Ray Peat on CO2

"Hyperventilation tends to increase under various stresses, and the resulting loss of carbon dioxide increases the alkalinity of the blood, which causes the platelets to release serotonin. Estrogenic stimulation and hypothyroidism are common causes of chronic hyperventilation, with its effect on platelets, releasing serotonin, with all its harmful consequences."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A response to stimulation is the production of more energy, with a proportional increase of oxygen and sugar consumption by the stimulated tissue; this produces more carbon dioxide, which enlarges the blood vessels in the area, providing more sugar and oxygen. If the irritation becomes destructive, efficiency is lost: oxygen is either consumed wastefully, causing blueness of the tissue (assuming circulation continues; blueness can aiso indicate bad circulation), or is not consumed, causing redness of the tissue. As more sugar is consumed in compensation, lactic acid also enlarges the blood vessels."

- Nutrition For Women

"When the organism detects the inflammation or other stress (possibly by sensing changes in blood sugar, lactic acid, or carbon dioxide, or all of them) its adrenal glands will secrete anti-stress hormones, including adrenalin and cortisone (assuming these glands are not exhausted or starved). Both adrenalin and cortisone can raise blood sugar to meet the increased need."

- Nutrition For Women

"Since carbon dioxide dissolves best in oil loving material such as the skin, it enters the body even against a concentration gradient. Adding baking soda to an epsom salts soak should make it more effective."

- Nutrition For Women

"Recently, Dr. G.G. Costa and others at the Medical College of Virginia developed a test for cancer which probably involves this pregnancy metabolism. They feed the patient some radioactive fat, and a person with even a very small cancer will breathe out about three times as much radioactive carbon dioxide, showing that the metabolism shifts toward fat mobilization at an early stage of cancerization."

- Nutrition For Women

"The higher rate of oxygen consumption that occurs at higher body temperature corresponds to a high rate of carbon dioxide production, and an inhibition of lactate formation, with maintenance of a more oxidized balance that reduces inflammation."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Experiments over the last 60 years have shown that more or less glucose, carbon dioxide, warmth, and progesterone during embryonic and fetal development can affect the growth of the brain, and the brain’s way of guiding future development and adaptive ability."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It’s important to minimize low level stressors and injuries, and to optimize the protective factors, such as light, carbohydrate, thyroid hormone, carbon dioxide, and a sense of a meaningful future."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"using calcium channel blockers and acetazolamide to treat the new disease, because of their therapeutic effect in high altitude pulmonary edema. He didn’t mention it, but both of these drugs can correct the tissue deficiency of carbon dioxide."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Neglecting the role of carbon dioxide in suppressing the formation of lactic acid, they also neglect all of its other essential metabolic effects, including its role as the factor whose absence results in the syndromes of altitude sickness,"

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Ignoring that 30 years of slightly elevated lactate might lead to cancer or other degenerative disease, those who taught physiological chemistry also had little interest in the idea of chronic metabolic hyperventilation—losing a little too much CO2 even at sea level."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The basic principles of respiration, the Bohr and Haldane effects, describe the physical equilibria of oxygen and CO2 in people who have adapted to living at different altitudes. The Haldane effect describes the fact that increased oxygen pressure decreases the amount of carbon dioxide retained by hemoglobin, and decreased oxygen pressure increases the amount of CO2 retained. A steady increase of retained CO2 with increasing altitude occurs in those who adapt. People who fail to adapt experience a loss of CO2, with an increase of lactate."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"lactate increases the leakiness of capillaries and loss of fluid, and decreases the ability of oxygen to diffuse from the alveolus to the erythrocyte. Since carbon dioxide diffuses many times more rapidly than oxygen, this diffusion barrier results in low blood CO2 at the same time as hypoxia. Even at sea level, an increase of lactate immediately increases the lungs’ diffusion barrier."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Exosome production during stress is part of the body’s normal restorative function (Zhang, et al., 2017); it’s only when protective factors such as progesterone and carbon dioxide are lacking that their production becomes counter-productive."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Antiexcitotoxic substances include progesterone, memantine, minocycline, and agmatine. A high ratio of CO2 to lactate, reducing intracellular pH, is important for preventing excessive excitability. Thyroid hormone, besides directly increasing energy and the CO2/lactate ratio, tends to increase the brain’s temperature, and to increase the ratio of progesterone to estrogen."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"The healthy mother’s physiology, interacting with her environment, is constantly adjusting the intrauterine conditions, regulating temperature, providing oxygen and sugar, regulating carbon dioxide level and essential nutrients while excluding major toxins."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In childhood and maturity, vigorous oxidative metabolism can maintain some of the essential protective factors of gestation, including adequate levels of glucose and carbon dioxide, good temperature regulation, and avoiding overproduction of superoxide and lactate. In these conditions, the cytokines can contribute to adaptation and continuing development."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It’s the oxidation of glucose (producing carbon dioxide), which is favored by warmth and the right amount of insulin, that can prevent inflammation"

