WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Well, good evening. Actually, it's going to be in the morning when we hear this. I'm 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:14.400 speaking now to Dr. Ray Peat. And Ray, could you sort of introduce yourself a bit, please? 00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:21.800 Okay. I had been a student of several other subjects such as linguistics when I began studying 00:00:24.920 --> 00:00:31.920 biology in 1968 and I had begun in brain biology at the University of Oregon because of my 00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:45.600 years of interest in psychology and linguistics. But as I ran into dogmatism, I decided to 00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:54.920 get to the biology of reproduction and aging because it happened that at the University of Oregon. 00:00:54.920 --> 00:01:04.740 These people were less dogmatic than the ones in nerve biology. And some of the most interesting 00:01:04.740 --> 00:01:15.000 work at the University was being done in biochemistry and so most of my course work was in biochemistry 00:01:16.360 --> 00:01:23.360 and endocrinology and the biology of progesterone, estrogen and tissue respiration was the center 00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:39.400 of my thesis and that led to interest in organismic respiration as controlled by thyroid and its 00:01:39.400 --> 00:01:46.400 interactions with progesterone and estrogen. And by chance, before I had begun studying 00:01:46.400 --> 00:02:03.160 at the University in 1968, I had visited Russia to talk to a biologist there who was studying 00:02:09.100 --> 00:02:16.100 the interactions of magnetic fields and nervous system and the endocrine system and because 00:02:16.100 --> 00:02:23.800 of my contact with the Russian literature, I ran into Buteyko's work right around that 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:31.300 same time and I respected what he was doing because he was one of the few people in the 00:02:33.720 --> 00:02:40.720 world that really took the physiology of carbon dioxide seriously. So many American biologists 00:02:40.720 --> 00:02:51.960 and physicians in particular think of it as a waste material rather than as a crucial 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:58.960 biochemical. In the early 1940s, someone demonstrated that many organisms can live and reproduce 00:03:01.520 --> 00:03:08.520 even without oxygen but they could find no cell or organism that could live and reproduce 00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:18.380 in the absence of carbon dioxide. So biologically, it's in a way much more fundamental than oxygen 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:33.560 and I didn't study much of Buteyko after that. I was just aware that he was one of the few 00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:40.560 people who had worked out the complex biochemical effects of carbon dioxide but I would periodically 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:49.600 check what the Russians were doing in relation to carbon dioxide physiology. There were a 00:03:49.600 --> 00:03:56.600 few others besides Buteyko, but it was really central to many of the things that I worked 00:03:56.600 --> 00:04:06.360 on because progesterone and carbon dioxide, for example, both have an energizing and calming 00:04:06.360 --> 00:04:16.560 effect on all cells, everything from the brain to the secretory and hormonal effects of carbon 00:04:16.560 --> 00:04:23.560 dioxide, respiratory and hormonal tissues. My interest was not particularly in relation 00:04:23.560 --> 00:04:42.560 to asthma, but Buteyko noticed many other effects of carbon dioxide when he was working with 00:04:44.840 --> 00:04:51.840 people treating asthma as the focus. He noticed that some of the patients recovered from other 00:04:51.840 --> 00:05:01.300 degenerative terminal diseases and those have been where I've spent most of my effort thinking 00:05:01.300 --> 00:05:10.600 about the role of carbon dioxide in all of the inflammatory and degenerative diseases 00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:18.280 and how it works synergistically with progesterone and protectively against the toxic effects 00:05:18.280 --> 00:05:26.780 of estrogen and other excitatory molecules. It turns out that all of the degenerative 00:05:26.780 --> 00:05:35.160 diseases are centered on an excess of inflammatory processes which de-energize the cells and 00:05:38.840 --> 00:05:45.840 shift the metabolism away from the production of carbon dioxide with a dominant tendency 00:05:45.840 --> 00:05:53.800 towards producing lactic acid in excess that can't be consumed and converted to carbon dioxide. 