A New Treatment For Blasting Tissues With Oxygen, Growing New Blood Vessels, Recovering Faster, Killing Bacteria, Building Stem Cells & Much More!

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, pretty severe skin and nerve and infections that aren't responding to traditional care. They then go into this high pressure, high oxygen environment, and typically with pretty good results.

So, theoretically, if I could crawl in this thing and have more oxygen for a workout, if I were to do a workout mid morning or mid afternoon.

For example, the Vitaris was built to actually have two people inside, so you might not have to sacrifice your marriage.

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Oh, well, hello. Thank you for stopping by the podcast, which is actually kind of cool. Today we're going to be talking about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which might sound like some fringe thing a NASA astronaut would do to recover after space travel, but that I have found increasingly interesting and useful for myself when I'm not just traveling, but now when I'm at home for everything from hyperoxygenation to aiding in killing bacteria, assisting with angiogenesis or the formation of new blood vessels, a surge of a really good antioxidant called superoxide dismutase, fibroblasts production, collagen production, bone density, a decrease in inflammation. The more I look into hbot, the more I am impressed with it. So I figured it was high time I did an actual podcast on what the heck HBOT is. So I think you're gonna dig this one. All right, folks, it's Ben and I have talked about this a few times, alluded to it before on a few podcasts, and many of you know, I now have this strange tube in my basement that, that I climb into that my kids and my wife are also now using to concentrate pressurized oxygen that we breathe for recovery for jet lag. I take naps in there. I do breath work protocols in there. It's called Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. It's also known as hbot. Now, you may have heard about HBOT before. It's been used in medical clinics for a long time, but it's kind of like hitting the biohacking and the health scene now for uses that go beyond simply medical management of, say, a wound or TBI or concussion or something like that. And I recently got my hands on this brand new book called Oxygen Under Oxygen Under Pressure. Using Hyperbaric Oxygen to restore health, reduce inflammation, reverse aging, and revolutionize healthcare. And this book really is a great kind of scientific treatise of exactly what HBOT is and how to use it properly. Everything from how frequently should you use it to the effect it has on stem cells to how it might surge an increase in antioxidants, specifically superoxide dismutase, how it works for the gut and how it can impair bacterial metabolism of certain type of gut issues, how it can increase fibroblast and collagen production, osteoblast production for bone dens. Really interesting host of things that I wanted to dive into today. So the hyperbaric chamber I've been using in my basement, now it's right next to my sauna. It's a soft shell chamber. I can pick it up, move it anywhere in the house. And it was very simple to set up. It's called the Vitaris 320. And I got it from this company called HBOT USA. Well, Jason Sonners, my guest today is actually the owner and clinical director of New Jers Hyperbaric Oxygen center and also a family wellness center there where he practices as a chiropractic physician. But he's also the owner of HBOT USA and just studies this stuff all day long and is one of the few guys who I found who can speak to just about every single aspect from both practical to scientific when it comes to hbot. So I decided I should get him on the show and we should chat about all things breathing, pure oxygen. Everything that we talk about you can access in terms of the show notes, if you want to check out the model, the HBOT chamber I've been using, et cetera. All of that's going to be at BenGreenfieldFitness.comhbot BenGreenfieldFitness.com hbot I also have a link over there to or I'm sorry, BenGreenfulFitness.comHBOT podcast it's BenGreenfulFitness.com HBOT podcast. But if you go to BenGreen GreenfieldFitness.com HBOT you can check out the chamber I've been using and learn more about what Jason does. And they've, they've set up a discount for my listeners too, if anybody wants to get a chamber for their home or, or for their clinic. So, Jason, sorry about that long intro, but welcome to the show, man.

That was a great intro. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good summary.

Pride myself on my fantastic introductions. Been practicing for a long time. Practice in front of the mirror last night just, just to prepare for that.

Perfect.

Yeah. So, so you, I don't think, from what I understand, just kind of like stumbled across HBOT and began to implement it in your clinic. Did you begin to use this personally for personal issues before you kind of realized everything else that it could do.

Yeah. So like you said, so we have a clinic in New Jersey and we've been in practice for 16 years. And I actually herniated a disc and I had a really pretty terrible neuropathy in my right foot. And my wife's also a chiropractor. I was getting treated. We're very into nutrition and all different modalities. So at the time we were doing everything we knew how to do to help me. And I was back to work and I was pain free in about maybe two weeks. But I was left with this drop foot in my right foot for over a year and a half after that injury and looking for a solution everywhere because I was 20, gosh, I think I was 25 or 26 at the time, and just trying to figure out, how am I going to get my leg back? How am I getting my foot back? And so we came across hyperbaric oxygen. And that was the thing, that was the one thing that actually took a few months of treatment, but that was the one thing that finally gave me my foot back, the feeling and the function back. So once I saw that, actually my stepdad has Ms. And at the time was recently diagnosed with a pretty aggressive version of Ms. And so we started treating him next and he had amazing results. So once I saw, you know, it helped my neuropathy. And even though Ms. Was a totally different mechanism, but it's also neurologic, you know, neuropathic. And it helped him so much. I said, wow, there's something here. I need to, you know, before I even bring it into my clinic, I need to know why this is happening. And that's when I started really diving, you know, pretty deep into the science and the research to, to kind of try to figure that out.

Okay, well, go ahead. I don't want to.

No, I was just saying then we started. That's when we started actually implementing it in our clinic.

Okay, nowI want to know a little bit more about how it would have existed anyways from a pure medical standpoint, like how this thing has been used in medicine. Because I don't think a lot of people realize how rich a history it has in medical use. But before we do, I think we should probably step back and clarify exactly what HBOT is. So can. Can you explain hyperbaric oxygen to people?

Sure. So. So hyperbaric oxygen, honestly. So hyperbaric. So increased pressure and then oxygen. So increased pressure of oxygen. And there's a lot of different setups. So it could literally just be increased pressure of air because we know air is 21% oxygen. So if you took air and just pressurized it, that would be hyperbaric oxygen. It would also be hyperbaric nitrogen for that matter. And then you could add.

Because air has nitrogen.

