Inhaling high-dose CO2 clears Alzheimer's proteins from the brain | Hacker News Reader

Inhaling high-dose CO2 clears Alzheimer's proteins from the brain

newscientist.com

42 pointsleumon12 comments

> The researchers found that intermittent exposure to high carbon dioxide levels caused the brain’s blood vessels to pump as they do during deep sleep, driving the glymphatic system.

[...]

> But an around an hour after the intervention ended, the amyloid and tau-clearing benefits had returned to baseline. Further studies need to explore whether this has an impact on Alzheimer’s disease risk or progression in the long-term, and how often you’d need to do it, says Vincent Tay at Changi General Hospital in Singapore.

> Further studies need to explore whether this has an impact on Alzheimer’s disease risk or progression in the long-term, and how often you’d need to do it, says Vincent Tay at Changi General Hospital in Singapore.

“Carbogen” has an interesting history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbogen

It has some sort of mind altering effect, and in the early days of psychedelic psychotherapy it was used to determine whether someone would freak out under the influence of mind altering substances.

https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/carbogen/carbogen.shtml

I understood why it's called "Carbogen" only after reading (on your provided Wikipedia page) about it being a mixture of "Carbo(n)" + "(Oxy)gen". This is an unfortunate naming habit, because logically "Carbogen" would rather mean "Carbon producer" or "Carbon generator".

Also can stop ongoing epileptic attacks it seems. The secondary risk of suffocation makes it impractical in any case.

A more sophisticated version of breathing in a bag to stop anxiety attacks. It seems that more CO2 than normal resets our system and put us on calm mode to save oxygen.

If the mechanism is that the CO2 tells the body to get rid of some chemical substance by the blood, I wonder if all this things could have a similar trigger in form of some toxic, or if the origin is alive and it needs some oxygen supply.

I can't find it at the moment (edit: found it [2]), but I am sure I read something about Jerome Lettvin [1] doing some experimenting with CO2 but for something like schizophrenia, and that despite having good results he had to stop due to legal liability reasons or the like. I think it came up in an interview with him which I read a transcript of.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Lettvin

[2] https://www.mindstrengthbalance.com/learn/interviews/jeromel... (search for Laszlo to find the bit where they start talking about this)

I would assume that all sorts of proteins would clear out of the brain in cases of prolonged oxygen depletion.

There are other unordinary methods to "reboot" body parts to treat malfunction, for example, some eye conditions can be treated by injecting a sedative into the eyes: https://news.mit.edu/2025/how-vision-can-be-rebooted-in-adul...

Who says high dose C02 means prolonged oxygen depletion?

I'm guessing he was thinking the same as my first instinct that it may have similar effects as carbon monoxide- preferentially binding with hemoglobin. But it doesn't if you're not physically displacing the oxygen.

Has other effects like acidosis but not oxygen depletion.

Some ppm less perhaps

https://archive.is/8qlbE

at least it's not "only in rats" LOLL

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