00:05:53.800 --> 00:06:03.240 Well, that's a great introduction, Ray. As usual, wonderfully complex. Now, as I said 00:06:06.680 --> 00:06:13.680 to you before, there was some question about the Buteyko method and why it works. Could 00:06:13.680 --> 00:06:19.200 you speak a little bit about that in terms of your thoughts about why reduced breathing 00:06:19.200 --> 00:06:24.520 would have the kind of profound effect that it is having? 00:06:24.520 --> 00:06:31.520 Okay. One of the effects of the thyroid hormone is to increase the consumption of oxygen in 00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:38.520 that means to increase the production of carbon dioxide. When the thyroid hormone is 00:06:38.520 --> 00:06:52.600 properly active, it increases the ratio of progesterone to estrogen. This shifts the 00:06:57.960 --> 00:07:04.960 balance in the body away from lactic acid towards carbon dioxide. If you define hyperventilation 00:07:04.960 --> 00:07:16.440 as a tendency to blow off the carbon dioxide, any time you produce too much lactic acid, 00:07:16.440 --> 00:07:27.440 it stimulates your respiratory center and it makes you lose carbon dioxide. Lactic acid 00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:34.920 itself excites the inflammatory process in all of the tissues where carbon dioxide inhibits 00:07:34.920 --> 00:07:44.320 it. There are several things that will shift a person towards an excess ventilation or 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:55.960 a hyperventilation and simply low thyroid function, which makes you unable to produce enough carbon 00:07:56.960 --> 00:08:03.960 dioxide. Your cells produce too much lactic acid in compensation and that drives the respiratory 00:08:03.960 --> 00:08:13.480 system inappropriately and makes you lose a little bit of carbon dioxide that you are 00:08:13.480 --> 00:08:20.480 producing. Hypothyroidism is one of the basic things driving hyperventilation. There tends 00:08:24.960 --> 00:08:31.960 to be excess adrenaline in hypothyroidism compensating, keeping the organism running even though it 00:08:31.960 --> 00:08:41.720 might run at a low temperature. Sometimes hypothyroid people have 40 times more adrenaline 00:08:41.720 --> 00:08:48.920 production in a day than the normal person. Adrenaline is another thing that can shift 00:08:48.920 --> 00:08:55.920 you towards hyperventilation. Endotoxin is always being absorbed from the intestine and 00:08:55.920 --> 00:09:08.880 endotoxin stimulates hyperventilation and overproduction of lactic acid and the activation 00:09:12.160 --> 00:09:19.160 of inflammatory processes. One of the driving forces behind asthma is the tendency to have 00:09:19.160 --> 00:09:32.240 too much endotoxin being absorbed producing an inflammatory state of the respiratory system 00:09:32.240 --> 00:09:41.640 and that can be detected as an exhalation of nitric oxide, a free-radical that's produced 00:09:42.640 --> 00:09:49.640 in the body. Patients with asthma exhale much more nitric oxide in their breath and most 00:09:49.640 --> 00:10:00.840 of it is produced in the bronchial system although inflammation anywhere in the body 00:10:00.840 --> 00:10:07.880 can raise the production of nitric oxide. Carbon dioxide will antagonize that energy 00:10:07.880 --> 00:10:14.880 of nitric oxide and lower the inflammation so simply providing carbon dioxide works against 00:10:14.880 --> 00:10:29.360 some of the basic mechanisms involved in asthma. One of the interesting things about estrogen 00:10:32.280 --> 00:10:39.280 treatment of menopausal women is that it causes a shift towards alkalosis and increases the 00:10:39.280 --> 00:10:49.220 risk of asthma and that's partly because it increases endotoxin absorption from the 00:10:49.220 --> 00:10:59.400 intestine and circulation in the bloodstream and partly because estrogen lowers the thyroid 00:10:59.400 --> 00:11:06.400 function. All of which tend to lower the production of carbon dioxide leading to a relative hyperventilation 00:11:06.400 --> 00:11:15.460 and alkalosis which helps to excite the inflammation and contraction in the bronchial system. 