midnight to 5 am) of steep drops, the next day I would have frequent loose bowels. This meant a lot of pathogens or toxins being eaten up by phagocytes and dumped to the liver and processed in the gallbladder for fecal excretion. Being that these stuff are toxic, they would induce diarrhea because the body does not want to absorb these filthy liquids.

This is one example of how important it is that we have good oxygenation. Not only due to having enough CO², but also enough O². Having enough CO² only guarantees enough tissue oxygenation to the extent of the oxygen blood carries, but if blood is hypoxemic or low on oxygen, then tissue oxygenation will also suffer.

Starting today, I will have to sleep with an oxygen tank feeding my breathing.

 

[kimbriel]

Until lately, I have taken my lungs for granted. Without any doubt, it is natural when I had good endurance. One time, without needing to train, I was surprised I could run up a steep hill of 5 km at a brisk, competitive pace and not falter. When my kayak would roll over, and I became underwater, I could take my time underneath the waves that my companions would start to wonder why I had not popped up.

Since February this year, when my lungs were subject to irritation by chemical stress, from my having taken cinnamon bark oil orally in the wrong way, my lungs have not been the same. And actually, it has been underperforming everyone else except for elderly people and people who suffer from emphysema from smoking. When I walk, I can feel myself panting from it, and have to slow down to a crawl. When I saw I piece of soft banana trunk, I my lungs would already strain from the little effort it requires.

This is 4 months after the incident. And it isn't so bad when, despite the ugly comparison I gave you, I am getting better, although a lot of patience is needed. As the body has its own schedule of healing, and the healing pace is highly dependent on the quality of treatment it is given. As I don't rely on doctors or hospital anymore, but on my own research, based a lot on Peat's writings and research shared here, I have quite a bit of a learning curve to overcome.

Old-timers here like me (member since 1016) have already been disabused of the notion that answers are within a click of your finger on the world wide web and on the Ray Peat Forum, and that finding a solution can still be a solitary journey (at least that has been my feeling). I, for one, still have to do deep dives on RPF material and RP material, and find as much sense as I connect all that content together in my mind. And from that, I have to begin experimenting on myself.

At a certain point, without even being fully healed and using that as my basis for giving you a definitive answer to how I fixed myself, I can begin to throw out some ideas from my experience that is largely still hypothetical but not just based on a whim but some data, however rough shod and diorganized the data come to me (I used to be more organized, but now it it has given way to more analyzing rather than the tedious routine of recording data which often I cannot find justification for). It's akin to being chased by a wolf and trying to measure how fast you can run, which would be a luxury.

That is my introduction before I get to the meat of the matter. I think the reader should know where I am coming from posting this. Here comes the gist of my post:

1. Having enough oxygen, not unlimited oxygen from the lungs, is still enough to give me good metabolism. If I were just in a state of rest, and I ate right. And were not subject to much stress- in all its forms- physically, physiologically, psychologically, and socioculturally. But since I am not subject now to physical, sociocultural and psychological stress, I would not know really know their effects with regard for my need for additional oxygen. But my current lung condition, bronchitis. ;eaves me vulnerable to physiological stress.

I still eat well, go through my day waking up and doing my chores and work, and reading and writing as I used to, and not given to fits of rage. My blood pressure is as high as usual, but as usual not affecting me any differently than when my lungs were better. My heart rate and my metabolism however, would vary, and would seem to correlate to my spO2 levels, but mostly being within the normal range used by the standard of care (medical establishment).

2. The most I could expect from working with just enough oxygen is that I cannot have excellent metabolism, just good. Good is when I would still see my blood sugar still being stable, and me not getting diabetic nor hypoglycemic. But I would see myself becoming more acidic. My urine would be at a lower pH, while my saliva would be correspondingly lower but higher by about 1 pH than my urine, and my breathing rate would still be normal at 14, which means there is enough CO2 to enable tissue oxygenation. This would mean that while I'm not given to anaerobic glycolysis, I'm not running totally on oxidative phosphorylation, and it is likely I am at times running on aerobic glycolysis.

It could very well be that I'm on 50% aerobic glycolysis and 50% oxidative phosphorylation.

