09/23/2021
For decades it has been used to treat divers with the ‘bends’ — potentially deadly nitrogen bubbles that can form in the blood when surfacing quickly from deep water. But pressurised chambers that deliver 100 per cent oxygen to the body can also bump-start the healing process, and they are now being used for a wide range of conditions from diabetic ulcers to damage caused by cancer radiation treatment. It’s even being investigated as a way to reverse ageing.
Research this month suggests that hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), as it is medically known, could be a treatment for dementia.