A few years ago, I added hyperbaric oxygen chambers to the clinic.  

In traditional hyperbarics, like traditional medicine, the mode of operation is to 'treat a disease.'  The problem is that a disease doesn't occur without dysfunction of the cells first.  Traditionalists tend to view a condition or illness as too many sick cells.  Therefore, traditional/hospital-based hyperbarics treat life or death situations like carbon monoxide poisoning, gangrene, flesh-eating bacteria, etc.

In the functional medicine world, hyperbarics is used and focused on enhancing the mode of operations of your cell function.  Illness is more because there's a lack of healthy cells instead of an abundance of sick ones.  

For example, if traditional hyperbarics is great at killing off life-threatening anaerobic bacteria like gangrene, the mode of operation includes functions like: Leukocyte oxidative killing, antibiotic synergy, toxin inhibition (from microbes), reduction of white blood cell stickiness, reduction of inflammation, and reduction of biofilms, just to name a few.  

As a result, we can apply those mechanisms of action to other scenarios that aren't immediately life threatening.  Situations like Lyme, SIBO, H. pylori, and COVID Long Hauler issues.

I say all that to say that one of my favorite ways to use HBOT is to help a person overcome fatigue due to the way hyperbarics improves the underlying mechanisms that lead to the fatigue.  

Here are 3 mechanisms of action that use HBOT to aid in increasing your energy. 

Whether it's your car's engine, your fireplace, or the manufacturing of cellular energy, you need a fuel source AND you need oxygen.  

For a person that is overweight/obese AND fatigued, that person has all the fuel source needed (extra weight) but they need oxygen to light the fuse (combust) and set the fuel on fire. 

Why isn't a person getting the appropriate oxygen?  For those living locally, just living here at 6500 feet above sea level, we have to fight harder to capture oxygen due to having less atmospheric pressure.

The other main reason I see people fatigued is that they are constantly in a fight or flight mode.  In other words, they are in constant sprint mode.  A sprinter can hold his breath and race 100 meters.  Going further than that at that speed is not going to be very possible because they run out of oxygen.  Chronic stress, autoimmune issues, toxicity, and trauma perpetuate the brain's communication with the body to keep throwing that person into protection.    

The mechanism of action that creates that combustion is that hyperbarics will hyper-oxygenate your tissues.  More oxygen is available to mix with the abundant fuel, and you start producing and releasing energy (aka ATP).  

The beauty about hyperbarics is that it's the pressure that dissolves oxygen into your plasma bypassing the need for your red blood cells to carry it around.  It's called Henry's law.

In traditional as well as functional medicine, the word OXIDATION has become synonymous with everything bad.  That's just not true.  

The reality is that oxidation is just a form of communication in the body.

Everything the body does is intelligent, it's just dose dependent.  Here are a plethora of vital functions that are dependent on appropriate amounts of oxidation occurring in your body.  

1. Hormesis  

2. Energy Production

3. Growth Factor Signaling

4. Hormonal Signaling

5. Antioxidant Production

6. Sirtuin Production

Here are a plethora of vital functions that result from an inappropriate amount of oxidation occurring in your body.

1. Autoimmune Disorders

2. Neurodegenerative Disorders

3. Chronic Inflammation

4. Cardiovascular Disease

5. DNA Damage

6. Mitochondria Damage

7. Cancer

So, if oxygen is needed for oxidation but too much oxidation creates a disease process, then why would HBOT be a good thing?

It's because it's all in the dose and delivery.  The negative consequences are typically from long-term exposure to harmful things.  For example.  Smoking a cigarette isn't going to harm you.  But smoking multiple cigarettes daily for 20 years, creates a lot of damage. 

Exercise creates oxidation and exercise is vital for healthy cell expression.  But over-training creates a breakdown in the body.  Think of hyperbarics as a controlled stressor (like ice baths, sauna, fasting, etc) that signals the body to create more recovery mechanisms.  

One of the main signals that is created after treatment with hyperbarics (between and after treatments) is the production of HIF-1.  Have fun searching HIF-1.   

While you're at it, search for sirtuins.  It's another benefit of oxidation signaling.  Whether that oxidation is coming from ice baths, fasting, sauna sessions, and yes, hyperbaric. 

Mitogenesis is the production of MORE mitochondria.  Mitochondria is where you produce energy within all your cells.  

Why would your body produce more in the presence of oxygen?  Oxygen is a valuable commodity.  You can go weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without oxygen.  We don't store it.   

Instead of wasting it, your body will create more cellular factories to utilize it, which in turn creates more energy to go dominate your life.   2 of the richest sources of mitochondria are your muscles and brain.  What does that translate into?  Improved physical capacity and mental acuity.