Reversing Disease Progression and Slowing Aging Process with Hyperbaric Therapy with Aimee Allenback

Today on Midlife Conversations, I've got Amy Allen back. And I'm excited for this conversation today because we're going to be talking about chronic illness and pain, things like Crohn's disease, autoimmune, things that come up, especially with midlife women, where we think we don't have control, where we've got to rely on prescriptions or, you know, just accept it, or it's in your head. And we want to talk about self healing today. Things that you could do, things you can put in your house, things that can actually help you overcome and heal you. Now, I met Amy through social media. I was sharing about my gut health journey, and she chimed in, I get a lot of messages on Instagram, but I happen to see hers. And she said, I don't know why, but I feel like I've got this parasite thing, too. I've been cleaning up everything else. I need to talk more. So that's how we connected originally. I then saw that she was founder of Next Level Oxygen, and I had been doing my own research into hyperbaric oxygen chambers and oxygen therapy. So I had questions for her, so we became friends. She was out in California recently, and I said, I've got to have you on my podcast with. What Amy does now is she actually helps people in their private home, set up healing centers, set up wellness centers in their own home so you can have things at the convenience at your own home. That makes it really easy. All different price levels. But I want to share her story today, her journey, what she's learned. You're going to love this episode today. Thanks so much for being here today, Amy.

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

So, Amy, take us back. What was going on before all of this, because there was a time when, as I'm talking to you right now, if you're watching us on YouTube, you can see she's got this big hyperbaric oxygen chamber in the background. She's got an infrared sauna. She's got all the things, but there was a time you didn't know what those were. You didn't have those things. What was going on?

How did. Yeah.

What was going on in your health?

Yeah, yeah. So this actually goes back 20 years ago with what ultimately became a diagnosis of Crohn's disease. But how it started was inflammation in my leg. But not just inflammation. Oh, I can't see it. Like, I could see it. It was an elephant leg on my right, and it was no knee formation. I couldn't See my ankle bone? Nothing like that. Which was highly concerning to somebody who was, you know, 26ish years old at that time. And so I was. Not only was it highly concerning to see it, you know, I was 20. So I mean, those things just are supposed to resolve themselves and they're not supposed to be happening to me anyway. Right. And so I went to a family doctor and they poked and prodded and gave me some sort of, probably my first dose of what was many of prednisone steroid. Then I was, you know, to the point where I couldn't even go up and down the stairs in my house. I had my first cute little house I had bought, had stairs there. Anyway, I then was. Ended up having a parorectal abscess in my body, which was a little unusual as well. And so with the parorectal abscess, of course, if nobody knows about that, that's right on your anus. And so that's an uncomfortable thing to even be talking about in your 20s. And so, I mean, these two alone were killing my life socially.

They were together at the time. Were you like.

No.

What were you thinking was going on with your body?

I had no idea what was going on with my body. And that was, that was kind of the part of the rest of the generation of the story is that I was just going to the family doctor right where I started. Then I had this perorectal abscess and that doctor also wanted me to go to rheumatologist to find out what was happening with my leg. So they did a Doppler study where they located a baker's cyst, which is some formation of a cyst of a mass of fluid right behind your leg. And the solution was going to be to drain that. I have the, the, excuse me, perorectal abscess. I'm put on antibiotics, of course. So what they do with an abscess is they basically lance it, they cut you open, they drain it. That's the solution. But they give you antibiotics, of course. Right. Because they don't want you to get an infection. I have no idea at this time in my life about medicine and all the things that it can be doing to my body. So I'm just taking it. But I'm starting to talk and I'm starting to tell this doctor what's happening and this doctor what's happening. And so I had, had the Doppler study done on my leg. They said, you have this baker's cyst. We'll Take care of that. It's going to solve everything. That doctor rheumatologist wanted to give me some more medicine. And so I knew at this point I was taking a lot of medicine and that just, that wasn't making me feel good, it was making me sick. And on top of all this, again, unrelated at the time, but I had these sense of urgencies of to the bathroom. And I was not a happy person. I couldn't, I couldn't just go out and have a social life. And I'm in my mid, you know, mid to late twenties and I'm, you know, boarding on a serious adult at this point and I can't do anything. But in my conversation with these doctors, I said to that rheumatologist, listen, I just had this perorector abscess. I'm taking all this other medicine, like, can I wait to finish this medicine before I try to do this? And he was actually the first doctor that said, oh, wow, you've got this, this going on and this going on. You need to go to a gastroenterologist. I hadn't even heard of what that was at the time. So I hadn't even done that kind of research for myself. And I'm like, okay. And so I do. This is like the dawn of the Internet time frame. And I'm starting to, I don't know if it was Google at the time. This is in the days and I'm figuring it out though. I'm looking at all my symptoms, the way that I'm feeling, the lethargy that I was having. I really was only able to go to work and come home and that was it. And I was noticing other things. If I ate spicy foods, I was getting, getting, you know, things were happening in my body. My consistency of going to the bathroom wasn't normal. So anyway, I, I, I realized before I even go to this gastroenterologist that I think I have this thing called Crohn's disease. It's, it's.