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide had once been seen as a hormone, and it had been used medically for ulcers, arthritis, cancer, and mental problems, and Yandell Henderson’s work had led to its use as carbogen (5% CO2, 95% 02) for resuscitation, but by the middle of the century most therapeutic uses had been stopped, and hospitals had been taught to use pure oxygen instead of carbogen, and patients with brain swelling were being hyperventilated with oxygen to lower their blood carbon dioxide."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the 1950s, Gilbert Ling noticed that in the presence of increased carbon dioxide, a given stimulus produces less contraction of a muscle than with a lower concentration of carbon dioxide. Around the same time, Russian physiologists found that the CO2 produced by active brain cells relaxes brain blood vessels, including capillaries, increasing the flow of blood in proportion to the increasing metabolic needs."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The principle of induction, central to Ling’s view of cell structure and function, is something every student hears about early in the study of chemistry, the transmission of the electron withdrawing properties of various atoms and groups through connected atoms. Carbon dioxide, a Lewis acid, strongly withdraws electrons from the proteins on which it is adsorbed, increasing their acidity. This affects properties such as contraction and nerve activation, as well as oxygen binding and enzyme action."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Besides this fundamental stabilizing, regulatory function of carbon dioxide, it combines with ammonia to form urea. Urea, like carbon dioxide, powerfully contributes to the regulation of water, modifying its properties. The elimination of ammonia protects against its toxic effects, which include creating pseudohypoxia,"

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Stresses activate the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, which converts the gaseous CO2 (the form that binds to protein and favors structured surface or vicinal water) into the ionizable carbonic acid/bicarbonate, which leaves cells. Activating this enzyme raises the intracellular pH, tending to excite cells, and inhibiting it lowers the intracellular pH, quieting cells, saving energy."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Seeing hormones and drugs in terms of the carbon dioxide system, rather than the reductionist system of cascades of receptors and messengers, makes the organism intelligible as a single system."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The oxidative processes that support purposive, creative functioning of the organism, optimize CO2 by inhibiting carbonic anhydrase; this enzyme is inhibited by thyroid hormone T3, progesterone, urea, caffeine, antipsychotic drugs, and aspirin. Agents that tend to cause reversion to the primitive anaerobic energy production activate the enzyme—serotonin, tryptophan, cysteine, histamine, estrogen, aldosterone, HIF, SSRIs, angiotensin, and parathyroid hormone, for example."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Like intracellular ATP, an appropriate amount of progesterone, T3, urea and carbon dioxide each has an infinity of beneficial effects, individually and in combination, and with their synergizing nutritional, botanical and pharmaceutical substances their use could transform the nature of health care."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The intensity of lipolysis during the night is decreased during the most restorative deep sleep, but the free fatty acids themselves, by blocking oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide, tend to increase lactate and to depress glucose metabolism, creating an inflammatory and excitatory state that interferes with deep sleep."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although the liver has a much larger capacity than the lungs for detoxifying serotonin, the lungs detoxify several times as much of the circulating serotonin as the liver does. The reason for this is that in the high oxygen environment of the lungs, carbon dioxide is lost from the blood, and carbon dioxide is needed for retention of serotonin by the platelets. With the loss of CO2, the platelets release their serotonin very quickly, to be immediately detoxified by the local MAO."

