The Forgotten Gas That Might Change How You Breathe

Introduction

I've spent four decades in medicine, emergency rooms and functional medicine practices, conversations with thousands of patients. And I can tell you this: we've built an entire culture around one side of the oxygen story. We breathe in oxygen, our cells use it, and that's the happy ending we teach in medical school. But the real story, the part that actually delivers oxygen where it needs to go, has been hiding in plain sight.

It's called CO2. And a man named Steve Scott has spent years figuring out how to use it therapeutically.

When I first encountered Steve's work through The Carbonated Body, his new book that digs into the science and application of CO2 therapy, something clicked for me. Here was someone asking the questions I should have been asking decades ago: What if the problem isn't that we're not getting enough oxygen? What if it's that our bodies can't release the oxygen we already have?

That's where CO2 comes in. And it changes everything.

You breathe in oxygen. It gets absorbed by hemoglobin in your red blood cells. Hemoglobin carries it around your body. But here's the part we usually gloss over: your cells can't actually use that oxygen until hemoglobin releases it. And hemoglobin won't release oxygen unless something tells it to let go.

That something is CO2.

It's a mechanism called the Bohr effect. When your muscles work, they produce CO2. That CO2 makes the environment slightly more acidic. That acidity tells hemoglobin, "Let go of that oxygen now. The cells down here need it." It's elegant. It's built in. It's so simple that we somehow missed its therapeutic potential entirely.

Steve Scott didn't miss it. What he understood, and what he's spent years exploring, is that most of us are actually breathing too much. We hyperventilate chronically, without realizing it. And chronic hyperventilation does something counterintuitive: it lowers your CO2 levels. Lower CO2 means hemoglobin holds onto oxygen more tightly. Your cells become oxygen-starved not because you're not breathing oxygen, but because you're not retaining enough CO2 to release it.

You can be gasping for air while your cells are suffocating.

I admit, when I first heard this, I had to sit with it. It goes against everything we've been taught about breathing and wellness, everything. Breathe deep, we're told. Fill your lungs. More oxygen is better. But that's only half the equation.

Meeting Steve Scott: The Scientist Who Asked a Different Question

Steve comes at this from an engineering background, not a medical one. That turns out to be an advantage. He wasn't constrained by what medical school teaches. He started reading Constantine Buteyko, a Soviet physiologist who published groundbreaking work on breathing patterns back in the 1950s. Most of the Western medical world ignored it. Steve didn't.

He became fascinated with a simple observation: what if we could safely increase CO2 levels in the body without the person having to retrain their entire breathing pattern? What if there was a device that could do it?

That question led to Carbogenetics, the company that created The Carbonated Body. The device itself is elegantly simple: a rebreather that allows you to breathe your own exhaled air mixed with fresh oxygen. You're not just breathing pure exhaled air, which would deplete oxygen. You're creating a controlled, therapeutic environment where your CO2 levels rise.

The effects are what Steve calls "immediately therapeutic." Within minutes of using the device, blood vessel dilation increases. Blood flow to tissues improves. Oxygen delivery to cells improves, not because there's more oxygen in the air, but because the CO2 is finally releasing the oxygen that was already there.

I've had to reverse some thinking here. Years of emergency medicine trained me to think about oxygen delivery in certain ways. More oxygen is the answer. Hyperventilation is the treatment. But that framework doesn't account for the Bohr effect. It doesn't account for what happens when your body's own regulatory mechanisms are working against you.

The Philosophy Behind the Device

What strikes me about Steve's work is the philosophy underneath it. He's not trying to create a new industry around a new problem. He's trying to correct something fundamental that modern life has distorted.

We live in a stress-driven culture. Constant stimulation. Chronic threat perception. Our nervous systems spend most of their time in fight-or-flight mode. And fight-or-flight breathing is fast, shallow, incomplete. It's hyperventilation. Most of us have been hyperventilating for so long that we don't even notice it anymore. It's normal to us.

But it's not normal to our physiology. Your body wasn't designed to spend eight hours a day in chronic hyperventilation. That's new. That's a problem we created.

Hyperventilation depletes CO2. You exhale it faster than your body can produce it. Your CO2 levels drop. Your blood becomes more alkaline. And that alkalinity changes how hemoglobin binds to oxygen. It holds on tighter. Your oxygen saturation looks normal on a pulse oximeter. But your cells are starving.

This is the paradox of modern life. We're often in perfectly adequate environments with plenty of oxygen in the air. But we're breathing it away faster than our bodies can use it. We're oxygen-rich and oxygen-starved at the same time.

Steve understood this intuitively before he understood it scientifically. He started experimenting with his own breathing. He discovered that when he used the device, he felt better. He recovered faster. His anxiety dropped. So he did what engineers do: he built something, tested it, measured it, refined it, and created something that works.