And what is not disease and how did you figure?

Well, Crohn's disease is an autoimmune disease, which is there's just a vast majority of vast array of autoimmune disorders out there. This particular one is anywhere in your gastrointestinal tract from the point of putting food into your mouth, down your esophagus, into your small, your colon and your small intestine, and of course exiting out. So anywhere in that process, you could have a surgeons of Crohn's disease and basically what's happening is your body is fighting your entire intestinal tract, and it's not absorbing any of the nutrients that you're eating. That is the very basic way to say it. So it's like, I'd like to.

Next level celiac. So a lot of people understand that celiac is an autoimmune, and that's when your body's not recognizing gluten and it's doing that. But with Crohn's, you're saying pretty much anything. It's fighting.

Yeah, everything. I mean, it just wasn't. And like I said, it could be at any point in your. In your whole gastrointestinal tract. So I go get a colonoscopy. I, you know, I believe in them wholeheartedly. I started when I was in my twenties. I've had several. So I'm a big advocate for that kind of, you know, we. We're going to talk about a lot of wellness. I think there's a place sometimes for western medicine, for sure. This isn't to say that doctors are all horrible. They have some good tests and things we can do, but advocacy for yourself and understand root cause stuff is what I didn't know about. Right. Because this is what ended up happening was, yes, I ended up getting a diagnosis of Crohn's disease. I had a colonoscopy. They said you have Crohn's disease and the rest, because what would they see.

On a colonoscopy for Crohn's infected areas.

Basically, that would look like ulcers of the inside wounds, basically, of the inside of my colon. And mine was in what's called the terminal ileum, which is right where your large intestine connects to your small intestine. People, again, can have it at any range of their entire system. All still very foreign to me, even at this point. I would never tell myself I was a Crohn's expert, except that I've lived with it. I know what it feels like. I know what it was doing to my social life. Interestingly enough, in this period of time, I had or I was diagnosed with a panic anxiety disorder. Panic disorder. Well, it wasn't until years later that I actually understood the gut brain connection is like the strongest one in our body sometimes. And so I, looking back, I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, that's what was happening to me.

What's so interesting is I know this was your 20s when this was happening, but a lot of. Especially women in midlife, they're navigating a Lot of this. And what happens is you have one thing, just like you said. You had the swelling, you have the pain, you have the things going on, and then you get another thing, and then you get another thing, and then you get the. Like you say the anxiety and all, and then we start thinking, what's wrong with us? I'm just attracting this bad stuff. Or like, what, I'm just declining, or it's my midlife, or it's my. But what. What you're saying really is important people to understand that you've got one thing off whack, especially in your gut, especially in your. It's your second brain. That could affect a spiral of a number of things. So where you're thinking, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? It could be just getting to that root right there. Could. Could spiral and fix everything.

Yeah, for sure. And nobody at the time, in my twenties, ever connected my panic and anxiety with my Crohn's disease. That was a much later thing that showed up in my own brain. And I would imag.

But anyway, like right now, they would say, okay, the cortisone and antibiotics. And now. And now here's Xanax for your stress and your anxiety, right. That they just keep throwing more and more pharmaceuticals.

Well, I was on. I was on Celexa, and then that was like that. I was on Lexapro. I mean, I was on medication for that, which probably could have been resulted in the Crohn's. So with the Crohn's, of course, that was the next round. It was like, well, here's the prednisone. So this massive prednisone. I had a massive, of course, weight gain, which wasn't helping the social life either. And it wasn't helping my mental health because it just. It's, you know, certainly I would never say that weight is going to tell you who. Who somebody is. Not at all. But when you gain and at 25, 26, 27, you gain 35 pounds and you. Not only the gate, the weight gain. I look like a chipmunk. There's something different about steroids that it does to your body. Makes you happy.

Not to mention all those pharmaceuticals and what they're contributing to your gut, making it worse.

Well, that's what I was going to say. I was on a drug called Acicol. Then I was on a drug called Pentasa. I was taking 16 of these pills a day, right? And. And then I started Remicade, which Is in. Is actually a rat protein based IV infusion. And I remember years later thinking, disgusting. Yeah, like, this isn't even a human biologic thing. This is coming from rats. I, I've never been a good shot person or IV person. I ultimately ended up having kind a reaction that was a vasovagal reaction, which is another. That was a time in my life I learned about the vagus nerve and all the things it does, but I just basically had what looked like a seizure episode. It was really me passing out, but it was the vasovagal response. So I'm like, okay, no more IVs. We're not going in. I'm not laying there and getting this IV. But. So, so all eight to 10 years, what were you. What would.

If someone were to ask you about your future at that point? Like, what did you think? Were you thinking that this was going to keep getting worse?

Like, where.