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The ideology around stress physiology, falsifying the meaning of serotonin, estrogen, unsaturated fats, sugar, lactate, carbon dioxide, and various other biological molecules, has hidden the simple remedies for most of the inflammatory and degenerative diseases."

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Every kind of cell releases carbon dioxide into the blood, in proportion to its metabolic rate, and its best known effect is to stimulate breathing, increasing the absorption of oxygen by the lungs in proportion to the metabolic rate."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Between its formation and its exhalation, CO2 participates in many essential processes, including the stabilization of the energy producing system."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since CO2 relaxes smooth muscle, cells that are working and consuming oxygen and glucose (producing CO2 in proportion to their activity) cause nearby blood vessels to relax and expand, delivering more oxygen and glucose in proportion to the increased need."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Reductive stress activates multiple layers of restorative processes (alternatives to the protective functions of carbon dioxide) to stimulate breathing, increase circulation, provide energy and materials for renewing cell structures. Prostaglandins, cytokines, estrogen, and nitric oxide are produced in coordinated ways, and cellular behaviors are changed defensively. The structures of the cell skeleton are modified, as the reductive chemistry changes protein disulfides to sulfhydryls, changing shapes and, most importantly, the solvent properties of the cell material."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since carbon dioxide has stabilizing effects in the brain, including the relaxation of blood vessels, the loss of carbon dioxide causes vasoconstriction, deficient delivery of oxygen and glucose to the brain, leading to a decreased metabolic rate."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Stress modifies our breathing, causing a vicious cycle, in which the lactate and ammonia produced when stimulation exceeds our oxidative capacity stimulate more intense breathing, causing more carbon dioxide to be lost, reducing oxidative efficiency and increasing the formation of ammonia and lactate."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Considering the crucial role of CO2 in preserving the integrity of cells, there should be more attention to using it therapeutically—"

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Direct use of carbon dioxide is likely to be helpful in all the situations that are known to be benefitted by acetazolamide, without the risk of allergy to that drug—traumatic brain edema, mountain sickness, osteoporosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, hyperactivity (ADHD), inflammation, polyps of the intestine, and arthritis. Diabetes, cardiomyopathy (Torella, et al., 2014), obesity (Arechederra, et al., 2013), cancer, dementia and psychosis are also likely to benefit."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The cell-quieting effect of sugar oxidation probably involves the greater production of carbon dioxide with a shift of the electronic balance toward a more oxidized and coherent state."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When cancer metabolism increases the amount of lactate in the blood, increased breathing lowers the carbon dioxide in the blood (Gargaglioni, et al., 2003), and the loss of CO2 affects metabolism and physiology at all levels."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"‘When CO2 is increased, the redox balance of the cell is shifted in the direction of oxidation (Melnychuk, et al., 1977), the use of glucose for growth and fat synthesis is inhibited, and the Krebs cycle is activated (Melnychuk, et al., 1978)."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The reductive balance is an important cell organizing factor, for example governing the conversion of the relatively inactive estrone into the powerful estradiol. (This is where a vicious circle of excitation, fatigue, and degeneration often starts, that requires the intervention of stabilizing substances, such as carbon dioxide, thyroid hormone, sugar, and progesterone.)"

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It seems likely that a basic part of progesterone’s ability to protect the brain against stress is its support for the high energy mitochondrial oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Besides directly stabilizing the internal structures of the cell, progesterone increases the ATP concentration and oxygen consumption, decreases excitatory systems and numerous inflammation-related processes, decreases intracellular calcium concentration, and increases the use of glucose, leading to increased carbon dioxide production, as well as adjusting breathing and pH."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When fats are oxidized instead of glucose, more oxygen is needed to produce the same amount of energy, and less carbon dioxide is produced."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"While lactic acid and a more reducing balance in cells activate the excitatory glutamatergic system, an increased concentration of carbon dioxide inhibits that system"

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide is both a product of, and an activator of, oxidative energy production,"

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Other substances that protect against the effects of hypoglycemia or impaired glucose oxidation include progesterone, caffeine, certain anesthetics including xenon, niacinamide, agmatine, carbon dioxide,"

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"acetazolamide, stimulates respiration by changing CO2 and pH;"

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"Adaptation to hypoxia or increased carbon dioxide limits the formation of lactic acid. Muscles are 50% more efficient in the adapted state; glucose, which forms more carbon dioxide than fat does when oxidized,, is metabolized more efficiently than fats, requiring less oxygen."

