About HBOT: Hyperbaric oxygenation therapy

Oxygen is essential!

Oxygen is a vital substance that allows our cells to produce energy and sustain life. Clean air is as important to our bodies as clean water. Without these, our bodies can neither function efficiently nor maintain a state of health. Oxygen typically accounts for about 21% of the air we breathe, though this may be significantly reduced due to:

High pollution (leading to less breathable O2)
Stress (causing a constriction of arterial oxygen flow)
Heart disease (which again constricts the flow of oxygen)

Vascular diseases are on the rise, and it has been shown that depleted tissue oxygenation, as well as the depletion of other vital nutrients, is playing a significant role in this increase. In healthy individuals, our red blood cells are extremely efficient in performing their task of delivering oxygen to the rest of the tissues in our body. However, as health declines or as disease processes develop, certain tissues in our body begin to become severely depleted of vital oxygen. This can happen gradually, as in chronic disease, or suddenly, as in a stroke or an incidence of near drowning.

What is HBOT?

HBOT is oxygen delivered under pressure. This is a means of delivering oxygen at higher concentrations for medical and prescriptive purposes. Hyperbaric is any pressure greater than the pressure at sea level (1.0 ATA). The greater the pressure, the greater the dose of oxygen delivered. In addition to pressurization, the percentage of oxygen is increased from room air (21% O2) to maximum of 100% O2. This again increases the dose of oxygen delivery.

The physiology of HBOT

The limiting factor of oxygenation at normal pressures (1.0 ATA) is our own blood and tissue physiology.

At 1.0 ATA, the red blood cells are able to carry only a limited amount of oxygen, which includes a very small percentage (about 3%) dissolved into our blood plasma. At higher pressures, oxygen is more readily dissolved in all bodily fluids, including blood, plasma, lymphatic fluid, cerebrospinal fluid and the fluid between cells. This increase in oxygenation helps to reverse states of tissue oxygen depletion, known clinically as hypoxia, which is often the cause of most cellular damage during disease states. It is important to understand the difference in physiology between healthy and injured tissues. Research has concluded that oxygen administered to healthy patients results in an action called vasoconstriction, meaning that once their blood vessel walls and surrounding tissues have been sufficiently saturated with oxygen, the vessels themselves constrict to restrict the flow of blood to the tissues. This is a natural protective mechanism of the body, which aids in reducing the toxicity of too much oxygen to healthy tissues.

However, in damaged tissues, where oxygen toxicity is less of a concern due to an already depleted state of tissue oxygenation, the vessels remain open and dilated until the hypoxic state is reversed. This phenomenon allows the oxygen to be routed through the body in exactly the pathway in which it is most needed by the tissues. At higher atmospheres, those approaching 3.0 ATA, oxygen‘s toxic properties are used to fight infections and cause damage to susceptible cancer cells. These effects occur in a therapeutic window between the level of oxygen that is toxic to us as complex
human organisms and the level that is toxic to simpler organisms and single cells such as bacteria and tumor Cells. Research in this area has proven quite promising and more research is currently underway.

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