62: Can Oxygen Heal Your Brain? – The Shocking Truth About Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy with Dr. Aaron Hartman

In the functional medicine world, you'll see these hyperbaric places pop up all over. Well, is this a fad? Is there actually data behind it? And there is. When I did my training, one of the things that was interesting that they had literature, this was animal literature showing that dementia models that even at 0.03 so it's less, it's a super small amount actually on spec scans improved the blood flow perfusion to these animals brains reproduced actually it was with a 1.3 ATA room air device. And this was published in 2022, showed that you actually could improve stem cell production. And this was doing hyperbaric for 90 minutes, 10 days over two weeks showed the stem cell markers increasing three times and they actually would stay up for up to 72 hours after the last exposure. They didn't go further than that. But we know that from the literature that there's about 8,000 genes that get upregulated from stem cells. Um, we know that in some of the hyperbaric literature you can actually as well increase your stem cells by eight fold. So you can affecting 8,000 genes eight fold increase in stem CE. Really powerful tool. Let's talk briefly about a treatment or therapy that's been around since the 1600s, is now coming back into vogue, has been hyped up a lot. Is it all that you think it is? Is it hype or is it actually that powerful of a tool? So the first question you might be asking yourself is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Before I take a deep dive, I want to say be talking about these little short things. It's something we're doing once a week on Fridays, posting these out, just taking deep dives into things. People have asked us about the things that have popped up within our community as well as in the office. These are deep dives into particular topics of interest that hopefully will help you in your healthcare journey. So if this information is helpful, please like share. Subscribe now, let's talk about hyperoxygen therapy. So it's really interesting. When I did my hyperbaric oxygen certification probably about two years ago, one of the things I was actually intrigued by was, you know, people have heard of Caisson's disease, which was an illness that people got during building the Brooklyn bridge in the 1800s because they had to go down like 60 plus being 60ft underwater, which is almost 2 atmospheres. People come up really quickly and get basically the bends. But they called it Caissons disease because they didn't know what it was. But the reality is they had to figure out how to treat that in the 1800s. Well, they used information they knew going back to the 1600s when the very first hyperbaric. These now obviously these were very rudimentary, but chambers were created. Well fast forward to between World War I and World War II. There actually was a health spa, health center, so to speak. The very for me, the very first of it's kind of new knows that actually was basically hyperbaric. It was a massive sphere that you can live in for a week at a time. Unfortunately got dismantled during World War I, I believe because they need the materials for supplying the war effort. And no one's ever really put together back a similar place. But the point is, is hyperbaric oxygen therapy is not new. There's about 12 different FDA indications for it, including radiation necrosis. If you have like radiation to breast for breast cancer and the tissue dyes, you can actually use it to help heal that flesh eating bacteria, a gangrene. If you're a diabetic patient and you've had gangrene, your wound's not healing, you can actually use hyperbaric oxygen to reperfuse that lemon and save it. This is pretty sounds pretty cool. If you've had surgery and you actually have developed a necrotic flap, a flap that's done, you can actually use hyperbaric to treat that. So these are FDA approved indications. But I was kind of curious, why is it that you don't hear about here in Richmond there's three, there's a wound center and then two other hospitals that I know of that have chambers. Why don't you hear about people using this? Well, the reality comes down to it just takes time for insurance to approve the indications. Right. And if you have flesh eating bacteria, you can't wait the four to six weeks for the insurance approval. So people tend to get surgery and just because of that it's not commonly used. But in the functional medicine world, you'll see these hyperbaric places pop up all over. Well, is this a fad? Is there actually data behind it? And there is. When I did my training, one of the things that was interesting that they had literature and this was animal literature showing that dementia models that even at 0.03 so it's less, it's a super small amount actually on spec scans improved the blood flow perfusion to these animals brains. Well actually was this reproduced? Actually it was with a 1.3 ATA room air device. And this was published in 2022 showed that you actually could improve stem cell production. And this was doing hyperbaric for 90 minutes. Five day 10 days over two weeks showed the stem cell markers increasing three times and they actually would stay up for up to 72 hours after the last exposure. They didn't go further than that. But we know that from the literature that there's about 8,000 genes that get upregulated from stem cells. We know that in some of the hyperbaric literature you can actually as well increase your stem cells by eight fold. So you can affecting 8,000 genes, eight fold increase in stem cell production. Really powerful tool.