- 2000 - July

"Could carbon dioxide, a major product of mitochondria, help to call mitochondna into existence? My answer to this is yes,"

- 2000 - July

"Exercise, like aging, obesity, and diabetes, increases the levels of circulating free fatty acids and lactate. But ordinary activity of an integral sort, activates the systems in an organized way, increasing carbon dioxide and circulation"

- 2000 - July

"While the flow of carbon dioxide moves from the mitochondrion to the cytoplasm and beyond, tending to remove calcium from the mitochondrion and cell, the flow of lactate and other Organic ions into the mitochondrion can produce calcium accumulation in the mitochondrion, during conditions in which carbon dioxide synthesis, and consequently urea synthesis, are depressed, and other synthetic processes are changed."

- 2000 - July

"Glycolysis produces both pyruvate and lactate, and excessive pyruvate produces almost the same inhibitory effect as lactate; since the Crabtree effect involves nitric oxide and fatty acids as well as calcrum, I think it is reasonable to look for the simplest sort of explanation, instead of trying to experimentally trace all the possible interactions of these substances; a simple physical competition between the products of glycolysis and carbon dioxide, for the binding sites, such as lysine, that would amount to a phase change in the mitochondrion."

- 2000 - July

"Glucose, and apparently glycolysis, are required for the production of nitric oxide, as for the accumulation of calcium, at least in some types of cell, and these coordinated changes, which lower energy production. could be produced by a reduction in carbon dioxide, in a physical change even more basic than the energy level represented by ATP The use of Krebs cycle substances in the synthesis of amino acids, and other products, would decrease the formation of CO2, creating a situation in which the system would have two possible states, one, the glycolytic stress state, and the other, the carbon dioxide producing energy-efficient state."

- 2000 - July

"In the way that carbon dioxide alters the shapes and electrical affinities of hemoglobin and other proteins, I propose that it increases the stability of the mitochondrial coacervate, causing it to recruit additional proteins from its external environment, as well as from its own synthetic machinery, to enlarge both its structure and its functions."

- 2000 - July (1)

"In the relative absence of carbon dioxide, or excess of alternative solutes and adsorbents, such as lactic acid, the stability of the mitochondrial phase would be decreased, and the mitochondria would be degraded in both structure and function. As the back side of the idea that carbon dioxide stabilizes and activates mitochondria, the idea that lactic acid is involved in the degrading of mitochondria can also be tested experimentally, and it is already supported by a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence."

- 2000 - July (1)

"When the background of carbon dioxide is high, circulation and oxygenation tend to prevent the anaerobic glycolysis that produces toxic lactic acid, so that a given level of activity will be harmful or helpful, depending on the level of carbon dioxide being produced at rest"

- 2000 - July (1)

"Therapeutically, even powerful toxins that block the glycolytic enzymes can improve functions in a varety of organic disturbances associated with (caused by) excessive production of lactic acid. Unfortunately, the toxin that has become standard treatment for lactic acidosis--dichloroacetic acid--is a carcinogen, and eventually produces liver damage and acidosis But several nontoxic therapies can do the same things: Palmitate (formed from sugar under the influence of thyroid hormone, and found in coconut oil), vitamin Bl, biotin, lipoic acid, carbon dioxide, thyroid, naloxone, acetazolamide, for example."

