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HYPERBARIC OXYGEN CHAMBER THERAPY (HBOT) FOR AUTISM
Specifically, Dr Jerry Kartzinel discussed Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, or HBOT, as a possible treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorders at a conference in June 2005.
Since then, many healthcare professionals who treat autistic individuals have reported excellent results using the Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber for hyperbaric autism treatment.
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Autism - a form of brain injury
Autism is now understood as a multi-functional disorder that may, among other things, involve:
- Heavy metal damage to brain cells
- Autoimmune damage to the brain cells
- Intestinal inflammation
- Persistent yeast, viral and bacterial infections
- Cellular energy processing dysfunction (Kreb Cycle dysfunction)
All these processes can be helped by increasing oxygen flow to the tissues and cells in the brain as well as in the guts.
This is where the Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber comes in.
Mild Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (m-HBOT), using a Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber with just slightly raised air pressure, is a very effective way of getting more oxygen into the body at the cellular level.
According to the Laws of Physics, an increase in atmospheric pressure results in more gas being dissolved in any given liquid.
Increasing oxygen supply
In mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy (m-HBOT), the gas is oxygen and the liquid is blood. So when a person enters a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, more oxygen is dissolved in the blood.
Under pressure, oxygen does not only hook up to red blood cells – the "traditional" way oxygen is delivered to tissues. It also dissolves into the blood plasma.
This is significant because when that plasma circulates near dormant or injured tissues, the oxygen in the plasma will dissolve further into the cells there. In fact, damaged or injured cells receive more oxygen from the blood plasma than from red blood cell in the "traditional" delivery system.
Greater oxygen supply will enhance the recovery of damaged tissues such as damaged brain cells (encephalopathic brain), a bruised muscle, a sprained tendon, surgical wound, etc.
The hyperbaric oxygen chamber can therefore be used to treat a broad range of medical conditions, including autism. This has given rise to hyperbaric autism therapy.
Safe uses of the Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber
The Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber has a history of several decades. It has been safely and effectively used for a wide variety of conditions, including:
- Cerebral palsy - brain injury, often leading to limited motor skills, speech difficulties, learning disabilities, or other problems
- Lyme disease – an infectious disease with symptoms ranging from fever and chills to muscle paralysis, severe arthritis as well as heart and neurological disorders.
- chronic fatigue syndrome
- cancer
- wound healing
- migraine, etc
In fact, treatment with the Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber has been – and can be – used for any condition related to immune dysfunction and / or perfusion problems (supply of blood to an organ).
Mild HBOT is approved by the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for treating high altitude sickness caused by lack of oxygen to the tissues.
Over 2800 mild Hyperbaric Oxygen Chambers are in service today with a flawless safety record.
The Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber is a Class II Medical Device that is cleared by the US FDA for use in the home, clinics, and sub-acute care.
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When hyperbaric oxygen therapy was first used, they typically employed higher pressures of 1.5 to 2 ATA (absolute atmospheres) of pressure, together with 100 percent oxygen.
This required sophisticated equipment to achieve the high pressure, as well as multi-person chambers with a smaller "depressuration" chamber to allow patients and doctors to go in and out without affecting the other patients under treatment. Such equipment my cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Also, a great deal of precaution and care is required in handling pure oxygen, which is highly flammable.
And too much oxygen is toxic. Conventional HBOT is thus normally limited to 40 treatment sessions, to avoid oxygen toxicity.
Mild HBOT
The world of hyperbaric medicine is now discovering that excellent results can be achieved with much lower pressure – as low as 1.3 ATA – and less oxygen, typically 21 percent to 24 percent FiO2 (fraction of inspired oxygen, that is, the percentage of oxygen reaching the lungs).
This is known as mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or m-HBOT and it appears to be highly beneficial to many body systems. In particular, lower pressure appears to be more beneficial for the injured brain than higher pressure.
One reason is that the body’s physiology has to function at very tight ranges. For example, body temperature, blood pH and blood pressure have to be keep within very tight ranges.
A “high” fever of 39.5 ºC is brought back to normal by a mere 6 percent decline in temperature. High blood pressure of 100 mm Hg is brought back to normal by a 20 percent drop in pressure.
By the same token, the body appears to cope better with just slight variations in air pressure and the level of oxygen.
The air we breathe is at normal atmospheric pressure and it contains 21 percent oxygen. Under such circumstances, the amount of oxygen dissolved in tissue is 0.3 percent.
With conventional HBOT delivering 100 percent oxygen at 1.5 ATA, the amount of oxygen dissolved in tissue become 3.0 percent. This is a 10-fold increase. If the pressure in the Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber is 2 to 4 ATA, the amount of dissolved oxygen is very much higher.
The newer Mild HBOT delivers 24 percent oxygen at a pressure of 1.3ATA. This increases body tissue oxygen from 0.3 percent to 0.4 percent.
The increase may seem tiny. But it is a 33 percent increase. In human physiology terms, this is a significant increase! Perhaps this is why mild Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy has proven more beneficial than the use of conventional Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber.
Dr. Jill James found evidence that autistic children do suffer from oxidative stress – cellular damage caused by free-radicals, which may be produced by too much oxygen. This perhaps explains why mild HBOT is preferable to conventional HBOT for treating autistic children.
(Dr Jill James is Director of the Biochemical Genetics Laboratory at Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute and a Professor of Pediatrics at the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.)
With the lower pressures and less oxygen, it is possible to go beyond the 40-sessions limit with conventional HBOT.
Click here for evidence of the efficacy of Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber Treatment