Is C02 Therapy The Ultimate Biohack?

0:00 Hey everybody, this is Hunter Williams. I hope you're doing amazing wherever you might be in the world. Today's video is going to be about something called carbon dioxide therapy. And if you are watching the video, you probably see this crazy looking device that I have here that looks kind of like an oxygen mask with a contraption that's a little electrical thing with little dial on it. And this is actually my carbon dioxide therapy device from a company called Carbogenetics. So today we're going to deviate a little bit from the peptide side of things and talk about one of my favorite devices that I have.

0:36 It's actually as biohacking devices goes, not that expensive. I want to say this like $700. And I'll make sure I've a discount code. By the way, this not like a paid ad or anything. Actually just friends with the owner of this company. I have a few devices in my house that I use just about every single day. And this is definitely one of them. I used it for like 10 to 15 minutes a day, but this hands down, one my favorite devices and I actually don't have the tank hooked up. What you have to do is get like a little soda stream, CO2 tank that you would put into a water carbonator that used to make homemade soda.

1:10 You hook that up to this thing right here. What I want to talk about today is what carbon dioxide therapy is and how it can be super beneficial for our health long-term. And we're going to go over all of the benefits today. But typically when we are here at CO2, we usually have like a negative connotation with that. We usually are like, oh, We want oxygen, not carbon-dioxide. I'm going talk today about something called the Bohr effect. It was discovered a while back and this device is actually harnessing the bohr effect to provide all these amazing benefits to the body.

1:44 truth be told i actually ran out of my co2 in my tank a couple days ago so i'm actually fiending to do this right now so I'm really disappointed i didn't get to this today i think i'll be okay but uh it's one of those things the tanks typically range somewhere like 50 to 60 bucks you can actually get them refilled at most stores like target if they sell a soda stream there so it''s one gas places have helium and things like that. You can fill it up there that do those for restaurants to have inside of their soda machines.

2:16 But I love CO2 therapy. We're going to walk through everything today. And again, like I said, this is not a paid ad. It's just one thing that I know the owner of the company. He's a really amazing guy. Actually just came out with a book called the carbonated body. I'll make sure that link to in the description. But this is one of my favorite things and you guys know I don't talk about devices that much, but I did want to talk to you about this today because there's some really cool science behind it. And also too, I'm just a firm believer now having used it for on and off for like six months that there are absolutely benefits that go above and beyond

2:46 peptides that we can harness. So without further ado, let me share my screen and today we're going to learn about CO2 therapy. Before I do that, just want make sure that you're on the email list. Censorship is on the rise. I do have a new YouTube channel. Hopefully that stays up and hopefully my social media stays at the best place to stay in touch with me is in the email list. So you can always join the e-mail list down in description and also to make sure you check out my private group, the Axion Collective. We do live coaching calls every Thursday night there at 8 p.m. Eastern. You can also message me directly anytime and get a response usually within about 24 hours as long as I'm traveling.

3:17 Yeah, so let's head over to the slides and today we're going to learn about CO2 therapy. Alright, let's get into it today. We're going to learn about CO2 therapy, the complete science behind breathing carbon dioxide. And you may not have heard of that before, but basically inhaling small amounts of carbon monoxide may be one of the most underrated interventions in human physiology, leverages centuries old mechanisms to boost oxygen delivery, cerebral blood flow and recovery. What's cool today is we can actually look at some tangible data to see what it's doing, Why does CO2 matter more than we probably think? When we have this thing called the Bohr effect, like I mentioned, and basically what happens is that elevated CO two in the body forces hemoglobin to release

3:55 oxygen into tissues more efficient efficiently. So a lot of people know about HBOT. I've even talked about the tub called them a mini oxygen therapy tub. Those are all great therapies to do, but the H-Bot, if you want one in your house is typically like 70 to a hundred thousand dollars. Whereas this little device is 700 bucks. And to me, I get maybe not, all the benefits of HBOT, but it's pretty doggone good and I love how I feel when I do it. Like I said, we do see up to 50% increase in brain blood flow with just 5% CO2 inhalation.