I suspect given that my body senses my oxygen supply is limited, it must be downthrottling my thyroid production, in order to keep my oxygen consumption down to as to match my body's oxygen demand to the limited oxygen supply

This may explain why I am slightly hypothyroid now, as based on my ECG QTc value.

It may explain why when I took thyroid and pregnenolone to rev up my metabolism, i ended with a lower metabolism and felt spacey (lack of oxygen in my head) the next day, I think I intervened against the wisdom of the body, against its decision to lower my metabolism in order to match my oxygen demand to my limited oxygen intake.

It may also explain why when I took 6 glasses of carbonated water one day, I would keep waking up at night to urinate 2 to 3 cupfuls of very alkaline urine. For the body wanted to limit my metabolic rate. This would be along the lines of what Ray Peat would call protective inhibition.

3. I had been wondering why my ECG curve has been looking very different also. My QRS curve has been very low (for those whos don't understand what this is, kindly google for an image, as my trend of thought is disturbed when I had to draw up a low curve and a high curve and explain why it changes. Sorry) and it reflects the low energy available to the heart as it pumps. It indicates pleural effusion in the lungs (liquid in the lungs, which would block also gaseous exchange such as oxygen intake and CO2 exhaust). I would wonder if this were true because why would the lungs affect the heart in this way. A lot of times research just says and doesn't explain why. So I spent months thinking about this. But now I think that is true and not just the medical establishment making things up (I am given to doubting what they say as I am afraid of being led down a wild goose chase). As the heart pumps to the lungs to get blood oxygenated, coming back from the lungs, the heart is the first organ that the newly oxygenated blood passes, and so the heart would know be the first to know if there is enough oxygen available for it to use as usual. With less oxygen available due the poor oxygen intake in the lungs, the heart would not be able to continue to pump in a way that would be reflected in a high QRS curve. It is probably a protective mechanism of the body to conserve the use of the limited oxygen availability.

4. Along with my bronchitis, I also have symptoms of ALS. I would be thinking of this as me having to face two problems at the same time. I would be thinking of this as both a breathing issue as well as s neuromuscular issue on an equivalent level. But now I think of it is a breathing issue primarily and a neuromuscular issue secondarily. I should fix the breathing issue first and the neuromuscular issue should be fixed as a result.

I think that the body may be inducing the neuromuscular issue to keep me from physical activity as protective inhibition, to channel my limited metabolic energy towards healing my lungs, so as to regain my ability to breathe in unlimited oxygen. And so I should just help my body towards that goal by not getting in its way.

5. Expressing my thanks once again to Ray Peat for giving me material to build on as I think my way out of my health issue. Especially for writing "Mind And Tissue," which is a deep read and which intially appeared irrelevant to me that I didn't read it. But now becomes very relevant as it exposes the wrong way by which western doctors frame their approach towards healing. It is a deep read that now I appreciate very much, although I am not even halfway to finishing reading.

I just had a very rare form of lung cancer (lung carcinoid) so this topic is of particular interest to me. There is actually much research that supports CO2, not oxygen, as being really important for breathing. Look up Buteyko breathing.

 

[yerrag]

I just had a very rare form of lung cancer (lung carcinoid) so this topic is of particular interest to me. There is actually much research that supports CO2, not oxygen, as being really important for breathing. Look up Buteyko breathing.

An earlier post in this thread has a pdf that explains Buteyko theory very well, although some parts of it I have to skim through for being too detailed. How it impacts different systems, such as nervous system and digestive system and the immune system it covers briefly. The title is "A Biochemical Basis of Buteyko Theory."

Unlimited Oxygen Intake Is Crucial But Taken For Granted Until Your Lungs No Longer Provide It

Hi yerrag, disregard the genetics bit, I didn't write that and the fact that caprylic acid seems to help in the way that it might has nothing to do with genetics. Oh, my bad. I was too focused on the genetics bit. I had Sunday lunch with my siblings and my attitude was combative given they are...

raypeatforum.com

How are you dealing with your lung carcinoid issue?

