Signal Noise in the Sensory Nervous System

So far I could establish that there appears to be a problem in the sensory nervous system, which distorts or prevents sensory input information to get to the brain and other organs. This leads to physiological dysfunctions when there is an external influence on the physiological balance to which the body has to react in one way or another.

In healthy individuals, the sensory nervous system accurately passes on the information to the organs, on which usually either a neurological or hormonal reaction follows to compensate for the distortion. In CFS patients this automatic balancing system does not work for false or absent input information and so they go into dysfunction until the stimulus is either gone again, or the body found a different way to deal with it.

Blood PH-Value Maljustment

The most important influences leading to severe dysfunctions are food and air related (+physical exercise). So far I was could find out that all of these relevant influences are changing the blood’s ph-value in one way or another when the body can’t react immediately, leading to problems for the heart, which starts malfunctioning with the consequence of fatigue and exhaustion.

In regards to food for instance, it’s not histamine intolerance itself, which causes problems for CFS patients, but whether the food becomes acidic or alkiline during the digestion process since the body doesn’t react immediately with countering the ph-inbalance when this happens. Histamine rich foods are simply prone to be or turn alkiline during digestion, which leads many to believe the problem is the histamine itself, but which isn’t.

High Humidity Lowers Core Body Temperature

With the exclusion of critical foods and the avoidance of physical exercise, the remaining relevant external influence is the air we breath in. There are two problems stemming from air when it comes to CFS: Humidity and air pressure.

In regards to humidty, normally, both temperature and humidity are being increased in the nose to optimal levels before the air reaces the lungs. But when this is not happening, because the sensory nervous system is malfunctioning, then the air can have the wrong temperature and humidity. This becomes a problem especially when the (absolute!) humidity is high, because water has a high heat capacity, wich means that water needs a lot of energy to warm up.

The consequence is that when water droplets enter the lungs, which weren’t properly pre-heated, then the body’s core starts cooling. This leads to fatigue, when the air (aka the water in the air) is lower than the body temperature, because the body’s core temperature is also the body’s main dial for the wake/sleep state. Is the air humid and above body temperature (e.g. steam), then this can lead to a heat collapse and even a burning of the lungs.

Dropping Air Pressure Leads to CO2 Deficiency

While it’s possible to compensate for high humidity by spending your days in a low humidity environment and by avoiding steam saunas, air pressure is a far bigger nut to crack. The big problem with air pressure is that when the sensory nervous system doesn’t pick up on changing air pressure, then the lungs won’t adapt with deeper or more shallow breathing, which is necessary to have the optimal amount of oxygen, but also CO2 to enter the blood stream.

One of the consequences of too much or too little oxygen and CO2 in the blood stream is that this the ph-value of the blood changes, which then leads to inefficient heart performance as described above. On top, the blood’s capability of passing on oxygen to the cells starts dropping, because there is a chemical equilibrium between the number of oxygen and CO2 molecules, which determins how much oxygen can be picked up and released by the blood cells.

This means that when there’s either too little oxygen in the blood or(!) too little CO2, then less oxygen will be passed on to the normal body cells, on which the mitochondrial performance starts dropping and fatigue sets in.

Biochemically Sound Explanation

So far I only got to the point where I realized that the problem with air pressure must be something in connection with breathing under the condition nof dropping (and perhaps also very low) air pressure. My initial explanation was that must be the lack of oxygen, which is causing the fatigue during dropping/low air pressure condition.

Just a few days ago I discovered the crucial role of CO2 in the breathing process on the website of Dr Martens (German), where you can find an explanation of the biochemical context in regards to the importance of both oxygen and CO2 for the cellular energy household.

Dr Mertens explains CFS/ME and other similar disorders like Fibromyalgia mainly with stress-related hyperventilation. While this is certainly correct, it’s also probably only a sufficient explanation for a subset of patients; see my explanation above with the signal noise in the sensory nervous system leading to ph-value deviations under specific conditions.

Carpogen Inhalations For Normal Energy Levels

Dr Mertens’ treatment regime includes two elements: Carpogen inhalations to counter-act the CO2 deficiency in the blood in the short-term and breathing exercises to reduce hyperventilation as long-term treatment. The element which spurred my interest was the carpogen, which is a mix of 95% oxygen and 5% CO2. According to Dr. Mertens, only a couple of sessions with each several inhalations of carpogen are enough to bring the body’s energy levels to normal within less than one week.

While I was sceptical about the prospects, the approach itself appears to be standing on sound scientific grounds. But particularly interesting to me was that the biochemical explanation for the carpogen treatment was the perfect last piece in my own puzzle for explaining CFS.

CFS-Treatment by Trash Bag

Since Dr Mertens’ practice is located a bit too far away for me, but especially since I don’t suffer of hyerventilation, I came up with my own adapted treatment regime for carpogen inhalations, sort of the poor man’s version for it.

All you need for your at home CO2 treatment is a standard trash bag with some 20-40l volume. You blow up the trash bag with air and then you inhale the air inside exactly 10 times in a row. During these ten repetitions the share of CO2 will go up to around 20% replacing all oxygen during the first 4-6 breaths (depending on the size of the trash bag and the depth of your breath). The subsequent 4-6 breaths will then be without oxygen, but with ~20% CO2 which enters your blood stream, where it binds to the blood cells.

This should then increase the oxygen release to the body cells to normal levels for a couple of hours. Five sessions per day should be enough to increase your mitochondrial energy levels in a way that you feel energized again. Do not do this more often than 5 times per day and no not breath in the air from the trash bag more often than 10 times per session!

So far I do not see any relevant hazard for otherwise healthy individuals, who only suffer of chronic fatigue, which means that hypothetically, you can do this indefinitely. Please not that I am NOT a doctor, just another patient. Talk to your doctor before you try it and ideally, have someone around when you do it, just in case. Personally, I’m still on day 3 in my trial, but it actually feels like this could work. It would be hands down cheapest trick possible to get rid of this nasty condition…