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How Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy May Help You
By: Krist Hammargren

Take a breath. The air you just took in is about 21 percent oxygen. The capillaries in your lungs pick up the oxygen and it's dissolved in the plasma of your blood and gets carried to all parts of your body. Your body uses that oxygen to heal itself and usually 21 percent oxygen is plenty to do the job.

When you have a foot ulcer, however, your body could use even more oxygen. The white blood cells that fight infection in the ulcer use 20 times more oxygen when they're killing bacteria. Also, the more oxygen your body has to work with, the more efficiently it lays down wound-repairing connective tissue.

Yet, just when you need more oxygen, you may have less. If you have neuropathy (diabetic nerve damage), that may have caused changes in the blood flow, resulting in an island of low oxygen levels in your foot. Less oxygen means slower healing, and an ulcer that doesn't heal could eventually lead to an amputation.

So, it seems that you should try to get extra oxygen in your blood when you have a foot ulcer, to bring the oxygen levels in the tissue around the ulcer up to normal or even higher. But sitting in your living room and breathing in 100 percent oxygen won't do the trick. Under normal circumstances, only so much oxygen will dissolve in you in your blood. You can make more oxygen dissolve in your blood by going into a pressurized chamber and breathing 100 percent oxygen. This is called hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The pressure in a hyperbaric chamber is the same as if you went scuba diving 45 feet under water. When you breath 100 percent oxygen while you're at that pressure, your blood has about 20 times the amount of oxygen dissolved in it as it does normally.

Hyperbaric Oxygen (HBO) therapy isn't a new treatment. The technology was developed in the late 1800s and was first used to treat decompression sickness ("the bends") in deep sea divers who swam up to the surface too fast.

Today, HBO is also used to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, serious burns, diabetic foot ulcers and radiation damage - all conditions in which not enough oxygen is getting to the tissues. Patients sit or recline in an air pressurized chamber along with several other patients. A specially trained observer is also in the chamber while the patient inhales oxygen through a mask or a clear plastic hood. They can listen to music, read, play cards, or just sit and relax. Check with your doctor to see if you can benefit from this type of treatment.

Krist Hammargren