What was going on in your mindset about your life and how, like, what did you think of when you looked at someone that was healthy or you heard of someone that was healthy?

Yeah. So I was jealous because I wanted to be able to go do these things. Like I said, having an urgency to go to the bathroom, which I was still having, taking these medicines. It sucks because you either go. This honestly became a thing. I would go out and I would scope out where the bathroom was with my friends. And that way if I had to go, I knew exactly where to go. Because I'll tell you, there's nothing worse than having to go to the bathroom and not knowing where you're gonna go do that. And so, and, and that was even if I went out because to be honest, there was a many, many times I just, I didn't go out.

I'd imagine you'd be scared to go out and eat because you don't know what it's gonna do and what's gonna happen.

Well, and then you're talking about food. So of course you have doc, the doctors who are saying, you know, why you shouldn't eat the spicy foods and, you know, you shouldn't eat the roughage, you know, which would be like salads and stuff, which in most cases in my 20s, I think if I eat salads, you know, I'm healthy. Right, right. And this is hard to digest in your body as somebody with Crohn's. And so it was a very, a lot of mixed messaging, a lot of medicines, a lot of different things. Of course I still had all the anxiety going on, which that was. That was Never coupled together. I wish I, you know, knew then what I know now. I would handle those people who deal with anxiety way differently than how I was, of course, given the protocol. So, so yeah, I mean, for, well, 12 years essentially is the point that I ended up having to have my first and hopefully my only surgery. And that was because I had such scar tissue buildup that happens in your body over time. With Crohn's, I'm not sure about celiac, but scar tissue buildup. I was doing regular colonoscopies. I had little bit of things here and there, little flare ups of like a hemorrhoidectomy, you know, and, and just occasional, not great feeling things going on in my. It was just embarrassing.

Yeah.

If I had to say anything, as you said before, we kind of just say, oh, well, this is just how it is. Right. And I was saying that in my 30s, like this is just how it is. I mean, what a dumb way to think if I'm going to live to be 85.

So where did the pivot come? Because you look at you now and not only are you healthy, but you, you help other people's heal through remedies. Like how did you get to that? Because I would imagine if someone had told you 20 years ago, oh, you know, in the future you're going to have all these things, you would have said, oh, pseudoscience or what do you mean? It would have been like, where did this, how did your journey begin? Like, what was your first glimpse on? Wait a minute. There are some things that we can do that can fix this that aren't pharmaceutical.

Right. So. So I was introduced to hyperbarics much. You know, I don't know, maybe five years or so before this pivotal moment for me about autism. I worked with the National Autism association and we were seeing parents taking their kids in, into these hyperbaric chambers and seeing results. And it had to do with gut health too, mind you. But that's still where I started. I was still kind of like, how does getting in this thing just fix me? Right? I mean, I'm a sc. Everybody's skeptic. I think at some point.

Back up for a minute here. Like you said that you were working in autism. Why were you working in autism? And what was it? What was the hyperbaric doing for kids with autism specifically?

Yeah, I fell into that by happenstance. I was working at a hotel. This group was a mother formed group. All their kids were very young and just getting diagnosis and they were desperate for anything that could help Their kids. And there wasn't a lot. Right. And hyperbarics was hitting the market as a regular possible treatment for their kids. And so they were starting to use it. And yes, their kids, their gut health was improving. And that was related to their brains just from just being in hyperbarics. Yep. And then that was, of course, going to their gut. That was my first introduction to the brain and the gut are attached to one another. And so these kids were, you know, they were having less tics, they were having improved memory or a concentration on things and not just fixation is one of the things that they do. I was seeing kids who were verbalizing. I mean, they were able to actually have some fundamental changes. And if you go back and do the research and you read about Jenny McCarthy's story and her son Evan, like, she will tell you that Evan is fully recovered from autism. And they did it with. With hyperbarics as an adjunct therapy. None of these therapies, I would ever say, is the one that does it. I think there are a collection, but I do think you can find some that are, like, the best for you. And that's one of the things that I try to do, is find out what is going to be the best thing for you. But hyperbarics was exactly what they did. And they saw amazing success with him. And she's. She's been a huge supporter of that. The rest of his. And he's in his early twent now. So. So I started to realize and understand about this thing, and I. And I got to be friendly with the. The manufacturers. But what. What really got me kind of curious and I wanted to test this theory was I had a blockage in my colon. I went to do a colonoscopy. I was doing them every year, every two years. I was on Humira at this time. Right. So this time frame is about 2015 is when I had this. I ended up having surgery is what my story is. But I went to have colonoscopy. So I'd already been on. Hu is a human protein. So. Right. I feel better now. At least I don't have rats rat stuff in me. So I'm like, okay, it's an injectable. It's very expensive. I didn't like it, but that's what it was, you know, And I was feeling okay. And that's kind of what they tell you. Okay, good. You're feeling good. Stay on the medicine. Right. So anyway, I get this blockage and literally the half the size of my pinky, and they're like. Like you can't have anything, not even a piece of lettuce, because that could obstruct you, which is, of course, a serious reason, right, to end up in the hospital. And they say you need to. You need to schedule this surgery, like, soon. We need to do a resection and get this disease.

