Nexus - 0109 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Healing With Oxygen deficiency is the primary cause of disease? Some peopie actually have jess room in their blood for the oxygen they inhale, due to all the extra stuff they’re already carrying around in their veins, while their overworked elimina- tion systems try to catch up. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Plagues follow periods of wide- spread ignorance of basic sanitation and extensive pollution of public water sources. The local air may also be loaded with smoke and soot. The victims’ bodies used up their internal oxygen supplies trying to neutralise their high blood toxin levels, result- ing from constant reingestion of diluted wastes. This weakened their immune systems, setting them up for massive microbial assaults, The survivors were those who, through location, health habits and/or attitude had maintained a high enough oxygen saturation to keep the plague germs out. A big factor in susceptibility is the share of a person’s oxygen supply that gets used to oxidise and render harmless various sub- stances taken into the body which might otherwise cause problems if allowed to _ accumulate. Apart from the body’s own waste products like urle acid, opportunis- tic pathogens are a major source of such toxins, which are necessary to the metabo- lisms of the microorganisms producing them. Oxidatlon of those toxins and the intercellular debris that feeds the patho- gens interferes with their attempts to sur- vive and spread. But It aiso ties up consid- erable amounts of oxygen that could oth- erwise serve elsewhere in the body. The percentage of a person’s oxygen supply that is used up In these cleaning functions can vary widely. Some people stay internally clean enough that the rest of their metabolic functions never get serl- ously deprived of oxygen and they don’t seem to ever get sick. Others have loaded their bodies down with extra matter that they can’t use, or absorbed high Jevels of toxins from their particular surroundings. The net result of tbls Is that even with adequate oxygen in the air, they are carrying so much debris around in their biood that it still can’t pick up enough oxygen as it passes through the lungs. The oxygen saturation of their tissues then drops into the range that disease organisms find comfort- ahs Combustion of carbon and hydrocarbon fuels binds up tre- mendous amounts of formerly free oxygen Into carbon dioxide (CO,) and Incomplete combustion ties up still more Into carbon monoxide (CO), which itself grabs onto addittonai oxygen to become more stable as CO,. It only takes around five minutes or less for a monoxide suicide’s garage to fill to a iethal density with car exhaust. Stretch the minutes to years, multiply that car motor by severai billion, including some real monsters and all the jet engines; add in all the industrial belchings and how many years do we have before most of the ground layer of our atmosphere tastes Ilke that garage? In some places It already does. At the same time, the pianet’s oxygen- producing forests have shrunk to the smallest size in recorded history, so now far less oxygen Is being released back into the air and less CO, Is being absorbed and broken down. Half of the rainforests we came Into this century with have been sent quite prematurely and rudely to that great jungle in the sky, along with vast wooded areas that used tooccupy temper- ate zones. , Increasingly harsh and unpredictable weather is a further effect of global defor- estation, since tbe trees areno longer there to soften winds, reduce temperature ex- tremes and attract rain. As the percentage of oxygen in the alr declines, It grows less able to hold the amount of water vapour necessary to sustain normal cloud cover, rain leveis, atmospheric conductivity and thermal reguiation. s« More oxygen production {s lost through the destruction by pollution of the oceans’ phytoplankton. Because the atmosphere is so vast, a severe imbalance between global produc- tion and consumption of oxygen can exist for decades before the effects become obvious enough for humans to notice. An average adult human breathes In around 400 cubic feet of air a day. From that we extract about 20 cubic feet of oxygen for internal use. If the air is around 20% oxygen, we’re only remov- ing the oxygen from a quarter of the air inhaled, Presumably the otber three quarters isn’t contacting the actual lung surface. ZZ, a G3 if)! ME: eZ able. It shouid be noted that not all pathogens share the same oxygen tolerance levels. They range from completely anzrobic ones to hardy outdoor types that can withstand long exposure to air. Some can attack only those with badly weakened immune systems, others are sufficiently tough and energetic to invade anyone who Isn’t at a high enough level of oxygen saturation and vitality to resist, which these days can Include entire populations. But all disease organisms are unable to survive the high oxygen concentration in a truly healthy human body, over three times that of air. All are vulnerable to the instant oxidation that occurs when they encounter singlet oxygen atoms released inter- cellularly by H,O, moiecules from the peroxisomes, certain mito- chondria, or other micro-bodies. There area Jot of variables that can affect one’s ability to pull off this little biochemical stunt on demand. Breathing, eating and exercise habits, air quality and emotional states are all factors. the human body was originally designed to grow and operate at a 50% stronger If there’s a richer mix of oxygen in the air, the body can obtain its needed supply with Jess effort. If the oxygen level is low, extra lung-work is requlred. People breathing the same air have widely varying states of health and diseases have been around a lot longer than internal combustion engines and chalnsaws, What explains this, if oxygen Continued from Page 9 concentration of oxygen