WEBVTT

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So the next ones up are: CO2 is more important than oxygen and nitric oxide is an unhealthy

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stress chemical. So these concepts are so fundamentally opposite to what we're taught,

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especially the first one right. If you ask people what is the most important nutrient and then they

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kind of get their head around it they probably go oh it's oxygen right. Number one thing is oxygen

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because you only go a few minutes without breathing. Number two is water because you

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can only go a few days without water and then all the rest is a lot longer right. So oxygen

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seems like the most important nutrient. So the idea of carbon dioxide being more important than

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oxygen is kind of saying it's the most important nutrient of all. Some people actually class it as

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a hormone. I don't know if Dr Ray Peat does. I think that's you know a valid definition of carbon

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dioxide or CO2. CO2 is actually one of the most beneficial things in the body and it's quite

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hilarious that you know there's this effort to demonize it as a bad thing in the environment…

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Because not only is it one of the most essential things in the human body it's also the most

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essential thing arguably well along with sunlight and water for helping plants grow right. And as

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carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere plants grow more and more and as CO2 increases in the

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human body it has lots of beneficial effects as well which we'll talk about. So how is it beneficial?

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Let's start with like my understanding before I came across Dr Peat and then we'll add Dr Peat's

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understanding. So I first came across this concept from Dr Buteyko. Dr Buteyko was a Russian

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scientist and he observed that the more that people had, the higher. He was a pulmonary

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scientist, he would check people's breathing basically in a medical context, and he would

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see the two extremes he would work with like astronauts and athletes who were like the very

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highest level of pulmonary function. And then he'd also work with people who were dying of

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pulmonary disease of various kinds. And struggling to breathe and he observed a very

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interesting correlation which is that the more that people breathed the sicker they got up until

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and including the point that they stopped breathing altogether and the less that they breathed the

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healthier they were. Can you does that mean like in the more breaths during the minute that

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they're taking to breathe or what's the distinction the definition of that? Literally filling up a bag

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how much of a bag you would fill up with how much you're exhaling, because obviously if you're right

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right the volume yeah absolutely volume yeah yeah and so I think in fact I might have

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misremembered this I didn't look it up for years but I think it's something like maybe six litres

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he'd consider really great and then like 12 was more common when people are unhealthy but the one

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thing I do remember is so this is what he observed so therefore he would see that the more that people

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were able to hold their breath the healthier that they were and so people who were in the brink of

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dying, and it wasn't just a pulmonary disease it could be any disease, they would be unable to hold

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their breath for a few seconds without desperately gasping. People who are like peak level of

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strength and vitality they could hold their breath for maybe easily 60 seconds without effort. And so

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that he ended up calling the control pause basically what the way that you measure your

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own control pause is you take a little breath in, you breathe out, but don't push any air out just

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let your lungs relax so half a breath out and then you basically just hold your breath and you

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get a stopwatch and you see how many seconds you can hold it before you feel any kind of

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significant desire to breathe. And so, he had a very simple chart, for he said if you're if the

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amount of time you can hold it easily is between 0 and 10 seconds you're probably already sick

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if it's between 10 and 20 seconds you're probably on the verge of getting sick like you you probably

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get sick frequently or you know it doesn't take much if it's between 20 and 40 seconds then you're

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probably you know averagely healthy like okay but can be taken down without too much trouble

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if you're between 40 and 60 you're pretty strong and from his perspective you're if you're above

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60 seconds if you could genuinely hold your breath with no effort for more than 60 seconds

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in a relaxed way then you'd be like superhuman from his point of view. So that was his experience

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there's a whole system behind it called the Buteyko method that people still do and teach to

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this day it has not caught on massively despite being very effective for a lot of things the

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usually the main thing it's used for is asthma it's very effective for that but it's actually

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very effective for a whole range of different health issues but his system not Dr Peat's but

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his system Dr Buteyko is required like practicing holding your breath for a long time which is

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actually very very difficult and so anything that requires an extensive amount of effort

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discipline exertion and overcoming resistance tends to not get a lot of mass appeal at least…

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Unless there's kind of a status thing right I guess people love to like do intensive exercise

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but then often it's a lot of showing off and you know if you say oh I held my breath for 60 seconds

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say no one's going to go “oh, well done!” So there's not really any status around it and it's very

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difficult so it's never really caught on. But, anyway, what's the science behind it and how is

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it related to Dr Peat? So, Krissy you probably know the answer to this as based on context

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but like, if you hold your breath, what is the thing that tells you “I need to breathe now”, what is the

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mechanism? Oh, I mean I don't really know, for me it's the pressure of the build-up