Can't eat until you get this done.

Liquids only. Yeah.

Okay.

And so I did it on New year's Eve of 2015, and I went in that day and I had 8 inches of my colon removed. But my hyperbaric piece of this story is that I knew that hyperbaric baric was supposed to be helpful in surgery recovery. I knew that it was supposed to help you recover faster. Less scarring, less bruising, quicker healing, less pain. I mean, inflammation. Right. Reducing all that stuff and helping. And so I had also learned you could preload. So I reached out to this manufacturer and said, I'm going to have this surgery. Can I have a chamber in my house For, I think it was a month I had it, maybe it might have been six weeks. And I did for two weeks before my surgery. Got in the chamber and laid in it, let it do its thing. Didn't necessarily feel anything specific, but I knew the concept of what was happening. Went in. I did my surgery. It wasn't very soon. I guess when you have that kind of a surgery, you have to go to the bathroom before they let you out. So it was like three days later, I get out. Within that first five days, I'm back in the chamber. Now I have it in my home. So I have it at my disposal, and I can do it it the amount of times I needed to do it. See result. The kicker for me was six weeks later, I went to my doctor, my gastroenterologist, who was not the surgeon, but he's the one who had been managing my care. He does a colonoscopy, and he literally says, if you. If I hadn't known that you had surgery, I wouldn't be able to tell. There was no. There was no visible sign that I had had 8 inches taken up out of my colon and actually put back together. And I was like. I was like, huh? Now, I didn't have. This isn't a case study. And have 8. 8 inches removed. Not do hyper. What I'm doing. And I said, well, I've been doing this thing called hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And he was like, ah, that's what's helping you. And I was like, okay, wait a second. Maybe this stuff really does work, right? And this is now going into 2016. And so I'm think, okay, this is something. So now I need to start learning a lot more about it. And so I'll just jump ahead one more because I have one more big pivotal moment with my journey with Crohn's and hyperbarics and the other modalities, and that is that I did get very involved in hyperbaric. Started learning all about it, started hearing other people's stories. I was ready to get off. Huma humora. You can have allergic reactions to just in general, right? You know, all that. You know, you see it on the TV and then everything. It's like death. It was tuberculosis. You can get. I had regular TB testing, right? Lymphoma, right. Cancer. That's what this drug could potentially do to me. And listen, I was only getting older, and so I would say in 20, you know, before COVID I was really kind of starting. So 20, 19, 2020. I'm like talking to my doctor thinking, can I get off this humira? I'm taking it twice a week. You know, I had it covered so it wasn't too, too expensive, but. But I didn't like it. I didn't like the idea of it at this point. I'm really getting good about things now, right? I had a lot. A lot of other things putting in my body that I started to remove. And so they were like, you know, if you don't take it, you're going to have Crohn's and, you know, there's no cure for Crohn's and you'll be sick again, whatever. So what happens is we have a major hurricane. I live here in Florida. We have a major hurricane. I get a lot of damage in my house, and it's time to do some mold remediation. At the very same time that I decided to open a med spa, which I had opened for two years. I mean, the very same time that I'm opening this thing, and now I have three chambers available to me, and I'm still not quite putting it together, but I know this is something that can help me, but I hadn't had it available to me, right. To really use.

And you only do what time when you had it at the very beginning, right?

And then I returned that back, right? So that was that. I was like, okay, that was a surgery thing, right? That wasn't a Crohn's fixing thing. So these guys come in, they're working on my house, they blow a fuse. Five days, goes By I don't know it because I'm not in the house house. There's no electricity. My three month supply of my Humira, which is about $20,000 gone.

Oh my God.

And then that doesn't get replaced. And I go, well, now or never, Amy. You either you either figure out how to get back on this medicine or you trust your gut. Hahaha. Which I did. And you do hyperbarics. And I started doing hyperbarics routinely, three to four times a week. And then it was a little less than a year later I was introduced to hydrogen water. Start drinking hydrogen water. I'm now over two years years of cold turkey, going off Humira and not having a single recurrence of issues that are crazy.

That is crazy. Okay, so let's get in a little bit into the science of this and why? Because first of all, a lot of people listening don't even know what this is. So. Yeah, okay, so hyperbaric stands for. It's hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Like what is that? Why is it hard for people to go and find this? Like why do you need a prescription for it? How like can you get into detail? Because this is all. This is newer to me too. I'd heard it, but, but I know when I wanted it for surgeries a few years ago, I couldn't get it. It was like hard to find. So talk to us about that, the evolution of it and what is the actual science behind this? Or what do you know for sure about this?