- 2000 - July (1)

"Carbon dioxide formation is the essence of oxidative metabolism, along with the formation of metabolic water, from the interactions of carbon fuel, electrons, and oxygen. Even before carbon dioxide has covalently reacted with water, to form carbonic acid, it has a great affinity for electrons. This affinity, which predisposes it to react with water and amines, governs its non-covalent  adsorptive properties, but these are passed over by Most physioiogists."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Both spontaneously, and enzymically, carbon dioxide combines with water. Formed inside the respiring cell, it is constantly leaving the cell as carbonic acid, bicarbonates, and carbonates. As it streams out of the cell, any positively charged group, such as a calcium ion, that it takes along will enter extracellular fluids with the carbonate or bicarbonate ion, approximately as a pair with equal positive and negative charges, but the removal of the alkaline metal ion will tend to restore the proteins’ acidic nature,"

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The adsorptive effects of carbon dioxide, and a great variety of other chemical effects, modulate the cell’s structure_and function so that it retains far more potassium than sodium, and is able to excrete calcium while binding magnesium."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"this simplified picture of carbon dioxide’s effects on minerals makes it possible to understand the fact that the blood’s pH is higher than the cell’s, and many other mysteries, Without resort to special hypothetical devices. The alkaline metals that have been mobilized from respiring cells in association with carbonic acid remain alone in the blood when carbonic acid turns into gaseous carbon dioxide and leaves the blood in the lungs. Protons, if we have to talk about them, are left in the cells, and subtracted from the blood, by the reactions of carbon dioxide, but the conventions for talking about the blood’s alkalinity relative to the cells omit the background conditons: The intrinsic acidity of the cell substance, and forces exerted by the cell substance on the dissolved substances."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Hypothyroidism suppresses respiration as a source of energy so little carbon dioxide is produced, and lactic acid is formed even when there is no noticeable stress. This in itself resembles hyperventilation, since loss of carbon dioxide is the defining feature of hyperventilation, but the presence of abnormally high adrenergic activity, and of free fatty acids, stimulates further hyperventilation, exacerbating the loss of carbon dioxide. Decreasing the carbon dioxide impairs respiration even more, leading to increased lactic acid production, and that stimulates more adrenergic activity, and so on, in a vicious circle."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since these effects of estrogen on tissue water are considered to be nongenomic, and independent to some extent of the normal estrogen receptors and response elements, any tissue 1s probably susceptible to estrogen-induced swelling, as well as to the swelling produced by unsaturated fats and carbon dioxide deficiency."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The inhibition of carbonic anhydrase causes carbon dioxide retention, and this can produce acidosis. Intracellular acidosis has many important cell-protecting effects. By reducing the ionization of the cell’s macromolecules, the cell’s affinity for water is decreased."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide’s concentration affects the structural energy content of the protein water system, and this effect can nicely account for many of the mysteries of cellular heat production, including the negative heat observed_in certain stages of nerve and muscle activity."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The loss of carbon dioxide reduces brain circulation, creating complex paresthesias and stroke symptoms. Hyperventilation is a relative term, and refers to the amount of carbon dioxide which is lost from the blood. Heavy, rapid breathing at high altitude or in the presence of a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, doesn’t necessarily constitute hyperventilation."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Water, proteins, oxygen, and minerals, are all crucially regulated by carbon dioxide. The enzyme, Garbonic anhydrase,  which is regulated by hormones (including the parathyroid hormone) and nerves, accelerates the interchange between carbon dioxide and bicarbonate, each of which has special functions. Bicarbonate is more soluble in water, but carbon dioxide is more soluble in living substance and fats."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide limits the electrical depolarization of nerves and muscles, a phenomenon first discovered by Gilbert Ling. This prevents the over-excitation and exhaustion of brain cells and muscle cells, including the heart. The presence of carbon dioxide limits the formation of lactic acid. This explains the lactate paradox of high altitude exertion"

