Hyperbaric oxygen and why people are using it - from serious disease to chronic insomnia – with Alan Trim

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0:59Plus you can be assured that all ingredients undergo rigorous third-party testing. Buy Primudine now at OxfordHealthSpam.com and use the discount code DrSophie, that's D-R-Sophie for 20 % off. Hi I'm Sophie and this is Age Well with Dr Sophie Schotter, a space devoted to all things health, wellness and longevity because for me aging well is about looking and feeling like the best possible version of ourselves inside as well as out. So together with my producer Fee I'll be deep diving into the latest research sifting fact from fiction. I'll also be talking to all kinds of trusted experts tapping into their knowledge along with bringing you conversations from a range of interesting women and men finding out how they age well.

1:47So this is my show, welcome along and as always thank you so much for listening.

1:59Alan welcome. Before we explain what hyperbaric oxygen therapy actually is and we'll probably shorten that to HPOT if that's okay. Should we start with your story because I know it's a fascinating one. How did you get into all of this? Yeah thank you Sophie for having me on. So it's a sort of tale of trauma actually which is I think the unifying factor of many people that find themselves in hyper barracks and probably imagine wellness in this kind of field more broadly. Back in 2019, I was kind of living a life that was of abundance, really. I just moved into my first bought house. I was with a lady that I absolutely adored.

2:36My business was allowing me a lot more freedom to work from home at the time. I'm not metric. I sort of was doing very, very well. And yet my sleep at the time just evaded me. Now, people often say, is it down to stress or were you overthinking? But at the time, as I say, everything was going very, very well. So when it was at its worst and the insomnia probably kicked in, I was at times going four or five nights without any sleep at all. And one of the worst consecutive days I had was going six nights and just sleeping five hours cumulatively across those six nights. And the worst, I think, actual occasion, I think, was in that where I was finding the Samaritans after the fourth straight night of no sleep, just because it felt like my brain was falling out my rear end, basically.

3:18so to speak. So it was traumatic. And yet because my brain is one of problem solving, I'm a very curious person. I began to obviously take the agency to look at what was going wrong and why it was happening. So it was leading me down to cutting edge modalities like pulse electromagnetic field, red light photobiomodulation, a device called Nano V, which is really good for inflammation. And I was like trying meditation techniques, breathing techniques. I was doing wellness retreats and none of it seemed to be working and I remember on a very obscure kind of sleep podcast in the States they were talking about hyperic oxygen being effective for sleep and by this point I've become so cynical that I just didn't believe it was going to work and the place in St.

4:01Auburn's about an hour away from where I am in Cambridge and when I came to do it I just didn't think on sort of traveling down there I thought there's nowhere this is I've trying to do other things it's unlikely this this was going to suddenly conquer it that night after doing an hour and a half in what was a mild pressure chamber I believe a 1.388 chamber which is only 10 feet of pressure I came home and I slept a bit and I was still a little bit cynical that sort of correlation doesn't equal causation so I then I went back the following week on the Friday and that night I slept something about four or five hours but it was kind of enough in my sleep drive to get off to sleep and to remain asleep for me to think there's something in this because it had been so far removed from where I've been at previously.

4:41So I then acquired a chamber, had it set up at my home, did somewhere initially between about 30 and 40 sessions. By about 10 sessions in, I was significantly better in my sleep. By 20 sessions, I remember even my ADHD symptoms. So my focus, concentration, my energy levels over the course of a day, and all of what kind of descends on me now when I do a kind of block session of hyperbarics, particularly when I get to about the 10 sessions, I realized I've just had a little bit more consistent energy over the day where I can work till later hours for good or for bad and be more consistent in my concentration over more complex tasks.

5:14And when I realized the basis of this against or the science of it in treatment for what were off-label conditions such as cancer, MS, recovery from injury of any kind, whether it's sporting or whether you're coming away from surgery, I realized there was an application across the board. So I set up on the side of what I already did, Cambridge Hyper Barracks, I started to see the benefits of people firsthand. And it was just so empowering. And from there, I realized that there was essentially a practice building, a lot more interest growing in Hyper Barracks. This is going back now to about 2021.

