Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy For Longevity

Dr. Furnas (00:01):
Does anyone remember the photos of Michael Jackson inside a hyperbaric oxygen chamber? Tabloids flew with rumors that he was trying to live forever. Sadly, he didn't. But was there any truth to those rumors? Welcome to Skintuition. I'm Heather Furnas.

Dr. Korman (00:21):
And I'm Josh Korman. As two plastic surgeons, we lay aside our scalpels and explore the nonsurgical world to bring you what's new, what's safe, and what to look for when you're ready to hit refresh.

Dr. Furnas (00:34):
In this episode, we'll be talking about longevity ways to change the course of aging. So we live long healthy lives because that's a way of looking and feeling our best, which is really the theme of this podcast to look our best and feel our best without a knife. At present, we have limited options, stem cell therapy, young plasma transfusion, physical exercise, fasting and medications like metformin. Physical exercise is hands down, the best proven anti-aging modality we have right now, and other possibilities show great promise. And that brings us to today's topic. So Josh, what is hyperbaric oxygen therapy?

Dr. Korman (01:23):
Well, it's a lot of words, but hyper, we know what that means. That means just like a lot.

Dr. Furnas (01:30):
Yeah, like just had too much caffeine.

Dr. Korman (01:33):
Or some people that are just a lot. And baric has to, with pressure, barometric pressure, it's all about pressure. So hyperbaric oxygen therapy is breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized environment. It's a well established treatment for lots of things like decompression sickness in scuba divers, burns, serious infections and wounds that aren't really healing.

Dr. Furnas (01:59):
So decompression sickness is called the Bends or caissons disease. And if you've ever scuba dived, you'll be familiar with it. It's like, imagine taking a balloon under water, it shrinks the deeper you go because the pressure compresses the air inside. And so the nitrogen in our bloodstream is compressed so much that the deeper a scuba diver goes, then it gets absorbed into the blood when you're breathing that compressed air. But when you come up to the surface too quickly, then the nitrogen that was absorbed in the blood becomes bubbles. And those bubbles, it's kind of like bubbly champagne-like blood can be lethal. And the pressure in a hyperbaric chamber forces the nitrogen back into solution through pressure until the body can get rid of it.

Dr. Korman (02:58):
It's interesting, the word I think, is what gets people a little scared, like chamber of secrets. Chamber seems like some thing.

Dr. Furnas (03:09):
Harry Potter story.

Dr. Korman (03:10):
Yeah. So in a true hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, the air pressure is increased to two to three times higher than normal air pressure, offering even more to your lungs than pure oxygen at normal air pressure. So it is important to understand actually the difference between the soft pressure and the hard pressure tanks. The soft pressure tanks are ones that people can get for home use. They don't really get up to that two to three times barometric pressure. The hard chambers are the ones that do. Those are the ones in hospitals and some other clinics. I know a lot about this cuz I'm actually building a clinic that's ,going to have one of the hard chamber ones and it's quite a deal, but I'm excited about it. But we'll see. It's a thought for the future, and we're trying to learn exactly what does the therapy do. So these are tanks, but not really tanks. It's just like an interior room inside a device with high pressure oxygen.

Dr. Furnas (04:09):
And so that extra oxygen can kill bacteria. And so as we mentioned, it is used to fight infections and it also can help with wound healing because it can provide oxygen with that extra pressure in situations where a wound isn't getting enough oxygen, like diabetic wounds or radiation wounds or wounds after a serious burn, like Michael Jackson's. So he was being treated in a hyperbaric chamber after he was severely burned filming a Pepsi commercial. But were those tabloids onto something?

Dr. Korman (04:49):
So well, the extra oxygen triggers the release of substances called growth factors or stem cells, which you may have heard of. And this whole idea is that promote healing. So it may, and still at this point may also help the slowing down the aging process by enhancing our own antioxidant defenses. If anybody's seen the second season of White Lotus, there's one segment where they're talking about hyperbaric oxygen a lot. But the point is that it's important to understand the difference between what things are providing antioxidants and what things are providing other means. There's a lot of buzzwords, like we just said, stem cells and antioxidants, and it's important as educated consumers in the whole world of wellness as we live longer, to try to understand exactly what does it all mean? What are these antioxidant defenses?

Dr. Furnas (05:49):
Yeah, that sounds a lot like chemistry.

Dr. Korman (05:53):
Yeah. So our body can accumulate free radicals.

Dr. Furnas (05:57):
Free radicals, like hippie protestors, like get out of Vietnam.

Dr. Korman (06:02):
Yes. Well, this is not a political statement. It's not from the 1960s or from the 2020's or anything. But free radicals are highly unstable and highly reactive. And what does that mean? So you can actually think of them as what they do is they cause damage to tissues. That's what it matters. Our bodies that have this huge immune system to protect ourselves and protect us from bugs that want to kill us or make us sick. And it's a balance between what things are good for us and what things are not good for us. But these free radicals, what they do is they can cause severe damage to our tissues.

Dr. Furnas (06:50):
Yeah, interesting. You know, these free radicals can lead to heart disease and cancers and inflammatory diseases. We don't really connect with free radicals. And so antioxidants are kind of like the SWAT team that comes in and scavenges the free radicals. What else?