 

[Blossom]

@yerrag, you’re welcome. That sounds good. Carbogen would be an excellent option to try if you have access to it. You could experiment with both plain oxygen and carbogen on different nights to see which helps you feel the best. Regardless of which you go with I do feel a little extra oxygen will help increase your chances of avoiding hypoxia that can cause further and potentially body wide damage while you’re sleeping and aren’t awake to monitor yourself. I wish I had practical experience with carbogen but sadly it’s not available here in the clinical setting or otherwise to my knowledge. I believe in it though. Our breathing is normally regulated by co2 so it’s very important and under appreciated. The importance of buteyko and similar breath work is that it helps us avoid the rampant over breathing so common amongst us and it resets our chemoreceptors to tolerate higher and more optimal co2 levels overtime in my understanding. It’s nice to be here where people appreciate it’s importance.

 

[ecstatichamster]

One of the best ways to raise CO2 levels is to load with thiamine. 2g or so per day for 5 days and then 1500mg per day, can potently reduce carbonic anhydrase, raising CO2 in the body and therefore helping oxygenation.

 

[yerrag]

@yerrag, you’re welcome. That sounds good. Carbogen would be an excellent option to try if you have access to it. You could experiment with both plain oxygen and carbogen on different nights to see which helps you feel the best. Regardless of which you go with I do feel a little extra oxygen will help increase your chances of avoiding hypoxia that can cause further and potentially body wide damage while you’re sleeping and aren’t awake to monitor yourself. I wish I had practical experience with carbogen but sadly it’s not available here in the clinical setting or otherwise to my knowledge. I believe in it though. Our breathing is normally regulated by co2 so it’s very important and under appreciated. The importance of buteyko and similar breath work is that it helps us avoid the rampant over breathing so common amongst us and it resets our chemoreceptors to tolerate higher and more optimal co2 levels overtime in my understanding. It’s nice to be here where people appreciate it’s importance.

It's intentional that the medical industry would deprive us of the ubiquitous availability, much less allow the use of carbogen, as I am finding it to be a "must have" basic without which we have to find elaborate but second rate solutions to health issues. I've already used it two years ago to arrest the metabolic decline due to a pervasive fungal parasitic infection that would have led me to a downward spiral that typical hospital boxed-in protocols are helpless against. Alternative medicine practitioners would be just as flummoxed.

Being that my oxygen tank is small and need to be refilled after each nightly use, and that to get refills would require a daily trip across town in our hellhole traffic, I have opted to stick with using carbogen with a morning and evening hourly session daily.

I've already progressed quite a bit but with room to go, using it. The unit actually draws atmospheric air and mixes it with the CO2 from a tank. It takes a long time before needing a refill. The bothersome persistent hiccups is gone, thanks to it erasing a serum CO2 deficit that triggers the persistent hiccups. This was a state that eventually resulted from my chronic bronchitis. Even as my bronchitis is halfway in being fixed, my ALS symptoms have subsided and I can see passage of food and liquid through the epiglottis go unhampered with no choking or threat of aspiration. The symptoms of Meniere's are much subtle now, as a simple act of bending over used to put me in a tizzy. My left foot is less floppy now and getting firmer and sure-footed as I walk. All these improvements have been made possible by the gradual restoration of energy to the neuromuscular system, aided by oxygen being made available more freely as a substrate aided by better tissue oxygenation with carbogen therapy. Some supplements such as thiamine and niacinamide and Arkkemansia prebiotic may have helped as well.

The hypoxic and hypoxemic burden on my system has been very stressful and degenerative. The improvements I have seen only spur me to be relentless in overcoming my current condition of bronchitis.

The use of NAC in nebulization has been very effective, as a lot of stubborn sticky phlegm stuck in the airways have come off and its effect is readily seen in the uptick in my spO2 values. @Highserotonin90 mucho gracias! Will continue my postural drainage and will begin using the mucus clearing device soon as I incorporate some homeopathic remedies as well as mullein leaf tincture as I continue using essential oils.

I am optimistic as the body has begun to respond well and the way our body responds give me a good indication of what is in store. As Ray would say, our job is to help the body heal itself.

I hope to share some findings I discover using carbogen as I ramp up the hours using it. Thanks for being such a big help!