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of the carbon dioxide in the body that tells me I need to breathe

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Awesome, yeah! Absolutely, you know the answer. Most people though think that it's the lack of oxygen

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right if I hold my breath for too long I need to breathe why because I'm running out of oxygen

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so the key thing to understand is this thing called the Bohr effect that was invented

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in 1904 and what Dr Bohr discovered is that in order for oxygen to get from the blood red

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cells which… So, the oxygen goes into your lungs, from the lungs it goes into the red blood cells

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the red blood cells through the whole cardiovascular system transport the oxygen throughout the body

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But then to get it from those red blood cells into every other cell it requires carbon dioxide

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and so if you have if you do not have sufficient carbon dioxide to go from the red blood cells

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into every other cell that means that that cell has to start making do without carbon dioxide

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Without oxygen or with less oxygen, and so it can do that, it can do anaerobic respiration it

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can do anaerobic energy creation through various different mechanisms, but none of them are as

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energy efficient, and none of them are, as you know, involve the fastest strongest highest level of

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metabolism, which is why Dr Peat was fundamentally against all of them because optimizing metabolism

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was really I would say the centerpiece of his whole philosophy. So, now here's the thing, the higher

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stress chemicals the more that you have an intolerance to carbon dioxide, the more that you

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feel that the same level of carbon dioxide is intolerable to you and you have to breathe more…

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And people get into a kind of loop with this and at the extreme this is called hyperventilating.

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So, hyperventilating people right because they're just trying to get out as much CO2 as possible

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now when someone is hyperventilating what's the usual advice they give you? Get a paper bag, right?

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And blow into that, because then you're not losing the carbon dioxide you keep breathing it.

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Back in again because you're breathing into a bag so it's kind of trying to break that cycle

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Now, other than this effect of being crucial from to transporting oxygen from the red

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blood cells into every other cell, the other thing that's so important about carbon dioxide is the

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number one way that your body relaxes the whole cardiovascular system, so it dilates and opens your

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arteries your capillaries your blood vessels and all the rest of it. So what you're saying you're

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CO2 is what dilates the capillaries and not it's not not because i always thought it

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was nitric oxide. So, you're saying it's CO2 it's definitely CO2 uh this is one of the craziest

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things about science it's what it's up there to me is it's just as crazy as a lot of the other

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things we talked about like almost everyone's starving for thyroid or people poisoning

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themselves of estrogen um is believing that CO2 is a bad thing when in fact it is, you know, one of

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the number one things that is beneficial for your body. So, that's why i added the other quote about

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nitric oxide being bad for you Dr Peat firmly believed that nitric oxide is a stress gas it

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is a gas that it is a secondary backup system, from Dr Peat's point of view, which is used in certain

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circumstances which i'll talk about in a second. But, generally, you should have sufficient carbon

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dioxide to keep all of those arteries and blood vessels and all the rest open, and the nitric oxide,

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from his point of view, and i agree with this, is a emergency backup way of opening those blood

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vessels to keep you alive. But it's not the primary way that that should be going on. Now what i didn't

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learn from Dr Buteyko, but which I learned from Dr Peat is exactly why and how CO2 is so beneficial,

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why Dr Buteyko was right that those people who could barely hold their breath for a few seconds

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were probably very ill, versus people who could hold it for a long long time were probably

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very strong and resilient and not ill is because carbon dioxide is mainly created when your body

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is doing when your body is creating energy, when your body is creating ATP in the optimal way.

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So, when your body's creating ATP using the Krebs cycle and it's uh going through the

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electron transport chain, it's doing the whole thing, that means, you get, i think it's almost

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30 units of ATP from two units glucose. So, the abundance of ATP when it's doing it that way

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the two byproducts are water and carbon dioxide. Now, from a normal medical perspective, it's a waste

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byproduct, but the interesting thing that Dr Peat said, and again this is not a theory, there's

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abundance of science behind this, is that the higher that CO2 remains, the more that the body

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stays in that high metabolism efficient optimal energy producing state, whereas the more that

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you're depleted of CO2, the more it goes into its backup state. And based on what I said earlier

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about Dr Buteyko, the reason for this should be obvious if you're joining the dots, because

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all of those backup less efficient energy producing systems tend to be anaerobic

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or they're less aerobic so meaning less oxygen. So, basically, that CO2 that you're creating is not

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a waste product, although you do need to blow off the excess, obviously but it's not a waste product

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because you need a certain amount to get the oxygen back into the cells for the next round

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of energy production, and if you keep blowing off that CO2 excessively because your stress

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chemicals are too high, which means that you're over breathing or hyperventilating, then you don't