4:25 And that's typically I'm in like that 5 to 7%. What I mean by that is when you look at that device, you can change the meter to actually change, the amount of CO 2 that you're inhaling. I typically do like the 5-7% range and i'll get into what that means a little bit later. When we look at our nervous system, what's cool about is it activates the parasympathetic nervous and suppresses inflammatory pathways. So for people, a lot of it's hard chargers and entrepreneurs have high running or hot running nervous systems. This works really well. And there's over 28 peer reviewed studies across wound healing.

4:55 tumor oxygenation, hearing loss, and exercise recovery to back this up. And we'll cover some of those today. So ancient Europeans actually visited volcanic moffets, which are natural CO2 vents. You may have seen those in pictures, these vents that have CO two that come out of the ground. Paracelsus actually going back, I love studying some this ancient history, really any history. But Paracellus is called CO 2 Spiritus Sylvester in the 1500s. In the modern story actually begins at Yale.

5:25 centuries or even longer. So in, like I said, going back, the foundational discovery was made at Yale by physiologist Jan Del Henderson, and he discovered that reduced CO2 caused circulatory collapse during surgery, which proves that carbon dioxide drives circulation, not just waste removal from the body. So in 1922, Henderson and Howard Haggard invented the HH inhalator, delivering carbogen between five and eight percent CO2 and oxygen to resuscitate drowning,

5:56 poisoning and overdose victims. And so by 1928, it was saving non-breathing newborns and several hundred babies were saved, according to Henderson at Yale. So we have this 1943, 30% CO2, 70% O2 induced emotional catharsis, and around 200 therapists adopted Carbogen in the 50s and 60s. In 1987, there was anxiety worked on it, so CO 2 inhalations eliminated free-floating anxiety with effects lasting days, weeks, or even longer. In 1995, we have carboxy therapy where French physicians coined the term after decades of subcutaneous CO2 injections for circulatory disease.

6:32 How about that? Sub Q CO 2 injections. I actually need to look up further because I was just kind of preparing a report on this. And I'm like, man, how do you actually inject CO two? But it's pretty cool. Um, I don't know where you can find that. And then in 2010s and 2020s, we have the consumer devices like the Carbogenetics, my friend Steve, and the Conscious Breathing Institute bring CO2 to the biohacking mainstream. So it is much more in the forefront today than it's kind of been. In the past, one of these fringe things, when we look at the Bohr effect, what this does, It was actually described by a guy named Christian Bohr in 1904.

7:06 And basically when CO2 rises and pH drops, hemoglobin's grip on oxygen weakens. So carbon dioxide forms, and I'm going to try to pronounce this right, carbamino hemaglobin, which shifts the oxyhemoglobulin disassociation curve right releasing around 10% more oxygen at tissue level under anaerobic conditions. So your SPO2 is around 96 to 98 percent regardless of how you breathe and the bottleneck isn't loading oxygen in the lungs, it's unloading it in tissues. So again, getting oxygen is getting it oxygen into the tissues to which then it can have the effect of all the healing and nervous system regulation and

7:41 all of the things that we want it for. And CO2, is the key that unlocks that delivery. Let's start to look at some findings around this. Carbon dioxide is one of the most potent cerebral vasodilators, basically meaning that helps get blood flow to the brain, acting via pH-mediated smooth muscle relaxation and nitric oxide production. A landmark study in 2008 found carbogen increased global cerebral bloodflow while pure oxygen decreased it, making carbogens superior for brain tissue oxygenation. How about that? CO2 increased brain blood flow while oxygen itself actually decreased it and CBF responds at three to six percent in CO two.

