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Steven Scott

@steve_scottinc

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Founder and CEO of @carbogenetics
Author of @thecarbonatedbody

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Just had a great time in Sacramento, CA, joining Mark Bell and his cohost Nsima Inyang on the podcast!

@marksmellybell /
@nsimainyang /

Super nice guys, and we went really in depth about my book, The Carbonated Body, CO₂ therapy, and the role carbon dioxide plays in our bodies. I really appreciated their curiosity and the opportunity to dig into the science beyond the usual quick talking points.

Thanks, Mark and Nsima, for having me and for such a great conversation! Looking forward to sharing the episode with everyone when it’s out. by @steve_scottinc

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12 days ago

Magical night at the Magic Castle in LA with Kerri, her friend Angelica and our amazing host magician Sohum! Super fun night! Sohum Modha is really an amazing magician. They don't allow pictures or videos inside so just got a few pics mostly outside. taken in The Magic Castle by @steve_scottinc

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11 days ago

I'll refrain from talking about the outcome of the game, but was a fun time with friends. First time at US Bank Stadium. by @steve_scottinc

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a month ago

Four myths in a row, called by the same guest, at the end of our conversation.

I ran Steve Scott through a quick myth-or-reality round, and he called myth on all four.

More breathing is better breathing. Myth. Fatigue is usually a mitochondrial problem. Myth, and my own read on the episode was that in a lot of cases it comes down to whether oxygen is being delivered at all. Carbon dioxide is simply metabolic waste. Myth, and he was emphatic about that one. Most healthy people breathe properly. Myth.

Every one of those reversals points at the same idea. The gas we were taught to get rid of is doing real work in the body, and how you breathe changes how much of your own oxygen you actually get to use.

Steve Scott is a researcher working on carbon dioxide. The full conversation is Ep. 471. Comment 471 and I'll send it to your DMs. by @steve_scottinc

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a month ago

Someone whose entire field is a single molecule told me longevity medicine should get smaller. That surprised me.

I asked Steve Scott how he thinks this field changes once his ideas about carbon dioxide are taken seriously. His answer was that it gets smaller.

His read is that people are running so many therapies and supplement stacks at once that they are overwhelming their bodies, and their livers, in the process. The direction he sees is more reductionist: build on structure and terrain first, and add less on top.

I answered with one word, foundations, and he agreed. I have said versions of this for years, and hearing it from a researcher whose whole field is one molecule landed differently.

Nothing here tells you what to take or what to stop taking. It is a question worth sitting with. What would you keep if you had to keep less?

The full conversation with Steve Scott is Ep. 471. Comment 471 and I'll send it to your DMs. by @steve_scottinc

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a month ago

I always assumed the paper bag was there to slow a panicking person down. The reason is more specific than that, and I did not know it until this conversation.

Carbon dioxide is the signal that tells your red blood cells to release the oxygen they carry. Breathe fast and hard and you blow that signal off, so the oxygen stays stuck to the hemoglobin and rides right past the cells that need it.

The bag makes you re-breathe your own carbon dioxide. The signal comes back, and the oxygen lands.

The everyday version needs no bag at all. Slower breathing keeps more carbon dioxide in you, so more of the oxygen you already have gets where it is needed.

That is the whole mechanism, and it is why "take a slow breath" is better advice than it sounds.

Steve Scott, a researcher working on carbon dioxide, is the one who explained it to me. The full conversation is Ep. 471. Comment 471 and I'll send it to your DMs. by @steve_scottinc

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a month ago

A rodent the size of a naked mole rat should get two or three years. They live past 30. They shrug off cancer, and their odds of dying at 30 are about the same as their odds at 2.

In this clip, Steve Scott shares his read on why. They spend their lives in crowded burrows where CO2 runs 5 to 9 percent, and he suspects that environment plays a role. He also says there could be other reasons. That honesty matters, because nobody has ever run the experiment. No study has raised these animals under different CO2 levels and compared lifespans.

