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i wish i knew who cat was and the "other" line of thinking.   



I am for sure that there is more here than V vs V. 




It is one of the reasons I don't spend much time on here. 



Partly because of the energy drinks pushed. 




 Caffeine .....   on a defective hypothalamus .....  no wonder we cant sleep.  think about it.   really




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Not an opinion that's shared by many around here. But you're entitled.

Jimi I do think you are on to the simple explanation. Again I am no expert but in normal day to day life we do produce carbon dioxide (CD) when we exhale and yes CD is a vasodilator but the concept of we CH's using O2 is associated with how we take in the O2 and exhale.  In my opinion improper breathing techniques is probably why some people have success with O2.  You have to breath in such a manner as to push out the CD.  This is why concentrators with only a 10 lpm flow is usually not very effective on hits above a 4-5 kip (trust me I know as I had one for 10 years).  You need a regulator of at least 25 lpm so you can breath and exhale properly to displace the CD.  Recently during my worst of worst cycles I actually bought a regulator that will go to 60 lpm. That was a godsend because many times using my 25lpm regulator on high hits I would deflate the bad in only one breath.  Again the idea is to breath so you displace the CD and like Jimi says when this occurs the brain is tricked so to speak and allows for the vessels to return to normal and end the CH.

Just my uneducated feelings.

Wishbone

Glassman wrote on May 3^rd, 2011 at 10:37pm:


I had read Batch's explanation of how oxygen works and am in total agreement with it.  However, the one area that seemed less understood is how the uptake of carbon dioxide is done.  I read "cast off" but eventually remembered something else involved, like a missing link.

from Batch's explanation:

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I remembered something I read in 2008 by Michael Trachtenberg at Harvard, who did his early work on carbon dioxide removal for NASA, building carbon dioxide-capture systems for spacesuits and for the ship being developed for the first manned mission to Mars.

I looked back to where I read this and will recap.  Batch, your comments are welcome and I hope this will maybe add to your description of how oxygen works.  You seem to have the rest. 


Here was the interesting thought Batch left us with:

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The problem here being - it does not involve neurochemistry, but neurobiology instead.  It is biological, a physiological processes evolved over million of years and used by virtually every organism on earth.  Clinical research on the role of glial brain cells in epilepsy and head trauma were revealing for this.

Trachtenberg's explanation:

Glial cells bring in nutrients, including oxygen, and carry away pathogens and carbon dioxide.  Since 1967, Trachtenberg had been investigating a mystery: given the large distance in the brain between neurons and blood vessels, it seemed impossible that the glial cells could scavenge carbon dioxide fast enough to prevent a dangerous buildup.  Increased carbon dioxide would increase acidity, which in turn would change the "excitability" of the neurons, causing them to fire at the wrong time.

Nature solved the problem, evolution had borrowed the same high-speed carbon dioxide shuttle used in nearly every plant, animal, and bacteria on earth: an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase.  Plants use carbonic anhydrase to help them absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Mammals use it to help them move carbon dioxide from tissues into capillaries and from there to the lungs to be expelled from the body. 

One driver of this movement is a simple pressure differential: a gas will always flow from a region of higher concentration and pressure to one of lower pressure.  But the second driver - the one that homes in on only carbon dioxide is the carbonic anhydrase contained in each of our cells.  The enzyme catalyzes a reaction that turns carbon dioxide to bicarbonate, which can be carrried in large volumes in the blood plasma to the lungs, exhalations have a concentration of about 4% carbon dioxide.




The reason I bring this up is because Batch had everything involved in his explanation, except I saw no mention of the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, which is what homes in on carbon dioxide and accelerates its uptake. 


The only reason I remembered reading this though, is this sentence here:

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I thought about cluster headaches when I read this and if this had a connection -- do we maybe have a problem with carbonic anhydrase?
I found this similar to the question Batch left us with in his post:

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It is interesting  to me that the hypothalamus be affected when breathing pure oxygen since that is considered to be where our defect lies.

I understand your long suit is chemistry, this was just next door.    The 20th century age of physics brought chemistry a long way and with much more chemistry understanding, biology is taking flight this century.  It was simply that a neurobiologist was working on this when I read it.

You have composed such a good comprehension of how oxygen works for everybody here, I thought maybe you might be able to add this as a piece to the picture. 

When reading about this, it seemed that the carbonic anhydrase was more like "looking to attract" carbon dioxide rather than it being "cast off".  Maybe better called an "uptake". 

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And yes, this was also true at the other end.   



Thanks for the great work, Batch.

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Yeah, it can be.

It can also be a life-saver.

Just stop. Don't even go there.