8:21 So when we look at 3% CO 2, we get around a 10% cerebral bloodflow increase. 5% CO2, around 50%. And then the 7%, now 7% you don't want to start off there when you're using your device. It takes some working up to, but it actually increases cerebral blood flow by around 100%. Beyond that, it can actually become dangerous. You just want be careful what you are doing. Again, there would be many stops along the way before that would actually happen. But basically, we have an autonomic paradox with our nervous system and we get calm through carbon dioxide.

8:54 So hypercapnia activates both sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways, but CO2 has a direct local inhibitory action on heart rates. So heart rate typically doesn't increase. My mild hypercapnia around 7% CO 2 increases high frequency HRV indicating enhanced bagel tone. Again, this is improving our HRB and I've actually tracked this with my Oura Ring. The days that I do this, the following night that sleep, I absolutely have a better HR V than the days I don't do it.

9:25 And we also get anti-inflammatory effects that depend on intact vagal signaling through cholinergic antiinflammatories pathways, suppressing NF kappa B via nicotinic receptors on macrophages. So again, at low dose around two to 5%, we get calming vasodilatory parasympathetic benefits. When we go over 7.5%, uh, we tend to see anxiety, elevated blood pressure. Again, it's used as a laboratory panic challenge test again for the purpose of therapeutic CO2 use. We're not really going to go into that range.

9:55 We also get this pH regulation. So again, you've probably heard different biohacking people talk about acidity and alkalinity and how to balance those between a certain range that's going to make us healthy. But when we look at CO2, we get a bicarbonate buffer. Normal blood pH is around 7.35 to 7 .45. It's maintained by a critical 20 to one ratio of bcarbonate to carbonic acid. The lungs regulate CO two in minutes and kidneys adjust over hours to days. You also get NF-kappa-B suppression.

10:25 So hypercapnic acidosis inhibits the canonical NF kappa B pathway, reducing ICAM-1 and interleukin-8 while leaving anti-inflammatory interlucanin unaffected. And then hyperkapnia inhibites bacterial phagocytosis at increased viral replication and influenza models, so it's protective in sterile inflammation and potentially harmful during active infection. So let's look at some of the clinical evidence. We do have 67% wound healing, so complete healing in CO2 group versus 0% in controls when they looked at wound-healing.

10:56 And we also saw 100% tumor control, So regional control in hypoxic laryngeal tumors with ARCON versus 55% with radiotherapy alone. So basically what they did is they combined CO two therapy with radio therapy and they actually basically doubled the control of tumors there. We also see 66% walking distance. One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the amazing performance hand enhancer that CO2 is. If you do it before a workout, you definitely notice if you can sit down for 10 minutes and do this before workout you will absolutely feel a better pump

11:29 in the gym when you're doing it or better endurance if your doing cardio. And so the increase in total walking distance after transcutaneous CO2 in claudication patients. And then we actually see 68% hearing recovery. So the recovery rate with carbogen plus steroids of 50 versus 52.3% just from steroids alone for people working on recovering their hearing from hearing loss. Again, it's because of that cerebral blood flow that then all of a sudden we're getting more oxygen in the brain tissue that is going to help with recovery hearing.

12:03 Let's look at some wound healing studies. So 2020 study in 57 diabetic chronic wounds, the wound surface area reduced by 96% and volume reduced 99% in the CO2 group versus 25% surface reduction in controls that did not use CO 2 therapy. We also in 2009 see that after 18 days of transcutaneous CO2, pain-free walking improved by 73% and ankle brachial index increased 37%. And then the improvements maintained at three and 12 months, we're getting lasting effects from the wound healing.

