Hyperbaric oxygen therapy may sound new-agey but it’s actually a well-studied therapy used in a variety of conditions. The therapy provides hundreds of times the normal oxygen levels to its recipients over time.
It hasn’t gotten much play in central nervous system conditions but a recent fibromyalgia study opened some eyes.
Check out what increased oxygenation did to FM patients and their brains (and take the poll) in
▪ New Age Fluff or Real Treatment? Fibromyalgia Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Study Opens Eyes
It didn’t work for my husband,but ME/ CFS is so different for each patient.
So true!
i tried hbot pretty early on with me/cfs and it did nothing for me.
HBOT started my CFS healing. What was interesting was that I did a few sessions at a low pressure and I felt nothing. For the session where we bumped up the pressure to 2, I felt something in 15 minutes. It was like a tiny flash of feeling less sick.
How are you doing now Laura?
I want to be clear, I didn’t just feel fatigued, I felt ill all the time. The hyperbaric cured that. I started getting ill in the autumn of 2016. It got to the point where I spent the day in a recliner chair. I had an aide. It was rough. When I started hyperbaric, they had me on 1.5 ATA. When I told the director that I didn’t just feel fatigued, I felt ill, he increase the pressure to 2.0 ATA. That’s when I felt improvement.
I was seeing Dr. Susan Levine here in New York. She recommended the treatment to her other patients, but I don’t think it was so successful.
I did participate in an Ian Lipkin study. The assessment showed a lot of “wrong/bad” bacteria in my gut. But Dr. Lipkin didn’t really have any thoughts on how to address it. He recommended eating resistant starches. Maybe the “bad” bacteria made me feel sick.
I had many years of brain fog, depression, fatigue and skin problems and insomnia leading up to the CFS. Diet (low carb, intermittent fasting) and supplements help. These things still need to be managed. The insomnia is a chronic problem. I’ve tried a million different things. A few have been very helpful.
the hbot treament i did was just 2 weeks straight. i certainly did not try 120 days. it would be really nice if it actually improved the brain fog but so expensive and time consuming. additionally, my sinuses and ears are always a problem which would make it hard to do.
when I was told I had FM,I read a study on oxygen therapy and it’s effects on FM and so i went to an M.S. charity centre where they have a hyperbaric chamber, started with 80×1 hour sessions at 2 x normal atmospheric pressure and now go once a week. the net result of the 80 sessions was that my brain fog in the morning, and my general fatigue, disappeared! the pain remained but at a much reduced level and is controllable without drugs, through diet, supplements, acupuncture, excercise and physio.
Try exercise with oxygen therapy. It was amazing for my fatigue! At first I just breathed the oxygen, then I did it while walking on a treadmill for like 5 minutes a day. Eventually I was able to work up to 15 minutes of exercise a day (after like 6 weeks) and increase the intensity. A year later the brain fog and fatigue are totally manageable.
I chose EWOT because it is much more affordable and time-conscious than those hours in the HBOT tube. Doing it consistently like 5 days a week was key for me….but it was like 515 minutes a day, so I made it work.
I think these guys were the ones I bought, but there are others out there too. They were just one of the most affordable products I found:
http://www.onethousandroads.com