 

[yerrag]

@yerrag, you’re welcome. That sounds good. Carbogen would be an excellent option to try if you have access to it. You could experiment with both plain oxygen and carbogen on different nights to see which helps you feel the best. Regardless of which you go with I do feel a little extra oxygen will help increase your chances of avoiding hypoxia that can cause further and potentially body wide damage while you’re sleeping and aren’t awake to monitor yourself. I wish I had practical experience with carbogen but sadly it’s not available here in the clinical setting or otherwise to my knowledge. I believe in it though. Our breathing is normally regulated by co2 so it’s very important and under appreciated. The importance of buteyko and similar breath work is that it helps us avoid the rampant over breathing so common amongst us and it resets our chemoreceptors to tolerate higher and more optimal co2 levels overtime in my understanding. It’s nice to be here where people appreciate it’s importance.

It's intentional that the medical industry would deprive us of the ubiquitous availability, much less allow the use of carbogen, as I am finding it to be a "must have" basic without which we have to find elaborate but second rate solutions to health issues. I've already used it two years ago to arrest the metabolic decline due to a pervasive fungal parasitic infection that would have led me to a downward spiral that typical hospital boxed-in protocols are helpless against. Alternative medicine practitioners would be just as flummoxed.

Being that my oxygen tank is small and need to be refilled after each nightly use, and that to get refills would require a daily trip across town in our hellhole traffic, I have opted to stick with using carbogen with a morning and evening hourly session daily.

I've already progressed quite a bit but with room to go, using it. The unit actually draws atmospheric air and mixes it with the CO2 from a tank. It takes a long time before needing a refill. The bothersome persistent hiccups is gone, thanks to it erasing a serum CO2 deficit that triggers the persistent hiccups. This was a state that eventually resulted from my chronic bronchitis. Even as my bronchitis is halfway in being fixed, my ALS symptoms have subsided and I can see passage of food and liquid through the epiglottis go unhampered with no choking or threat of aspiration. The symptoms of Meniere's are much subtle now, as a simple act of bending over used to put me in a tizzy. My left foot is less floppy now and getting firmer and sure-footed as I walk. All these improvements have been made possible by the gradual restoration of energy to the neuromuscular system, aided by oxygen being made available more freely as a substrate aided by better tissue oxygenation with carbogen therapy. Some supplements such as thiamine and niacinamide and Arkkemansia prebiotic may have helped as well.

The hypoxic and hypoxemic burden on my system has been very stressful and degenerative. The improvements I have seen only spur me to be relentless in overcoming my current condition of bronchitis.

The use of NAC in nebulization has been very effective, as a lot of stubborn sticky phlegm stuck in the airways have come off and its effect is readily seen in the uptick in my spO2 values. @Highsmucho gracias! Will continue my postural drainage and will begin using the mucus clearing device soon as I incorporate some homeopathic remedies as well as mullein leaf tincture as I continue using essential oils.

I am optimistic as the body has begun to respond well and the way our body responds give me a good indication of what is in store. As Ray would say, our job is to help the body heal itself.

I hope to share some findings I discover using carbogen as I ramp up the hours using it. Thanks for being such a big help!

 

[yerrag]

@Blossom I wanted to add that there's also another reason, apart from the hassle of having to refill my small oxygen tanks every day, is that I recalled two months ago, when I was recording my spO2 chart while asleep, that I found it odd that the charts with me using oxygen while asleep, compared with me not using oxygen while asleep, did not differ much. It's only now that I got to appreciate the significance of that observation.

I think that there are two reasons for that. One reason was that my intake of oxygen would still be limited, even with oxygen being supplied, given that my lungs' gas exchange capability was still compromised by my bronchitis condition. Still, having oxygen supply still having having no oxygen supply, but not by a whole lot. The second reason, which is more significant, is that the oxygen in my blood vessels are still constrained because at my condition, I have a CO2 deficit, and this constrains the amount by which my tissues can be oxygenated. So even if I have more oxygen in my blood with the oxygen supply to boost it, not much of the additional oxygen in the blood can be transferred to the tissues, given that the low CO2 state remains as is. So, I would not see much change in oxygen saturation (spO2) in the charts.