12:38 I talked a little bit about this Archon protocol with tumor oxygenation. So there was phase three trial on accelerated radiotherapy with carbogen and nicotinamide. which produced most robust evidence base for Carbogen therapy. So 80% local control in T3 and T4 larynx carcinomas across 215 patients higher than any prior literature report on that. We also saw 2012 a study with, like I said, 100% regional control versus 55% with just radiotherapy alone. And again, 88% of people had no issues with Carbiogen, meaning that they tolerated it fine because some people, depending on how strong they are,

13:15 might not be able to sit and inhale, or they'll have to build their way up to it. Moving on to muscle recovery and exercise performance, obviously a lot of you out there probably would love to use it for this effect. So we look at gene expression, a 2011 study, transcutaneous CO2 upregulated PGC1 alpha. For anyone paying attention at home, what else does that sound like? SLUP, anybody, SLUPP332 also does the same thing. CERT1 and VEGF, increasing mitochondrial number and inducing fast to slow fiber type switching, which mimics the aerobic exercise effects.

13:50 We also see endurance in animal models, rats receiving transcutaneous CO2 showed improved endurance, increased mitochondria DNA and greater capillary density. And then we have human muscle oxygenation, so CO 2 enriched cold water emergent. significantly increased tissue oxygenation and leg muscles versus plain cold water. And that was a 2020 study. Now, how do we actually use the CO2 inhaler? It's not as confusing as it may look looking at that device. You really just put it around your head. Again, start low, build gradually, find your sweet pot, and then you can kind of play around with some intervals in terms of maybe doing like five to 10 minutes,

14:26 two or three times per day if you have time. But again, just start slow and go slow with this because for a lot of people, we can induce this fast breathing state. So we want to make sure that we're doing it. Here's kind of my optimal timing. And just to be honest, I don't get to do this every day, depending on how busy I am. But morning, you wanna do around five minutes at two to 4%, which is gonna be a little bit lower setting. This will help with energy and alertness to start the day. I love doing it for like 10 minutes pre-workout, around 30 minutes before training to prime vasodilation and oxygen delivery.

14:59 and then within 30 to 60 minutes post workout, you can use it to enhance circulation and lactate clearance for recovery. And then I would not do this like right before bed because it can tend to have a stimulatory effect. I usually try to stop usually about like four or five o'clock during the day. Usually don't do it after that. Again, does that mean it's going to keep you up? No, but it could be quite stimulating. So you're just going want to make sure that you don' Do it too late in the day, especially if you're trying to go to bed. And again, how to track progress. You can do a body oxygen level test. So after a normal exhale, pinch your nose and time until the first urge to breathe and test first thing in morning before caffeine or exercise.

15:33 If you do that and it's below 10 seconds, you have poor CO2 tolerance and you are likely chronically over-breathing. Then if can this for 40 seconds you want a target score of 40 and a five plus second improvement equals meaningful progress. So again, that's just kind of how a good way before doing this to see how well you have or tolerate CO2 and then what you can try to shoot for. And again just to explain the different concentration effects, one to two percent, most people are going to be comfortable.

16:06 They might have a mild increase in breathing rate. That's going be the lowest level on the little knob around three to 5% is a sweet spot for therapeutic effects. Then around seven to 10%, if we go over like that seven, to 7.5% we're going to get confusion, visual disturbances, and possible loss of consciousness within minutes. So I'd not recommend going that high. And it's actually kind of hard to go that higher on that machine and above 10% convulsions, coma and death possible. Again, just one of those things to be careful with, which again, the machine, it is very easy to use.

16:36 You would have to sit there and do that for a while and it isn't going you would get to that. So just some safety thresholds. For people with COPD, they have impaired CO2 elimination, so we don't want to use it if someone has COPD. for people that get panic disorder, like severe anxiety or claustrophobia, around 5% CO 2 reliably triggers panic attacks. Just be careful with that, I'm not saying if you're anxious that you can't do it, just start very low at like 1% and ease your way into it.

17:08 People with very high blood pressure, CO2 raises blood, pressure and cardiac output. So again, if that's a threat to you, If you have extreme hypertension or high pressure. And then for pregnancy and people with seizures, I would just avoid this just because there's not a lot of work in that. be something that would not mix well with those. So therapeutic use at 5% or above exceeds workplace safety limits. This is why Carbogen remains a prescription gas requiring licensing provision at those higher levels. Again, just be careful.