00:11:15.460 --> 00:11:24.920 Well now by reducing the breathing voluntarily working at reducing the breathing, does it 00:11:27.680 --> 00:11:31.680 make sense that you would then at that point be raising the CO2 levels? 00:11:31.680 --> 00:11:38.680 Yes, yes. If you breathe in a paper bag it's the same thing as voluntarily holding your 00:11:38.680 --> 00:11:46.360 breath. Swimming underwater will do the same thing. Any time you hold your breath or breathe 00:11:46.360 --> 00:11:54.520 in a paper bag or force yourself to stay underwater for as long as you can stand, that is raising 00:11:56.200 --> 00:12:03.200 the carbon dioxide and sort of acting as a sedative on your nervous system so you stop 00:12:03.200 --> 00:12:12.120 the excited adrenaline driven overventilation and you can gradually train yourself with 00:12:12.120 --> 00:12:20.840 a paper bag or swimming underwater or just making the deliberate effort not to breathe 00:12:20.840 --> 00:12:27.840 so much. I think it's good to do everything you can at the same time, for example, living 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:38.520 at a high altitude. In Mexico City despite the pollution, the incidence of asthma is 00:12:38.520 --> 00:12:48.280 drastically lower than it is in the lower altitude cities and that's undoubtedly because 00:12:49.280 --> 00:12:56.280 of the retention of carbon dioxide at high altitude where the oxygen pressure is lower. 00:12:56.280 --> 00:13:05.080 Uh-huh, I see. Now one of the things that we've noticed and as you say when you learned 00:13:05.080 --> 00:13:12.280 about Buteyko he was treating an awful lot of more things than asthma ultimately. One 00:13:12.280 --> 00:13:19.280 of the things that seems to respond very, very rapidly is panic attacks. Probably exactly 00:13:19.280 --> 00:13:25.080 for the mechanism that you're talking about, the excitotoxicity is really driven down by 00:13:25.080 --> 00:13:30.320 loading up carbon dioxide. We even have a number of small exercises that we do that 00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:35.240 are rather simple when somebody even has an attack at night to actually calm themselves 00:13:35.240 --> 00:13:42.240 down by using a series of shallow breathing exercises, all of which build up the CO2. 00:13:43.240 --> 00:13:50.240 Yeah, and there's a drug called the acetazolamide. The brand name is Diamox. It used 00:13:50.240 --> 00:13:59.820 to be considered diuretic but it became popular to prevent altitude sickness because it causes 00:13:59.820 --> 00:14:10.040 you to retain carbon dioxide and hyperventilators are the people who are susceptible to altitude 00:14:11.400 --> 00:14:18.400 sickness. And so taking this acetazolamide makes you retain your carbon dioxide by inhibiting 00:14:18.400 --> 00:14:25.880 the carbonic anhydrase enzyme and prevents altitude sickness. But it also prevents over 00:14:25.880 --> 00:14:34.240 breathing and alkalosis at night. People who have sleep disordered breathing, it's found 00:14:37.040 --> 00:14:44.040 that the acetazolamide will usually cure that and it's very effective in treating asthma, 00:14:44.040 --> 00:14:53.680 which is one of the pretty correct ways to show that carbon dioxide deficiency is so 00:14:53.680 --> 00:15:01.760 closely related to asthma and other breathing disorders. Epilepsy is another thing that 00:15:02.600 --> 00:15:09.600 can be prevented with acetazolamide or anything that raises your carbon dioxide. And neurologists 00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:20.080 used to demonstrate an epileptic brainwave just by having a person's hyperventilate. 00:15:20.080 --> 00:15:27.280 Yes, well we've been able to stop epileptic seizure. I mean, when someone knows, generally 00:15:27.280 --> 00:15:32.320 they know when their aura starts and so if they practice reduced breathing when that 00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:38.200 comes up they don't have seizures. Yes, the old fashioned way to do that was just to give 00:15:38.200 --> 00:15:44.280 them a paper bag and they can breathe in the paper bag for seizures or migraine or panic 00:15:44.280 --> 00:15:51.280 attacks or whatever. Now I remember you once telling me that at one point there was something 00:15:51.320 --> 00:15:57.200 called, I think it was called Fireman's Oxygen, in which they had about 6 to 8 percent carbon 00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:04.200 dioxide in the oxygen. Yes, and Bill Henderson was the physiologist who got that