Dr. Korman (07:10):
Well, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, we'll just call it HBOT, cuz it's a little, you know, everybody's into these TLAs, three letter acronyms. So we'll have a four letter acronym, HBOT. So it's been shown to inhibit, okay, get this word telomere shortening. So this is where we get down to DNA.

Dr. Furnas (07:31):
Okay. Yeah. Telomere shortening is huge. Telomeres are the DNA protein structures at the end of each chromosome, and they protect our genes from damage and degradation. We love long telomeres. The problem is little bits of the telomeres are lost with each cell division, so they kind of serve as a ticking clock, and the lifespan is associated with telomere shortening. And interestingly, your lifestyle can impact telomere shortening or protecting of telomeres.

Dr. Korman (08:13):
So in fact, telomere length is really all about health and lifespan and at the rate at which an individual's aging. So what accelerates the process where telomeres get short, which is what we don't want?

Dr. Furnas (08:29):
So chopping off the length of the telomere, smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, exposure to pollution and stress. All of those things shorten those telomeres.

Dr. Korman (08:45):
Yeah, that's a big surprise. No, not really. So I think we can safely say that HBOT should be combined with a healthy lifestyle.

Dr. Furnas (08:54):
So let's move on to stem cells. HBOT increases the number of circulating stem cells. So what are stem cells? They've become a buzzword. We've talked about 'em in previous episodes. But Josh, why don't you just kind of remind us about stem cells?

Dr. Korman (09:12):
Well, stem cells, basically a lot of cells in our bodies, they start as something that can go in one direction, meaning they can develop into certain cells. And then there are others that are unspecialized cells that actually can develop into a variety of different cells. It's kind of like a kindergartner who might grow up to be an athlete or a professor or a bus driver. That's interesting, I guess when we see people like the people who seem to can do more than one of those things, they can be an athlete and a professor or a bus driver professor. So, but in general a kindergartner has many possibilities. So sometimes the cell type is predetermined, like I mentioned. So it's like if you're going to go IDB, into daddy's business, they used to say, so it's like, son, you're going to take over my company, there's no choice. But others cells, they can choose, a muscle cell or a brain cell. They can also fix the damaged tissues. And someday researchers hope they can become healthy cells to treat things like heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Furnas (10:23):
And that's kind of why they've become such a buzzword. It's the potential to fix these things. So more stem cells are good things, sort of like the countries with enough babies and children to grow up and support the elderly. And countries with very low birth rates are worried about their economic future. Who's going to support the elderly?

Dr. Korman (10:47):
So HBOT also encourages the clearing out of old cells, new blood cell growth, release of growth factors, which leads to new collagen formation, cell repair, and new skin cells. So skin looks better and the blood flow to the brain is better.

Dr. Furnas (11:06):
And that sounds really good. Now, these are early days, and we need further research. Right now, HBOT, anti-aging protocols vary widely. If you read papers, there are a number of papers out, but it does make it difficult to compare the results. In general, treatment frequency ranges from one to five times a week for a total of 40 to 60 sessions.

Dr. Korman (11:32):
And if you ask some of the people that run these places, they say that, oh, you need to do 20 sessions. I mean, the good thing is there's enough evidence that insurance companies for certain diagnoses will actually cover hyperbaric oxygen treatments. But again, people are using them for, HBOT treatments, for a lot of different things. So what's it like? So like I said, the chamber's of cylinder with windows, and it looks like something people might sleep in. Actually, some people put their pets in them, so their pets will live longer, which is interesting. And your ears can feel plugged, but that's like you're on an airplane and you can yawn or swallow, adjust them. A lot of times you can watch a TV show or something while you're in there. Essentially, there's two ways to get the hyperbaric oxygen. It's either breathing, using liquid oxygen or air.

(12:24):
So if it's air, then if wear a mask and have oxygen in addition to it. And if you use liquid oxygen, you don't need the mask. These are two different ways people do it. But essentially what you're doing is you're hanging out for an hour, two hours in a container that's usually clear, or there are some openings, or you can see not openings to the outside, but glass walls. So if you're a little claustrophobic, it's good to go and test it out first to make sure that it's not too claustrophobic for you. But most people find it's pretty straightforward.

Dr. Furnas (13:03):
And then to avoid oxygen toxicity, you may need to take breaks.

Dr. Korman (13:09):
Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Furnas (13:11):
And when a session is done, you may feel lightheaded, and so you should have someone drive you home. It's not for everyone. It shouldn't be used if you have a lung disease or a cold. You don't want to have it if you've had recent ear surgery or an ear injury. Possible complications include eye damage, lung collapse, low blood sugar, sinus problems that we talked about, oxygen toxicity.

Dr. Korman (13:40):
Well, it's a lot of things that can happen, but most never do. And the anti-aging benefits are promising, but we use standardized protocols and guidelines.

Dr. Furnas (13:51):
And in the meantime, I am exercising with my weights.

Dr. Korman (13:56):
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I think exercise is excellent. So join us every two weeks as we tackle topics from hair loss to hormones and pimples to wrinkles, discovering new ways to feel better about ourselves.

Dr. Furnas (14:09):
If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us, review us and share. Have an idea for a topic? We'd love to hear from you. Theme music by Diego Canales, production and engineering by The Axis.