Yeah, so I even like to just call it hyperbaric therapy a lot to start with because we get real confused with the oxygen piece because that's probably the number one question. Where's the oxygen? Hyperbaric hyper means increased, Baric means pressure. The pressure is the power of what's happening with hyperbaric therapy. What happens with that is that when you're under greater than atmospheric pressure, we live at one. So as that starts to increase, the gas laws that are all involved simply mean that the oxygen gas molecules are going to be able to dissolve into a liquid. So if you take a soda, for example, and you open it up and you get all the fizz out. Right. Of the carbon dioxide. Those gases were compressed into liquid at one time, right. You don't see them until that all opens. So that's kind of explaining that gas law. Well, that's what's happening under pressure is oxygen is actually getting into your blood plasma. So the one thing I'd like to clarify again at the beginning of this is that Our current delivery system of oxygen is attached to our red blood cells. We all know we have a red blood cell. There's a little thing called hemoglobin. The little oxygen molecule attaches and our plasma carries it through our body. And that's how that goes. Now if you can imagine that same scenario, except your plasma, the actual, you know, liquid piece that's moving it all along is also filled with oxygen purely because of the pressure. Okay, that's happening.

I want to make sure I'm understanding this, and maybe this is a dumb question, but I know what people thinking are listening, what people listening are thinking. Okay, So I want to understand correctly. So in normal life, you said we're at one. So if you go to a higher altitude, is that less health? Let's start with that. If you go to a higher altitude, is that less healthy for you? You're getting less oxygen.

Correct.

That's why you feel altitude sickness and you can, you can have issues there. So we all understand that like you've gone to the top of a mountain, you've gone, traveled, you know, the altitude thing. So you're saying by going under, like if you were to go under water, basically. But no, but if you were to go under, you are increasing. It's like the opposite problem of altitude. Is that correct? Am I saying this correctly?

A hundred percent, yes.

And the reason is you said our current delivery of oxygen is our red blood cells. And explain this. And then, and then. But plasma, the liquid is filled with oxygen, helping us move this quicker when we're under one.

Well, no, once we are under pressure, our plasma is filled with oxygen. So without the assistance of a device that would add this pressure and in theory, could you lay at the bottom of your pool that was at least 10ft deep?

Yeah.

You'd have to have a long snorkel, right?

Yeah. So yes, I mean the same thing.

But yes, because people will ask you that, you know, and that's why there are some people who are divers who actually sometimes are healthier because they spend so much time at these increased pressures. Right.

How this actually happens in your body though. So like I'm just taking that water analogy. If you're underwater with a long snorkel. Nobody has a 10 foot snorkel. But if you did and you were doing, doing that, how does that actually work in your body? And then how is it in a chamber?

It's gas physics laws, they're, they're exactly the same. You're just going to be a lot more pruny because you've been underwater. So that is honestly the truth. We are emulating as if you were going 10ft below in this particular chamber. You see here there are other chambers that do higher pressures. Which is going to go back to your, your question originally, which is you tried to go and find, you know, a resource when. So 1660s is the first time somebod was creating a hyperbaric chamber. Hundreds of years ago.

Okay.

In the 1930s is the first time somebody used it to help somebody with a decompression sickness. In the 50s it started becoming more popularized uses. And now we have 14 indications that are covered by insurance, but they're quite severe. Severe anemia, osteomyelitis, gas gangrene, you know, burned. We know about burn wounds. In fact, a lot of people love to talk about Michael Jackson. Well, here's what happens if you were around as you and I were in that age, we were younger, but that Pepsi commercial came out and he got caught on fire and we all knew about it. Well, what he did was he wanted the best way to heal, right? And that was hyperbaric chambers for wound healing. So he bought a very high level chamber for a hospital and that's how he got.

How does the healing actually happen? Because obviously it's helping so many different things. But like what I don't. I want to understand, and maybe I'm sounding repetitive here, but I understand what you're saying about your increasing pressure. And the plasma is now filled with oxygen, but how is that actually helping us heal?

Right? So a lot of our oxygen that we're getting just regularly with our red blood cells is going to work our body, right? Our brain, our heart pumps our hearts, it helps our lungs breathe, our liver function. I mean, it's helping all of our major organs in our body. And it is. Sometimes there's not an available surplus to deal with things like somebody who has Lyme or somebody who has migraines or somebody who has chronic dise. Crohn's disease, because we're using that oxygen constantly. So in order to get our body and our tissues to upregulate to a, to a level that they can actually start to perform and heal, that's where having a surplus of oxygen is helpful in our body.

I get it now. Okay, so I. Okay, so I am understanding. So we create a surplus of oxygen in our body through this mechanism, which now allows our body to still use what it needed for healing, but now we have extra for the good stuff. It's like the icing on the, the cake.

Yeah. And it's not just for healing. I mean, we have NFL, NFL athletes using this. We've got LeBron James using this. We've got, I mean, all kinds of. And I like to bring up athletes because to. To the common person, they are very in shape. Right. They eat. Right. They do everything they can do to be the best. And these guys are using hyperbaric because what happens is when they are exerting their muscles so much, they're breaking that down. They want to recover faster and they want to improve their endurance and performance. And they're going to get the same by virtue of having that surplus of oxygen.

