When you drink a carbonated beverage, does your body absorb any of the CO2? Is it all burped/whatever, or does some remain?
CO2 is water soluble and I expect some will be absorbed (and quickly cleared by the lungs), similar to what happens during abdominal insufflation for laparoscopic surgery. I couldn’t tell you how much.
Thanks. I was also thinking maybe reacting with the contents of the stomach as well, perhaps bonding to something there.
CO2 is relatively inert to anything your innards will throw at it. In aqueous solution, there’s a carbonic acid / bicarbonate / carbonate equilibrium that is pH and temperature dependent. But I don’t expect it to react with much anything. We don’t have the same tricks up our sleeve that plants do to use it as a reagent.
Thanks twice. Context is that I’m losing weight, and I’ve become quite addicted to cans of unflavored sparkling water. My thinking was that the mechanism for offloading weight (given sufficient exercise and low calorie intake) is largely through exhaling excess CO2. So I’m drinking this sparkling water and suddenly think, “wait, am I adding CO2 to my system? Noooo!”
I’ve never seen this as a physiologic mechanism in weight loss. Where did you see this theory?
Various places. Here’s one:
That’s just metabolism. And your body will always discharge excess CO2, whether from metabolic processing (“burning”) of fat or from carbonation.
Yes, that is the “physiologic mechanism” in question. It’s not clear what your were confused about. Perhaps you could clarify.
Many reactions in the body are reversible. The OP seemed worried this one might be. It is not.
The story seems to have got a bit confused.
To lose weight you need to convert fat into something that can be removed from the body. Fat is a hydrocarbon, and metabolising fat will yield CO2. The amount of CO2 you exhale is normally exactly the result of your body operating. When you lose weight you will exhale the carbon in the fats in the form of CO2. But it got there because your body converted it from fat. It did this because a metabolic pathway was activated to cause the conversion to occur. Which is either a calorie restricted diet or extra exercise, or both. The amount of CO2 you exhale is a very good measure of your body’s operation. If you are losing weight, all of the carbon locked up in the lost fat ends up being exhaled. This is a sobering reminder of how much exercise is needed to lose only a little weight. Whilst exercising the CO2 you exhale in deep fast breaths over the normal amount you exhale is the measure of how much fat you are losing.
Your body can’t convert CO2 into fat, or indeed into anything else, that is the province of plants and algae etc.
Excess CO2 you might exhale due to drinking a carbonated drink isn’t in competition with CO2 production due to your body operating.
So by shedding pounds we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere and thereby exacerbating climate change? No thanks. I will continue packing on poundage to further my conversion into a massive carbon sink. It’s the responsible choice.
Came in to note that the CO2 is part of the weight loss but so is water. When losing weight, you breathe and pee/sweat the weight off. There’s no special E= mc^2 conversion that takes it directly to energy.
Well, yes. That’s exactly what burning fossil fuels does - releases the carbon from the sink accumulated from millions of years of dead (mostly plant) life.
That is very noble of you, but unless you are planning to live forever or to die on a different planet, you are just delaying the release of all that carbon by some years. You are better off shedding it while you can control what will happen to it. Not to mention that by reducing your body mass now you will function more efficiently until you live, so, all other variables being the same, you will actually end up having a smaller carbon footprint. Even better, in losing weight you will start consuming less, which will further reduce your existential carbon footprint.
Wait. If his porcine body is buried not cremated, doesn’t most of the carbon remain with the um remains?
Worms are mobile.
Gotta go to those pinochle tournaments.
Nope. Despite the jokes above, the main thing that happens to buried human remains is that they’re broken down by bacteria. In the process, CO2 and methane[*], both of which contain carbon, are produced. Assuming it’s not in a sealed coffin, some of those gases will be absorbed by the soil and some will make it to the atmosphere.
[*]Mostly. Other, usually smellier, gases will also be produced in much lesser amounts.
So some of it stays in the earth, away from the atmosphere. Feel better, @Oly ?
Hey, as suggested upthread, my plan is to live forever. And with apologies to Stephen Wright, so far so good. But barring that, my backup is mummification. Not only continued carbon sequester, but weight loss and a nice tan to boot!