Had I been using carbogen instead of regular oxygen, the spO2 charts would look different. But not in the way we would typically expect it. The spO2 chart would see steeper drops in spO2, because there is higher tissue oxygenation going on, and more oxygen would be drawn from blood, making spO2 level go lower (but it is probable that the drop in spO2 would be minimal or non-existent or there may be an increase in spO2, as there is also a fresh supply of oxygen that comes with carbogen).

The past few nights, between 1 and 5 pm, I have been seeing much more significant drops in my spO2 levels. I can only attribute this to having gone thru a 1 hr session of carbogen breathing right before heading to bed. In this situation, I had loaded up on CO2, but I wasn't feeding my blood with oxygen continually (as when I have an oxygen tube feeding me oxygen while I sleep). In those hours, I saw scary drops in spO2 that were more frequent. This was because the higher presence of CO2 allowed more tissue oxygenation to occur (in this case to meet the high demands of oxygen needed for phagocytosis that was ongoing in those times) and this led to steeper drops in blood oxygen.

The day after, my bowels would be more loose, on the verge of diarrhea. This, to me, confirms that there was more phagocytic activity that wrapped toxins and bacteria in the phagocytes eventually would bring the toxins and bacteria to the liver on to the gall bladder as they become wrapped in fecal matter. Normally, the large intestine's walls would absorb the gut stew to leave solid fecal matter behind to be excreted. But because of the presence of toxins and bacteria, the gut walls were not allowing this. Thus, I came to have loose bowels in the aftermath.

Now is something I entertain that is even more speculative.

I noticed that my blood pressure had dropped as well. I sense that carbogen improved tissue oxygenation that led to the phagocytes becoming more effective in eating up toxins and bacteria, and leaving less spillover ROS in its wake. With less spillover ROS, there is less need for antioxidant action by albumin. Withe less albumin being oxidized and excreted, there is more albumin left in blood to build up blood volume. With higher blood volume, a lower blood pressure is needed to circulate the blood throughout the body.

Now, I am just talking about the immune system becoming more potent and the blood pressure becoming lower, but it shows the cascading effect of having more CO2 available in our body, which in this case is in the blood. But this is something I can observe and connect to positive changes in our health. No doubt, there is more to this that is beyond our ability to observe directly but can be deduced in the wider scheme of things, as the body has many processes that are inter-related. But it helps to see relationships positively in terms of virtuous cycles, and negatively in terms of vicious cycles.

 

[Blossom]

Fascinating @yerrag! Do you think you may have been aspirating food or drink into your lungs due to neuromuscular issues?

I also wonder if you might be able to buy an oxygen concentrator online so you always have some available that you don’t have to drive around to refill in case you need it? This would also be potentially helpful for increasing the odds of avoiding the hospital.

Keep up the excellent work and keep us posted please!

 

[maillol]

Your experience sounds very similar to mine. I developed asthma about 10 years ago. Doctors just gave me inhalers and said you have asthma now. It's taken me a long time to solve it but I think I have. One of the first things I suspected was iron because I had been using cast iron pans and eating a lot of red meat but my ferritin came back normal so that threw me off for a while. I gradually got worse and also started getting very cold.

A few years ago a friend of mine encouraged me to give blood. I was a bit scared to be honest because I felt so fragile at the time but I had some intuition that it would be a good thing to do. I noticed after a couple of weeks that my breathing was a bit better. I have since given blood 5 times and I no longer need an inhaler at all. I ran a 5k a couple of weeks ago.

I've since learned that the inflammation cause by high iron can raise hepcidin, keeping iron out of the blood, making iron blood tests misleading. Ferritin is said to represent tissue levels of iron but this is also unreliable especially in inflammatory situations. This is an interesting paper on the topic https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjh.13374

Raised hepcidin due to high iron can also counterintuitively cause anemia. I realised this applied to me at one of my blood donations when they test your hemoglobin with a drop of blood in a copper solution. If it sinks your hemoglobin is ok. Mine floated but then they tested the iron and it was in range so they still allowed me to give blood.

