Cancer And Oxygen Levels
Years ago, the medical experts used to think cancer needed oxygen. This made any sort of therapy focusing on adding oxygen to the blood a bad idea.
However, more recently, studies have shown cancer thriving in areas where there’s little to no oxygen. Many cancer patients also have hypoxemia, which is low oxygen levels in the blood.
This is why studies are being done, which are showing how oxygen helps with the effectiveness of chemotherapy and aids recovery after them.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Combined With Chemo
Most of the studies being done to look at how hyperbaric therapy affects cancer have it being used in combination with chemotherapy or radiation.
It’s successfully helped reduce the size of tumors when used beside chemo, and it’s even improved the odds for patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a very aggressive brain cancer. Hyperbaric therapy was also studied with radiotherapy, and it showed hope in lowering the mortality rate for those with head or neck cancer.
How Hyperbaric Therapy Helps With Cancer Symptoms
Even more than helping directly to battle cancer, hyperbaric oxygen therapy also helps with many of the conditions that come with cancer and cancer treatments.
For example, both cancer and its treatments cause fatigue and low blood cell counts. Hyperbaric therapy is able to give energy and convince your bone marrow to increase the amount of blood cells it makes.
With chemo and radiation treatments often causing Mucositis and Esophagitis, which are types of inflammation in different parts of your digestive system, using hyperbaric services to reduce the inflammation is a huge help to prevent any further complications and to aid digestion to help you stay healthy.
Of course, cancer treatments are most known for killing healthy cells and not just the cancer cells, something called necrosis, which can get quite severe. Hyperbaric therapy, by helping the damaged cells get more oxygen, hastens their repair.
The last thing we’ll mention here is commonly called chemo brain. Basically, this is brain fog, and it’s negatively affecting your memory and slowing down your thought process. Fortunately, more oxygen to your brain helps your mind work better.