Oh, sorry. Because. Yeah, exactly. And then you could add different amounts of pressure and different amounts of oxygen to create different doses, if you will, of gases to affect our body. And so it's been used traditional medicine for a while. I mean, it kind of, it's been around 300 plus years in a couple different ways. But I'd say since the 60s and 70s it's been used more traditionally in hospitals, but really it's only saved for very particular, pretty severe conditions. So they'll use it for gangrene, osteonecrosis, osteomyelitis, radiation burns or other skin burns, non healing wounds, diabetic neuropathy. So pretty severe skin and nerve and infections that aren't responding to, to traditional care. They then go into this, you know, high pressure, high oxygen environment and typically with, you know, pretty, pretty good results.

Okay, so in terms of something like, let's say wound care, the how exactly would exposure to high amounts of oxygen actually affect that?

So, you know, and it's in the book too. There's, there's a handful of mechanisms that happen to all of us if we go into a hyperbaric environment, pressurized oxygen environment. There are things that happen to us and they happen to all of us. And they have to do a lot with just increasing oxygen levels, increasing mitochondrial performance. So the ability to make cell energy, ATP, stem cell release, bacterial management, as you alluded to earlier, collagen synthesis, fibrinogens, basically all the energy and the cell signaling that our body requires to heal happens because as the body is exposed to this increased oxygen level, it sees a fuel source or a nutrient, if you will, that it could use to further push that process. Most of the issues that are, you know, even with those indications that are used in the hospital, most of those have to do with microcirculation damage. So damage to the capillaries. And that's where gas exchange occurs. So where our body is collect oxygen and bringing it into the cell or dumping carbon dioxide back into the bloodstream to go back to be exhaled, that all happens in these small capillaries. And anytime we have trauma, infection, any kind of injury like this, the microcirculation is damaged and therefore gas exchange is hindered and hyperbaric oxygen, because of the way that it works, it actually bypasses a lot of where that damaged microcirculation is, and it's able to get oxygen into places that are, you know, literally oxygen starved for that time.

Okay, so when you climb into one of these chambers, how exactly are they built to achieve that effect? I mean, is this like some kind of a pressurizer combined with an oxygen concentrator or what's exactly happening inside that chamber?

So right now, like, as we're having this conversation, I'm sure a lot of your audience is aware of this, but, you know, in order to get oxygen moving around your body, we require red blood cells.

I thought you were going to say you were inside an HBOT chain, which wouldn't surprise me.

Should be. I should be. I don't have a good signal in there, so I can't do that. But yeah, so if, if we require oxygen to be attached to a red blood cell, the red blood cell travels around to the circulation, dumps the oxygen into our cell, picks up carbon dioxide, brings it back to our lungs, and we exhale. That's, that's normal gas exchange, if you will, you know, in our body. But right now, as we sit here, we're about 97, 98% saturated, meaning our bodies are getting almost as much oxygen as we could possibly get.

You mean if you were to put on like a pulse oximeter on your fingertip, which is actually a great way to monitor your oxygen status, you should, ideally, just, in a normal living situation outside the chamber, you're gonna be about 90. What did you say? 97, 98%.

Exactly. So if you. Without any heart or lung issues, we all typically run very high 90s in terms of our ability to deliver oxygen to our cell. So if we had a mask tank of oxygen and we were to breathe that, right now we can go from, let's say, 97 to 100, so we can get about 3% maybe, but you could never be more than 100% saturated. And so the biggest, the biggest difference here is under pressure, you're literally, you're increasing the gradient, the pressure gradient of oxygen, which means you're increasing the diffusion, how much oxygen you could absorb. And so as a result of pressure, you're actually going to dissolve oxygen into the plasma. Usually we only carry oxygen in red blood cells, not in the plasma of our blood. But because of this pressurized environment, we're actually dissolving gas oxygen into the, into the plasma, the liquid of the blood. And so all of a sudden, we could bypass the red blood cell carrying capacity and deliver many, many times more oxygen to a particular area of our body than we could if we were just relying on our red blood cells.

Now, does the actual pressure matter? Because I know there's like hard shell chambers, there's soft shell chambers, there's, I think in your book you call it ata, which I forget what that stands for, but it's the actual amount of saturation in the air that you're breathing. Can you get into the different forms of delivery and how much oxygen you actually need in one of these chambers?

Sure. So all gases move because of gradient. So things go from high concentration to low concentration, or from high pressure to low pressure. So right now, wherever you happen to live, you're in equilibrium with the air that's around you. And if you go into a pressurized environment, all of a sudden the pressure outside your body is much greater than what your body is used to. And as a result, that gradient starts dissolving increases of oxygen into your body. So you're asking, you know, does it matter how much you get? What I would say is the more pressure you're exposed to and the higher percentages of oxygen you're exposed to, the larger the gradient that that will create, which also means the larger the diffusion will be inside your body. So, you know, some people could use a hyperbaric chamber that just uses air. So air is 21% oxygen. And let's say the chamber you have goes to ATA is atmosphere is absolute. So the amount of, you know, the relative amount of pressure you could also use, psi and millimeters of mercury, all these pressure units virtually mean the same thing. So but you know, you can go to 1.3 atmospheres, which is what your chamber does at 21% oxygen, and that will create a certain amount of diffusion into your body. Or you could add, let's say, like we just did, add an oxygen concentrator to that. And now all of a sudden, instead of 21% oxygen, you're breathing, you're going to be breathing, let's say, about 94, 95% oxygen.

And if you're using an oxygen concentrator in a soft shell chamber, you would actually need a mask placed over your mouth to be able to breathe the extra oxygen that's being delivered. Or is that just getting pumped into the chamber itself?

Well, I mean, the way it's set up, it could just be pumped into the chamber, but to really, to maximize the absorption for you, you would have a mask on. That way, the more of that you Breathe under whatever pressure you're in at the chamber, the higher the dosage of oxygen.

Okay, now, now what about, what about the, these big hard shell ones you find in hospitals? Do people need to wear masks when they're in those, or are those built differently so the oxygen is more concentrated?

So it could be both. So like you could have a hard chamber which is also pressurized with air, and then have oxygen, either concentrated oxygen or 100%, you know, green tank oxygen. And that could be supplied through a mask or a hood of some type. Or typically in a hospital setting, the entire chamber is actually filled and pressurized with 100% oxygen so that there's literally nothing else in, no other gases really in there, other than the oxygen itself.