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have enough CO2 transporting enough oxygen into the cells. Your cells are going to be creating energy

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through an inefficient mechanism, they're going to produce less CO2 as a byproduct and you're stuck

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in this vicious circle. And when there's less CO2 floating around then you're going to be in a state

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of hypertension, or closer to it if, all other things being equal, I mean there are adrenal issues and

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stuff that can mean, you got all that bad stuff going on, you still are not having high blood

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pressure, but generally at least a high blood pressure and then the body has nitric oxide as

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an emergency backup system to deal with that. But nitric oxide has its own issues. So, I think at that

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point let's go to what Dr Peat said about CO2 absolutely. He says the basic control of blood

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flow in the brain is the result of the relaxation of the wall of blood vessels in the presence of

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carbon dioxide which is produced in proportion to the rate at which oxygen and glucose are being

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metabolically combined by active cells. In the inability of cells to produce CO2 at a normal rate,

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nitric oxide synthesis in blood vessels can cause them to dilate. The mechanism of relaxation

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by nitric oxide is very different, however, involving the inhibition of mitochondrial

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energy production situations that favor the production and retention of larger amounts

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of carbon dioxide in the tissues. These are likely to reduce the basic tone of the parasympathetic

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nervous system and there is less need for additional vasodilation. Okay, so, I kind of

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already said all that, but he said it in the proper sciencey way… So, let's look at a couple of bits

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of that. So, the mechanism of relaxation by nitric oxide is very different involving the inhibition

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of mitochondrial energy production -  and again he gives a you know scientific reference in that quote -

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So meaning if you're using CO2 that helps with mitochondrial energy production, but if you're

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using nitric oxide it actually slows down mitochondrial energy production. So, it actually

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makes it worse. The other thing he said is that large amounts of carbon dioxide in these tissues

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are likely to reduce the basic tone of the parasympathetic nervous system. So, basically,

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if you have enough carbon dioxide, you stay relaxed, that's the other part of it, and so

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this in my view is one of the reasons that exercise is often, but not always as we'll talk

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about next, healthy for people. So, the main way that we produce carbon dioxide

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more than usual, well, there's two ways we can kind of build up carbon dioxide in the system, one

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is to hold our breath. Most people don't do that, although there is a theory that people are

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actually doing that unconsciously, and that that's the real cause of sleep apnea, the body is holding

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the breath not because it's trying to kill you, but because it's trying to build on carbon dioxide,

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because it's getting so low that it's actually an issue… So, that's a theory, but the other main way

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that we build up carbon dioxide is exercise. That's why when you're running or whatever you're doing

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you breathe more right, you may be out of breath, you may be puffing and panting, and all the rest of it,

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if you're pushing yourself hard that's simply response to the carbon dioxide, right. There's

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nothing else that you're doing there, other than just getting rid of what feels like an excess of

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carbon dioxide, very good, yeah, that's lots, so he carries on to say nitric oxide is increasingly

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seen as an important factor in nerve degeneration. Nitric oxide activates processes that can lead to

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cell death. Inhibition of the production of nitric oxide protects against various kinds of dementia.

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Brain trauma causes large increase in nitric oxide formation, and blocking its synthesis improves recovery…

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And so every statement you made there, obviously we don't want to read it out, but

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the studies behind it, right, so, all of these bad things that excess nitric oxide is actually doing…

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And so, how have we come to this idea that you just said, Krissy, that nitric oxide is the thing

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that dilates the blood vessels? Well, I said, technically it's true it does it's just that

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it does it in a bad way, so where's this come from? It came from the discovery of viagra in the 1980s

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which has been used, you know, later also for cardiovascular health by a lot of people,

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including even some biohackers who really should know better, but they don't understand it's actually

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the backup system… So, whereas carbon dioxide has this anti-inflammatory metabolism

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boosting energy producing benefit, nitric oxide is the opposite. However, nitric oxide is often

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related to being in this excitatory state, right, and so one area where nitric oxide absolutely

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is required is for men to get an erection. So, you know, that's I've got, you know, a herbal product

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for that, and I stand by that for that very specific purpose… Nitric oxide is necessary

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and is effective. However, should men be walking around with one of those 24 hours a day?

