If you were told there was a way to age yourself, recover faster from injury and reverse the effects of Covid, you would be skeptical.
But hyperbaric chamber therapy shows that those effects are not so far-fetched. The therapy involves spending one to two hours in a pressurized oxygen machine breathing 100 percent pure oxygen, which helps repair and replace damaged cells.
The problem, however, is the price. A few weeks of sessions can cost more than $50,000.
The age-old practice recently burst through mainstream sports, with elite athletes such as football player Vinicius Junior and basketball legend LeBron James using the technology to speed recovery from injury or swelling.
But it’s not just popular among the rich and famous. It turns out that more and more ordinary people are spending thousands of euros to slow down the aging process.
Hyperbaric oxygen chambers can increase air pressure up to 17 times the normal level
HBOT can be performed in single rooms or in large rooms with other participants
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) involves breathing 100 percent pure oxygen into a pressurized chamber. The air we breathe every day is fair 21 percent oxygenin comparison.
The air pressure inside is then gradually increased to a higher than normal level. In some rooms it can increase up to 17 times.
“If you breathe oxygen in a pressurized environment, it can increase the concentration of oxygen delivered to your cells and to various tissues in the body,” Dr. Mohammed Elamir, a chief physician at the Aviv Clinics in central Florida, told DailyMail. com .
Oxygen helps cells carry out vital functions, such as breaking down food for energy. It also helps repair and replace damaged cells, which in turn helps the body heal.
At the clinic of Dr. Elamir, patients are placed in multiplex rooms that can hold up to 14 people. Then they wear masks with 100 percent pure oxygen for 20 minutes at a time.
“That pressure is equivalent to diving 10 meters below sea level,” said Dr Elamir.
You can also do the treatment in an individual room.
Increasing oxygen levels trigger the production of stem cells and the growth of blood vessels in the brain. This helps tissues heal and helps the body fight off certain infections.
Soccer player Vinicius Junior became the latest sports star to show off their use of HBOT
Basketball sensation LeBron James has been an avid user of oxygen chambers in recent years
Early research suggests that stepping into these chambers regularly could halt or even reverse the effects of aging on the skin.
a Clinical Trial 2020 for example, from Tel Aviv University and the Shamir Medical Center in Israel found that HBOT helped stop the aging of blood cells and reversed the aging process. Blood cells even got younger as the treatments progressed.
The researchers suggested that regular HBOT could significantly increase telomere length. These are structures made from DNA sequences and proteins found at the end of chromosomes. Telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes from becoming entangled and affecting cell division.
Dr. Mohammed Elamir, a chief physician at Aviv Clinics in central Florida, said his clinic has seen about 500 people since opening in 2020.
“The problem is that the aging process or that replication process can cause damage to the chromosome,” said Dr Elamir.
However, each time a cell divides, the telomeres shorten until the cell dies. This process occurs naturally with age, although lifestyle factors, such as poor diet, obesity, stress, smoking and pollution, can impair telomere health.
Telomere length has long been associated with longer life. This is shown, for example, by research people who live to be at least 100 years old and relatively healthy have longer telomeres than centenarians in poor health.
The shorter the telomere, the faster the body ages. Therefore, as the study indicates HBOT could do, extending it could slow down the aging process.
In addition, a 2021 clinical study published in the journal Aging found that participants who completed 60 days of HBOT targeted different parameters of skin aging.
The treatment increased the protein collagen density. As the body ages, it loses the ability to make collagen, resulting in wrinkles, discoloration, papery skin, and slow recovery from injuries.
“The study indicates for the first time in humans that HBOT can significantly modulate the pathophysiology of skin aging in a healthy aging population,” the researchers wrote.
However, the research is still early days and the study authors have acknowledged their small sample size.
There may be another use for a growing problem.
a Study from 2022 investigated the effects of HBOT on lung Covid patients. Participants were 36 patients with cognitive symptoms such as brain fog. They reported reduced brain fog, improved memory and attention, more energy and less pain.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that approximately 23 million Americans are suffering from long-term Covid.
However, the research team only observed the effects of the treatment for one to three weeks, so any long-term benefits are unclear.
The increase in oxygen can heal injuries and slow recovery time in athletes, some studies suggest. This has led many sports stars, such as Tiger Woods, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Michael Phelps, to take up the practice.
HBOT is not FDA approved anti-aging, long Covid or sports injurieswhich means that the costs are not covered by the insurance.
Some estimates range from $250 to $600 per session. At Aviv, the smallest package is $10,500 for the smallest package and the largest costs about $51,500.
Oxygen therapy was first discovered in Britain in 1662 and has been used in the US since the early 1900s. In the 1940s, it was a common treatment to treat decompression sickness in United States Navy sailors.
The FDA has approved the therapy for this purpose, as well as gas embolisms, burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, gas gangrene, wounds, severe anemia and skin grafts, among others.
There are risks associated with the treatment. A common side effect is pressure in the ears, similar to when you’re on an airplane and have to pop your ears.
“Suppose you’re under pressure for the first 10 minutes and don’t pop your ears… you get pain in your ear and you get temporary damage to your eardrum,” Dr Elamir said. “So to mitigate this before anyone enters our rooms, we teach them how to pop their ears and equalize properly.”
In addition, Dr. Elamir said HBOT is not suitable for people with a history of seizures, people who are pregnant and people who have had a collapsed lung before.