Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a painless, noninvasive therapy. Our patients often tell us they don’t notice the pressure change, except for a bit in their ears. Specifically, some feel a bit of pressure in their ears, like when they take off in an airplane. It feels like their ears are “popping.” After a treatment, some patients say they can think more clearly and that they have more energy. If there has been pain from swelling or impinged nerves, patients often comment on the pain relief, plus increased strength and range of motion after their treatments.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy works by increasing pressure in a hyperbaric chamber, along with 100% oxygen. Oxygen molecules under pressure compress smaller than the liquid in the body, which enables them to dissolve directly into the plasma, where it can be carried throughout the body. This allows the oxygen to penetrate membranes and reach injured areas of the body that are malfunctioning due to lack of oxygen. Thus, your brain, bones, organs, and muscle tissues become highly saturated with oxygen, resulting in numerous health benefits, including healing diseased or damaged areas and increasing recovery of new and old injury sites.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HB0T) is a medical treatment where you inhale 100% oxygen in a chamber with increased atmospheric pressure. HBOT injects 400x the oxygen into your tissues and bones and mobilizes stem cells. It regrows healthy tissues in the brain, blood vessels, skin and bones. It also reduces pain and swelling, and speeds recovery.

A hyperbaric chamber is used to heal a variety of injuries and diseases. It can be a monoplace chamber, meaning that it is built to be used by one person at a time, or it can be a multiplace chamber, which can treat 2 to 30+ people during a single session. 

Treatment in a hyperbaric chamber heals bones, tissues, nerves, the brain, skin, and organs throughout the body. It is most often used to treat stubborn infections and slow-healing wounds, injuries, bones that won’t heal, radiation damage from cancer treatments and burns. it speeds up healing from surgery, prevents some scar tissue from forming, reduces pain, helps reverse sudden hearing loss and sudden blindness, and stimulates the down-regulation of inflammatory genes. Studies show that it rehabilitates damage from stroke and autoimmune diseases, reduces skin damage from sun exposure, reduces nitrogen damage during decompression sickness and speeds healing from athletic injuries and other accidents and injuries. It also reduces pain and damage from swelling in the brain and throughout the body.

Most patients feel better after their hyperbaric treatment in a number of ways. For example, athletes who come in for rapid injury recovery, they can feel significant pain relief after just one treatment. The pressure with the oxygen reduces swelling, forcing more oxygen and nutrients into the injured or diseased areas. This can relieve pain and improve range of motion. Thus, movement and intensive activity are easier. At the same time, we also warn athletes that they may feel so pain-free that they may want to go immediately back to their full training schedule. We try to encourage them to give their tissues more time to fully heal before resuming their heavy training schedule.

In other cases, a patient can feel worse for a short time after treatment, as their body is detoxifying. The oxygen that floods a patient’s system can stimulate cells to detoxify rapidly or re-invigorate cells that were idling or not functioning fully. In some cases, the treatment can cause such a rapid detoxification effect that it can cause stress and what is called a herxheimer reaction. This may occur when there is an active infection. This may lead to mild flu like symptoms. However, hyperbaric treatment helps these infections heal more rapidly, and so after the requisite number of treatments, patients feel significantly better and at times, they tell us that they have not felt so pain free and able to function again for years or even decades.