Yes. Okay. I'm going to share my experience in a few minutes because I've had it. I don't know. When did you drop it off at my house? Was it like 10 days ago or so?

I want to say. Yeah, I want to say like two weeks. Okay.

So I have been using it every day, minus two days. So I'm going to share about that in a minute, like, what I've noticed. But I do have a question. This. So in the biohacking space or the aging space, a lot of people feel that this is one of the only things that really is proven to lengthen telomeres and to truly help slow down the aging process. What do you know about that?

Yeah, well, so, I mean, just stem cell proliferation starts to happen naturally when you're doing this regularly. And as you know, people are going out and they're getting stem cells. Right. If we could have a modality that would actually use what our body's resources already have. Our body is an amazing machine. I don't have to say that, I don't think probably to your audience, but it has so much capability. But if it' not in an optimal state, none of that works. And so that's what we're doing. When we're talking about hyperbarics, we're talking about neuroplasticity, which is being able to reform your brain and relearn things. So somebody with a stroke immediately should be getting hyperbaric therapy. We've seen, if you really get into the big stories, you talk about drowning victims or I actually talk about baby Jessica sometimes. This is an old story, but she was the baby that fell down the well. Her leg came up behind the back of her head. Basically, she was there. I don't know the full time, but I want to say it was almost two days. They pull her out, her legs completely black. Doctors are like, take her leg off. A doctor there at that time says no, let's stick her in the hyperbaric chamber. And within six hours and she was at a higher pressure chamber with 100% oxygen. And we can talk about that later. But her leg turned pink, her circulation increased. That is what happens. And now that's a really dramatic story to tell you, but you got to understand, this is what's happening to all of us, right? And so people with neuropathy who are losing sensation in their feet or having these little tiny diabetic foot wounds that they're never really able to resolve, all of a sudden, with that plasma driving that extra oxygen sometimes into the farthest areas, it's going to fix those problems. And it's doing it at the cellular level. It's creating ATP, it's creating cellular energy, it is helping those cells rebuild, regenerate, it's doing angiogenesis, is creating new blood vessels, neurogenesis, new nerves, collagen production. And when we talk about anti aging, we are talking about bone health, our joint health and our brain health. Above all, the degeneration process is happening. So if we can slow it down, then we can hopefully live a longer and better life into our later years. So we can reduce the poss of quickly degenerating macular degeneration or Alzheimer's or dementia, anything like that. Okay, it's just I have a few.

Random, random questions around this. Okay, There might be a little rapid fire, but high pressure versus low pressure, you mentioned that a few times. What's the difference? And why would you want one or the other?

So this is kind of. I hate this answer and I love this answer. Everybody is an individual, right? So everybody's response is individual. What we are finding and what I love to talk about when we talk about wellness is these low pressure chambers like you see behind me is a 1.3 atmosphere environment. That chamber, just with regular use and without even a supplemental oxygen source, which you could use as an oxygen concentrator, is helping with traumatic brain injuries, helping with ptsd, it's helping with anxiety, it's upregulating our body to be in a better state, our hormones as women, right? It's going to be helping with metabolism, Metabolism with energy, reducing stress, helping you sleep just in this chamber. Now why you want to be in a higher pressure chamber, the ones that we talked about before, those 14 indications that are only approved by insurance, those, those do require a faster response. And so the higher the pressure, the more of the oxygen that is going to get into that blood plasma through the gas laws that we talked about that higher pressure, more the dissolving of those gases. I like to do a really simple analog, though. And that's like putting 87 gas in your car, 93 gas in your car. Right. One might run your car better, but if you're driving down to Tijuana, you're still going to get to Tijuana. Right?

Got it.

Okay, so you.

So is that. And is that the same as a soft versus a hard chamber? Is that the same?

Yes. So a soft shell is going to be 1.3. Right now, there's nothing that's on the market that is FDA approved to be higher than 1.3. I do share that because this is becoming popular. And when things become popular, manufacturers pop out of the woodwork, mostly from foreign countries. Right. Their exp sorted in. They're white labeled. And you do want to make sure you're doing the right thing and choosing the right modalities for you. A hard chamber is going to let you actually start at the same pressure of 1.3 and then have a variation of increases. I would say to go beyond a 2.0 or 2.2 is rare. And you read something you want and like, I might say, like a stripe.

You broke up a minute.

Sorry about that.

You said to go above a 2.0 is.

To. What is. Is when you want to address something just very quickly and very. As quickly as you can to help get some regulation back in that person. So like a stroke victim, you would maybe.

Could you take the lower pressure and do longer and get that same result?