All right, now I have a quick question for you. How much does one of those hard shell chambers inside a hospital cost? Like, do you know the approximate price point?

So I'd say there's three types of chambers. There's going to be like hospital grade versions that are 100% filled and pressurized with oxygen. And you're looking at probably close to 200,000 plus the cost of oxygen, obviously, which is, you know, it's not that expensive, but when you're filling a full chamber and running it for an hour or two, it's quite a bit, it adds up. And then a chamber that might be a hard chamber, but is not filled with 100% oxygen, it's filled with air. And you could add oxygen separately. That's, you're looking closer to like somewhere between 90 and 100.

Okay. Versus this one, this one that I have this Vitaris 320. How much was that one?

So that's about 22,000.

Okay, so 22,000. And then for, for like a more of an entry level unit. What's the cost on something like that?

Maybe more like 15.

Okay, got it. So basically what you can do with a soft shell, if you have an oxygen concentrator with it, you can get close to, to most of the performance and recovery effects you'd be looking at with one of these fancy like hospital hardshell chamber units or these bigger hard shell chamber units, but you just gotta pump a little extra oxygen into it.

Correct.

Okay, got it. So I wanna ask you a few questions too about this whole performance and recovery piece and what exactly you see. But before I do, I'm curious. When we're talking about the type of effects that these things can have, are we talking about doing like multiple treatments multiple days in a row? Are we talking about one single Time that you're laying inside it or what's the actual use, frequency and volume of one of these things.

So just like the tool you would choose, let's say soft versus hard versus hard and 100% oxygen, mild pressure versus high pressure, you have to match the right tool, let's say to the right goals, I would say, and same thing in terms of frequency and duration. So depending on what goals you're looking to achieve would determine how often, how long you should stay in, how many times you should use it for how many months, or should it be ongoing. So I try to match patient or client goals with equipment and protocol, but I usually break it down into short term and long term benefits. So short term, literally from the first time you step in there and you get pressurized in your breathing, you'll see an increase in oxygenation period. Every single time. You'll get, you'll get more ATP production because you're going to light up your mitochondria to produce more energy. You're going to get some level of immune activation. So white blood cell activation, Neutrophil macrophage activity tends to stimulate pretty quickly. But then there's the long term. In the long term you're talking, you know, 20 hours, 40 hours, 60 hours and more. Just an ongoing level. Depending again on what you're trying to accomplish. Some of those long term, that would be more, you mentioned earlier, like sod, superoxide disputase increases, you actually, not only will your mitochondria make more ATP so they become more efficient, but your body will actually recognize this enormous amount of excess oxygen. Your body will start replicating mitochondria, so you'll actually start doubling and tripling mitochondrial content so that you could process the oxygen better. You'll get a release of stem cells, you get balance of the microbiome, you get, you alluded to that earlier too, the angiogenic effect. So when you're rebuilding blood vessels or remodeling, that capillary structure that I was saying earlier gets damaged. So to really rebuild that, that's a long term benefit. And then more of the antimicrobial, like if you're trying to kill an infection of some kind, you would need higher pressure, higher oxygen and you would need.

Longer periods of session. Yeah, I saw one interesting study on stem cell proliferation. I would love to hear your comments on what this thing can do to stem cells and most of those protocols. I think there were seven or eight additional studies that were referenced in the paper that I was reading, which I'll link to in the show notes for people if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com HBOTpodcast but most of these treatments were anywhere from five to six days a week for a total of 30 sessions, down to I think as infrequently as a total of 10 sessions. But, but for the stem cell effect, it looked like multiple times, like being in there almost every day for a period of time is what it took to get a significant kind of like an anti aging or longevity response. Is that correct?

Yeah. You know what I tell people who are interested in the longevity quality of life anti aging, you would front load it for sure. So if you had access to it, you would do minimum 20 hours, but you're really looking to do like 40 to 60 hours over the course of a maybe two month period. And you're going to start. That's where you're going to really build a lot of those long term benefits. I was mentioning. After you do that, then you don't need that level of commitment to have, you know, the ongoing effect. But to really front load it that way, to be that intense about it in the beginning, that's where a lot of those benefits come in.

Sounds kind of similar like NAD and you know, another anti aging tactic and mitochondrial health tactic a lot of people are using. You can do multiple IVs for, you know, anywhere from four to five days in a row of 750 to 1,000 milligrams of NAD and then just kind of keep yourself, you know, cruising along with, with oral supplementation after that or an occasional iv. So once you get a hyperbaric, you should spend ideally multiple days in a row inside it if you can and then you can just start to use it, whatever. Like one or two times a week after something like that.

Exactly. I would spend, you know, the first two months roughly, you know, three, four, five times a week at least, and then spreading it out.

Now how long would you need to be in there?

So typically for this kind of effect you're looking at about 60 minutes at least. You know, some people, I love it in there. So I'll easily do 90 minutes at times or even sometimes two hours. You hit a point where it's like diminishing return, you know, you do.

Okay, that's what I was going to ask you about because when I first got it, andand I actually want to ask you about this too, I have so many questions for you. I fall asleep like a baby in that thing. Likelike a, like a well slept baby. Meaning I get in, and after about 10 minutes, you know, once. Once it pressurizes and your ears are kinda done doing their popping, I get this. And I don't know if the sense. If it's the full on sensory deprivation just because nobody can bug you in there. I don't know if it's like what I call the car effect, where you can kinda hear the motor buzzing in the background and there's like this mild vibration that lulls you to sleep, like when you're in the backseat of a car when you were a kid or I don't know if it's the actual gaseous interchange that's causing that type of effect, but I get super sleepy. And so the first time I got it, I actually slept in there on four separate occasions and had wonderful sleep scores. Just literally crawled in that thing for like eight hours and slept the whole night in there. Which obviously, because I'm a married man and value my relationship, is not something I make a regular habit of, but I gave it a try, and I fall asleep in there and slept in there the whole night multiple times. So first of all, is there any danger to me spending the night inside a hyperbaric chamber that you're aware of?

So let me start by saying the Vitaris was built to actually have two people inside, so you might not have to sacrifice your marriage and get hyperbaric.