After giving blood your body will increase EPO to make new red blood cells. Anything that increases EPO will decrease hepcidin, releasing iron into the blood. There are lots of other things that lower hepcidin too, caffeine is one. I noticed that anything that lowered hepcidin would make me cold and at first I would avoid them but I realised that I needed to get the iron out of my tissues. It is commonly said that we can't excrete iron but this is not true - Gastrointestinal iron excretion and reversal of iron excess in a mouse model of inherited iron excess | Haematologica

After my blood donations substances that lower hepcidin no longer make me cold. My asthma is gone but I think I will continue to give blood once or twice a year. I did notice my fitness was worse in the weeks immediately following donation because my red blood cells would've been low. This is the opposite of what doping in cycling aims to achieve so it makes sense. My hemoglobin is still a bit low so I'm working on that at the moment with B12. This also seems to be related to sleep quality which I think is poor when my hemoglobin is low i.e. there aren't enough red blood cells to properly oxygenate my body. I had a bit of an aha moment when I went skiing recently and slept terribly at that altitude. A hemoglobin meter is cheap and worth getting IMO.

I'm waffling a bit but maybe this can help you too. You could get a full iron panel but like I said I'm not sure how useful blood tests are. It seems that the only really useful test would be an MRI. I know it can be daunting if you haven't done it before but it might just be worth giving blood and seeing how you feel. Yellowy skin could be another sign of high tissue iron because my hands are pinker now with more prominent veins.

 

[T-3]

Great to hear that you've seen improvements, yerrag! -- from carbogen, nebulizing NAC and many other thoughtful considerations/actions dealing with such trying symptoms.

Having followed your challenges re blood pressure and your theory of high blood pressure as (in part) a protective adaptation to insufficient blood supply, the reduction in blood pressure thanks to increased blood volume from carbogen was another piece of good news of interest to me and others.

Please keep us updated on your symptom profile. If you're measuring and willing to quantify the changes in blood pressure you've seen, that would be of interest, too.

Also, I'm curious based on your interpretation of the mechanism by which carbogen enabling your immune system to mount a stronger response and better utilize oxygen....why it took weeks of carbogen therapy to see a response. Or maybe you could clarify: how much carbogen and for how long before you could feel/measure improvements?

 

[yerrag]

Fascinating @yerrag! Do you think you may have been aspirating food or drink into your lungs due to neuromuscular issues?

I also wonder if you might be able to buy an oxygen concentrator online so you always have some available that you don’t have to drive around to refill in case you need it? This would also be potentially helpful for increasing the odds of avoiding the hospital.

Keep up the excellent work and keep us posted please!

It is fascinating unlocking relationships through observation and using Peat's principles in making discoveries that in all likelihood isn't new but kept hidden from us by the tyrrany of a closed circle of academia and research institutions.

I don't think there is aspiration involved as that would involve a fever arising from infection in the decaying food in the lungs.

For the same reason I see little value in sleeping with an oxygen supply - that the oxygen used is mere window dressing in the form of having a higher spO² value, yet with the oxygen only serving to save us from hardness of breath and nothing in the way of improving our health by way of improving immunity or structure- because of the absence of CO2 (unlike carbogen), I would not benefit greatly from either an oxygen concentrator or a large oxygen tank.

if carbogen were available in a tank setup because it is not banned by the self-serving medical establishment, I would gladly sleep with a supply of carbogen. Because I can derive improvement in my health, and not merely have it to keep me from falling into asphyxia and dying.

My current small oxygen tanks would be useful enough already in keeping me from dying from asphyxia, while the carbogen machine, though not suitable for continual use while I sleep and breathe it, should still be useful used in therapeutic sessions.

 

[Blossom]

Understood.

Because I can derive improvement in my health, and not merely have it to keep me from falling into asphyxia and dying.

I’m admittedly often too focused on this aspect of things.

 

[yerrag]

Understood.

I’m admittedly often too focused on this aspect of things.

That seems to be the singular focus of modern western medicine. It isn't to develop an individual to the peak of his health and abilities, but to save him from falling into an abyss.

It is like a parent who keeps a child from becoming his own person by constantly bringing him down, but is always there when a personal crisis arises to save him.