100%. Yes. There's kind of an average number that two hours at a 2.0 environment. Excuse me. Three hours at a 2.0 environment would be like d doing. Sorry, I've said this all wrong. So many numbers. One hour at a 2.0 environment would be like doing three hours in a lower pressure environment. So again, it's a compounding effect with any hyperbarics that you're doing. It compounds over time. So. Yes. Could you go in and do high pressure and see results that may take you three different hour sessions in the lower pressure? Yes, that's very possible. Again, all things considered, you know, with people. But what typically happens is you go into a high pressure chamber, you see what you. They get you to the baseline they want you to be at, and then they put you into the low pressure chambers and we use it as a maintenance.

Got it.

For somebody who's dealing with something specific, if you're just a health and wellness person, I say get in this chamber. I like I said three to four times a week for me, you are doing an amazing job. I hope you're going to share a little bit about what you've seen. You said you were going to. Because I love one of your stories, which I didn't even know you were going to have that done. And I'm like, oh, I should. I would have been like, oh, oh my gosh, this is going to be so great. But you had it on your own. And honestly, there's so much to say about hyperbarics. I have even some notes here. But I'm constantly surprised at the stories that I hear. And I know that it, I know it's all to be true. And real quick, going back to my Crohn's disease, we know that wound healing, right? Everybody knows wound healing, hyperbarics, burns, stuff like that. Jay Leno just had a situation. He did hyper, Hyperbarics. It's the same mechanism of action that we can assume is happening inside of our body. So like I said earlier, I had ulcers, I had wounds on my colon internally. So the theory is that if I can externally heal a wound, why couldn't I internally heal a wound? And what they're showing on some of the studies they have done related to gastro type events is that we can, we can heal those through hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

So I've had about, I've done about 10 sessions. I maybe have skipped probably two days since you, since you brought it here. So. But I've done 90 minutes for 10 days now and only skipping one day twice. And I think my first few sessions I did 60 Minutes. And what I will say is I didn't, I don't really. There's not like a huge, you don't get out like feeling totally different. But I will notice that I'm a little bit more energetic and alert.

I.

After. The biggest notice that I've had is my skin's a lot softer, like, which is really bizarre. Like, I really notice that. And I understand it produces collagen, so that makes sense. And then I did have an IPL done, which is like a intense pulse laser at the dermatologist that I get done once a year and it is healing a lot faster. So like I'm, I'm so where that would normally on my hands and face, take seven to 10 days, it started coming off at five. So that's, that was an interesting thing to me. Now the reason I wanted to do hyperbaric was more for inflammation and I Wasn't even thinking about skin and things like that. But I was doing it more because of the injuries I've had and inflammation and pain and those things. I will also say that I have I told. I texted Amy yesterday and I said there's got to be something with metabolism here because I get ravenous and I'm not gaining weight. So yeah, I looked it up and it does speed up your metabolism and you do burn a high amount of calories while you're in it, which is really interesting thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm always careful when we talk about weight loss. Even you can see the sauna behind me here. There's a. There's protocols you can do that are weight loss specific with saunas. Right. And it's just all of these modalities do require a frequency and consistency because they're natural. I mean this is really again helping our body work the way it's intended to work.

Yeah.

And just giving it that push, that's.

My guess is that you. These tools like hyperbaric help get your body in an optimal state and then your body works at optimal function and optimal function is a faster metabolism and is your skin healing and turning over quicker. All of that. But I think like you said, when we are without oxygen, we're without the right. Because we're using it to heal and fix all these other things. We're not getting that optimal health state is my. Is the way I would explain it of course.

And bacterias and stuff like that. They don't live in. I mean in hypoxic. They love a hypoxic environment where there's no oxygen. That's where they thrive and that's where. That's where cancer and stuff like that wants to just eat us apart. If we can change that relationship of oxygen in our body, we can again not a cure would never say this is a cure for anything. But we can again put our body in a state where it's going to be a lot harder for things like.

That to progress in there any contraindications for this? Like who should not use a hyperbaric. When I had mentioned to my assistant, she said, well I heard that. I heard that you shouldn't do it because it could create problems with your lungs. Like she had a number of things she had heard where. What's the truth within that? Is there anyone that shouldn't do this and can anyone really healing from something you. Something like this?