I like to spread out.

I'm just kidding. I mean, you could do that. But yeah. So there's a few things. I think it's all of the above. Some people get very energized by it. So some people do a session and they feel like they want to get up and go work out, while other people get the exact experience that you're describing. I'm more the. I kind of zone out and I often fade and take a nap in there. But you'll see things like on the sleep score, you might see you get really high HRV scores. So the increased oxygen actually helps increase heart rate variability. So that's one piece of that. The extra oxygen also stimulates parasympathetic activity. So it's for somebody who might be leaning towards sympathetic fight or flight on a regular basis. You could feel a really strong shift into your parasympathetics. And so that often comes with the chemistry of relaxation. So. So I think there's a few reasons why you probably feel that. In addition, I do think the same thing. You know, you could let go. You know, nobody could bother you. So, you know, you could really relax and the sensory deprivation piece I love, too. So it's probably a combination of all the above.

All right, so not a huge issue from like an excess free radicals from too much oxygen being breathed or something like that. Just to stay in there for a while.

Right. Not in the version you have. Like I said, I think what you'd see if you could do a gas analysis as you're in there, you'll see that the first hour and a half to two hours, you're going to see a pretty rapid increase in dissolved blood gas, oxygen in your system. And then once you start pushing between two and three hours, it's really going to start leveling off. And then you're just going to be pretty close to saturation. So it's not going to hurt you in that version. But at the same time, it's not a super efficient use of time. If you had other things you were trying to do besides sleep in different chambers, if you were in higher pressure and higher oxygen levels, that would not also be the same. So you can reach levels of oxygen toxicity. And so with different equipment and different types of chambers, that's not the same story, but in the version that you have at home, it would be safe to do that.

Okay, got it. Now, I want to delve into some of these effects that you have alluded to. And my first question is, if we know there's direct pressure to oxygen molecules, and as you highlighted earlier, that allows oxygen to cross cell membranes more readily and enter into areas it normally would enter less readily, like plasma or synovial fluid in your joints, or cerebral spinal fluid, or kind of like that interstitial space between the cells. Like there's a lot of places that oxygen can go when it's under pressure and concentration like this that it normally would, wouldn't go. And of course, red blood cells are what we use to transport oxygen through the body. All these other body fluids can provide these alternate transfer routes for getting extra oxygen into different areas. But specifically, when it comes to the red blood cells, do we see any type of effect on aerobic capacity, red blood cell production, erythropoietin production, anything from almost like an endurance or an aerobic capacity standpoint related to red blood cells.

So there are, and we could talk about that there are performance, if we're looking at it that way, performance enhancement effects of hyperbaric oxygen, but they don't come from red blood cell changes. So the red blood cell adaptation, if you will, is really from a lack of oxygen. And so that's the Whole, like, training at altitude scenario where, you know, even though air at 8,000ft is also 21%, just like I'm at sea level right now. So at sea level, it's 21%, and at 8,000ft, it's 21%. But the pressure is different at altitude, and because the pressure is different, there's less molecules. So at 8,000ft, you're looking at about a relative 16% oxygen. And so the body recognizes that as hypoxic. And what you do is you build more red blood cells to make up for that deficiency. So the red blood cell adaptation that we have has everything to do with hypoxia, not hyperoxia. So because in a hyperbaric chamber, you're flooding your body with oxygen, you get other adaptations like your mitochondria, recognizing the fact that there's more oxygen so that we need more mitochondria to process that, but you won't have a red blood cell reaction to that same process.

Okay. All right, got it. So it's more. All these other fluids that are delivering oxygen to tissue. So it'd be a little bit more of, like, a recovery repair type of scenario that would provide more than, like, a. Like a red blood cell direct effect, right?

I mean, people use it for performance, like, you know, the extra oxygen. So the reason people, let's say on a performance side, the reason you would train at altitude to build more red blood cells would be then, if you went to sea level, you have this excess oxygen carrying capacity, right? That's the whole thought process. So without that extra red blood cell carrying capacity, by being in a hyperbaric chamber, you are increasing your oxygen, even though you're not increasing your red blood cell count. And so you still have excessive oxygen to be used for performance. But it doesn't let you know it'll last. As you get out of the chamber, it's already dissipating, and you get depends on how much pressure, how much oxygen, and how long you are in the chamber. But that oxygen may stay for three to six hours. It may stay for six to nine hours. It may stay.

So theoretically, if you had a bunch of readings or, you know, if I were gonna go through my morning research journals, I could crawl in this thing and have more oxygen for a workout. If I were to do a workout mid morning ororor mid afternoon, for example.

Exactly, Exactly.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. So, regardinganother piece I wanted to ask you specifically about blood is I know that hyperbaric oxygen can stimulate angiogenesis so the growth of new capillaries and can build new circulatory systems, which is one reason that that vascularization can be helpful for areas that have compromised oxygen delivery, like pockets of hypoxia and damaged or injured tissue, et cetera. First of all, is that correct?

Yes, absolutely.

All right, so do you, do you get concerned? Because I interviewed Dr. William Lee recently and we talked about his anti angiogenic foundation which looks into reduction of capillary growth to tumors. For example, would there be any concern if one had like a pre existing tumor or cancer or something like that in terms of angiogenesis to a tumor growth?

When I first, you know, 12 plus years ago, when we first started getting into this hyperbaric was on the list of contraindications for cancer. And I'd say over the last, over the last six years, but especially over the last two or three years, the thought on that has changed dramatically. And a lot of that is owed to a lot of the work of Thomas Seyfried and Dom d' Agostino looking at metabolic causes of cancer. And so the understanding would be. We just spent a weekend with them in LA last week.

Yeah, I saw you there at the Metabolic Health Summit.

