Carbon Dioxide Medical Science

In 2021, two profoundly revealing research papers were published about using carbon dioxide in medicine. For years, I have championed CO2 medicine in the form of three types of bicarbonates and breathing retraining. In the blood, bicarbonate and carbon dioxide are two forms of the same thing that convert into each other with the help of an enzyme.

Doctors have been experimenting with carbon dioxide for hundreds of years, but CO2 medical science went into high gear about 120 years ago when it was administered with the early forms of anesthesia. Carbon Dioxide inhalation makes you breathe deeply so that the anesthetic is rapidly effective and stays effective throughout the surgery. Carbon dioxide can stimulate your breathing if you stop breathing. Carbon Dioxide inhalation can also calm your breathing if you are over-breathing (hyperventilation).

Carbon dioxide is present in the blood in several forms, such as bicarbonate, dissolved carbon dioxide, and carbonic acid, of which 90% is bicarbonate or HCO3. Plants survive by extracting CO2 from the air using magnesium at the center of chlorophyll and sunlight to convert it into proteins and sugars. In medicine, up to 5% carbon dioxide is added to pure oxygen to stimulate breathing after apnea and stabilize the O2/CO2 balance in the blood.

I have tried to make it clear that modern medicine must embrace hydrogen and carbon dioxide to go along with oxygen to remain relevant. ICU units routinely have carbon dioxide gas machines. Still, they are not used much except for insufflation in less invasive surgeries, such as laparoscopy, arthroscopy, endoscopy, and cryotherapy, as well as for respiratory stimulation during and after anesthesia, when it should be widely used for most serious surgeries. In the West they never use hydrogen.

If modern medicine knew what it was doing, which it doesn’t, carbogen inhalation should be used for every patient sick enough to need emergency care. Why? Because CO2 is the key to safe and plentiful oxygenation. We have known this for 140 years! The same story is true about hydrogen inhalation. But in this case, hydrogen helps oxygen burn cleanly, amplifying oxygen and carbon dioxide healing properties.

New research published in a new book by Chinese doctors (which I will introduce within the week) affirms everything I have ever said about hydrogen. After two weeks of hydrogen inhalation, thirty cancer patients saw “improvements in shortness of breath problems, better appetite, significant improvements in physical function, role function, emotional function, less fatigue, vomiting, and insomnia.” After four weeks, “better cognitive functions and markedly relieved pain.”

These distinguished doctors champion hydrogen oxygen machines but the most powerful hydrogen inhalation machine will only put out one liter of oxygen a minute with two liters of molecular hydrogen. That is not enough to hold up the oxygen side of the equation, nor does it touch on the power of CO2 medicine as the key to much more oxygen.

Over the oxygen supply of the body carbon
dioxide spreads its protecting wings.
Friedrich Miescher
Swiss physiologist, 1885

The use of medical gases continues to gain more and more strength in the medical field. Medical gases are rising in hospitals, pharmaceutical and health fields, and the home because they feed the roots of life. However, the key to life is carbon dioxide because it is the key to oxygen. CO2 is crucial to life, health, and the safe use of oxygen in hospitals.

CO2 plays various roles in the human body, including regulating blood pH, driving the respiratory system, and determining the affinity of hemoglobin for oxygen (O2).

CO₂ exerts potent effects on lung biology clinically relevant in critically ill patients, particularly those with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The protective effects of CO₂ have been observed in multiple models of acute lung injury. Hypocapnia (Lowered CO2) in the Blood Leads to Reduced Oxygenation, which exerts harmful effects. Hypocapnia remains a common – and generally underappreciated – component of many disease states, including early asthma, high-altitude pulmonary edema, and acute lung injury. Hypocapnia commonly complicates conditions that are present in critically ill patients.

CO2 has beneficial effects in patients with acute lung injury, affording reductions in pulmonary inflammation, lessened oxidative alveolar damage, and the regulation of innate immunity and host defenses by inhibiting the expression of inflammatory cytokine.

Flooding the surgical field during open heart surgery with
carbon dioxide is associated with improved myocardial function.

Deficiencies of carbon dioxide in the blood drag down oxygen delivery to the cells. This is a prime cause of most diseases. Adequate home care is vastly empowered with molecular hydrogen and carbon dioxide inhalation devices, which is a significant part of why it is better to treat at home than in hospitals. Western hospitals refuse to open to the wonders of hydrogen inhalation and only use 1% of carbon dioxide potential as a medicine.

In my new book, Medical Miracles with Carbon Dioxide and Bicarbonates, I refer to CO2 as the holy grail of modern medicine, and what it can do for the sick and dying, for athletes, and even for beautiful skin is astonishing. I published an essay on what topical application of carbon dioxide can do for the skin, and the science below shows us how it can protect the skin.

The Science

Normal arterial levels of CO2 have antioxidant properties. Indeed, a group of Russian microbiologists discovered that “CO2 at a tension close to that observed in the blood (37.0 mm Hg) and at higher tensions (60 or 146 mm Hg) is a potent inhibitor of generation of the active oxygen forms (free radicals) by the cells and mitochondria of human tissues” (Kogan et al, 1997). Dozens of studies have shown that modern “normal subjects” breathe about 12 L/min at rest, while the medical norm is only 6 L/min. As a result, blood CO2 levels are not high enough to sustain health. Overbreathing crashes both blood CO2 and oxygen levels.

