In spite of a rapid growth in the number of people being affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) throughout the past decade, you’ll hardly find any preponderant treatment for cure. You must be knowing about hyberbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) as a mode of treatment to fasten the healing of wounds. Surprisingly, the recent collaborative study, after a lot of experimentation, has affirmed HBOT to be a potential treatment for TBI and PTSD.
Therefore, first let us know in detail about TBI, PTSD, and HBOT.
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
This is a complex brain injury, which can occur due to fall, accident, injury, etc., and can lead to severe disabilities. The impact of TBI on a person can distort his entire personality and mental abilities. Imagine the plight of the person whose brain function has been disrupted – which defines us. The situation becomes tougher when the person doesn’t believe he is affected by a brain injury.
TBI patients often undergo headache, mood swing, thinking problem, memory loss, frustration, attention deficits etc. In more complex cases, they encounter speech problem, loss of consciousness, body parts functioning problem, emotional problem etc.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
This disorder is seen to often develop to those people who have gone through any shocking, scary, or dangerous event at some point of their life due to damage of tissues in brain. It’s not unnatural if you feel terrified after some shocking happening; it becomes unnatural when you’re unable to recover from anxiety or depression or shock even after months and years. In such cases the affected person should be diagnosed with PSTD.
PSTD patients struggle to trust even on family members. They are frightened, unable to bond and communicate with others, and always depressed. They often go into flashbacks, see bad dreams, and avoid to face things that remind them of the traumatic event. They always apprehend in mind that some danger is about to come, so easily get startled and have angry outburst.
Hyberbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a treatment process that uses 100% pure oxygen in an air tight chamber in high pressure for the patient to breath. The more one breaths oxygen, the more it dissolves into one’s body fluid and repairs the damaged tissues to accelerate healing of wounds.
Normally, we breath in 21% oxygen content in the air, which raises to 100% during HBOT, and the whole process runs for at least 90 minutes in a day.
Is There Any Link between TBI and PSTD?
Since long scientists and doctors have anticipated a link between PTSD and TBI, as both the symptoms have been observed mostly in people returning from the injuries and trauma of war. Though, according to some researchers PTSD and TBI have no link, enough evidences have been found which prove PTSD can develop after mild TBI.
PTSD can occur without any physical injury unlike TBI; it is more like a psychiatric condition, but the symptoms of PTSD, as discussed before, for longer time can lead to physical damage to brain. On the other hand, a person already affected by TBI can develop PTSD. The interesting part is you treat any of the diseases, the other will be cured along with the one you treat.
How HBOT Benefits PTSD and TBI Patients?
Hyperbaric therapy places the affected patient in an airtight, transparent chamber filled with more atmospheric pressure. By generating 100% pure oxygen, the patient is made to inhale the maximum of it for minimum 90 minutes. A patient who has completed the entire course of treatment for almost 40 cycles gets cured in most cases.
This therapy forms new tissues in brain by making reach the dissolved oxygen in the affected areas. Unlike the earlier notion hyperbaric therapy can heal your brain from trauma.
The key agenda here is tissue formation. DNA stimulation makes the nucleus of the cell to split and forms tissues. HBOT aids in DNA stimulation, which grows the production of hormones that stimulate growth in different tissues.
This treatment also turns off certain genes, which are the reasons behind cell death. On the other hand, it also turns on genes, that grow cells in brain.
A Final Takeaway
The great researcher, Doctor Harch, says about HBOT, “A therapy that stops the injury process very early on if rendered soon after the TBI, or that can help long-term dysfunctional patients by helping to ameliorate their symptoms and make them more functional, could potentially have a huge impact. This just has tremendous importance and application to society. I believe it’s going to revolutionize the fields of medicine and neurology.”
Though the equipment and the treatment are bit costly, there is no question of hesitation when it’s about saving a life. If any of your acquaintances are suffering through PTSD or TBI, motivate them to opt for this therapy as it will give them relief.