Exactly. And that's what they were talking. The whole thing was about metabolism of cancer and one looking at the glucose driving factors associated with cancer, but the other the actual energy metabolism of the cell, of the cancer cell. So bottom line is, if you believe in and understand the metabolic concepts around cancer, you would say that basically these cancer cells are dysfunctional, but they have this specific metabolic dysfunction where they don't use oxygen to make ATP anymore. So what they're doing is they're fermenting lactose, they're using sugars, different types of sugars, and they're fermenting them in the absence, anaerobically in the absence of oxygen. And so in this approach to cancer care, these people are doing different keto fasting, right. Certain medication, like diabetic medications like metformin and others to really try to drive blood glucose levels down and then drive oxygen levels really high. Because if you basically, if a cancer cell is metabolizing sugar without oxygen, what you would be doing is you'd be starving it of the glucose and then you'd be pushing the cell into aerobic respiration, which it can't handle. So cells that can't adapt to die. And so if we start shifting the metabolism, we could start killing off a greater degree, naturally killing off through autophagy, naturally killing off these sort of broken and dysfunctional cells so that we could actually and at the same time drive healthy cells. Right. A normal, healthy cell that's able to adapt actually loves this whole fat burning, ketosis, high oxygen environment. So you're shifting this whole environment to create extraordinary discomfort for a cancer cell, and at the same time, literally feeding and nourishing healthy cells to continue to be able to adapt. So, long story short, it appears that the angiogenic effect of cancer cells has everything to do with increasing blood flow to increase glucose, access more blood vessels, to deliver more sugar, to make more energy. And so the angiogenic effect of hyperbaric is about delivering more oxygen. And so even though it's the same angiogenesis, if you're metabolically shifting the person away from glucose in the first place and you're increasing their oxygen, I wouldn't be worried at all. In fact, I would encourage using those two tools in that person Versus worrying about the reason for the angiogenesis in the first place.

Okay. All right, got it. That's good to know. All right, so we have formation of new blood vessels. We have the increased delivery of oxygen to a wide variety of tissues, including, I know, the brain, which is why this thing can be so darn effective for jet lag, where you're breathing poor air and lower amounts of oxygen to tbi and concussion, where you have impaired oxygen delivery to neural tissue. But then there's this fascinating antioxidant response, and I threw this term around earlier, the concept of sod, superoxide dismutase, which is an enzyme in the cells that can deactivate free radical or superoxides, which are some of the more destructive free radicals. And from what I understand, hyperbaric is actually somehow stimulating upregulation or production of superoxide dismutase. Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay. Are there any other antioxidant mechanisms that are affected by this?

I mean, there are. So here's the thing. People talk about the oxid, right? It's oxygen. So there's an oxidative reaction to hyperbaric, which is the opposite of what we're talking about here. So the interesting thing about it all goes back to, really, hormesis, Right? So can we introduce a type of a stress to the body and then have the body react in a way such that it's increasing adaptation to whatever that stress is? Right? So healthy stress equals healthy adaptation. So hyperbaric, in many ways, has this mild oxidative effect on the body, and so that the body's reaction to that is upregulation of its own natural antioxidant effect. So that's why SOD is so greatly stimulated through that process.

Could you make an argument that because of that and the decrease in inflammation, because I know that that's another huge thing that you see in the literature is a very significant drop in inflammation, which from a longevity and overall chronic disease standpoint is important. But from an exercise standpoint, you know, just like metformin or synthetic vitamin C or synthetic vitamin E, or longer, you know, like 10 plus minute periods of time in the cold, we know any of those examples can blunt the hormetic response to exercise. So is this something that you think you wouldn't necessarily want to sit in for those couple of hours following an exercise session? Or have you seen any literature on the exercise effects of post exercise hyperbaric?

So there's no, or at least I haven't seen any research on where we place hyperbaric relative to a post workout. Its effect overall on either improved healing, decreased hormetic effect. But what I would say is yes, it absolutely reduces inflammation. And yes, because of the same mechanisms that it helps heal non healing wounds, it's the same mechanisms that it would actually heal the damage associated with exercise. So with exercise we're obviously we're breaking tissue down purposefully with the idea that once we recover, we're faster, we're stronger, et cetera. And so hyperbaric would increase the healing. The question you're saying is, does it also decrease the hormetic effect? You know, my understanding would be that there's a stimulus and then there's a response. So the stimulus was the exercise and you broke that tissue down. And now the inflammatory cascade that occurs because of that, it's all about cell signaling. That cascade is necessary for signaling a healing response. So while hyperbaric would reduce inflammation, the way it does it is through stimulating the healing response. So I feel pretty good about the fact that it's not going to negate the cell damage from the tissue. If you happen to do like a really hard central nervous system workout where you're really trying to exhaust the nervous system or, or you're pushing PRs on a regular basis, you may want to delay the hyperbaric a little bit just to allow for that full inflammatory cycle to kick in. But ultimately you're going to want to get in there and start healing stuff so that you could do it again.

Yeah, I've mostly been using it because I'll typically do some kind of a movement session in the Morning around sometimes about 7 and 9am and then typically I'll do a harder workout sometime between about 5 and 7pm and what I've been doing is after lunch, going into the hyperbaric with all the magazines and books that I want to go through for that afternoon. And I'll combine reading and a quick nap or sometimes just crawl in there and take a nap. So I've got it spaced kind of in between the two exercise sessions anyways, just to play it safe. But I was just curious if you'd, you'd say anything about that. So. So another question is this whole bacterial effect, and this was something I wasn't aware of until I read your book, but apparently there is an effect in terms of the way that HBOT synergizes with antibiotics and also an effect on, from almost like a bactericidal standpoint, meaning a drop in certain bacteria and fungi and viruses. That was a new one for me. So can you go into what the effect is in terms of the biome with hbot?

