In this video Dr. A, an integrative/naturopathic physician with 30 years of experience, reviews the evolving scientific understanding of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) as an adjunctive treatment for cancer. He traces the literature from a 2012 review that shifted the view of HBOT from a potential risk to a possible benefit, through a 2016 comprehensive review that highlighted mechanistic reasons for its safety and efficacy, to more recent studies that demonstrate anti‑cancer effects across a range of pressures. The core of the presentation explains how HBOT alters tumor biology: it reduces hypoxia‑inducible factor (HIF) and VEGF in cancer cells, re‑activates tumor‑suppressor p53 (even when mutated), promotes apoptosis via MAPK/ERK pathways, remodels the tumor stroma and suppresses cancer stem‑cell activity, lowers tumor antioxidant defenses, and decreases proliferation, epithelial‑mesenchymal transition (EMT), invasiveness, and MMP‑9 expression. Dr. A also outlines clinical applications—HBOT can aid recovery from radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, synergize with radiation and certain chemotherapies, and enhance metabolic or oxidative therapies such as ketosis or high‑dose IV vitamin C. He clarifies common misconceptions: mild (1.3–1.5 ATA) HBOT is as effective as higher pressures, HBOT does not worsen cancer markers like VEGF, and ketosis is not required (though it may be synergistic). Safety considerations are noted, with a few chemotherapies requiring timing separation. The video concludes that HBOT offers both supportive and direct anti‑tumor benefits, independent of adjunctive metabolic strategies, and encourages viewers to like, share, and subscribe.
Chapters
The science is escalating at a level that we really haven't seen in the past. And that's probably the most important thing is in 5 years, in 10 years, we're going to need to know even more about the way hyperbaric can help us in cancer treatment. Hey, it's Dr. A. Welcome to my YouTube channel. I've been researching and teaching in the integrative and naturopathic medical world for 30 years now. And I've been seeing patients for a very long time. We use this channel to answer questions and a lot of the questions that came in all Also, we're focused on hyperbaric oxygen and cancer. So let's dive into that. So first off, hyperbaric oxygen in relationship to cancer was in the past always a kind of a question mark. So there was a lot of theoretical ideas that maybe it would be good. On the other side of the equation, maybe it would make cancer worse because the oxygen, etc. And there was a couple of things that kind of came together. But in 2012, a review paper about hyperbaric oxygen. Cancer was published, and it essentially said, "Well, we've had this history of thinking hyperbaric might make cancer worse," and there was one or two research studies that maybe showed that or maybe were confounded, but it wasn't real clear. And so the paper in 2012 essentially said, on balance, looking at the mechanisms and everything else, it appears that hyperbaric oxygen would be beneficial for patients either with cancer side effects from treatment or recovery, or maybe even in the treatment of cancer. So then time. Time marches on, and there was more research done and more mechanistic looking at hyperbaric oxygen and cancer. In 2016, another paper was published that was again one of these sort of grand reviews of the literature. And essentially that paper in 2016 said, "Well, in 2012, we kind of turned the ship a little bit towards maybe this isn't so bad. Now we know these mechanistic reasons why hyperbaric oxygen would not only be good for people with cancer treatment-related side effects, but also for people." with active cancer that might be undergoing other treatments to be supportive to their cancer treatment. So if you think about that, that's 8 years ago that that paper was published. There's been a lot more research since then. And the upshot of the research, but also the mechanisms behind hyperbaric and cancer, really show that the concerns that we used to have that it's oxygenating therapy, maybe that would make the cancer more aggressive. What we found was the opposite of that happens. And that's because hyperbaric oxygen therapy when it comes to cancer and tumor biology actually works differently in many areas than it does in non-cancer cell biology. And this was a really big, remarkable revelation in the research and the science. And what we found was between pressure, gas, and time, we have effects on tumor biology that are actually anti-cancer. So we have a number of places where hyperbaric oxygen can be positive and helpful in the cancer care world. We already kind of knew about using it