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Absolutely not! So, this is a thing where a little bit of poison is no big deal, right, a little bit of

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nitrogen oxide, whatever it is, an hour a day or however much you're erect, that's absolutely fine…

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Your body can deal with that, but having that be the only thing that stops you

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hypotonic 24 hours a day that's not a good thing, so that's the

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distinction and so you can even make the argument, the viagra there's nothing

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wrong with that it lasts for a few hours, use every now and then, that's okay, it's

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not the end of the world, but when people are kind of trying to constantly boost

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nitrogen oxide to open the blood vessels, to me that seems like a really bad idea

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when you look into the actual science behind it. Dr Peat goes on to say

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organophosphates increase nitric oxide formation and the productive

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anticholinergenic drugs such as atropine reduce it. Stress including

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fear and isolation can activate the formation of nitric oxide, and various

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mediators of inflammation also activate it. The nitric oxide in a person's

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exhaled breath can be used to diagnose some diseases, and it probably reflects

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the level of their emotional well-being. So whereas the level of CO2 is a way of

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diagnosing health from this perspective, it being higher being good because it

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means you must be able to retain most of it rather than blowing out

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excessively in a hyperventilating way. So, nitric oxide is actually literally

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opposite. So this is the case, why do people favor nitric oxide other than

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maybe brainwashing by the pharmaceutical industries? I think it's

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actually for the reason that it said, so if I just go back to it, stress including

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fear can activate the formation of nitric oxide. So, you've got to remember,

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and we talked about this a lot in other episodes on stress, people like the

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feeling of stress often when the alternative is a feeling of depression

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and deflation and being a low in energy, right? So, just a reminder there's three

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kind of basic modalities of the nervous system one is a dorsal vagal mode where

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we feel shut down the other is a sympathetic mode where we feel

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overstimulated and the third is a ventral vagal mode where we feel

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relaxed yet energized. So a lot of people a lot of the time are in a shutdown

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state or probably not in a shutdown state but resisting a shutdown state…

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Right? Like, you know, I hear this in a lot in people and they're like “oh I can't stop!”

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“Because if I do, I'll collapse, you know, I'll fall asleep, like I've got to keep

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going, I've got to keep going, I've got to keep going…” So, anyone who has that attitude

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“I've got another coffee, I'm gonna do this, go to this, like I can't stop

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because if I do, I'll collapse…” Which is a lot of people that is the attitude if

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I need to fight that dorsal vagal state off, and so when that's your mode of

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being, which is very common, and again I'm not making anyone wrong for this because

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often this starts because of the stuff we've talked about, like a thyroid

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hormone excess of estrogen, like a progesterone lack of testosterone, excess

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of inflammation, excessive seed oils, etc, etc, and many other things all of that

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stuff… But once you're in that state, stress feels good because the

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alternative is collapse, or, you know, depression, or whatever you want to call

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it, which feels bad. So, I think that's why people like nitric oxide, but the thing

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that actually will get you out of that vicious circle of going between collapse

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and overstimulation, a piece of it actually is carbon dioxide. And, so,

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learning to tolerate carbon dioxide is good. Dr Peat, as far as I'm aware, did not

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talk about and recommend Buteyko breathing practices… I don't know why I

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haven't seen him comment on it, but if I had to guess, I would guess this because

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the main mechanism that Buteyko breathing practice is used to help you

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to tolerate more CO2, which is a good thing, but the mechanism they use is to

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get you to hold your breath for a really really really long time until you

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absolutely feel like you can't anymore, which they call the maximum pause as

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opposed to the control pause. And often you're holding your breath like several

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minutes… Many minutes, I got to the point where I could hold my breath for three

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minutes from cold without any preparation, but I'll tell you what that does:

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when you hold your breath for such a long time it triggers stress chemicals.

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And Dr Peat was not keen on that, so his method of boosting carbon dioxide was

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different. He would encourage people not to over breathe certainly but he was not

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necessarily encouraging people to hold their breath for a very long time. He

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encouraged them to obviously get into this high metabolism state where you are

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producing ATP in optimal way because that will naturally raise carbon

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dioxide anyway and he also actually experimented with increasing CO2 in the

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environment and potentially even bathing in it. So, doing like - I don't actually

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know if he did this - but I know one of his biggest followers like has a whole

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book on bath bombs and it's basically adding sodium bicarbonate and an acid

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like citric acid to a bath and then when you do that it creates there's loads of

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CO2 in the atmosphere the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will go up like ten times but

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actually there's all the CO2 bubbles in the bath itself and there doesn't have to be a

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whole bath. If you don't have a bath you could just do a foot bath, it's still good, and

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these little CO2 bubbles, just like if you drink sparkling water, you

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collect them on the surface of your skin and then they'll be absorbed transdermally

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through your skin straight into circulation. So if you want to do it in a

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relaxed way, you know, warm bath, you know, the candles, music, whatever, you can

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be super super relaxed, and then still really saturate your body in CO2. And I'm

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actually a big fan of that, I really like doing it. I know we still have our list

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but I… and maybe this might be for another time because Wim Hof is big out

