The portable hyperbaric chamber is effective even at low pressure

I am often asked why hyperbaric chamber sessions are not offered by the medical profession to treat a damaged brain. It is true, why is a therapy with such impressive results not indicated by the High Authority of Health to treat a head trauma , a stroke , or drowning ?
In my opinion, there are several reasons for this. And today, I would like to share with you a study that provides a beginning explanation for one of these reasons: a poor choice of placebo treatment.

The protocol for conducting a good study on hyperbaric oxygen therapy

Before introducing you to the study in question, here is a short introduction to help you understand what comes next. Generally, in order to carry out a quality study, scientists use 2 groups of patients:

• The first group receives real treatment. That is, several dives in a hyperbaric chamber, during which the patients will breathe pure oxygen.
• The second group receives a " fake " hyperbaric treatment.

A few days or weeks later, scientists evaluate the patients in both groups and compare their cognitive progress.

• If patients in the first group made cognitive progress, and those in the second group did not, then the study demonstrates that hyperbaric treatment is beneficial for the brain.
• If there is no significant cognitive difference between the two groups, then the study demonstrates that the treatment has no effect.

But be careful! In order not to distort the results of the experiment (placebo effect), the patients in the second group must not know that they are receiving a "fake" treatment! Which is impossible to do when using a hyperbaric chamber... Indeed, when the atmospheric pressure increases inside the chamber, we necessarily feel it at ear level.

Different maneuvers to perform to balance your ears. Video credit: DAN boater

We must necessarily balance our ears to no longer be bothered. Like in an airplane, during the landing phase. Thus, for the patients in the second group who receive the "fake" treatment, the scientists are still obliged to slightly increase the pressure in the hyperbaric chamber. In order to provoke this famous sensation at the level of the ears. And concerning the mask, for this fake treatment, it is not pure oxygen that comes out but only air. Thus the patients do not know if they are receiving the real treatment, or the "fake" treatment.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy to treat the brain

So why is hyperbaric oxygen therapy not yet democratized to treat the brain? Well, because there are studies reporting contradictory results! And yes, some teams of researchers have not found any significant difference between the 2 groups of patients, at the end of their respective treatments...

Yes, but a recent study https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1096/fasebj.2022.36.S1.R5221 comes to provide a start of an explanation for this! A group of researchers has just demonstrated that the "false" treatment used... is in reality a real effective hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatment .

Breathing only air (without the addition of pure oxygen) in a lightly pressurized portable hyperbaric chamber also has a therapeutic effect!

Portable hyperbaric chamber enables proliferation of progenitor stem cells

In this study, 8 adult subjects made 10 dives in a portable hyperbaric chamber over a period of 2 weeks. The dives were made without an oxygen mask. That is to say, these 8 people breathed the ambient air inside the chamber.

During this study, scientists took 4 blood samples to measure the level of progenitor stem cells in these people:

• Immediately before the first dive ("Control")
• Immediately after the first dive ("Post Tx 1")
• Before the 10th dive ("Pre Tx 10")
• 72 hours after the final dive (“72h Post Tx 10”)

The results are astonishing: breathing ambient air, in a portable hyperbaric chamber, triggers the proliferation of progenitor stem cells! And even more !

The team of researchers concludes:

We conclude that breathing room air at 1.3 ATA daily for 60 minutes over a 2-week period has significant effects on the mobilization of progenitor stem cells and is therefore physiologically active. These results suggest that breathing air at 1.3 ATA hyperbaric pressure daily is a dose-based treatment, not a placebo or sham. These data suggest that reevaluation of its use as a placebo control in scientific research is warranted.

Kent MacLaughlin, Jacob J. Lamers, Rudolf Braun, Marlowe W. Eldridge. Oxygen Dose: A new perspective. The FASEB journal, volume 36, Issue S1, May 2022

This team of researchers was able to demonstrate that the "false" treatment used by so many studies was indeed a real hyperbaric treatment! This study has the effect of a bomb! It calls into question certain studies that concluded that hyperbaric oxygen therapy had no effect! There is still a long way to go before hyperbaric chamber sessions are offered to us in hospitals to treat the brain. But today a new step has just been taken.