The beauty of the Carbogenetics device is that it bypasses the learning curve. You don't have to retrain your breathing patterns first. You don't have to wait weeks for results. You put on the device, breathe for 10 minutes, and experience what correct CO2 levels feel like. Your body learns. Your nervous system recalibrates. And then, when you take the device off, you're more likely to maintain those breathing patterns naturally.

It's elegant because it works with your body's own mechanisms, not against them.

The Science: Why This Actually Works

Here's what happens physiologically. When you breathe CO2, either through Steve's device or through other methods like breath-holding, several things activate in your body:

Vasodilation increases first. Your blood vessels relax and expand, allowing more blood to flow. This happens within minutes. It's one of the most immediate effects, and it's measurable. Heart rate drops, blood pressure normalizes, and suddenly you're delivering more blood to tissues that have been starved of it.

The Bohr effect, which I mentioned, is the centerpiece. CO2 makes hemoglobin release oxygen. Higher CO2 = more oxygen delivery. This isn't theory. This is basic biochemistry that we somehow turned into a minor footnote in medical training.

But there's more happening. CO2 acts as a Lewis acid, it can withdraw electrons from molecules in your body. This has effects on proteins and cellular function that we're still mapping out. Steve mentions in his work that physiologists like Gilbert Ling have explored this territory, but it's still relatively unexplored because, frankly, nobody thought to look at CO2 as a therapeutic agent.

The nervous system calms. When CO2 rises, your parasympathetic nervous system activates. You move out of fight-or-flight and into rest-and-digest. This explains why people using the Carbogenetics device report feeling calmer, more focused, less anxious. You're not imagining it. You're activating a neural brake.

Inflammation decreases. Higher CO2 levels suppress inflammatory cascades. For someone like me who's spent decades watching inflammation destroy health, this is significant. We don't yet have all the mechanisms mapped, but the clinical observations are clear.

There's also an effect on mitochondrial function. Your mitochondria, the power plants of your cells, work more efficiently when CO2 levels are adequate. This matters more than most people realize. When your mitochondria are working well, everything downstream works better. You have more energy. Your brain functions better. Your immune system is more effective. Your recovery is faster.

The acid-base balance shifts. When you're chronically hyperventilating, your blood becomes alkaline. That's the opposite of what you want. You need a slightly acidic environment for optimal function. When you breathe CO2, you're restoring that balance. Your body can finally work the way it was designed to work.

One more thing that Steve emphasizes in his work: CO2 is a vasodilator. This matters for everyone, but it matters especially for people with cardiovascular issues, people with poor circulation, people dealing with cold hands and feet, people with erectile dysfunction, which is really a vascular issue, not a sexual issue. Improved vasodilation means better blood flow everywhere. That means better delivery of oxygen, nutrients, and hormones. It means better clearance of waste products. It's foundational.

What It Actually Feels Like: The Practical Side

Here's what separates Steve's approach from a lot of wellness theory: he's tested this. He's worked with people. He understands that the science only matters if people actually feel better.

Using the Carbogenetics device, users report immediate effects: deeper calm, improved focus, better sleep. Within hours or days, people describe better exercise tolerance. Injuries that plateau in their healing suddenly progress. Chronic pain conditions improve. One user might notice their anxiety drops. Another might find their athletic performance improves. A third might finally sleep through the night.

These aren't placebo stories. These are people experiencing what happens when their cells finally get the oxygen they've been demanding all along.

The first time you use the device, you notice it immediately. Within 2 to 3 minutes, your breathing becomes easier. Your heart rate drops. You feel a sense of calm that's hard to describe. Your parasympathetic nervous system activates, your rest-and-digest mode kicks in. The anxiety that was humming in the background quiets down. Your mind clarifies.

If you're an athlete, you notice something else: your recovery improves. The inflammation that usually follows hard training decreases. People report that injuries heal faster. A shoulder that's been bothering you for months suddenly feels better. A knee that was limiting your training responds. This isn't because you're doing something new. It's because your cells finally have access to the oxygen that's been sitting in your hemoglobin all along.

For people with chronic conditions, whether it's fibromyalgia, autoimmune conditions, or post-viral issues, the effects can be more gradual but equally significant. Higher CO2 means better vasodilation, which means better nutrient delivery and better waste clearance. Inflammation decreases because CO2 suppresses inflammatory cascades. Sleep improves because your nervous system has finally reset from constant fight-or-flight.

The book *The Carbonated Body* walks through the mechanisms and the applications. Steve isn't selling a magic bullet. He's explaining a physiological principle that's been there all along, showing how it works, and demonstrating how you can use it. Some people benefit immediately. Others need more time. Some see dramatic shifts. Others see steady improvement.