Sure. So the full effect on the immune system, more or less, besides the anti inflammatory piece one, is that it's going to upregulate your neutrophils and macrophages. So those are part of your white blood cells that help fight infection. So right off the bat, and that's a short term benefit. So right off the bat, you're going to start getting an upregulation in your own immune system's ability to fight whatever infection it needs to fight. Outside of that, like I said earlier, even in traditional medicine, they're using hyperbaric oxygen for gangrene and osteomyelitis. So they're using it for really, really tough infections for a few reasons. One is most of these pathogens are anaerobic, meaning just like I was saying, with cancer cells, these bacteria live without oxygen. So they actually thrive in a low or no oxygen environment. And they grow these biofilms around them, which actually helps protect them from oxygen and medication and other things we might throw in there to try to kill the infection. So it's almost like a wall that it builds up. So this hyperbaric environment actually again increases the oxygen level obviously in the body. So that creates a higher oxygen than what these pathogens are willing to accept, but also helps to break down the actual biofilm, making whatever other therapies we might be choosing for those infections much more effective. So there's a piece of it that has to do with killing bacteria who are anaerobes, but beyond that, I would say that even less powerful anaerobes like H. Pylori or C. Diff, that are often found, E. Coli, even in our intestines. So it's the same phenomenon where as you're increasing oxygen in the body, you're making it very uncomfortable for these anaerobes to thrive. And most of our probiotic are either aerobic, meaning they love oxygen, high oxygen, or they're at least oxygen tolerant. And so as your body just starts to bathe in this increased oxygen from the hyperbaric therapy, you're basically same thing. You're feeding those healthy bacteria, you're creating an environment that helps them to thrive and to balance. So at the same time that it's creating a high oxygen environment and making it very difficult for these anaerobes to. And these pathogens to live in our intestines, we are creating an environment of high oxygen, which actually makes the majority of our healthy bacteria very comfortable and to thrive in.

Okay, all right, got it. Yeah. It's really interesting just because I know and. And I don't know if I will have released it by this point. I just recently did a podcast with Matt Cook where we really explored biofilms and SIBO in great detail. And even the fact that based on some of my own recent testing, I have some biofilm issues. So that's also been kind of a motivation for me to get into the hyperbaric. And as a matter of fact, in that last trip to la, where I saw you at the Metabolic Health Summit, I actually went to Next Health, the clinic that I visit down there in la, and almost every afternoon went in there and did my, what I call my trifecta. I do an nadiv and then I crawl on the hyperbaric, take a quick nap, get up and do a 3 1/2 minute cryotherapy session. And one, one of my motivations for doing that is I just want to kill off this biofilm as fast as possible. So that hyperbaric combined, combined with the NAD especially, can be really.

And it is.

Yeah, yeah. Over there, they had a. They had one of the big hard shell chambers, and same thing, I crawl in that thing and within like 10 minutes, I'm dead to the world. Like, all my body wants to do is sleep, which is, for me, great, because I'm not one of those guys whose brain turns off that easily. Okay, now how about bone? How about bone repair? Bone formation, you know, I know. You know, multiple research studies have shown this stem cell proliferation and stem cell building piece, which in and of Itself is great news for anybody who doesn't want to do like a stem cell injection per se, or is in this for the anti aging and longevity piece. But what about bone?

Yeah. So, you know, there's again, this is all, it's all about cell signaling, how our body's communicating once it gets a stimulus of a certain kind. And so again, this increased oxygenation in addition to the nitric oxide synthase, which they measure for almost a full day post hyperbaric, from a stem cell standpoint, such a powerful stimulator, there's a ton of growth factors, and these growth factors are the signals for healing and recovery. So you'll get different types of progenerator cells, you'll get platelet derived growth factors, you'll get brain derived growth factors, glial cell derived growth factors, vegf, all of these are signaling tools that our body uses to spark healing response. And so not just fibroblasts, but also osteoblasts. So the cells that are going to heal ligaments and tendons, but also the cells that are going to start healing bone. So there are a few studies that I've seen looking at, let's say post fracture and speed of recovery and certainly show similar effect.

Now this VEGF is one that you talk about in your book quite a bit. So can you highlight that one and explain what the importance of that one would be?

So these are all, I mean, these are all growth factors that I'm talking about, like bdnf, pdgf, vegf. These are all things that are again, signals. And so the VEGF has a lot to do. The VEGF also has a lot of work in cancer. So you'll see it show up so much in cancer research. And VEGF has a lot to do with the angiogenic effect. And so when we see rising levels of vegf, we know that one of the things that's happening is there's going to be angiogenesis, neovascularization, healing, recovery, and building of new blood vessels. And so again, in certain circles, you know, that sounds very scary because they recognize that as, you know, an adaptation of a cancer cell, at the same time, you know, if you look a little bit deeper, you could also see how in so many other ways, especially in the healing capacity or in a performance capacity, that increased vascularization is huge for oxygen delivery.

Okay, all right, got it. Now what about the effects on connective tissue, you know, tendons, skin matrix? I know some people are using things like light therapy for that. Others are using peptides like thymosin beta or TB500 or in some cases BPC for the inflammatory component in conjunction with that. How about the effects on things like fibroblasts and collagen?

Yeah, so exactly. Those are the two main. So the fibroblasts and collagen growth are the two main mechanisms for skin healing. So same as healing a wound. Yet it doesn't have to be broken down to a point of a non healing wound. It could simply just be loss of the typical elasticity or you know, loss of the integrity. So it keeps cracking or breaking or it's the beginning of a, let's say in a chronic case, like a beginning of a bed sore. But it doesn't have to be this, you know, enormous non healing ulcer. It could just be the breaking down of skin the way we know it. And this is going to help stimulate that. Now we use, I love like red light, green light, you know, we use different light therapies. In addition, I don't think by the way, we're talking about hyperbaric because we're talking about hyperbaric and I love it. But you know, even in our clinic we use multiple modalities. I don't, there's not a single modality that like by itself does, does everything we need it to do so. But to me it's one of those fundamental tools because oxygen is such a fundamental nutrient that our body requires. So when you add oxygen to peptide therapy or oxygen to red light therapy or NAD or you know, all these other modalities, you're just, you know, the synergy is always greater.

Yeah, you're stacking the effect. I've found that to be useful. And I'm fully aware by the way, for those of you listening in, like sometimes I'll, I'll throw off something I'm doing at home like a full body pulsed electromagnetic field or PEMF table or hbot. And I realize some of these things are a little bit spendier. And I even know many people who listen in are health clinic owners or people like Jason who are running health facilities who want to add these to their facility. And I realize in a case like that sometimes being able to monetize a purchase like this makes better sense. I'm lucky enough in that as an immersive journalist, I'm kind of putting a lot of these things in my home and using them in my business to blog about and to write about and to fill others in on. And I'm a voracious self experimenter anyway, so love to toy around with this stuff. But you know, PEMF is another example where if I consume some type of an antioxidant supplement, or even if I'm using say like plant medicine for a journey, laying down on that PEMF table and doing a full body or even a localized to the head PEMF treatment can amplify the effects of something like that or something like a peptide injection for example. And when you combine some of these biohacks, like doing hyperbaric along with things like certain nutrients or pemf, you certainly get this stacking effect that begins to make you feel just absolutely amazing. Now regarding this whole stacking effect with hbot, is there anything in particular that you found to be really useful as far as producing surprising effects when you administer pre or prior to hyperbaric? Whether that's a treatment, an oil, a supplement, anything like that that you found to combine really well with hyperbaric?

