In this educational video, Dr. A – an integrative and naturopathic clinician with over 30 years of experience – addresses a common question from patients and practitioners: how can the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) be amplified? He outlines four evidence‑backed adjuncts that synergize with HBOT. First, red and near‑infrared (NIR) light therapy, which enhances mitochondrial energy production and improves the cellular redox balance, complementing the oxygen‑rich environment of HBOT. Second, methylene blue, an old pharmaceutical agent that enters mitochondria via an alternative pathway, further boosts mitochondrial efficiency and works in concert with both HBOT and red/NIR light. Third, antioxidant support (glutathione, vitamins C/E, NAC, alpha‑lipoic acid, etc.) is recommended to counterbalance the oxidative burst induced by HBOT, ensuring a proper rebound phase. Fourth, adequate hydration is emphasized to facilitate extracellular fluid volume, supporting cellular waste removal and lymphatic/venous return during the increased metabolic activity prompted by HBOT. Dr. A also mentions a continuing‑education webinar for clinicians. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like, share, and subscribe.
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Hey, I'm Dr. A. Welcome to my channel. I've been researching and teaching in the integrative and naturopathic community for over 30 years, and I've been seeing patients a long time, and I use the YouTube channel to answer questions. I get a lot of questions about other modalities that we use to help people with chronic illness and cancer, etc., and one of the modalities we use a lot is hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Question that I often get is, what can I do together with hyperbaric oxygen to improve the function and the Outcomes of the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Now, there's going to be many answers to this. I picked the top four that I think of, but of course, there's lots and lots of other things that are going to be supportive to hyperbaric oxygen. Now, if you don't know what hyperbaric oxygen therapy is, you can go look at our other content, and we have a lot of other videos on this. But I just want to get into some synergies—the things that help out hyperbarics. The first thing is the family of light therapies, especially red light therapy. Red light and near infrared therapy. So red near-infrared are commonly used nowadays in home devices and medical devices. It's used a lot for joint pain, muscle pain, improving mitochondrial function, et cetera. But one of the nice things with red near-infrared therapy is it has an improvement in the functionality of your cell's energy production systems and also in the balance— they call it the redox system— your antioxidant-oxidant balance. So it kind of helps push that system as well. Well, it turns out that Many of the things that red and near-infrared light do are seamless with the benefits that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can provide. Number 2 is something we hear about a lot online, and sometimes medically speaking, is a very, very old drug called methylene blue. And it's used sometimes as a more of a supplement. It actually is a drug, methylene blue, and you can get it from a number of places. We got a ton of methylene blue content, so I'm not going to go into all that. But methylene blue, one of the main things that it does is it goes in and it helps your mitochondria, kind of comes in through the side door, and it helps your mitochondria to function and to kind of speed up their operation, which does a whole bunch of things, one of which is improving energy. Well, the other factors that come in and help with the mitochondria that methylene blue might do, one is what I just mentioned, red near-infrared light, but the other is oxygen. So hyperbaric oxygen delivers more oxygen through plasma saturation to your mitochondria so they can work better. So Methylene blue, number 1 red near-infrared, and hyperbaric oxygen, sort of like a triangle. They all go together. Quick interruption from the regular video. If you are a healthcare practitioner and you have an interest in this topic, we're going to put a link in the description below to my CE website and specifically the webinar that is about this topic. So see you over there. Thanks. Number 3 is antioxidants in general. Now, a lot of people who understand hyperbaric oxygen will say, well, what you're doing when you put someone in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber is you're going to An oxidative burst, which is true. So you're kind of a pro-oxidant treatment. That is true. But what happens is your body generally works in rhythms biochemically. So whenever there's something that goes up on one side, there's usually a compensatory response that goes down on the other side. And that's part of how your body operates. So if we have— we take hyperbaric oxygen out of it and you have an oxidative event, like you have an immune response, at some point your body needs antioxidant support to balance that out. So what we do a lot of times with hyperbaric oxygen and the patients is they may, you know, go in on whatever schedule they're getting. We make sure that they have enough other antioxidants around so that when they go into the downward phase after the oxidative burst, their body has the cofactors, the requisite antioxidants needed. Now, those things are in the category of antioxidants. There's lots of antioxidants. Primary ones are supporting glutathione, vitamin C, vitamin E, and there's other collateral things that fall into that as well, like NAC. We got lots of videos on that, alpha-lipoic acid, and many, many other things. But antioxidants as support for the downward phase after the pro-oxidative burst from hyperbaric. And then number 4 is hydration. You might think, how do oxygen pressure and hydration work out in my body, and why, why would they go together? Well, as I mentioned earlier with red light, And methylene blue, you're sort of, you know, supporting the mitochondrial part of hyperbaric. Even if you just do hyperbaric oxygen, you're going to force the mitochondria to turn over more, go into more oxidative cell respiration. And then what happens on the other side of that is that the cell removal of junk to take the trash out gets stimulated. So that speeds up as well. You're sort of detoxifying the cell. Well, it turns out that you need the area in the extracellular space around your cells to have a good amount of fluid in it so that when we go And we remove the trash and dump it out in the extracellular space, it can then easily go into the venous return side or the lymphatic return side, whichever place it winds up, and be removed from the body. The more hydrated we are, what we know from tumor biology research, etc., is that this, the act of hydration, allows us easier movement in the cell but also out of the cell in the junk removal section. So hydration actually helps too. So although there's many, many, many supports for hyperbaric oxygen, four that are real con. Common big picture things that I like to do alongside red near-infrared light, number one, methylene blue, number two, antioxidant support for the rebound phase, number three, and then overall hydration, improving your hydration, et cetera. All right, I'm Dr. A. These questions and answers come in and I try and answer 'em on the channel. Like, share, subscribe. Thank you all you subscribers. It's been great to see the community grow. I'll see y'all in the next video.