The variability actually makes sense once you understand what's happening. If you're someone who hyperventilates chronically, and most of us in high-stress modern life do, then your CO2 levels are low. Your hemoglobin is holding onto oxygen. Your cells are running on a deficit. When you breathe CO2, you're reversing that deficit. How quickly depends on how deep the deficit is, how long you've had it, and what else is going on in your body.

I'm struck by how practical Steve's approach is. He's not asking you to retrain your breathing completely, though that would help. He's offering a tool that works within minutes. Use it for 10 to 15 minutes. Experience what higher CO2 feels like. Let your body remember how to release oxygen. Some people use it daily. Others use it occasionally, as needed. There's no rigid protocol.

What Steve has done is democratize access to something that normally requires months of breathing retraining. Buteyko breathing exercises can take weeks of practice. The Wim Hof method requires significant training. But the Carbogenetics device gives you the experience and the benefit in one session. Your body learns. Your nervous system recalibrates. Your breathing patterns begin to normalize.

That matters because most people won't commit to months of breathing retraining. But most people will try something that works in 10 minutes. And once they experience what it feels like, what healthy oxygenation actually feels like, they become curious. They want to understand it. They want more of it.

The Bigger Picture: Why This Matters at My Stage

At 75, I'm thinking about what I could have done differently. I spent years breathing the way most stressed, high-achieving people breathe: fast, shallow, inefficient. I spent decades in emergency medicine, which trains you to hyperventilate. It's the automatic response to crisis. But chronic hyperventilation is the crisis I didn't see coming.

What Steve's work represents is an acknowledgment that we've been solving the wrong problem. We built an entire supplemental oxygen industry around the assumption that oxygen delivery is the issue. We push people to breathe deeper, exercise harder, take more antioxidants. But what if the issue isn't input? What if it's output, the ability of hemoglobin to actually release what's already there?

That shift changes everything about how you approach health. It suggests that sometimes the answer isn't doing more. It's doing less, and breathing smarter.

The spiritual dimension matters too, at least for me. Breath is fundamental. It's the one bodily function that's both automatic and voluntary. You can ignore your breathing for days. Or you can pay attention to it, change it, use it as a tool for transformation. That's powerful. That's why breath work has been central to virtually every spiritual tradition. And now we have the physiology to explain why.

Steve isn't presenting CO2 therapy as a replacement for other approaches. He's presenting it as a fundamental correction. Better breathing patterns. A device that teaches your body what higher CO2 feels like. Time and consistency to let your nervous system recalibrate. These things stack on top of everything else you're doing, your exercise, your nutrition, your sleep.

The Science Still Has Questions

I respect that Steve acknowledges the unknowns. We don't yet fully understand all the downstream effects of chronically elevated CO2. We're still mapping which conditions respond best, who responds fastest, and why individuals vary so much. The book touches on this honestly. Not as a limitation, but as territory still being explored.

That's the sign of someone doing real science. He's not pretending certainty where it doesn't exist. He's explaining what we know, showing what works, and being transparent about what we're still learning.

Constantine Buteyko's work from 70 years ago should have moved this field forward faster. But the medical establishment didn't pick it up. Steve's choosing a different path: create a tool, document the results, write about the mechanism, let people experience it themselves. That's how change happens when institutions move slowly.

In Steve's work with *The Carbonated Body*, he documents several categories of people who respond particularly well to CO2 therapy.

Athletes and people focused on performance see dramatic improvements. Their VO2 max improves. Their recovery shortens. Their training tolerance increases. This makes sense. Better oxygen delivery means better athletic function. Steve has worked with people across multiple sports, and the pattern is consistent.

People with anxiety and panic disorders see rapid improvement. Within minutes of using the device, anxiety decreases. This is because CO2 activates the parasympathetic nervous system, your rest-and-digest mode. If you've been living in fight-or-flight, this is transformative. You remember what calm feels like.

People with chronic pain conditions, fibromyalgia, autoimmune conditions, long COVID, post-viral syndromes, often see significant improvement. Better blood flow means better nutrient delivery and waste clearance. Reduced inflammation means less pain. Improved nervous system function means better pain modulation.

People with sleep issues benefit quickly. Better CO2 means better nervous system regulation, which means better sleep. Many people report falling asleep faster and sleeping deeper after using the device.

People recovering from injuries or surgery heal faster. Better blood flow to tissues means faster healing. Better oxygen delivery means better collagen synthesis. Better anti-inflammatory effect means reduced swelling and complications.

