Are you worried about getting back on the field after your latest injury or after an intense practice session? Find out how hyperbaric oxygen therapy can help you get back to full strength as soon as possible.
If you’ve been injured or strained by playing sports, you know the name of the game is recovery: How quickly can you heal and get back out on the field?
Athletes down through the ages have tried hundreds of methods to return to action as quickly as possible.
Thanks to new technology, we now have a promising treatment to help athletes recover from musculoskeletal injuries as quickly as possible: hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
At Vayu Advanced Wound Clinic and Hyperbarics, our team, led by Dr. Badam, MD, CWSP, UHM, is ready to assess and treat your injury if you’re a good candidate for this therapy.
Here, Dr. Badam, who is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Wound Care, and fellowship trained in Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine, explains what you need to know.
What is hyperbaric oxygen therapy?
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a therapeutic process that provides pure oxygen to your body inside a pressurized chamber. The air pressure inside the chamber is 1.5 to 2.5 times normal pressure, which allows your blood,serum and plasma to absorb plenty of oxygen leading to at least 20 times more quantitative oxygen in your body.
The air you breathe every day includes 21% oxygen, while you’re breathing in 100% oxygen at a higher pressure when you undergo HBOT.
This additional oxygen helps decrease inflammation and swelling in your body, increases the fight against infection, provides faster healing and more blood vessel growth, and helps ramp up the production of stem cells and growth factors.
Each session in the chamber lasts for 60-110 minutes. The number of treatments varies according to your specific situation, but it usually takes 10-40 sessions to see the best results.
How does it help with healing?
HBOT has also been shown to help heal musculoskeletal injuries, such as the injuries athletes often receive in sports.
At the most basic level, every injury damages your cells, and your body recovers (or heals) by repairing that damage. Oxygen plays a vital role in that healing process, so HBOT simply speeds up the process by super-saturating your body with oxygen.
The higher-than-normal pressure forces the oxygen into your tissues and bones, which jumpstarts the repair process.
HBOT also speeds the healing process by reducing swelling, growing new blood vessels, stimulating bone cell regeneration, and enhancing production of stem cells and collagen.
The upshot of all this is that you can speed up your healing process simply by spending some time in the chamber.