17:38 If you're playing around with this, start low and then go slow to build up to it. Then just in closing, here's some of the published literature. You can screenshot those and look them up. I've got the PubMed IDs on there if you do want to look those up, In conclusion, what do we know has been proven to the Bohr effect in CO2-mediated basodilation and parasympathetic activation or established medical science? There's no debating that and clinical RCTs show impressive results in wound healing, tumor oxygenation, and peripheral circulation. And again, once we get into cognitive enhancement, exercise performance, and anxiety reduction, there's less data that's like 100% undeniable there,

18:18 but still enough to have some benefit. And then also too, just anecdotally speaking myself, I can say there absolutely is a benefit Um, and then the, uh, the last position, just be able to track your progress and see that over time, if you're using it, that is going there. But I will say for me, it's something that when I don't have it especially when i'm doing it every day and I run out, I have time to go to the store or whatever, to get it filled up. It is kind of a letdown because I'm like, man, especially if I do it around like two o'clock in the afternoon, it kind of like picks me up.

18:49 So that is it for the slides. And that's my summary of CO2 therapy. Again, not super complex, but it's one of those things I think in a biohacking world, that not enough people know about and not people talk about. I highly recommend that you check it out. If you're ever at any of the conferences, Carbogenetics is usually there, so I recommend checking out their booth and you always can do a little sample of it and try it. I'm a huge fan of this. I can't recommend it enough for people to go out and try.

19:19 And I will say for me, practically speaking, I really have like three main benefits. For me it's kind of that brain energy in the afternoon if I have a heavy work day that kind resets. The second is going to be exercise performance. Then the third is gonna be just wakefulness in morning. If you're someone that struggles in a morning, and I am more of a more morning person, but if you are someone who struggles You put that on first thing in the morning before your coffee, it kind of wakes you up, gets you going, get you out of bed and helps kick start the day. And obviously, I think when we look at the implications of CO2 therapy, we don't have enough long term study data around it where it's been evaluated for

19:52 years of therapy obviously because a lot of cases we hadn't had these consumer devices where people can use it at home. But when we look at things like neurodegenerative disease or some of these neurological diseases, I think at some level we could trace those back to cerebral blood flow and the ability to deliver oxygen to the brain. And if we use something like CO2 therapy, we can increase that and then help with brain function that is only going to benefit us not to mention the peripheral tissue that we're getting it into for muscle performance and recovery and everything there.

20:23 So I'm a huge fan of it. I think you could check it out and again, I'll have the links in the description there, but as biohacking devices go, which usually range up into the tens of thousands of dollars or more, this one's relatively affordable and it's something that I do every day in addition to my vibration plate in my sauna. Those are kind of my holy grail of things. And again those are not things that are super expensive that, you know, most people can at least save up the money to get. So that's it for this one. I would love to hear your feedback. Obviously, this wasn't a peptide video. This definitely enhances peptid use if we look at some of the mechanisms of action.

20:54 If we increase peripheral oxygen delivery into tissue, that is only going to increase the efficacy of our peptides. So just keep that in mind when you're using your peptids out there. And if some people say they might not work or they don't work as well as they've heard other people's say, it's one of those things I think we can use technology like this to amplify the results we're going to be getting from the peptides. But again, look forward to hearing your feedback on this one. I know it was a little bit off the beaten path, but I'd appreciate if you go support Carbogenics and let them know that you came from me.

21:27 Thank you guys. Just in closing, I'm so grateful for the amount of support I get, especially with the YouTube channel. It seems to be going really well since I've relaunched a new YouTube Channel. So thank you, guys, so much. And in close, in whatever shape or form or fashion it is that you should support me, whether you use my code of places, share this with friends and family, join the email list or, you know, or in the private group. Thank, You guys so, much that goes so far in supporting me to bring these messages to you. That's it for this one, and I will see you in next one. Peace.