How Can We Measure CO2 levels?

In this video, I will explain how you can measure carbon dioxide (CO2) with the use of certain devices. As students progress with their level of health (according to the Buteyko table of health zones) their symptoms would decrease and the need for medication would become less and less. When level 7 is reached virtually all symptoms of disease would be gone. This is true 100% of the time, provided that students are able to reach such oxygen levels. So the method is, of course, very effective, but people may wonder what kind of methods can be used to measure one’s state of health. CO2a stands for alveolar carbon dioxide. It is the amount of CO2 that is measured in the lungs. It is extremely difficult to measure as it would be very hard to put a device in the lungs (only done with animals). So on humans, many professionals try to measure CO2a by trying to calculate the flow rate of the exhale. And then in addition to flow rate, they need to measure changes in CO2 of the exhaled air. You then get 2 kinds of graphs, which will provide you with the velocity rate by which you exhale and the CO2 concentration. To measure changes in CO2, one can hold a device under the nose (capnogram) and measure end-tidal CO2. End-tidal CO2 would show you how much CO2 is present in exhaled air. That would be at the end of exhalation. Of course for Buteyko, measuring CO2 was very important as he realized that carbon dioxide plays a crucial role in breathing retraining. CO2 is necessary to provide oxygen to the brain, heart and all other organs, it dilates blood vessels and it regulates the immune system. Probably 100 or dozens of chemical reactions in the body are based on CO2. When CO2 in the body becomes even slightly less, many chemical reactions in the body become disrupted or start to go in opposite directions, etc. Dr. Buteyko was against using a capnometer and measuring end-tidal CO2. This is because the capnograph shows the highest number of CO2 at the end of the exhalation. Find more about monitoring CO2 here: https://www.normalbreathing.org/etco2... For normal healthy people (according to current medical standards) would be around level 5 (40 CP). Such people breath 80-90% with their diaphragm and as a result, the carbon dioxide level in their exhalation would increase very slowly. The program in such cases would show a very nice plateau that only increases very slightly. So then the very last part of the capnograph would show end-tidal CO2. Only in such cases, would such end-tidal CO2 have a very close correlation with alveolar and arterial CO2. So it is only for a normal breathing pattern that this method works really well. However, when people have abnormal breathing patterns, they have high end-tidal volumes (not 500 or 600 milliliters, but more like 800, 900, or 1 liter of air per breath). So if the end-tidal volume is larger, the capnogram is going to show high numbers of end-tidal CO2, which is not in correlation with real alveolar and arterial numbers. So what did Dr. Buteyko use for his research? He simply measured the total amount of carbon dioxide of all exhaled air. He would collect all exhaled air in a bag and, with the use of a capnometer, and measured the amount of CO2 in the air. You can find more about the health effects, uses and benefits of CO2 here: https://www.normalbreathing.org/co2/ Again when measuring end-tidal CO2 in people with abnormal breathing patterns (chest breathing), the capnograph will show shark fins (as opposed to a nice plateau). Therefore, chest breathing alone will cause a 20% difference in measuring CO2. This does not mean however that everyone with a low CP breath with their chest. Especially in young children, the breathing is with the diaphragm even if they have level 1 of health according to the Buteyko Table of Health Zones. Now you may think that a deviation of 20% is not much when measuring CO2. But when a 20% mistake in CO2 measurement is made, it can lead to a misreading of a person’s health of up to 2 levels (according to the Buteyko Table of Health Zones). This could mean that a practitioner would conclude his patient to be at a health level of 5, while he or she is actually in level 3. Therefore, using a capnograph is not reliable to tool for measuring breathing retraining. Now it does not mean that the capnometer has no place at all. For higher CP students (with normal breathing patterns) the machine can be used to provide biofeedback. Also, when one does multiple readings with a capnometer on a patient during sleep, the accumulation of readings (with multiple readings) can be used to effectively measure breathing training progress. This is because, during sleep, the patient will not be able to manipulate breathing that can cause huge deviations in readings. The YouTube URL of this video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ51w... The video features Dr. Artour Rakhimov