By the way, last night, for an hour I breathed carbogen to see what my spO2 chart would look like when used at an hour known for having huge spO2 drop. From 3-4am, the chart looked normal without the huge drops in spO2.

This means the CO2 accompanying the oxygen I breathed was effective in providing a sustained burst of internal respiration (aka tissue oxygenation) with a lot of oxygen left in the blood. Carbogen is that good.

It is one of those very good things in life that are banned for its ability to make us less dependent on the powers that be for health security.

 

[yerrag]

One of the best ways to raise CO2 levels is to load with thiamine. 2g or so per day for 5 days and then 1500mg per day, can potently reduce carbonic anhydrase, raising CO2 in the body and therefore helping oxygenation.

Is this like doing Buteyko but the chemical version of it? Where serum CO2 levels are higher to the point of inducing respiratory acidosis? Which normally the respiratory center would keep from happening by converting CO2 to bicarbonate via carbonic anhydrase? Or by breathing out carbonic acid as CO2 by hyperventilation?

At this state, would the body retain this extra CO2 reserve if it had no Buteyko training to keep CO2 from being hyperventilated away?

 

[yerrag]

Great to hear that you've seen improvements, yerrag! -- from carbogen, nebulizing NAC and many other thoughtful considerations/actions dealing with such trying symptoms.

Having followed your challenges re blood pressure and your theory of high blood pressure as (in part) a protective adaptation to insufficient blood supply, the reduction in blood pressure thanks to increased blood volume from carbogen was another piece of good news of interest to me and others.

Please keep us updated on your symptom profile. If you're measuring and willing to quantify the changes in blood pressure you've seen, that would be of interest, too.

Also, I'm curious based on your interpretation of the mechanism by which carbogen enabling your immune system to mount a stronger response and better utilize oxygen....why it took weeks of carbogen therapy to see a response. Or maybe you could clarify: how much carbogen and for how long before you could feel/measure improvements?

Thanks for following my posts on blood pressure and for your open mind on it. My BP was hitting 220/145 a few days ago and it went down to 180/120 right after a day where I had 2 hourly seesions of carbogen.

180/120 is my new baseline (after eliminating a microbial cause) and it reflects my system having to deal with lead toxicity, something which I cannot work on currently as my bronchitis condition puts me on a vulnerable low oxygen state that would be further stressed by huge oxygen demands of phagocytosis needed to rid my system of the lead toxicity.

I can see carbogen having a significant effect by the stronger spO2 drops that result from a session of carbogen breathing, as the drops reflect higher tissue oxygenation as enabled by having more serum CO2, and confirmed by my loose stools the following day, which shows more lead toxins being excreted causing diarrhea, which is the gut walls way of saying it doesn't want the toxins back unto the system, by blocking the gut liquids from being absorbed by the gut walls.

As an aside, the immune response would be stronger because there is more oxygen involved to create the ROS needed in phagocytosis by the neutrophils. However, all that action is wasted action as the lead atoms are able to evade the immune action of phagocytosis mostly, making the immune action futile and a waste of energy. I need a molecule, Emeramide, to sequester lead and hold it captive to two sulfide bonds, in order for the lead toxin to be swallowed up by phagocytes on the way to being excreted fecally.
That would rid my system of this toxin such that immune activity towards it can cease. At that point, no longer should albumin be needed to clean up after the spillover ROS of phagocytosis.

Only then would I be able to build up my albumin stores in blood on the way to restoring blood volume to normal. With blood volume normalized, blood pressure will normalize as well.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Is this like doing Buteyko but the chemical version of it? Where serum CO2 levels are higher to the point of inducing respiratory acidosis? Which normally the respiratory center would keep from happening by converting CO2 to bicarbonate via carbonic anhydrase? Or by breathing out carbonic acid as CO2 by hyperventilation?

At this state, would the body retain this extra CO2 reserve if it had no Buteyko training to keep CO2 from being hyperventilated away?

Yes. And it is helpful. It is like taking acetazolamide but better due to the fact that there are no side effects.