5:47So at dinner with a friend of mine, I said to him, I think it's a very good opportunity, because the impact of this technology really needs to be done consistently. So when people come just two or three times a week, whilst that's better than not doing it at all, it's much better to have access to it five or six times a week. In meeting, I remember saying that there was a chance to basically rent and sell hybrid chambers across the country because I could see the market was increasing. But impacting on people's lives where they're just paying possession to come to a centre or where I'd had this set up at mine was just kind of not enough.

6:18I think having it in your home where you can essentially roll out of bed and use the chamber for reasons I would explain in terms of using it consistently five, six nights at a time, it made a much greater impact. And from there, we basically formed Oxidise and we've got high-end sort of performing athletes so Tom Stoltman three times world's strongest man Ben Whittaker who is soon to be a world champion in Britain he's got three and a half million followers and he's got a really exotic boxing style in the UK and various Premier League footballers but this all came about simply from that trauma growing into me starting a marginal regional business to now we're the biggest distributor of high-barric oxygen equipment in the UK, which has all happened in just over two and a half years.

7:00Wow. Astonishing. Astonishing. And your story also, the lack of sleep, that must have been really, really debilitating. Lots of people will resonate with that. And I had no idea that actually it can help with that. But anyway, we'll get on to that. We also do want to talk to you about Oxidise as a brand and the USPs that you bring to what is a really interesting and as you say, growing space. But as Sophie said, can you first explain to listeners in really simple terms, what is hyperbaric oxygen therapy and how does it work? The chambers vary in sort of size and shape. So what you're in is a pressurised, sealed, often spacious chamber.

7:38So you can either be sitting in the chamber or lying in the chamber quite often. And what happens is that increases the pressure to be above what is normal atmospheric pressure. So where we're all sat at this moment in time is one atmospheric pressure. But when you're in a chamber, let's say it's a 1.5 atmospheric chamber, it's adding a 0.5. So the 1 is atmospheric pressure right now plus 0.5, which is 50 % additional pressure. So under normal conditions, when we're breathing in at normal atmospheric pressure, our red blood cells are carrying oxygen around our body. So that normally saturates to a point of 96 to sort of 98 % if you were to use an oximeter on your finger to assess that.

8:16There's a certain ceiling basically in what the oxygen can be delivered. So what hyperoxygen does, or the pressure of the chamber does, is it pushes the oxygen deep into your blood plasma, bypassing some of your red blood cells deep into your blood plasma. And that blood plasma is thinner, so it enables the oxygen to reach underperfused or what we would call sort of injured or inflamed tissue and begin to oxygenate and provide nutrients to that tissue. So what we begin to see is an increase in the energy of those cells. So the ATP, as we call it, in the cell, it reduces inflammation, it increases new red blood vessel growth, so what we call angiogenesis, which leads to kind of faster and more effective tissue repair.

8:58But one of the other aspects of it that we're now seeing is it suppresses harmful bacteria, because a lot of harmful bacteria survives in low oxygen environments. So this can improve your microbiome health as well by infusing those regions with oxygen. so you have all these benefits of lowered inflammation increasing cellular energy perfusing this tissue that's now dying and under perfused where it's got underdeveloped it's swollen and sort of injured inflamed that's what's happening when you're in the chamber and one of the biggest things that happens when you get out of the chamber because it's still acting on you hormetically so there's still a change happening so when you get out of the chamber you go from what's called a hyperoxy which is infused tissue with oxygen so that's where you've got a lot of oxygen into the tissue to a hypoxic so it's moving the tissue out so moving the oxygen out of your tissue so when you leave the chamber the oxygen's leaving your body what we call off-gassing and in that it sends a mild survival signal to the brain to start activating certain pathways so it increases stem cell production it increases growth factors in the brain like bdnf so it increases neurogenesis and the creation of new brain synapses in the brain again it enhances this angiogenesis red blood cell effects and when we see people use these chambers even if it's a mild hyperbaric chamber so even if it's one which is only 1.3 ATA which is 10 feet of pressure we're seeing in a study by John McLaughlin at Wisconsin that after 10 sessions without any supplemental oxygen so without wearing a mask which is providing additional oxygen for you just what's in the chamber itself non-oxygenated just being it's having room oxygen pushed into it we're seeing a three times increase in stem cells just after after 10 sessions it traditionally has been used sort of more on-label uses in hospitals with sort of wound healing burns radiation sickness now we're seeing it being used by the nhs for ms which is a really cool advancement and stuff like diabetic ulcers but because of these benefits i'm describing physiologically everybody would benefit whether you're asymptomatic there's no obvious problem with with you per se that's been diagnosed whether whether it's for athletes looking to recover or people largely in our cohort who rent and buy chambers from us who have chronic conditions, cancer and neurological conditions.