Here is the wrinkle that keeps everyone humble. Mole rats in research colonies breathe the same air you and I do, and they still live past 30 without aging. So the burrow air alone cannot be the whole story.

What research has actually tied to their long lives is built into the animal itself: unusually good DNA repair, and enormous amounts of a molecule called hyaluronan. When scientists moved the mole rat's hyaluronan gene into mice, the mice lived longer, healthier lives.

My take? That brutal burrow may be why those protections evolved in the first place. The environment applied the pressure, and the biology answered.

Still one of the most interesting open questions in longevity.

The full conversation with Steve Scott is Ep. 471. Comment 471 and I'll send it to your DMs. by @steve_scottinc

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a month ago

If you have fixed the sleep, cleaned up the food, and the afternoon still flattens you at three, this one is for you.

Once the basics are handled, the question I would ask next is how much of what you take is actually reaching the cell. Nutrients and oxygen travel in the blood, and the blood hands them over in the capillaries, the finest vessels you have. That network gets thinner as we age. When it does, adding more of anything runs into the same narrow delivery, and the extra never arrives where it was meant to go.

I said it on the episode and I will say it here. Once you have optimised the basics, this is usually a delivery question.

The encouraging part is that capillaries respond to demand. Tissue that keeps asking for blood grows more of them. Steady, repeated movement, walking, cycling, anything you can keep up week after week, is what builds that network back.

Nothing in a bottle does that particular job for you, and nothing here is asking you to stop taking anything. It is asking where the bottleneck actually sits.

Steve Scott, a researcher working on carbon dioxide and oxygen delivery, is the one who walked me through it. The full conversation is Ep. 471. Comment 471 and I'll send it to your DMs. by @steve_scottinc

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a month ago

Ninety-nine, a hundred, and you assume the oxygen question is settled. I did too, until this conversation changed how I read a normal number.

What that little clip measures is how much of your hemoglobin is carrying oxygen. It tells you the blood is loaded. Whether that cargo ever got out at the tissue is a separate question, and the handoff is the part that decides how you feel.

Carbon dioxide runs the handoff. It widens the vessels so more blood reaches the tissue in the first place. It is the signal waiting at the tissue that makes hemoglobin let go of its oxygen into the cell. And rising carbon dioxide is what deepens your next breath, so the whole loop keeps feeding itself. Three jobs, none of them on the readout.

So a good reading and a tired body can both be true at once. Oxygen can sit in the blood and never reach the cells that need it, and that is the space between labs that look fine and a body that does not feel fine.

The clip is honest about what it measures. It just measures less than most of us assume.

Steve Scott, a researcher working on carbon dioxide, walked me through all of this. The full conversation is Ep. 471. Comment 471 and I'll send it to your DMs. by @steve_scottinc

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a month ago

Hemoglobin has to be asked before it hands over its oxygen. I had always pictured it as perfectly happy to let go wherever oxygen was needed.

In this clip Steve Scott, a researcher working on carbon dioxide, walks me through the Bohr effect. Carbon dioxide waiting at the tissue is what makes hemoglobin let go of the oxygen it is carrying. Over-breathe and you blow that signal off. Your saturation can read 100 percent while your cells are getting hardly any of it, because the oxygen never leaves the blood.

Steve says over-breathing almost always reduces delivery, and I am keeping his "almost".

It is also the real reason the paper bag works. Re-breathing the air you just exhaled brings your carbon dioxide back up, and the handover starts working again. I had always assumed the bag was there to keep people from being sick. Turns out most of us never knew the reason.

The full conversation with Steve Scott is Ep. 471. Link in bio. by @steve_scottinc

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a month ago

Showing the new version of the CO2inhaler at Fields of Wellness in Clearwater Florida last month. The new version uses a digital display and is easier to fine tune the CO2 levels. by @steve_scottinc

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2 months ago

Fun time golfing in Door County at Peninsula State Park. Check out Charles birdie chip! Beautiful golf course with great views of the water! by @steve_scottinc

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2 months ago