A particular chamber is used to supply strong, pressurized oxygen during hyperbaric oxygen therapy. It’s used to treat several conditions. You’ll spend about two hours in the chamber. You may feel pressure in your ears as the air is compressed — like on a diving plane or boat ride.
Increased Blood Oxygenation
As the body heals a wound, it needs oxygen to build new tissues and repair damaged ones. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy boosts this process. During treatment, you breathe pure oxygen inside a small cylinder pressurized to about 1.5 times the normal level of air pressure. This enables the plasma in your blood to transport a huge amount of healing oxygen deep into tissues and other physiological fluids, including the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. This boost in oxygen can help the body regenerate tissues, kill bacteria and even make new blood vessels grow to bring more oxygen-rich blood to damaged areas. This is known as neovascularization. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy also enhances the effectiveness of antibiotics in fighting infections. Being in the chamber feels strange at first, especially for claustrophobic people. But these sensations quickly disappear as your body adapts to the higher pressures.
Increased Circulation
One of the key reasons HBOT is so effective is that it dramatically improves your blood circulation. This increases the amount of oxygen your blood carries and allows more oxygen to reach tissue in high-need areas, like crush injuries or nonhealing wounds. This is due to Boyle’s Law, which states that the volume of a gas is proportional to its pressure at a constant temperature. This is why you need a pressurized environment to treat certain conditions, such as decompression sickness (the bends) in scuba divers. White blood cells fight infections, viruses, and illnesses that invade your body. According to studies, hyperbaric oxygen therapy can increase your white blood cell count and enhance its functionality. Before receiving HBOT, you must talk to your doctor about your medical history and health problems. It would help if you also ensured that any medical implant devices, such as pacemakers, are compatible with the pure oxygen in the hyperbaric chamber.
Improved Immune System
Your body produces more white blood cells due to hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which aids in the fight against illness and infection. This may result in a shorter recovery time from disease or injury. Increased oxygen encourages new blood vessels to form and stimulates the growth of endothelial cells, which are important for tissue repair. Hyperbaric oxygen also has epigenetic effects, turning off genes responsible for inflammation.
Breathing 100% medical-grade oxygen inside a safe and comfortable pressurized chamber allows the body to be treated for various conditions. This non-invasive treatment combines the laws of physics – Boyle’s Law, Dalton’s Law and Henry’s Law – with the power of oxygen to effectively enhance healing for many skin, lung and bone disorders.
Reduced Pain
The oxygen-rich atmosphere inside the chamber can help decrease inflammation and swelling in injured tissues, a great way to reduce pain. It also helps to promote the growth of new blood vessels in these wounded tissues, which can speed healing. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a safe treatment for most people, but it does carry some risks. The most common side effects are problems with your ears and sinuses caused by changing air pressure, which can cause ear infections or fluid leakage in the eardrum. It can also cause low blood sugar in people who use insulin to treat diabetes and seizures from too much oxygen in the central nervous system.
HBOT is a great tool to add to your health arsenal. It is helpful for various conditions and can treat some infections that aren’t responsive to antibiotics. It can even treat stubborn chronic wounds and certain types of poisoning.
