Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has transitioned from a niche medical treatment in hospitals to a wellness trend that wealthy athletes, celebrities, and biohackers are willing to spend money on to try. The chambers are pressurized, allowing you to breathe in more oxygen with the goal of making your body more efficient. So, does oxygen therapy actually work, and does it live up to the hype?
Oxygen therapy is becoming mainstream, with everything from oxygen bars to portable inhalers, luxurious spas, and at-home chambers. The chambers come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and price points. The increased demand comes thanks to tantalizing papers like this one. The study looks at the health benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy or HBOT.
Hyperbaric simply means higher than normal pressure. In this study, there were two key findings that suggested that some signs of aging had been reversed: longer telomeres and a reduction of malfunctioning cells.
Telomeres are like molecular safety helmets for DNA, and as our cells age and divide, these caps get shorter, compromising the stability of genes, which makes for unstable cells that are more prone to turn cancerous or die. In Shai’s study, participants spent 90 minutes in chambers like this one every day for 60 days, and his team found that the proportion of malfunctioning immune system cells went down by a few percentage points after treatment compared to before. That’s important because as we age, our cognitive abilities, heart health, and ability to fight infections decline, in part because the cells that make up our organs start to get sick and die.
Age-related functional decline is the greatest threat our society faces. However, Shai noted that his findings only apply to the specific method used in his study. Therefore, another study was conducted at a clinic in New Jersey to examine how other HBOT treatments work. Here, there is a hyperbaric area where the environment has increased pressure and higher oxygen concentration. Oxygen is an essential nutrient that helps our cells and bodies function. The air we breathe contains about 20% oxygen whether you’re at sea level or at high altitudes, but as you go higher, the pressure decreases, and oxygen molecules become more dispersed.
A hyperbaric oxygen chamber uses pressure to compress the air. To illustrate this compression, Jason entered a chamber with a fully inflated balloon. As the pressure increased, the balloon shrank, and the air and oxygen inside became more concentrated.
Most oxygen chambers in hospitals operate at about 2 to 3 times the pressure at sea level. Patients then breathe through a mask. Instead of the 20% oxygen in normal air, the mask provides 100% oxygen from tanks. Shai told me that, along with the high pressure in the chamber, the mask helps deliver up to 16 times more oxygen into the bloodstream, which then travels to the muscles and organs. This increases the amount of oxygen available to power the body.
Compared to the 1970s, there are now more hospitals offering hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). However, the use of therapeutic hyperbaric oxygen dates back over 100 years, with doctors trying to help divers recover from decompression sickness, also known as “the bends.” This condition occurs when divers ascend too quickly. To illustrate what that might look like, Jason inflated a second balloon while inside the hyperbaric chamber. Now, imagine your lungs as that balloon when the chamber returns to sea-level pressure. In the worst-case scenario, your lungs could rupture.
Right now, there are only 13 scenarios where insurance will pay for HBOT, and those are also the only ones you’d be able to get treated for at a hospital. At the cellular level, higher oxygen intake increases oxygen delivery to deprived areas when someone has the bends. It also helps prevent further damage by reducing inflammation and hopefully speeds up the healing process. In animal studies, hyperbaric oxygen therapy increased the growth of new blood vessels, and some of Shai’s work shows similar effects in humans. Results like these, plus all the social media hype, have made oxygen therapy super popular. People are installing oxygen chambers at home or visiting clinics to seek the previously mentioned health benefits.
Each chamber will have an entrance, pressure valves that we will reach, and pressure gauges. These tools are simply to control the flow of oxygen and air in and out.
Clinics can administer HBOT off-label, meaning at a clinician’s discretion. That’s not regulated by the FDA. The treatment also varies from location to location, depending on the equipment and the amount of pressure that’s used. In Jason’s chamber, patients breathe in 100% oxygen continuously. At Shai’s clinics, they take off the mask every couple of minutes. He says that this tricks the body into thinking it’s starved for oxygen, triggering all the repair mechanisms and enhancing the body’s anti-aging capabilities. It remains unclear whether HBOT has long-term effectiveness and under what conditions. The fact is that many questions people ask have answers we still do not know. Like any method, HBOT also has known risks. The medical professionals I spoke to mentioned that individuals with epilepsy, COPD, or empyema should not use hyperbaric oxygen therapy at very high pressures, as it can be dangerous.
There are also less serious side effects, such as temporary vision changes, lightheadedness, claustrophobia, vomiting, and ear damage. Soft chambers people install at home are pumped with room air, so the quality of the air you breathe is harder to track. Experts say that most hard chambers are installed in hospitals and clinics, but there have also been reports of hard chambers exploding at home.
I usually try out these therapies for myself, but after talking to my doctor, I decided against it. But if you decide to try it, make sure to speak to a trained medical professional before getting into any chamber. If you want to treat yourself, do it right; don’t take risks. The overarching advice I got was: don’t try this at home, especially by yourself.
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