CO2 is good for you

Imagine a world where CO2 was not a deadly poison in need of urgent regulation by the European Union and the Environmental Protection Agency but a hugely beneficial trace gas which helped plants to thrive…

If you've read Watermelons – or indeed hung around this column for any length of time – you'll know that that world already exists. What you might not know, as I certainly didn't until a few months back, is that CO2 can also make you healthier. I learned this from reader Christopher Drake wrote in to ask whether I'd heard of the Buteyko Method.

Konstantin Buteyko was a high-level Soviet physician who came up with the novel theory that what he called "Diseases of Civilisation" – by which he meant everything from asthma to depression to…

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