I mean, hands down, my favorite combination from for myself is high dose red light right before oxygen. So I do, you know, we have a particular red bed we call it. So you know, a pretty, a pretty high dose, 10 to 12 minute red light session because of, you know, so there's parts of the hyperbaric that could become a little vasoconstricted. Even though you're getting more oxygen, there's a bit of a vasoconstrictive effect. And so I love the idea of the red bed creating vasodilation, the synergy and the nitric oxide between the red light and the oxygen. So I love that sort of pre treating with the red bed and then jumping into the hyperbaric chamber after that. I find that synergy to be like nothing else for me.

Another thing I found to be useful just because a lot of times, especially until I fall asleep inside that thing, I focus on really deep, deep breath work just to get a little bit of extra oxygen delivered. And I've even done and this would be kind of a proceed at your own risk because you're zipped up in there by yourself in case you pass out. There could be risk, but I've done holotropic breathwork sessions inside the hyperbaric chamber. And one of the ideas is that that was originally created by Stanislav Grof, I believe as a way to get a lot of the effects from a DMT standpoint and a brain standpoint is something like the use of lsd. And I've always noticed the ability to be able to kind of like journey or merge left and right hemispheres of the brain far more easily during one of these hour long hyperbaric sessions that I do. But I started doing sessions like that and even shorter breathwork sessions that my friend who's been on this podcast before, Niraj, he has this wonderful 21 day SOMA breathwork program. And I have a bunch of audios on my phone that I've downloaded to my phone. So I'll put my phone in airplane mode and go in there and do this breathwork. But man, doing the holotropic breathwork. Yeah. Inside the hyperbaric, absolute game changer. Then the other thing that I do in there is there's another doc who's been on this podcast before. He makes these essential oils for specific purposes and he has one called Inspire that kind of opens up your lungs and you know, it's got the things you would expect like peppermint and rosemary. And I believe there's a little bit of cinnamon in there and some very kind of uplifting lung opening kind of oils. And I'll sprinkle some of that in there and get in there and do breath work. And it's absolutely amazing.

You know, let me just add to that. So also, if you happen to do breath work and you're doing breath holds, I think you'd be also amazed to see how long after you've been in the chamber for a bit.

Oh, I've gone almost six minutes at.

The end of session now. Let me just add to that too, just for you personally, but also for your listeners. You cannot hold your breath when you're transitioning between pressure. So it takes five or eight minutes to get to pressure and it might take another five minutes to get down from pressure. You could. Once you're at, you know what I'm saying, when you're at pressure, like, you know, you're at like four and a half psi. You could do whatever you want at pressure. Okay. Because once you're at pressure, you're all your, your airways are already equalized, but you cannot hold your breath, let's say at pressure, because you're not going to equalize. Exactly. And then let, let the air out. So just make sure that during transitional periods going, you know, the initial pressurization and the depressurization, you breathe normally throughout those transition periods. But once you're at pressure, you could do whatever you want just for you, for safety. I just want to make sure.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay, cool. And speaking of safety, tell me if this is a myth because someone found out that my kids go in there to Lay around and read books. And they absolutely love it. They love to zip themselves up and do the hyperbaric. And I think it's wonderful for them based on every. Everything that I've seen. But someone told me that there is risk of spontaneous combustion if you have something like a phone in there and it throws off a spark, or if you have pieces of paper, such as a book, that are rubbing together and that you could literally kind of like that movie Deadpool, just blow the whole thing up. Is this a concern?

Yeah. So I cover so many.

Right.

I think that's one of the reasons that Hyperbaric never really got the understanding, recognition until now that it pretty well deserves, I think, is that there's just so many myths around Hyperbaric. We could do a whole podcast just on that. But, you know, understand this. There's no risk of, you know, in other words, rubbing paper together. Right now in your house, you know, you're at 21% oxygen. You could light a lighter at 21% oxygen. It's going to burn because it's 21% oxygen. But it's not any more risk in or out. So inside that chamber, you're still 21% oxygen. You're compressing with 21% oxygen. The risk is, in a hospital setting, when you're at 100% oxygen and your entire environment that you're bathing in is 100% oxygen, you're literally the equivalent of being inside a green tank of oxygen. So at a hunt. And, you know, oxygen is not flammable. It's an accelerant. So you need something to be that initial, you know, sort of trigger anyway. But in a hospital setting, you're wearing very special clothing. You can't bring anything in there. It's a. It's a very regular, regularized area because of. If there were a spark in that chamber, that could happen for sure.

Okay, so that's kind of trickle down from the bigger hospital setting.

Exactly.

Okay, any other. Any other risks that. That folks should be aware of when using one of these things or contraindications?

I mean, the main contraindication, especially when we're talking soft chamber stuff, is. Is just pneumothorax. Right. If you have. If you have an airspace that you. Which is a popped lung, basically, if you have an airspace that you cannot equalize, you can't go to pressure. You just can't. You'll never be able to get that particular airspace properly equalized with the environment. You know, so you might see over time, too. Ben, if you Ever have like a little allergy or congestion or something, you're going to have a hard time, you know, clearing your ears. You know, the whole thing is about, you know, can you, can you equalize with your new environment in your air spaces, which is basically your lungs for the most part, your lungs and your ears. We have other air spaces too, but they tend to equalize pretty easily. So you know, if you have a lot of ear pain, back off, like it's just not worth it. You know, go, go back tomorrow or you know, go out, do a sinus rinse and try it again if you want. But as long as you're equalizing and you don't have any other issues, there's really very few absolute contraindications the way pneumothorax would be. But there are some relative, like clearing your ears. There's certain chemo drugs that actually their mechanism works on superoxide dismutase primarily. So those are contraindicated especially for high pressure. But generally speaking, the equivalent, just so you know, the equivalent of the pressure that you're in is about nine, somewhere between nine and 10ft underwater. So you know, that's, that's the amount of pressure. So as long as you feel comfortable, like, hey, I can get to 10ft of water, I can go like the deep end of a pool without a problem. You're gonna be fine.