The PCO₂ gap is the difference between the partial pressure of CO₂ in venous blood (PvCO₂) and arterial blood (PaCO₂). A high Co₂ gap is associated with increased mortality in patients with shock. A high Co₂ gap is associated with higher lactate levels, lower cardiac index, and lower central venous oxygen saturation.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the predominant gas molecule emitted during aerobic respiration. However, it is not a waste product but an essential gas for life and health. CO₂ can improve blood circulation in the skin via its vasodilatory effects. It is just one of the side effects that is wonderful instead of harmful, as all pharmaceutical drugs’ side effects are.

A new study examined the anti-inflammatory effects of CO₂ in human keratinocytes and skin. Keratinocytes are the most common type of skin cell, comprising the epidermis’s structural component. What was discovered is that CO₂ suppressed the UVB-induced production of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in the skin. Moreover, the suppression of inflammatory cytokine expression was confirmed.

Furthermore, high-CO₂ concentrations suppressed UVB-induced erythema in human skin. Sunburn is a radiation burn that affects the skin due to overexposure to solar UVR. It is characterized by erythema, a well-known acute cutaneous response to UVR caused by an inflammatory reaction in the skin. The intensity of the erythema is correlated to the degree of UVR-induced DNA damage.

Hence, CO₂ suppresses skin inflammation and can be employed as a potential therapeutic agent in restoring skin immune homeostasis. This is important because the skin is the body’s largest organ and acts as a protective covering, a barrier separating the body from the external environment. The skin prevents the entry of external stimuli such as antigens, microorganisms, and ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the external environment and prevents water evaporation from the internal environment.

UV radiation from sunlight is a significant stress source for the skin and affects various biological functions, including the nervous and endocrine systems. UV-induced oxidative stress leads to mitochondrial dysfunction and activation of the nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) pathway, a significant inflammatory response pathway, resulting in cell death.

Recent studies have reported that CO₂ improves alveolar damage in rat models and patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. The lungs are the internal skin of the human body. CO₂ has been shown to suppress inflammatory responses in several blood cell types and lung-derived cell lines. In the skin, CO₂ has been shown to improve wound healing. The wound-healing process consists of three phases: the inflammatory phase, proliferative phase, and stable phase; this process may be delayed when an excessive inflammatory response is triggered during the inflammatory phase. Various cytokines secreted from keratinocytes, fibroblasts, and inflammatory cells are critical factors that influence skin barrier function and keratinocyte differentiation. Data indicates that CO₂ suppresses the production of UVB-induced inflammatory cytokines in the epidermis.

Carbon Dioxide in the Treatment of COVID

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathways are crucial for developmental processes, oncogenesis, and inflammation, including the production of proinflammatory cytokines caused by reactive oxygen species and upon severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. No drugs can effectively prevent excessive inflammatory responses in endothelial cells in the lungs, heart, brain, and kidneys, which are the leading causes of severe coronavirus disease 2019.

CO₂ is an efficient anti-inflammatory compound that exerts its effects through inactivating ERK1/2 in cultured endothelial cells when the CO₂ concentration is elevated. CO₂ is a potent inhibitor of cellular proinflammatory responses. Transient application of 5–8% CO₂ is safe and effective in treating many diseases. Research indicates that CO₂ may be used for the treatment of COVID-19 as well as the modification of hundreds of cellular pathways.

CO₂, as a small molecule, can be efficiently transported through membranes by diffusion, and CO2 is spontaneously hydrated to HCO3 at the pH of the cytoplasm. Carbonic anhydrases can convert HCO₃⁻ to CO₂ and vice versa.

Carbogen, a gas mixture of 95% O2 and 5% CO2, is given to patients with retinal artery obstruction to improve retinal oxygenation. Clinical studies have demonstrated carbon dioxide therapy’s efficacy in improving microcirculation parameters without toxicity or side effects. Wound patients treated with CO2 reported greater ease of walking and reduced pain in the lower limbs even after the first CO2 therapy. Carbon Dioxide therapy can be used in therapeutic strategies to treat wounds related to tissue hypoxia.

Carbon Dioxide in Cancer

Northeastern University researchers have found that inhaling supplemental oxygen—40 to 60% oxygen as opposed to the 21% oxygen in the air—can weaken immunosuppression and awaken anti-tumor cells. The new approach, some 30 years in the making, could dramatically increase the survival rate of patients with cancer, which kills some 8 million people each year. The breakthrough findings were published in Science Translational Medicine. The easiest way of flooding the body with oxygen is by applying carbon inhalation therapy. Dedication to taking bicarbonates and a lot of time with breathing retraining can perhaps do the same thing but with a lot of effort involved. One could be in a coma and receive CO2 inhalation therapy.

Conclusion

Allopathic medicine hides the power of CO2, which is used quietly in hospitals to make oxygen safe. However, just as they hide magnesium that, when given via injection or intravenously, can prevent death from cardiac arrest, they hide the full power of what carbon dioxide can do for patients. The truth is that carbon dioxide is nothing short of finding the Holy Grail of modern medicine. Though I must admit it is not the only Holy Grail. In medicine, magnesium certainly qualifies and so do bicarbonates as an inexpensive way to absorb more CO2.

CO2 is the most powerful way to release armies of oxygen into the cells. It is CO2 that liberates oxygen for healing. It is CO2 that makes oxygen safe. It is CO2 that enables us, at home or at a clinic, to deliver a massive wave of oxygen to our cells, enough to smash into cancer cells and make them highly vulnerable to our efforts to eliminate them.

Only two companies make carbon dioxide inhalation devices. Click here and here. They are the same companies that make the dry CO2 body suit for the transdermal application of carbon dioxide. The Carbohaler allows you to increase the level of CO2 breathed in which allows more oxygen to be used by your cells for aerobic respiration which produces more CO2 on a cellular level. Supplemental CO2 increases your body’s production of CO2.