Over the last several years, probably more than 10 years now, professional athletes have been using Hyperbaric chambers to improve healing from bruising and injuries and it has worked fantastically for them.
Hyperbaric Oxygen chamber therapy works by a person breathing near 100 percent oxygen intermittently while inside the hyperbaric chamber that is pressurized to greater than 1.4 times sea level pressure.
Why Does HyperBaric Oxygen Therapy Work?
The reason that this works is because the body’s tissues need oxygen to work. Additional oxygen can help damaged tissue to heal. Oxygen at high pressure can enhance tissue function and fight infection, under certain conditions. At 1.4 ATA, the ambient pressure is three times higher than the air pressure we normally breathe. Breathing almost pure oxygen at this pressure can increase the concentration of oxygen available to the lungs by up to three times.
I am a big fan at leveraging the tech that professional athletes use for recovery from exercise but I was at the FDA consumer site today and saw that people have stretched the idea of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy into a new cure all for almost everything.
We see these kind of things often. A great idea is extended to be a cure all for lots of things that it was never designed for. Steroids for muscle gain, Acai berries for anything, and lately hyperbolic therapy for people with genetic diseases.
Not sure how this can be extended to the following diseases but it looks like there is some research that may say it works.
Approval for HyperBaric Chamber Therapy?
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared hyperbaric chambers for certain medical uses, such as treating decompression sickness suffered by divers.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy has not, however, been proven to be the kind of universal treatment it has been touted to be on some Internet sites. FDA is concerned that some claims made by treatment centers using Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy may give consumers a wrong impression that could ultimately endanger their health.
Despite over a century of use in medical settings, hyperbaric oxygen remains a controversial therapy. The last 20 years have seen a clarification of the mechanism of action of hyperbaric therapy and a greater understanding of its potential benefit.
As with other things that we see this looks like a technology that may be promising for some things but of course you need to be careful in what you read and be responsible to check the pros and cons of any therapy.