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there in breath and holding breath and things like that is that similar to

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Buteyko is it different where does it fall on those lines? Yeah it's a good

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question! So Wim Hof is absolutely not similar to Buteyko like any Buteyko

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practitioner would say it's not because Wim Hof tells you to do something that

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all Buteyko people tell you to never do which is hyperventilate. But I think

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there is genius to Wim Hof's breathing because what he's really encouraging you

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to do is to go between the extremes of hyperventilating so blowing out all the

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CO2 and then holding your breath and building up the CO2 and if you notice

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with a Wim Hof breathing pattern it always ends with holding the breath so

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it's CO2 right down CO2 right up CO2 right down CO2 right up CO2 right down

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CO2 up, that's what's going on. Now, another thing that's going on with that

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which he talks about a lot and the scientists who work with him is that is

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spiking the hell out of the stress chemicals the cortisol, the adrenaline, the

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noradrenaline… Is that a good thing overall? I don't think that that settles

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in either direction although of course adherence of either side would say that

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it is but I think it ultimately depends on what you want to do with your life.

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I think if you want to do the kind of superhuman stuff that you know Wim Hof

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has done it proven in the lab priority condition but also you know many other

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mystics and monks and all the rest of it, for all the ages, have been reported to

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do if you want to do that supernatural stuff you do have to be very very good

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at controlling your body's internal processes that are normally automatic

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And one of those things would be to manipulate stress chemicals sometimes to

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be extremely high, it's not necessarily bad for you to do what he does because

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the theory behind it is that you're yes you are skyrocketing the stress

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chemicals but then they can go back down again and they can actually you

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know find an equilibrium. It depends what you have to do, you know… I would

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say the Wim Hof method, I noticed it tends to be more attractive to men than

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women although there's plenty of women involved but still most kind of health

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groups there's more women than men in the Wim Hof health groups there tends to

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be more men than women. And I don't think that's an accident I think it's because

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you know one of the things that people say when they do Wim Hof breathing is

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something some of the people say when they do fighting, which is like it makes

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it everything else seems quite easy to deal with in comparison it's like you're

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you're toning that sympathetic response to the point where like you're able to

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deal with even highly stressful situations very well so if you're in a

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context of I need to climb a mountain like Mount Everest or in the context of

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I need to be in battle, I need to risk my life, I think those kind of practices are

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very beneficial because they make you very strong and resilient and hardy

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because you're the master of your own stress chemicals. However, what if it's

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peacetime, what if you don't want to climb up Mount Everest in your shorts…

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What if there are no battles what if you just want to live long and be happy and

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relaxed and peaceful and joyful and play with your kids and you know not all of

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us have that luxury but let's say you are an environment where you have that

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luxury then it could be argued that it's not beneficial to do these things

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to spike your stress chemicals because they're just going to prematurely age

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potentially and if nothing else they're going to stop you from

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having that optimal energy production. I've had rumors which I won't repeat

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here but I don't know if they're true but that Wim Hof struggled with his own

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issues, despite you know being a master in in some ways that, you know, he's

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extremely impressive to everyone definitely, including me… So it's a choice

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you know do you want to master your stress chemicals or do you want to stop

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living in a stress state? Some will say it's a false choice, they would say

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by Wim Hof method for you master your stress chemicals which will stop you

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being a stress state… But I remember one of the scientists in the documentary

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who's on this side, but talking about him, he said, you know, not only was this

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cortisol very high and his noradrenaline very high after he did his breathing

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practice it was higher even when he just walked into the room even before

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all that like it just seemed to be high in general and is that a good thing?

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Maybe I think, there was a certain point like when you can control

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your own physiology and you can literally you know change your heart

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rate it will change your CO2 concentration it will change your

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adrenaline it will change a level of lactic acid it will etc etc etc then it's

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just a choice what you do with it. So, I wouldn't want to judge Wim Hof or anyone

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with that level of self-mastery but I'll say for the average person who doesn't

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want to become superhuman it and who doesn't maybe want to harden themselves

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and strengthen themselves to you know be able to thrive even in extreme duress it

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might be better to just focus on optimizing your body's energy production

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rather than like making yourself super super resilient to stress. Because by

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making yourself resilient to stress you're also potentially filling your

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body stress and prematurely aging yourself. We don't know that for sure

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Wim Hof is you know still youngish he's certainly not 80 or something right so…

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He's not yet reached the average age that people die so we don't know for

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sure maybe he'll live to be under 50 and we're all completely wrong about this… I

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guess we'll see. I hope you enjoyed that clip from the rejuvenate podcast if you

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want to watch the full episode that came from just click on the link above or if

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