in recovery radiation damage from radiation treatment. We had growing evidence that it would be good in the recovery from, say, chemotherapy, surgery, other types of therapy. So good in the recovery from treatment, you know, phase of things. So that's one. We had previous evidence that sequencing hyperbaric and radiation therapy might be synergistic, and that is still true. And then we gathered more evidence in those intervening years that sequencing chemotherapy and hyperbaric oxygen might make the chemotherapy work better, et cetera. Now there's a small number of chemotherapies where you have to be a little careful about separating hyperbaric. But if you look at the actual human research, none of those that we have concern about have been associated with any human reports of damage. But if, for example, your cancer team is going to use hyperbaric or you're going to refer out for it and you have a particular chemotherapy, they may tell you to separate by a little bit. That's why it's a more of a cautionary And then a contraindication. So what's this business though, which is a really big shift in tumor biology thinking and cancer care thinking around how hyperbaric affects cancer differently really than it does normal tissue or injured normal tissues, so non-cancer tissues? Well, for a training class to teach healthcare providers about this type of tumor biology, I summarized a large, large amount of research that had been done and data reviews, etc., looking at the effect of hyperbaric on cancer cells. Cells and tumor biology and ways that it might help to be anti-cancer, might help with your cancer treatment beyond augmenting the other therapies. Now, I'd mentioned augmenting radiation chemotherapy. It also can augment certain dietary therapies like metabolic flexibility. It can augment oxidative therapies like high-dose IV vitamin C. Lots of things can happen that are very positive. But what about just at the base level of how does hyperbaric affect cancer in a way that makes it a good adjunctive treatment? It's not a single treatment. It's adjunctive treatment for cancer. And what happens is that when you do hyperbaric oxygen, there's a number of things that occur. And one of the primary things is that the tissue beds, so the deeper tissues in the body, get perfused with more oxygen, which of course hyperbaric would probably do that. The things that happen then is more oxygen actually changes the levels of hypoxia induction factor and VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor and a number of other things, and it changes them in a direction where we get all these positive anti-cancer benefits. So when we shift HIF and VEGF, we get a change in a number of factors that go on. So one of them is that we shift a tumor suppressor gene called p53, and in activation of p53, if we have normal p53, that leads us to an anti-cancer protective milieu, but there can be mutations in your p53 and that can decrease the protection, decrease the tumor suppressor activity. Well, hyperbaric actually helps to shift even the mutated genes back over into a neutral or a tumor suppressive milieu so that they're working again. So it's beneficial in the tumor suppression arena. 2 things that is done when we have this increase in perfusion of oxygen is we get an increase in programmed cell death, apoptotic effect, apoptosis. Some people say apoptosis, whatever way you want to say it's fine. And this is done through changes due to the oxygen pressure changes, HIF changes, et cetera, in factors and intermediate mediators called MAPK, ERK. And then there's some genomic changes there as well, kind of like we saw with the p53. A third place where there's a change, which has been huge in cancer research, especially in the last 10, 15 years, is the tumor stroma. And this is where your cancer stem cells live, which cause recurrence of cancer. There's the place, the stroma, is where the tumor cells can recruit normal cells in and have a lot of change. And the bottom line is that we didn't used to know this, but the hyperbaric changes also affect the tumor stroma in a way where the cancer stem cells, which we want to be quiet, downregulate. It decreases their activation and it decreases this, the recruitment of normal cells. And that again is done through these chemokine changes and shifts. The other thing that hyperbaric oxygen does is not all tumors have this, but some tumors have their own internal antioxidant defense that they use to oppose other treatments. They can oppose chemotherapy that way and other stuff. And hyperbaric, essentially through these chemokine shifts, will decrease the antioxidant defenses inside the tumor. So it's another benefit there. And then globally speaking, through, again, a bunch of