Photos by Diana Polekhina and Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Flux Magazine just came out with an article on modern medical solutions for wound treatment, and we were pleased to see Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy listed among the various modalities. We also saw a recent article from Film Daily about using HBOT for burn wounds.
HBOT is great for wound healing, in part because, as HBOT expert Dr. Paul Harch, author of The Oxygen Revolution, says, “Hyperbaric oxygen therapy exerts its wound-healing effects by expression and suppression of thousands of genes. The dominant gene actions are up-regulation of trophic and anti-inflammatory genes and down-regulation of pro-inflammatory and apoptotic genes.”
In non-scientific language, that basically means that HBOT influence the genes which help with healing. Plus, oxygen itself is profoundly healing, and when you flood the body with oxygen, it accelerates healing. This is why we have patients come to see us both before and after getting surgery.
Additionally, when it comes to the challenge of non-healing wounds, like diabetic wounds, HBOT addresses non-healing wounds in all tissue types, which is unique. There are no medications which can do that.
Of course, the irony in calling HBOT a “modern” medical treatment is that it was originally invented in the 1600s by British physician Dr. Nathaniel Henshaw, who is credited as the first person to use compressed air in a chamber called a domicilium.
Then, in the 1830s French physician Dr. Junod built a hyperbaric chamber to treat patients with pulmonary issues.
In 1861, the first hyperbaric chamber in the US was built in New York by Dr. James Leonard Corning to treat Hudson Tunnel workers who got sick from working below sea level.
In the 1920s, Kansas physician Dr. Orval J. Cunningham used HBOT to treat Spanish Flu, syphilis, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and cancer. He actually built a 5-story steel ball hospital to treat patients.
In the 1930s Brazilian physicians Dr. Ozorio de Almeida and Dr. Costa used HBOT to treat leprosy.
In the 1970s, Dr. Boschetty and Dr. Cernoch of Czechoslovakia conduct a successful trial of HBOT for multiple sclerosis.
In 1980Dr. Richard A. Neubauer and Dr. William S. Maxfield formed the American College of Hyperbaric Medicine. The International Society of Hyperbaric Medicine was founded in 1988.
So, we guess it’s “modern” in the sense that it wasn’t used in Biblical times. That we know of…