Okay. So, so basically the, the main things we would be looking at would be for someone who's injured, oxygen delivery to tissue to speed return to pre injury activity levels. And for people looking, looking at it from the performance standpoint, obviously you get the increase in ATP synthesis from the hyperoxygenation and a removal of more of the metabolic byproducts that build up within tissue. But then you would also potentially get like the mitochondrial and stem cell and blood vessel proliferation response. And then if folks were sick, you know, if we're talking about autoimmunity like Ms. Or Crohn's or inflammatory arthritis, you're looking at the anti inflammatory component. If it's the case of the nerves, like you were talking, who was it? Did you say it was your brother who had.

It was me with the initial neuropathy and then my stepmy stepdad with Ms. Oh, your stepdad?

Yeah. Soso with the nerves, it's actually allowing for repair of damaged nerves. In the case of neurological conditions such as, such as that or even something like Parkinson's or concussion or tbi. And then in the case of again healing or recovery, you've got the stem cells, post surgical recovery, things like that. And then finally what you brought up earlier, the immune system component for people with Lyme, sibo, C diff, etc. Basically you're giving a robes the necessary oxygen for life while allowing for killing off of pathogens. I think those are the main benefits that I think I came across in your book and that I've discovered thus far. Did I sum it up pretty well?

I think that's a great summary. The last only other thing I would add to that is on the performance side because we often look at the physical performance, but we don't often talk about the mental performance. And so they're studying now out of Israel especially this guy Shai Efrati has done a lot of research on hyperbaric, the mental or sort of the brain performance effect of hyperoxygenation. So we know that the brain uses up about 20% of the body's oxygen. So the question becomes, is that 20% the total amount that the brain requires to function the way that we want it to, or is that the total amount the body allows the brain to have because the body needs so much also on any given minute for its performance? And so what they do now is they're studying dual tasking. So complex motor, complex movement patterns with complex mental acuity tests. Tests the combination watching that with increased oxygenation, these folks are able to perform more complex motor and more complex mental.

Interesting. Okay.

Pretty consistently across the board.

Yeah, yeah. I haven't, I haven't messed around too much with, with using like nootropics or something like that prior to just, just because honestly I'm sleeping inside the thing and don't, don't want to spark up my brain prior to sleep sleep. But I'll have to mess around with that a little bit. Now. What about exercise with oxygen therapy? I was actually doing that this morning. I did an exercise with oxygen therapy session on the Vasper where I breathe the pure oxygen and kind of cycle between that and hypoxia using in this case one of those live O2 machines. What would be the difference? Because they will make claims that this thing will simulate. They're doing exercise with oxygen therapy with would simulate a hyperbaric and thus remove the need for crawling inside of a chamber. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on the whole hyperbaric versus the ewat or the exercise with oxygen therapy scenario.

Yeah, so I get that question a lot and I love hyperbaric, obviously, but I love oxygen modalities, so I like ewat I like ozone. I'm not a purist. When it to comes comes to oxygen, saying hyperbaric is the only one that works. It's just, again, different tools for different goals and different purposes. So I think the biggest difference just for people to understand is that with ewat, what you're doing is you're exercising. As you exercise, you're using up more oxygen. And then instead of breathing 21% oxygen the way we all are right now, you're breathing maybe 95, 98% oxygen. So basically, you're increasing the demand through exercise. So you're utilizing a much higher degree of oxygen and you're increasing supply. So as you increase demand and supply, you're going to turn over a lot more oxygen in that process than you would if you were just breathing normal ambient air while you were exercising. So from an oxygen delivery standpoint, I think it's great. The biggest difference is that you're still relying completely on red blood cells to do that work. So in order for this to work, you have to deplete your red blood cells and have them cycle through. And with hyperbaric, first of all, it's passive. So depending on the issues, right, some people can't do the mobility that they need to get an ewot to be performing optimally. So hyperbaric is obviously, it's a passive therapy. You're just laying there and breathing. But more than that, it's also bypassing the red blood cells and increasing your oxygen just by pure diffusion.

Okay, okay, that makes sense. And plus, I guess for people who can't exercise, obviously, or who are repairing an injury, the EDOP might be a little bit more difficult to pull off. Okay, cool. Ton of stuff here. And your book really delves even more deeply into the science. It's a really good manual for those of you who want to wrap your heads around this even more. The book is called Oxygen Under Pressure, and you can get it on Amazon. And then also, I know the folks at HBOT usa, Jason's company, they've worked out some discounts and some ways for you to get your hands on a hyperbaric soft shell chamber for your home that might allow you to overcome any of the price point issues. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com HBOT, that's where you can get a special offer for one of these soft shell chambers for your own home or for your clinic, or even just find a practitioner who has one of the soft shells if you want to go try it a few times before Getting one for yourself. And then also all the show notes for everything we talked about, studies, Jason's book, everything. I'm going to link to. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com HBOT podcast, that's BenGreenfield Fitness. Aside from that, I think that covers most of what I wanted to ask you. Jason, is there anything else you want to throw in there?

I think it's a great summary for people just getting started. We do have a channel for YouTube, HBOT USA. We put out a few videos pretty regularly. So for people just looking and learning and wanting more, there's probably content there that they could latch onto and keep their education going.

Okay, awesome. Awesome. All right, folks, well, I hope this has been helpful for those of you who needed to kind of wrap your head around hbot, how it works, what it is, and how to use it properly. So again, show notes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com HBOTpodcast and then you can get your hands on one of these chambers if you go to Ben Griffith. Greenfieldfitness.com HBOT Jason, thanks so much for coming on and sharing all this stuff with us, man.

Of course, Ben, man. Thanks for having me on the show.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Jason Sonner signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com check out this hyperbaric thing.

It is.

It's absolutely amazing. It's been a game changer for me, and until next time, have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you, even each and every week.