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Simple hyperventilation causes muscle spasms and paresthesia (prickling of the skin), in an experiment anyone can perform in a few minutes. When a large amount of carbon dioxide is blown off, the blood’s pH increases very slightly, because of systemic adjustments."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Histamine release, nitric oxide, and carbon monoxide are broadly involved in excitotoxic damage, and carbon dioxide tends to be protective against these, too."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Besides the simple excitotoxic killing of nerve cells, the processes which impair carbon dioxide production set in motion the long degenerative process that ranges from diabetic lacticacidemia to dementia."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In Alzheimer’s disease, brain respiratory metabolism is inhibited, creating a carbon dioxide deficiency with an excess of lactic acid and ammonia."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"W. F. Koch also found that excessive coagulation was produced in the toxic antirespiratory state. Carbon dioxide, probably by controlling the availability of calcium, is an important protection against abnormal clotting."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If excess lactic acid in the brain tissue is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, then the lactate paradox suggests that a slightly higher retention of carbon dioxide in the brain of Kashmir residents would counteract chronic excitotoxic effects, suppressing the stress metabolism which leads to the degenerative brain diseases."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The neuroprotective steroids, progesterone and pregnenolone, and magnestum and carbon dioxide all protect against excitoxicity and the related excess of intracellular calcium, while promoting normal calcification."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide is powerfully involved in the regulation of both sodium and calcium, as well as in respiration and energy production. It tends to relax both nerves and muscles. It is apparently one of the essential factors in preventing edema."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"ATP and CO2 both bind to hemoglobin, regulating its affinity for oxygen. The way in which they bind to this protein indicates that they will bind to many other intracellular proteins, similarly regulating the functions of those proteins."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"In many situations, including brain hypoxia, carbon dioxide is the decisive protective factor."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Low thyroid function involves reduced formation of carbon dioxide, and the body fluids dont retain as much sodium as in normal individuals. Both urine and sweat tend to contain abnormally high sodium concentration in hypothyroidism. Because CQ2 is central to the regulation of pH, and hydrogen ion excretion (acid urine) is one mechanism involved in sodium retention, the CO2 deficiency of hypothyroidism is probably closely connected with the inability to retain adequate sodium."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Carbonated water is such a common thing, chemists are embarrassed to talk about it. All the water in respiring organisms contains a considerable amount of carbon ‘dioxide. Carbon dioxide binds to proteins and to other amine-containing polymers, and dissolves in water, reducing the pH, so that the interactions of polymers and water are strongly affected by the concentration of CO2. Carbon dioxide modifies biological materials and structures in and around our cells."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"Whenever there is respiration, carbon dioxide is produced. By maintaining the effective concentration of Krebs cycle material, it protects the efficiency of respiration."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"Carbon dioxide is very soluble in water, but it is even more soluble in living tissue, so soluble that it will move from a low concentration in bath water into the body, where its concentration is already much higher."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"Carbon dioxide reacts spontaneously with ammonia, and with other amines. The reaction of ammonia with carbon dioxide is the first step in the formation of urea, protecting against the potential toxicity of ammonia."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"Although carbon dioxide probably associates with most of the amino groups in the body, only a few of these reactions have been studied. For example, it is known to bind to insulin, affecting its conformation. I think this is likely to explain some of the effects of the thyroid hormone in diabetes, since thyroid increases the production of carbon dioxide."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"The simplest way to visualize the effect of carbon dioxide on mucopolysaccharides is to think of its action as an expectorant, in which it decreases the viscosity of bronchial mucus, allowing it to be reabsorbed or expelled. Since 1odide also has a long history of use as an expectorant, we should compare the effects of carbon dioxide and carbonic acid with the effects of iodide in other situations."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"The transparent structures of the eye are interesting places for considering the effects of carbon dioxide. I think carbon dioxide has a role in maintaining the clarity of the lens, as I discussed in the cataracts newsletter, by preventing swelling."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"that hypothyroidism, leading to a substitution of lactic acid for carbon dioxide, might contribute to the development of glaucoma by increasing the viscosity of the aqueous humor."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"In experimenters wearing gas tight goggles, and in scraped comeas kept in tissue culture, carbon dioxide has been found to have an anti-swelling effect on the cornea."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"In aging, connective tissue becomes hardened by chemical cross-linking of the large molecules. If amino groups are well saturated with carbon dioxide, this type of reaction should be inhibited."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"The waterlogged condition seen during shock or stress in blood vessels, lungs, and other organs, and the edema of the brain and cataracts of the lenses that follow metabolic impairments of various sorts, seem to involve the uptake of free water, at the same time that bound (unfreezable) water is lost. Carbon dioxide seems to promote the retention of bound water, and protects against the edematous conditions."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"The thyroid hormone is the most important promoter of carbon dioxide formation."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"The overall charge on proteins and other macrolecules is, in general, a matter of the pH of their environment. Usually, cellular proteins have a negative charge above a pH of 5. The tonization of chemical groups such as hydroxyl, amino, and sulfhydryl are responsible for the overall charge. The degree of oxidation or reduction affects the number of sulfhydryl groups, and the structural state of the protein also influences the charge. At high pH the charge is high, and the number and arrangement of sulfhydryl groups can affect the charge. The presence of small tons, carbon dioxide, and oxygen also influence the charge of proteins. When the whole living system 1s involved, bioelectricity interacts with other electron-related phenomena, including oxidationreduction, pH, donor-acceptor and free radical reactions."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Oxygen, producing carbon dioxide, acidifies the cell, and carbon dioxide influences the cells handling of water. Carbonic anhydrase inhibitors are commonly used to regulate conditions involving edema, including adaptation to high altitudes."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"During intense contraction, especially when oxygen and carbon dioxide are limited, muscles produce Jactic acid, and the specific reaction in which lactic acid is formed causes protons to be consumed, that ts, it raises the pH."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Carbon dioxide, produced by respiration, and ATP hydrolysis, are two powerful acidifiers of the cell; with sufficient stimulation both can probably act simultaneously, and in this situation the pH decrease will tend to oppose the exciting stimulus."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Adequate CO2 1s intimately involved in the disposition of calcium,"

