SWAlexander
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Excerpt:
A Gas Exchange Disease?
The big problem this big study found concerned gas exchange – the ability to perfuse oxygen into the muscles and remove carbon dioxide from the blood. The ME/CFS patients did reach their anaerobic threshold at lower levels of ventilation, at lower levels of ventilatory efficiency, and with fewer breaths – and here was the kicker – while moving more air overall. (These indices were also reduced at their peaks).
Remembering that breathing = energy, the people with ME/CFS exhausted their aerobic energy capacity with fewer breaths than did the healthy controls. The authors concluded they had “inefficient exercise ventilation”.
The findings were:
The Signaling Process – Breathing is largely an automatic process controlled by a signaling process between chemoreceptors in the aorta in the heart and carotid arteries that supply oxygen to the head that are constantly sending information about oxygen and carbon dioxide levels to the respiratory centers in the brainstem. Increased levels of CO2 – a toxin at high levels – prompt the brainstem to increase breathing depth and/or speed in order to reduce them. On the other hand, decreased levels of CO2 prompt the brainstem to send signals that reduce breathing in order to allow them to build up to normal levels again.
The Muscles – Normal breathing is accomplished via the diaphragm – a thin kind of dome-shaped muscle – that sits between the lungs and abdomen. Its goal is simply to change the lung volume and create a pressure gradient between the inside of the lungs and the outside of them such that air rushes in to fill the void.
https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2022/06/25/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-gas-exchange-disease/
A Gas Exchange Disease?
The big problem this big study found concerned gas exchange – the ability to perfuse oxygen into the muscles and remove carbon dioxide from the blood. The ME/CFS patients did reach their anaerobic threshold at lower levels of ventilation, at lower levels of ventilatory efficiency, and with fewer breaths – and here was the kicker – while moving more air overall. (These indices were also reduced at their peaks).
Remembering that breathing = energy, the people with ME/CFS exhausted their aerobic energy capacity with fewer breaths than did the healthy controls. The authors concluded they had “inefficient exercise ventilation”.
The findings were:
- VE/VO2 – increased
- VE/CO2 (ventilatory efficiency) – increased
- VT (tidal volume) – increased
- fR (breathing frequency) – reduced.
The Signaling Process – Breathing is largely an automatic process controlled by a signaling process between chemoreceptors in the aorta in the heart and carotid arteries that supply oxygen to the head that are constantly sending information about oxygen and carbon dioxide levels to the respiratory centers in the brainstem. Increased levels of CO2 – a toxin at high levels – prompt the brainstem to increase breathing depth and/or speed in order to reduce them. On the other hand, decreased levels of CO2 prompt the brainstem to send signals that reduce breathing in order to allow them to build up to normal levels again.
The Muscles – Normal breathing is accomplished via the diaphragm – a thin kind of dome-shaped muscle – that sits between the lungs and abdomen. Its goal is simply to change the lung volume and create a pressure gradient between the inside of the lungs and the outside of them such that air rushes in to fill the void.
https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2022/06/25/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-gas-exchange-disease/
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