Yeah. So the only absolute contraindication, like no questions asked is somebody with a pneumothorax, and that is a punctured lung. If they have a punctured lung, you're not going in the chamber. You're also not able to fly. That's how bad that is. So we will tell people, like, hey, if you're cleared to fly, you're probably going to be okay to go through here. Your second contraindication, again, not absolute because everyone's different, is going to have to do with the ear pressure. So as you know, you go through some pressure difference change because we're going down, we're descending. And so for the first couple minutes, you're clearing your ears. We say clear your ears early and often. If you did not clear your ears, that pressure could potentially build and build and build and create what is called a barotrauma ear rupture, something like that. So we don't want to do that. So if you're somebody who's prone to, to very sensitive ears not being able to equalize your ears, those are things that we just want to know about. Actually, we wouldn't right away say, oh, no, you're not good. We would say, well, what are the ways we can work against making sure that you're going to be able to clear? Because as you also know, once you get to pressure, whatever pressure you're going to be at, the chamber then equalizes. And it's like you're standing outside, you're just inside. And so those are the two big, big ones. Then we talk about, like the little running list is stuff like seizures, asthma, blood pressure. And really what we're saying is, listen, if you're prone to seizures and I'm running a med spa or you're at home, like, let people know you're going in. Because if you should have a seizure while you're in there, we want to know how to make sure we're prepared to deal with it. But do they cause it? No. And in fact, at very low pressures, we see positive results in epileptic patients. We see the number of seizures being reduced and we see the intensity of those seizures being. Being reduced. Same thing with blood pressure. I had a previous client who got off blood pressure medication. So when you go in the hyperbaric chamber, it can increase that blood pressure slightly comes out, it will decrease, but over time, it does address hypertension. And that particular client actually got off blood pressure medication. So those things, same thing with asthma. Make sure you have your inhaler with you. Like, we don't want to put you in this thing. That doesn't necessarily allow you to get out quickly. And we can talk very briefly on any kind of claustrophobic concerns. But it's about two minutes to get out of this one. But if you're in there and you're having an asthma attack, have your asthma inhaler with you. So. So those other things we talk about really aren't because hyperbarics is going to do this to you. The other one, I guess I would say that people do sometimes bring up is cataracts. It can. If you have already started the progression of cataracts, high pressure, a lot of hours can progress. If you're somebody who has not had that started, it won't cause them. And if you've had cataract surgery, it won't bring them back. And so that's something else. But again, you have to be in a really high environment, high pressure environment with a lot of use of that for that to happen. So I will tell you, I was.

Super scared of the claustrophobic thing and I don't feel that at all. It's actually like pretty relaxing in the, in the soft chambers, in the lower pressure. We can bring cell phones in, you can listen to music, you can break. So like I just go in, I'll do my meditation there. I'll listen to a podcast, I'll listen to an audible.

Yeah.

Do my social media scrolling or whatever like you can.

And let me do that. Yeah, let me explain that just really quickly. That's because the, the chamber is being pressurized with what we call ambient air. That's this air that we breathe. And that becomes the first question, where's the oxygen? We are breathing 21% oxygen right now. So by virtue of breathing 21% oxygen, adding pressure, which we're doing with the chamber, that oxygen concentration is going to increase in our body just like it is. So I mean, that's just part of what pressure is doing. So that's why it's okay for you to go in there, because it's, it's like you're standing out here, right. And so it is okay for you to have a phone or whatever. Now, somebody with, I would say in the last 10 years, things like, excuse me, what's the word for your heart? A device. Come on, what's that word? When you have your heart device in there, whatever medical device implanted in your heart. Pacemaker. There you go. That's the word. Those are now being tested at high pressures, much higher than even these chambers. You can go online, look up your device, see what it's pressured at and make sure. So that would be, I guess, if you go back to a contraindication, making sure. So in theory, our phones are tested at pressures, you know, and things like that.

Wow.

So in. In this particular model, very, very safe.

Amazing. Amazing. So Amy sets up now and we're gonna link up where to find her on Instagram. She's next level oxygen on Instagram, and I'll link that up in the show notes. But what she does is super cool and super timely. It's kind of like, remember, you all are in midlife. So, you know, remember how years ago it was like the home gym was the thing, like your home gym. She sets up home wellness centers, which I think is super cool. Been like, I've been on a mission getting my room right. And what I like about doing stuff at home is there's things. There's so many different price ranges on things. Like, I'm. I've been sharing a lot of my stories about red light therapy. I'm a fan of infrared. I'm a. There's a lot of different things. But Amy is incredible resource. Resource for get. Figuring out what you can put in your home. And she is the person that is connected and can get you all the information and help you get a hyperbaric chamber in your. Your house, whether to rent or to own. There's different sizes, all the things. So I'll put all that information in the show notes. This was super helpful today, Amy. Thank you so much for doing this. I asked her to do this because I had a million questions and I was like, okay, I have questions. People are asking me questions on my stories. Can you get on and answer them? So this was super helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, no problem. And I feel like there's a million more things I could say about it. So anybody who wants to reach out and DMs, I'm. I'm here to be a resource for people on any, any part of their wellness journey.

And we might have to do a whole nother session on just other fun things like red light. But I wanted to do this first because this is kind of like the. The Ferrari of it all. Like, if you do a hyperbaric, that's like the. The best that you could do.

If I had to pick everything that I do, and I really love them. I really love my sauna. But I would. I would really say if you had to pick one, hyperbaric therapy is the way to go. It's going to make a huge difference. And. And you hit the nail on the head. You were looking maybe, for one thing, and then discovered something totally different. And that's what we hear that all the time. The time people are surprised. So, yeah, there's no way to sit here and just say yes. Basically, if someone says, will it help this? I say, yes, probably. Because it probably will. We need oxygen. It's our life know.

Thank you, Amy.

Yeah. Thank you, Natalie.