11:09Okay, so the next obvious question is, why has this become so popular? Not only for serious health conditions, which I would like to get onto if that's okay, but for so-called biohackers and general wellness, because everyone from Kendall Jenner to Brian Johnson are talking about and endorsing it. And Brian is probably the world's most famous biohacker. In fact, he called it the most efficacious whole body rejuvenation therapy I've ever done. And let's be honest, he has tried everything. I was reading that the American actor Jeremy Renner, who had a near fatal snowplow accident, shared his twice daily sessions on social media.

11:48Justin Bieber's revealed in his docuseries that a large part of his anxiety management has been the use of hyperbaric chambers. and people of a certain age might also recall Michael Jackson famously having his own personal hyperbaric oxygen chamber and the thing is everyone laughed at him then but it does seem he was onto something at least with regards to this there is science here isn't there and a huge amount of anecdotal evidence so in terms of general health and wellness firstly you've mentioned radically improved sleep but what else do we know that it can help with? Yeah it's fascinating I remember the sort of people mocking Michael Jackson myself of him and getting Bubbles the Monkey and stuff in there.

12:25So it's phenomenal how he was so ahead of the curve by a number of years, realistically, before it became popularized. But it really has helped in getting this equipment out into the zeitgeist with Brian Johnson, particularly because he's such a reliable path to truth. And he seems to be a lot less ideologically captured, at least at this moment in time, than many of the sort of gurus in the health space can become. But I mean, I might go back to actually those we did a survey within the company last year so we've got about 350 units around the uk 120 all of those are on active rentals in people's homes as we speak so we've generated a large enough cohort now to take a sample size of people who are using this equipment for essentially thousands of hours every week so we sent out a survey to our clients asking them essentially those that have done 40 sessions or more so when you have a rental from oxide we do it as a minimum two-month term.

13:20So in that space, we really encourage people to get between 40 and 60 sessions. So clients to qualify needed to have done at least 40 sessions. And we asked how did they fit in a number of departments? And 91 % did report better sleep, 88 % reported more energy, 87 % reported improved well-being, 82 % reported reduced pain, 89 % faster recovery, and 84 % greater mental clarity. So we're seeing a broad enough sample of people now who, non-coerced by us, have declared these benefits that they've felt even beginning sort of five, 10 sessions onwards, but certainly when you're talking into the 40 to 60 range.

13:58So we saw that as kind of feedback from our own client base. But Brian Johnson, as I say, is renowned for his rigor and transparency over what he does. And he publishes that data. And even recently went to town on AG1, which I was kind of quietly happy about because I've been aware of the fact that that gets peddled to some degree across the broad network of the chattering classes with this kind of space. But at the same time, how efficacious it truly is remains up for debate. And I think he did a very good breakdown of that. But he's very, very keen on the benefits of what he felt from 60 sessions of hyperbarics.

14:29And there's a particularly famous study in hyperbaric oxygen now you may have heard of before, but it's the Israeli study done by a doctor, Dr. Shiaf And he looked at the biological aging markers. So after again, 60 sessions at five times a week, 90 minute sessions in what is a 280A chamber. This is a hard shell chamber that simulates being 33 feet deep underwater. They found that telomere length increased over the course of this trial. Telomere length increased just nearly to 38%, between 20 and 38%, depending on which telomere part of it was measured. Senescent cells were reduced. So the zombie cells in our body, that build up over time were reduced by up to 37%.

15:09It improved cerebral blood flow, so therefore it improved cognition. It improved cellular energy metabolism, so people evidently showed more energy. And this was in a cohort of people that were 60 and upwards, so they were more likely to be accumulating a lot of the more negative aspects of aging than sort of clearly a younger cohort. But really interestingly with Brian Johnson, his self-experiment mimicked the same feedback almost exactly when it came to the senescent cells and the telomere length. But he also noted improved kind of mitochondrial efficiency. His sleep was deeper. His more cognitive performance was also great.

