Have you ever heard of HBOT, or Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy?
If not, you’re in for a treat!
It turns out this unique form of treatment can do wonders for a wide range of medical applications—from treating decompression sickness in scuba divers to slowing serious infections to accelerating wound recovery to addressing air bubbles in your blood vessels.
According to recent research, however, there’s a new use for it: treating traumatic brain injuries!
Below, we’ll take a closer look at what Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is, how it works, and what it can do for you. We’ll also dive into some of the recent studies linking HBOT to your brain health.
Let’s start off with the basics: what is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and how does it work?
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is a treatment in which you are enclosed in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, and the air pressure is increased to significantly higher (2-3 times) than normal. This increased pressure actually enables your lungs to absorb a great deal more oxygen than is possible at "normal" conditions. The increase of oxygen in your bloodstream can combat infection-causing bacteria and increase the activity of growth factors and stem cells that enable your body to make repairs to damage both internal and external.
The list of conditions currently treated by HBOT include:
(Information Courtesy of the Mayo Clinic [1])
If you read over that list carefully, you’ll notice "Traumatic Brain Injuries" or TBIs, were included. Research over the last decade has found that using HBOT can actually have a direct positive impact on your brain health.
In one study dating back to 2013 [2], patients suffering from TBIs were treated using HBOT. The researchers discovered that "significant improvements were demonstrated in cognitive function and quality of life following HBOT" and imaging identified "elevated brain activity in good agreement with the cognitive improvements".
HBOT was shown to increase neuroplasticity–defined as "the brain’s ability to modify, change, and adapt both structure and function throughout life and in response to experience"[3]. HBOT actually helped the brain to repair "chronically impaired brain functions" and helped to improve the quality of life of those suffering from TBIs.
In another study from 2018 [4], patients who’d sustained TBIs (between 0.3 and 33 years before the study date) underwent HBOT, which led to "significant improvement in all of the cognitive domains", including:
Wow! Talk about visible results.
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As the study explained, HBOT not only caused better brain tissue oxygenation, but increased the brains’ ability to repair itself on a cellular level, improved mitochondrial function, improved the blood-brain barrier, reduced inflammation, combatted cellular apoptosis (death), and alleviated oxidative stress.
All of these things stemmed from the exposure to higher-than-normal air pressure in an HBOT chamber.
But it’s not just TBIs that can be treated using HBOT.
According to the New York-based MD Hyperbaric Clinic [5], HBOT can be applied to a wide number of neurological and cognitive health problems, including:
As you can see, there are a lot of amazing brain-specific benefits of using this treatment!
If you’re interested in exploring how Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy can support brain health, improve memory, and aid in neurological recovery, we highly recommend attending this exclusive webinar. This session will provide expert insights into HBOT and how home-based devices can help optimize cognitive function and overall well-being. Join the Webinar Here
Not everyone will be well-suited to HBOT. Though the treatment is categorized as generally a safe procedure [6], there are some side effects you need to be aware of:
It’s important that you consult with your doctor to see if HBOT is the right therapy for you, or if it carries some risk that makes it unsafe for your specific health condition.
As you saw from everything above, HBOT has the potential to be a truly amazing means of treating (and possibly reversing) cognitive health problems. By increasing the amount of oxygen available in your body, it can stimulate stem cell and growth factor activity in your body, helping your brain to repair itself.
For anyone suffering from TBIs, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, CP, MS, or recovering from a stroke, it may be a medical route worth exploring.
Resources:
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy/about/pac-20394380
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0079995
[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01657/full
[4] https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/8/9/e023387
[5] https://mdhyperbaric.com/?page_id=826
[6] https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy/about/pac-20394380
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