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What are the diseases that we know that hyperbaric helps for? One of the best. This is my go to if someone has a traumatic brain injury, a TBI or a stroke after they get to the hospital. Part of both those entries are low functioning brain tissue that if left to its own devices will eventually stop functioning. You can literally get the blood to go those places with hyperbaric chamber. And there's great literature on traumatic brain injuries as well as stroke. What other things? You know, kids with autism, pandas pans have been using it to help with some of them because they have mitochondrial issues. Well, if hyperbaric improves mitochondrial function, energy production, which is one of the mechanism of action, then you assume that it would actually have a positive impact on neurological conditions. But if you've watched some of these little short 10 minute things, you may remember I recently talked about mitochondrial dysfunction meet the root cause of all chronic illnesses. So if you have something that improves mitochondrial function, you'd think it would help a whole host of different things. And it does. There's interesting literature on inflammatory bowel disease. I've actually had a patient who has Crohn's. Still has Crohn's. It's pretty much in remission right now at this stage. But he had had fistulas which are openings in the Crohn's that had started after surgery and that's common with Crohn's. He had them for about eight years doing hyperbaric dives, actually cured those up. And they've been not reactive for the last three years. There's interesting data using hyperbaric to change your gut microbiome, where if you follow some of the newer literature, you know, the gut microbiome is a big, big issue with health. Hyperbaric helps with that as well. So it's easy to see how hyperbaric therapy can help most conditions. What's interesting right now, where we're hearing more about it is an elite athlete world, the executive world, and the biohacking world. People using it as an anti aging thing to minimize old brain injuries as well as to improve gut function and improve mitochondrial health, brain health, a whole host of things. And when we talked about previously and some of these other things we've done about how part of mitochondrial dysfunction gets worn down through nutrient deficiencies, through toxin exposures, inflammation, infections, it's interesting how hyperbaric actually, in a way, makes your tolerance for those things go up. So even if you had an infection or nutrient deficiencies or heavy metals, you get less of an impact from it. And strangely enough, you can actually use it in chronic Lyme. It's been using chronic Lyme as well as people with recurrent Epstein Barr. Now the question is, how does that work there? And one of the things that happens is in the concept of dysfunctional cells or senescent cells, hyperbaric oxygen actually has a bigger impact on those cells than typical cells because they get dysfunctional and they don't actually make energy as well. And so they don't actually produce oxygen. The way oxygen works. By producing energy in those cells, it gets rerouted to make lactic acid, which an extreme version of that is cancer, while hyperbaric reverses this whole entire thing. So hope you're seeing how hyperbaric can be super impactful. But I want to unwrap one fallacy of it, and that's even small amounts are therapeutic, but you have to do them longer and for longer periods of time. If you have an acute illness, you really want to do a medical grade hyperbaric, which is typically 1.5 atmospheres to 2 atmospheres at 100% oxygen. So for like, if you're a cancer patient, I will use this with some of my cancer patients or patients dealing with post chemo effects. You want to do deep dive to get that initial big boost. And that's what we did with our daughter and actually started her vision she actually started able to see enough to actually read words and then write. After her first and second, some second bouts of hyperbaric therapy, her third, she didn't have any big changes, but we've been doing it daily. She has a tank at home that she does five days a week. But it's the big bang for the buck was with the first aspect of it. And so that's where if you have a major issue, if you're a cancer patient, traumatic brain injury patient, stroke patient, someone who really needs the big bump, you really need to find a hyperbaric center that can give you the big boost. And then if you're lifelong dealing with neurological issues, then you probably should think about getting your own chamber. I have a Parkinson's patient right now that I'm working with a couple actually who are actually using, they're using IV vitamin C in addition, some other things. But hyperbaric is one of the staples of their therapy and they've been pretty stable several years into their Parkinson's diagnosis. So the point is that hyperbaric can be very useful. But unfortunately most practitioners are recommending it haven't been certified in hyperbaric medicine, haven't really taken a deep study. So they recommend only soft chambers because they're more readily available, not the deep chambers. But the point is hyperbaric is you're going to hear more and more about this as people become more aware about some of the cutting edge things. And so just be aware, it is helpful, does work, and for some it can be a game changer and hopefully part of education. Really need to get more of these centers out there. Unfortunately here in Central Virginia and Richmond, patients have to go to either Charlottesville or Northern Virginia or Norfolk. There's actually not a center in central Virginia. So the point is that we just don't have enough of those these to be clinically used by enough people to have to hear about it and make big impacts. So anyway, if this information is helpful, please like share, subscribe. If you have a topic you'd like to talk about, please let us know. Otherwise, we'll talk to you later. Take care. Talk to you soon.

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