15:44And his microbiome fauna was improved. So it's amazing how these two different studies, one of somebody in a credible space when it comes to kind of health and wellness, and then other more scientifically medically backed process in what they did in Israel, it kind of converged on the same kind of data. but we are largely seeing that it is reducing systemic inflammation it is reducing neuro inflammation it's giving people more energy it's improving sleep and repair and recovery so essentially it's just making us more resilient as people and to add kind of my own anecdotal experience of it i've tentified now after using a chamber for four years i did more recently in december i did the most dense block i've done since i got much better with my sleep i did 40 sessions roughly in 45 days and i noticed i would say all those kind of things i always notice again when my concentration improves i have that more consistent energy over the course of a day but it won't improve your life if you're still neglecting certain things so over christmas i had a tendency to there was a couple of christmas parties which did impact obviously drinking is not going to be conducive to the best outcomes of using hyperbarics or having a bad diet is not going to lead to the best outcomes.

16:55If you're eating a lot of sugar and poor carbs, it's not going to also lead to the best outcomes. But on the whole, yes, this space has been sort of increasing awareness, people like Gary Brecker as well, and Brian Johnson. But I particularly admired Brian Johnson's feedback on the subject. And I also saw his AG1 takedown as well. I thought that was super interesting. But let's not go on that tangent, because that was unexpected, but interesting. So what about more serious health conditions? I'm really looking forward asking you my next question from a personal perspective. I know it's a big one, as you've said, for people with MS.

17:28Amazing that it's now getting NHS funding there, I think you said. And I know a lot of people with cancer use it because I was looking into it when I was going through cancer treatment in 2023. What do we know? What's the science telling us? Again, this is to do with now more serious disease as opposed to general wellness. And why do so many people with lifelong or life-threatening illnesses use it, including also, I should add, long COVID and chronic fatigue, I think it's popular. But MS and cancer, I think, are the two big ones, aren't they? So there's kind of a shared biology around serious illness.

18:02In most people that are suffering, whether it's MS, cancer, long COVID, chronic fatigue, there's these kind of signs amongst many people, which is a kind of chronic inflammation. There's an impaired oxygen delivery to tissues. There's mitochondrial dysfunction, so poorer cellular energy production. You've got the microvascular damage, which Hype Barracks is really good for, where the small blood vessels are kind of not working properly. So it's impairing the body's ability to heal and repair. And among other things, depending on the condition, you've got this dysregulated immune signaling. So our immune systems are quite often working against us.

18:37And I think in certain conditions, that's even more pronounced. So we're seeing these what we call pro-inflammatory cytokine storms with long COVID, where the body's sending out a signal to send resources to heal that area, but it's sending a storm of signals. So therefore, the resources being allocated is just actually now causing complications in itself. So the body's overreacting to the stimulus. And so there's a collection of universal themes to a lot of cellular dysfunction. And we're now realizing a lot of it is essentially metabolic disease and mitochondrial dysfunction. So this is kind of where hyperbarics can become a scaffolding by improving resources in the body.

19:13But so specifically with something like MS, you've got neuroinflammation, you've got impaired nerve signaling, which is leading to sort of fatigue and pain and brain fog and people are less able to move in the way they were before but since the 80s there's been a number of studies in particular department of MS which has led to it being adopted by the NHS sooner than perhaps other conditions in terms of on label so now you as I said before we do have these centers that you will see that are quite often low price low barrier to entry for people to use I actually think the pressure they go to were deeper than is necessary to be optimal actually for MS, but that's a different matter entirely.

19:49But there's still good hormetic pressures for people to benefit. But improvements have been seen in studies that were conducted all over the 80s. One of them was a Lancet study in 1980s, which was in 1987, which is improving fatigue and cellular function and energy and presentness, and a lot less brain fog when it came to the cerebral benefits that were seen in the 1990s with the Neubauer study. So there's been a consistency to the improvements for people with that particular condition. So therefore, it's been adopted more readily. But if you look at that as these tiny abrasions on the brain, which is kind of what MS is, why I think Hybarics has been adopted quicker with observable wound healing, which is external, you can see what's happening and how quickly it's improving the condition of the skin.