mediators, this decrease in hypoxia induction factor, especially HIF-1 alpha, but really the whole family, causes a change that will cause a decrease in cell proliferation in the tumor environment. It decreases VEGF in tumor cells. It doesn't do the same thing in normal, but it decreases VEGF in tumor cells. And a lot of people say, oh, it will raise VEGF. It actually doesn't do that. It goes the opposite way in tumor cells. Because remember, tumor cells act different than normal non-cancerous cells. So decreased VEGF, which we want in a cancer environment, a decrease in a process called EMT epithelial transformation, a sensory cell transformation. And so we wind up having a decrease in cancer survival and a change in programmed cell death. The other thing is, is that through the MAPK system and the ERK system, we have decreased invasiveness of the cancer and decrease in an intermediate called MMP-9, which can be pro-cancer as well. So in looking at this, we see we not only have the benefit of supporting cancer therapies, whether they're natural or standard of care synthetic or radiation therapies. We have the benefit of recovering from cancer therapies, helping after chemo, radiation, surgery, et cetera. Then we also have direct anti-tumor benefits of your hyperbaric on the tumor bed, the cancer stem cells, et cetera. Now we got a couple of questions, one of which was, and this is a very short version of a long answer, but the first question was, I heard this only works if I'm in a real high-pressure hyperbaric system. And as you know, there's a spectrum. There's mild hyperbaric and high-pressure hyperbaric, and we used to think that, but it was there was a lack of evidence about the spectrum. We only had one end of the spectrum. What we see now is that mild hyperbaric being depending on the country you're in 1.3 to 1.5 atmosphere has as much effect on all of these anti-cancer factors and the healing factors as higher pressure systems that might be 1.75, 2.0, 2.2, 2.5, etc. So there's no wrong pressure with hyperbaric. That was the first kind of misunderstanding. Now, if you go into a clinic and they have big, you know, high-pressure systems and they're doing your pressures at 15, 175, 2, 2.5, whatever, fine, that's going to work. If you're going to a clinic where you have a 1315 atmosphere, you're still going to get the benefits from it is the bottom line. The next one was, I was told that the hyperbaric treatment might make some of my cancer markers worse, such as VEGF, as we mentioned, and some of the other ones. And actually, if you look at the science, the answer is no. No, it's not going to do that. Again, that's old thinking that was just sort of misapplied from non-tumor biology over to tumor biology. And tumor biology doesn't work like non-tumor biology. And then another real common comment was, I was told I have to be in ketosis for hyperbaric to work. And this is where you're conflating 2 completely different concepts. First off, the answer to that is no, you don't need to be in ketosis. It may help you, but you don't need to be there. The hyperbaric benefit will go on no matter what's going on in your body system. So let's say you're not in ketosis, you're still going to get benefits from hyperbaric therapy. Now, if your doctor gives you something like exogenous ketones to jack up your ketone level, or they have you on a diet that induces ketosis or something, is that going to be synergistic with hyperbaric? Certainly. But if I'm not there and I don't have the ketones that day, should I just not do my hyperbaric? No, it's 2 different things. Synergy is good, but the absence of ketosis, the absence of exogenous ketones doesn't make the hyperbaric Or they're just better together. So you can still get benefit from hyperbaric even if you are not, say, in ketosis or taking exogenous ketones. Now, there may be many reasons why you want to do that during cancer therapy. And so it's sort of a double benefit, but it doesn't take away anything for you not to be there. By looking at the things that have changed over time, we go from 2012 where it's maybe it's not a bad idea, 2016, oh gee, it's a good idea. And now we have all this data showing that not only at sort of all the pressures available that we get benefit that's synergistic, the more metabolic treatments I'm doing, probably the better the hyperbaric works. But hyperbaric also works independently of those things. All right, I'm Dr. A. Thanks for listening to the channel. I hope that answered all those questions that we got. Please like, share, and subscribe. We're getting new subscribers. Please do the notifications so you know when we put these new videos out. So thank you so much for everything, and I'll see you on the next video.