 

[yerrag]

@Blossom

Yes. And it is helpful. It is like taking acetazolamide but better due to the fact that there are no side

Your experience sounds very similar to mine. I developed asthma about 10 years ago. Doctors just gave me inhalers and said you have asthma now. It's taken me a long time to solve it but I think I have. One of the first things I suspected was iron because I had been using cast iron pans and eating a lot of red meat but my ferritin came back normal so that threw me off for a while. I gradually got worse and also started getting very cold.

A few years ago a friend of mine encouraged me to give blood. I was a bit scared to be honest because I felt so fragile at the time but I had some intuition that it would be a good thing to do. I noticed after a couple of weeks that my breathing was a bit better. I have since given blood 5 times and I no longer need an inhaler at all. I ran a 5k a couple of weeks ago.

I've since learned that the inflammation cause by high iron can raise hepcidin, keeping iron out of the blood, making iron blood tests misleading. Ferritin is said to represent tissue levels of iron but this is also unreliable especially in inflammatory situations. This is an interesting paper on the topic https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjh.13374

Raised hepcidin due to high iron can also counterintuitively cause anemia. I realised this applied to me at one of my blood donations when they test your hemoglobin with a drop of blood in a copper solution. If it sinks your hemoglobin is ok. Mine floated but then they tested the iron and it was in range so they still allowed me to give blood.

After giving blood your body will increase EPO to make new red blood cells. Anything that increases EPO will decrease hepcidin, releasing iron into the blood. There are lots of other things that lower hepcidin too, caffeine is one. I noticed that anything that lowered hepcidin would make me cold and at first I would avoid them but I realised that I needed to get the iron out of my tissues. It is commonly said that we can't excrete iron but this is not true - Gastrointestinal iron excretion and reversal of iron excess in a mouse model of inherited iron excess | Haematologica

After my blood donations substances that lower hepcidin no longer make me cold. My asthma is gone but I think I will continue to give blood once or twice a year. I did notice my fitness was worse in the weeks immediately following donation because my red blood cells would've been low. This is the opposite of what doping in cycling aims to achieve so it makes sense. My hemoglobin is still a bit low so I'm working on that at the moment with B12. This also seems to be related to sleep quality which I think is poor when my hemoglobin is low i.e. there aren't enough red blood cells to properly oxygenate my body. I had a bit of an aha moment when I went skiing recently and slept terribly at that altitude. A hemoglobin meter is cheap and worth getting IMO.

I'm waffling a bit but maybe this can help you too. You could get a full iron panel but like I said I'm not sure how useful blood tests are. It seems that the only really useful test would be an MRI. I know it can be daunting if you haven't done it before but it might just be worth giving blood and seeing how you feel. Yellowy skin could be another sign of high tissue iron because my hands are pinker now with more prominent veins.

Glad you were able to fix yourself of asthma. As my problem isn't asthma, it is a different approach to fixing it. You may have missed the part where my bronchitis orginated- exposure to cinnamon bark oil- and the cause is known, but fixing it is a matter of helping the bronchi go back to its precious state where it is no longer irritated and still producing mucus for protecting the delicate alveoli where has exchange takes place. For this to happen, the phlegm has to be continually cleared and excreted and energy restored to the lungs. Providing the body with the means to generate energy to power the lungs for its recovery is important.

That is what I can do at the very least. I'm getting better, and I hope the final outcome is as desired and as successful as you were in fixing asthma.

Could you elaborate more on the iron connection to your asthma?

 

[yerrag]

I feel light-headed today, and as a result I have poor appetite. Could it be too much caebogen?

I couldn't set the device for 5% carbogen, as it's stuck at 10% no matter what value I program into the app.

Perhaps I have to change the input valve for CO2 from a ball valve to a needle valve. Have ordered a needle valve bit it will be a week before I receive it from China.

I also have a problem sleeping. I get only 2 hours sleep a day. Sleep hasn't been a problem for me until this issue with bronchitis.

First, it was the hiccups. Then I solve it. Then the phlegm, which has been solved.

I would use Cyproheptadine but it won't work so probably it's not a serotonin issue. Benadryl worked the other night, but last night it didn't.

I have no blood sugar regulation issues. Maybe it has to do with my nerves, given I have neuromuscular issues. Will GABA calm my nerves?