Complications of diabetes can lower serum bicarbonate, not increase it.

In general, it is true that there are many causes of a rise in bicarbonate, but doesn't this only makes the situation more precarious?

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timr 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Whatbaoutism is not a valid excuse.

It’s not “whataboutism”. It’s a basic control in a paper that takes population data and asserts a causal link between a complex, personal biological variable and a global phenomenon.

There are probably dozens of factors that matter a lot more to individual blood gas levels than global average co2. At a minimum, I’d expect to see controls for obvious medical factors before taking this argument seriously.

	▲	OutOfHere 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fair point. I can see how a global rise in antacid use could explain it more easily. If antacids are the culprit, I expect the rise in bicarbonate to eventually asymptote. Still, we know that very high sustained carbon dioxide does risk respiratory acidosis and a rise in serum bicarbonate. The question then is whether a lower sustained rise also has an observed effect. Fwiw, as per Figure 2A, thus far we see a linear increase in the data, with no sign of it being asymptotic.

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timr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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	▲	OutOfHere 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Diabetic ketoacidosis causes low bicarbonate, not high.