popular to 00:16:04.200 --> 00:16:11.960 the point that fire departments all over the country started using it because the carbon 00:16:11.960 --> 00:16:18.960 dioxide at that very high concentration is extremely effective for restoring respiration 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:28.000 to suffocated people and for babies too that don't breathe properly. Is anyone still using 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:38.200 carbon dioxide, isn't it used or was used at some points in operation rooms? Oh, every 00:16:38.200 --> 00:16:45.820 now and then there's some person who says that the hospitals are killing patients by 00:16:47.600 --> 00:16:54.600 giving them pure oxygen and saying that they would wish that hospitals would start using 00:16:54.600 --> 00:17:01.720 5 to 8 percent carbon dioxide whenever they give oxygen because it's basically stress-inducing 00:17:01.720 --> 00:17:10.320 and toxic to give people oxygen in excess. At sea level we really have an excess of oxygen. 00:17:15.240 --> 00:17:22.240 Some biological examples, I think, to reinforce the importance of carbon dioxide, rats normally 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:31.520 live a maximum of 2 or 3 years, but an animal called the naked mole rat lives in sealed 00:17:31.520 --> 00:17:40.640 burrows underground and they're about the same size as ordinary rats, but they live 00:17:41.400 --> 00:17:48.400 about 30 years and in their burrows they have an extremely high concentration of carbon dioxide 00:17:48.400 --> 00:17:56.360 and low concentration of oxygen and bats who are famous for living in caves where the CO2 00:17:56.360 --> 00:18:05.000 is high with a million bats in the same cave and someone was catching bats and trying 00:18:08.360 --> 00:18:14.200 to find out things about their life history and no one really knows how long the average 00:18:14.200 --> 00:18:21.200 bat lives, but one dead bat was found that had been tagged 42 years previously. So comparing 00:18:21.200 --> 00:18:32.500 that to a mouse with the same body weight, I think that illustrates how important CO2 00:18:32.520 --> 00:18:39.520 is. You have many papers that are written in regard to CO2. In fact, we have at least 00:18:39.520 --> 00:18:46.880 a couple, maybe more than two of your papers are up on the international site, on Peter 00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:52.660 Kolb's site. You were very generous to allow us to put those up. Any kind of closing remarks 00:18:52.660 --> 00:18:56.800 would you like to say? I know you could go on for hours about this, but any particular 00:18:56.800 --> 00:19:02.800 closing remarks you'd like to say in regard to CO2 and its function in so many different 00:19:02.800 --> 00:19:09.800 ways in illness? Well, you have to be cautious around doctors because doctors still tend 00:19:09.800 --> 00:19:18.400 to think of carbon dioxide as a waste material and they tend to shut their ears if you mention 00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:26.280 the beneficial effects of carbon dioxide. It's amazing when you think that it's in 00:19:26.280 --> 00:19:33.280 the primary physiology textbooks, the Bohr effect is primary physiology. There's much 00:19:33.280 --> 00:19:42.640 more basic physiology that's even more interesting than that. For example, the focus of the eye, 00:19:42.640 --> 00:19:53.920 the thickness of the cornea, the transparency of the cornea and the lens and so on. Carbon 00:19:54.960 --> 00:20:01.960 dioxide is essential for practically all biological processes and it's widely ignored even though 00:20:01.960 --> 00:20:10.080 the basic science is there. Well, I want to thank you so much for being available for 00:20:10.080 --> 00:20:15.120 this brief interview and I'm going to be putting out to everybody that they should definitely 00:20:15.120 --> 00:20:22.120 be visiting your website and to get your journals and to look into the previous journals that 00:20:23.520 --> 00:20:27.400 you've written in regard to carbon dioxide and of course anything else that they're interested 00:20:27.400 --> 00:20:32.520 in. It's a wide range of things that you have available to people. So thank you so much 00:20:32.520 --> 00:20:37.760 Ray and appreciate your friendship and your collegial assistance and support through the 00:20:37.760 --> 00:20:42.600 years. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye now. Bye. 00:20:42.600 --> 00:20:49.600 [End of Audio]