Even people with neurological conditions, brain fog, difficulty concentrating, memory issues, often notice improvement. Your brain uses about 20% of your oxygen. When your cells finally have access to the oxygen in your hemoglobin, your brain performs better.

The variability is real, and Steve doesn't hide that. Some people see immediate dramatic effects. Others see gradual improvement over weeks. Some people respond to daily use. Others find that occasional use is enough. This isn't a flaw in the approach. It's reality. Your body's response depends on how deep the deficit is, what else is going on, and individual variation.

Beyond the Device: The Book and the Framework

*The Carbonated Body* is more than just information about a device. It's Steve's attempt to reframe how we think about breathing, oxygenation, and health. He's challenging the dominant narrative that more oxygen is always better.

The book walks through the history of breathing research. It explains Buteyko's work and why it was ignored. It details the physiology in accessible language. It shows real examples of people using the device. And importantly, it gives you the framework to understand your own breathing patterns.

Most people have no idea whether they're hyperventilating. They just breathe. But once you understand what chronic hyperventilation does. Depletes CO2, makes hemoglobin hold onto oxygen, starves your cells. You start noticing your own patterns. You catch yourself taking shallow, rapid breaths when you're stressed. You recognize the connection between your breathing and your anxiety. You understand why your hands are cold or why your recovery is slow.

That awareness itself is valuable. It's the first step toward change.

Steve's approach is fundamentally different from a lot of wellness content. He's not trying to sell you on the idea that he has all the answers. He's inviting you to explore a physiological principle, experience it yourself, and draw your own conclusions. That's the mark of someone confident in their science.

Why I'm Writing About This

I'm writing about Carbogenetics and Steve's work because it represents something I value: genuine innovation based on basic science that somehow got overlooked. It's not a revolutionary new molecule. It's not cutting-edge biotechnology. It's a principle we've known for a century, combined with a device that makes it practical, and the willingness to ask: what if we've been solving the wrong problem?

At my stage of life, training for my 90s, I'm interested in tools that work with my body's own mechanisms, not against them. CO2 therapy is that. It's not external. It's not artificial. It's bringing your own body back into balance using a gas your body already makes but that you're probably releasing too much of.

The practical applications matter. Better oxygenation at the cellular level. Improved athletic performance and recovery. Better sleep. Reduced anxiety and improved focus. Faster healing of chronic conditions. These aren't small things. These are the daily quality-of-life issues that determine whether your 80s and 90s feel vibrant or diminished.

I'm also writing about this because I see something of what I wish I'd understood 40 years ago. Steve had the advantage of coming to this fresh, without the biases that medical training installs. He asked simple questions that somehow never made it into the curriculum. And he found answers that work.

We spend so much effort in medicine trying to add things: more medications, more supplements, more interventions. But sometimes the answer is correcting something we're doing wrong. In this case, we're breathing wrong. We've been breathing wrong so long that normal breathing has become foreign to us. Steve's device teaches you what normal feels like again.

That's powerful.

What Now?

If you're interested in exploring this, *The Carbonated Body* is the place to start. Steve walks through the science accessibly. He explains the device. He shows real examples. And he leaves you with a clear understanding of why this matters and how you might use it.

You don't need to accept it all at face value. Question it. Look at the physiology yourself. Understand the Bohr effect. Recognize your own breathing patterns. Notice whether you're hyperventilating. These are all things you can observe about yourself.

If you want to try the device, there's no reason not to. Use it for 10 minutes. Pay attention to what happens. Notice whether blood vessels feel more open. Notice whether your nervous system calms. Notice whether anxiety decreases. These are real, measurable effects that you'll feel yourself.

Notice also what happens after you take it off. Do you maintain some of the calm? Does your breathing pattern shift? Do you feel more settled? These subtle changes accumulate over time. People who use the device consistently often find that their baseline improves. Their resting heart rate drops. Their anxiety doesn't spike as easily. Their recovery is better. Their sleep is deeper.

This isn't about buying into a new wellness trend. It's about correcting something fundamental that modern life has distorted. We've become chronic hyperventilators. We've depleted our CO2. We're oxygen-rich and oxygen-starved at the same time. That's a solvable problem.

Steve Scott solved it. And now there's a tool and a book to help the rest of us understand why it works.

The science is sound. The device is elegant. The results speak for themselves. And the book, *The Carbonated Body*, is the roadmap for understanding it all.

That matters. At least for me, it matters enough to say so.

Because at 75, looking back on decades in medicine and looking forward to these next years, I'm done with complexity for complexity's sake. I'm interested in simplicity that works. Breathing is simple. CO2 is simple. The Bohr effect is simple. And yet somehow we've made it complicated and missed its therapeutic potential entirely.

Steve didn't miss it. And neither should you.