You only need to sit and breathe. That will do everything!

The terrible thing about Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is that if the person did not heal after a period that is usually up to two years, he probably will never heal. The common belief is that brain region simply died, and we don’t know how to fix death. Lora Herzog, a children doctor, had a car accident. She was defined with a “minor head injury”. But she felt really bad, her brain turned into something between fog to a bobble gun. She could not remember names, and her mind was distracted all the time.

Restart without saving

People with TBI sometimes describe the feeling that their brain doing restarts every few minutes, without saving. The cognitive activity is impaired, so people with TBI are confused, don’t remember the way, can not concentrate, and do not manage simple math exercise.

Turns out that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can help even five years after getting injured. The assumption is that at TBI there are two kinds of lesions. The first lesion causes necrosis and so death of brain cells. In that condition, nowdays there is no way to help. But the second lesion causes an impaired metabolism. The cells are still alive, just not functioning. Here the hyperbaric oxygen therapy plays a role.

How does this magic happen?

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy uses a pressure of 1.5 atmospheres (like 5 meters under water) and bigger oxygen concentration (100% oxygen). Oxygen is super important for cell functioning, because together with glukos, it supplies the material for making energy by the mitochondria. More oxygen can help in cases where arteries are narrow or blocked, and when metabolism of a cell is impaired so it uses a lot of energy.

In israel, hyperbaric oxygen therapy was a therapy for injurys due to diabetes mellitus. If you are a diabetes mellitus patient and you hit your leg, your body will work very hard to heal this hit and may not succeed, because of the blood flow. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy gives the body more oxygen and therefore help diabetes mellitus before amputation to relive the place that is hurt. While treating diabetes mellitus patins, doctors realized the thearpy is also reparing nerological problems. Brain imaging before and after therapy showed that brain region that thought to be dead, become active again.

Anti-Aging is over!

Except for healing, hyperbaric oxygen therapy can also revers aging. You are probably familiar with the phrase “Anti-Aging” from creams and medicine that stop aging. Rivers aging is different and totally crazy - the ability of taking people back in time! How can this make any sense?

Aging can be defined by physiological phenomenons (like kidney failure, cognitive problems, and heart attack) or by genomical phenomena (when cells that stop multiplying). At hyperbaric oxygen therapy the oxygen level increases. After the therapy, the oxygen level decreases back to norm, and some cells in the body read this difference as a distress - and activate stem cells, who play a role in fixing and creating organs. For example, more stem cells can help creating more veins and arteries that flow blood to the brain and different organs. Therefor, hyperbaric oxygen therapy also help sexual functioning (for men) like medicine that wide blood vessels.

But…

So far looks like hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a magic cure. Of course it’s not. First of all, it can’t handle dead cells, so some of the impairs stay even after therapy. Here are a few problems with hyperbaric oxygen therapy:

1. It’s extermly expensive. The payment is per visit. For healing afret TBI the need is for 30-60 visits.
2. The air pressure can cause ear Barotrauma, tearing the eardrum. This is a reversible but unpleasant injury.
3. A lot of preesure on the lungs can lead to a rupture or air chest. This injury can be prevented by imaging the chest and not treating when it’s risky.
4. Activating brain regins can may activate an epileptic epicenter and cause a seizure. The incidence is very low.
5. @tfcoates added more risk - oxygen toxicity. This is prevent by a protocol of breathing once in a while normal air (oxygen breaks).

This therapy is new and still at research, I believe we will definitely find out amazing insights!

photos credits:

1 Peter Pan by Disney

2 http://saintfrancisanimalhospital.org/vet-services/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy/

Reference:

Boussi-Gross, R., Golan, H., Fishlev, G., Bechor, Y., Volkov, O., Bergan, J., & Efrati, S. (2013). Hyperbaric oxygen therapy can improve post concussion syndrome years after mild traumatic brain injury-randomized prospective trial. PloS one, 8(11), e79995.‏

If you liked this post, you may enjoy this also:

• Article in Scince Daily: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131118132915.htm
• Lora Herzog’s story (hebrew): https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.1338082
• Hyperbaric oxygen for injury healing (hebrew): http://www.assafh.org/clinic/Hifrbaric/Documents/WOUNDS_-Efrati_com.pdf