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Under all conditions studied, the characteristic lactic acid metabolism of stress and cancer is suppressed at high altitude, as resptration is made more efficient. The Haldane effect shows that carbon dioxide retention 1s increased at high altitude."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"The Haldane effect is a term for the fact that hemoglobin gives up oxygen in the presence of carbon dioxide, and releases carbon dioxide in the presence of oxygen. It is the increased retention of carbon dioxide that accounts for the lactate paradox."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Sodium and carbon dioxide are essential for maintaining the normal fields, and these substances interact in ways that cause both of them to be lost during stress. In hypothyroidism, © sodium is persistently lost, as carbon dioxide is chronically replaced by lactic acid, Both sodium (Veech, et al.; Garrahan and Glynn) and carbon dtoxide--by stimulating the Krebs cycle, and keeping the respiratory enzymes active--help to maintain the normal level of ATP, protecting against stress and shock."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"The safest and most effective interventions will be those which support our basic. organizational fields (sodium, carbon dioxide, balanced proteins, fruits, thyroid, pregnenolone, for example), and dont introduce distortions, as some drugs, foods, hormones, and supplements do."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"In hypervennlatian: so much carbon dioxide is lost in the breath that our tissue respiration is impaired, creating a partial tissue suffocation."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If cells consume oxygen without producing carbon dioxide generously, a situation analogous ‘to hyperventilation/tissue suffocation exists."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Low blood sugar, most often caused by hypothyroidism, and diabetes--which involves poor absorption of sugar by cells--both tend to lower the respiratory quotient, the amount of carbon dioxide produced in relation to the amount of oxygen used."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The use of carbon dioxide inhalation in psychiatry has many metabolic justifications, one of which might be the importance of carbon dioxide in glucose regeneration. It is also essential for detoxifying ammonia."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Men who have had a diagnosis of scleroderma have told me that with the use of thyroid and magnesium supplements, epsom salts baths, and topical progesterone and vitamin E, their symptoms regressed. I suspect that carbon dioxide produced in mitochondria is the main factor in removing calcium from them."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide supplements have been shown experimentally to reduce residual lactate production."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Roman Schmitt has proposed that, 66 million years ago when dinosaurs became extinct and mammals began their rapid evolution, at that time hydrothermal venting went wild, releasing huge volumes of carbon dioxide and other substances into the atmosphere."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In times of lower atmospheric carbon dioxide, our Krebs cycle still produces it internally, and the rapid development of the brain during gestation takes advantage of the high concentration of carbon dioxide in the uterus."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter