Paula and I found out that arterial carbon dioxide is necessary for blood to flow to the brain; too much or too little carbon dioxide in the arteries will result in a reversible state of mental confusion. Mental confusion such as mental dullness and not knowing your own address. Loss of mind with mental anguish and hidden abnormal breathing is what Paula had and what Kraepelin discovered long ago and still, no modern doctor knows about this.
Carbon dioxide levels stimulate breathing rate and depth. This is handled by the brain stem along with the other vital signs of blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature.
Paula’s breathing rate is too slow.If her breathes are deep enough with active exhaling, her breathing is very effective. If she suffers hidden partial obstruction – she will be in immediate trouble. Why her breathing difficulty is not visible is unknown. It is unknown because it is unseen and therefore it is unstudied. Like sleep apnea was unknown before tools were available to make it visible and known and studied. And now there are treatments for sleep apnea.
Hypoventilation is known to cause hypercapnia respiratory failure and mental confusion and mental anguish. Hypoventilation can occur, it seems, due to injury to the apparatus of moving air in and out of the body. If Paula did suffer respiratory hypercapnic acidosis, why didn’t her breathing rate increase? Most likely due to injury to the body affecting control of breathing. No one really knows. No one has studied this. No one counts breathing rate during periods of [potentially reversible] mental confusion or during health. . And the patient is unaware of their own vital signs because vital sings are part of the autonomic nervous system and mostly unconscious.
Failure of organ systems other than the brain are known to cause both breathing abnormalities and mental confusion, yet heart failure, respiratory failure and kidney failure are hard for doctors to detect if the patient is mentally confused and if their ability to communicate is compromised.
Doctors do not even know that daytime hypoventilation with or without mental confusion even exists, because the patients are not aware that their breathing is so disturbed.
New discoveries are always bing made, medicine is an evolving thing. Did you know that my friend and sleep mate Mark had sleep apnea [and did not know it] , for twenty years before it was discovered to exist by the medical community?
Just think about that.
Of Sound Mind 