The Oxygen Paradox
Have we been misinformed?
Is carbon dioxide good for us?
Surprisingly, yes. But it’s not just good for us, it’s vital for our health, for fighting off disease and viruses, and for keeping our body in a balanced state.
The oxygen paradox
We all know that we need oxygen to breathe, it’s one of the first lessons we have in science class. But what we’ve been misled on is that too much oxygen is actually bad for us, and more interestingly, more CO2 can actually be good for us.
This is the oxygen paradox: oxygen is vital to live, but too much of it can be damaging.
I guess it shouldn’t be all that surprising if we look more closely at nature. Life itself is a balance of complex, awe-inspiring atoms that form over billions and billions of years to create all the different life forms that we see today: from an ant to a whale, and from a leaf to a planet. All life forms are balanced perfectly to allow the window of life that we see here on Earth to live in abundance. Even the Earth itself is delicately poised on a perfect axis and nothing highlights this more than if were to tip the Earth off its axis by just 2 or 3 degrees, we would suddenly find a very hostile planet indeed.
Everything needs balance, and oxygen is no different.
The effects of too much oxygen
There is such a thing as oxidative stress which means that when there is too much oxygen in the cells of our body we come under stress.
A rusting car has been the analogy used before as it provides a great visual of the process of having too much oxygen. When metals are exposed to oxygen they begin to rust. The strength of each metal then becomes thinner and flakier and ultimately loses its strength.
The same thing can happen to the cells within our body and this can cause unwanted stress as it works to re-balance the now weakened system.
Another example that highlights too much oxygen causing stress is through hyperventilation. Hyperventilation causes us to take short, sharp breaths that lowers the CO2 levels and floods the body with oxygen. This in and of itself contracts the heart, sends a…
