ABout Healthy Life

“All chronic pain, suffering and diseases are caused
from a lack of oxygen at the cell level.”
Prof. A.C. Guyton, MD, The Textbook of Medical Physiology*

* World’s most widely used medical textbook of any kind
* World’s best-selling physiology book

We can see that Professor Guyton was not just an ordinary Harvard medical graduate. When he was earning his medical degree, Arthur Guyton was a Honor Student of the Medical School at Harvard University. Later he became the Dean of the University of Mississippi Medical School

The above Guyton’s quote suggests that healthy life is hidden in high body oxygenation.
In this deep and clear phrase, Professor Guyton summarized results of hundreds of medical studies. The most impressive research that proves the link between tissue hypoxia and disease relates to cancer. It has been undoubtedly proven by decades of oncological research that low oxygen levels in cells initiates cancer tumors, is the driving force for their fast growth (in a dose-dependent manner), metastasis, and even chances of people to survive during last stages of terminal cancer.

Similarly, low tissue oxygenation is a hallmark for progression of heart disease, diabetes, COPD, asthma and epilepsy. Even such “genetic” or irreversible conditions like cystic fibrosis and HIV-AIDS can advance only in people with low body oxygen content.

What most people can notice, when they get healthier or sicker due to infections, common cold or other causes, that these states of the human organism (health and disease) simultaneously affect many parameters at the same time. For example, nearly all people can observe that their physical performance gets worse for diseases states; their level of energy is reduced; clarity of mind and ability of the brain to focus are diminished; sleep is likely to become longer and of poorer quality. There are additional effects related to personal symptoms related to chronic diseases, including various types of pain and inabilities of body organs and systems to do the job well.

Furthermore, all these effects are present in a dose-dependent manner meaning that there should be a state that corresponds to healthy life where all body systems and organs function as they should.

Body and brain oxygenation is very difficult to measure using devices

Note that brain and body oxygenation is not easy to measure. Researchers in physiology have various devices that can measure oxygen pressure inside cells. However, oxygen distribution is very uneven. Certain regions of the brain can have several times more oxygen than other areas. Therefore, such devices cannot measure total oxygen content in the brain or the human body.

Other devices, like those that are used to make PET scans of the brain can measure oxygen in one cross section. For example, the image shows oxygen distribution in the brain for normal breathing pattern and after about 60 seconds of deliberate hyperventilation. We can see that O2 pressure widely varies. For example, the area around the hypothalamus and pituitary gland get very rich oxygen supply due to arteries that bring large flow of blood.

If we think about total oxygen content in the human body, the situation is even more complicated since blood flow to specific organs and even areas of the human body also depends on the effects that is called autoregulation. Autoregulation occurs due to hormones and other special chemicals when physiological needs of some organs are much higher than for others. Such situations are normal due to digestion, physical exercise, sleep, mating and some other activities.

However, the problem of finding total body oxygenation can be solved using a simple test that measures body oxygenation. It is also called the “body oxygen test” and measured in seconds.