20:33But this is happening on the inside. So these kind of tears, these scars, this damaged tissue, which we would see observably changing on our skin, is happening within us. And that's kind of what's cool now with the next generation of the science of hyperbarics. But MS particularly has benefited. And normally with the kind of protocols, you'd always want people, particularly with a chronic condition, to be getting a consistent number of sessions. So going in and doing hyperbarics twice a week and get into 10 sessions and noticing a little bit of uptick in these markers is not going to change you at any kind of cellular level.

21:06So with the studies and cementing it in the longer term so that you can benefit after your treatment is done is really getting above 30, 40, ideally to around 60 sessions, at somewhere between 1.5 and 280A of pressure. So 1.5 being 16 feet to 33 feet of pressure, which is simulating being underwater in a chamber, essentially. But yeah, so we've seen benefits over the years to MS. And I think looking at, say, cancer, there's been, again, when you look at the kind of trifecta of what is fueling cancer, cancer thrives in hypoxic environment where there's a lot less oxygen, It thrives on glucose and it thrives on glutamine.

21:44And one of the doctors in the UK I really admire, Thomas Seedfried, he's popularizing now a protocol which consists of using a ketogenic diet. So reducing the contaminants of sugar and rubbish carbs and actually applying hyperbaric as part of this protocol. And in studies originally he did with mice, and now he's mimicking a lot of these benefits in humans, they saw a 77 % increase in survival rate to cohorts with cancer in his study. So it showed a significant increase. And the kind of more consistent studies of hybarics and cancer have come out around sort of radiation-induced tissue damage.

22:24So there's many studies around the benefits of people that have gone through radiation where now they've got this microvascular damage. They've got the chronic hypoxia, so there's not enough oxygen getting to tissue. Now we've got the fibroblast damage, which is where we're creating collagen, which helps uphold the scaffolding of the skin, of course. That's being impaired. And some of these wounds are often not even healing. So they're in persistent pain and inflammation. Those that have gone on to do hyperbarics in a number of studies have seen benefits in terms of their recovery. So reduced pain, reduced inflammation, improve markers across the board when it comes to recovery from radiation induced injuries but we have to be very cautious when we're looking at treating people with cancer and with oxidize obviously all of our staff are international board of undersea medicine qualified so they are qualified to do off-label applications and safe protocols with clients of different presenting issues but with cancer specifically if someone's cancer is multifactorial and it's spread we have to be very cautious that when you use the hyperbarics you're not increasing what is the ROS.

23:26So chlybaryx is actually a stressor on the body. When we flood the body of oxygen, it actually increases ROS, which is reactive oxygen species. So there is a kind of hormetic stressor on the body. So if someone's highly inflamed, we have to be really cautious to get them in on a protocol that is not exposing for too long. So often starting at half an hour every other day, just to see that they're not reacting in any stressful way to it. And then once they're getting used to it on a physiological level, we can introduce a kind of more progressive protocol. But we have to be very cautious with aspects like that when it comes to treating cancer or applying this technology to people looking to get better with cancer.

24:05And also there are certain interactions with certain radiotherapy and chemotherapy. When we're looking to apply this technology to those with cancer, we have to also look at which chemotherapies they're on because sometimes there can be interactions. So we would look to start the therapy after they've undergone chemotherapy. But quite often, because you are increasing the perfusion to the tissue, you're increasing the cellular function, you're therefore increasing the efficacy of the chemotherapy and treatments, the kind of legacy treatments that are being used. So not only is healthy tissue getting better, but unhealthy tissue is becoming more responsive to legacy treatments.

24:40Great. And I'll say this, Sophie, only because I know that you might want me to but I mean great answer but always check with your oncologist before you start any treatment regime I guess Sophie is the case would you say? Yeah I always think that's sensible to do while you're going through just having one person overseeing your care I think is important. Interestingly with hyperbaric oxygen I know there are also reputed skin benefits because it's thought to stimulate collagen production. From what I've heard several facelifts and cosmetic surgeons have started sending patients to hyperbaric chambers post-operatively and have seen really good results post-operatively in terms of healing.

25:19I even know some surgeons who've put chambers into their clinics for that reason. But as always, we need more research and more case studies. So what's the actual experience like while lying in a chamber? Can you talk us through that? Yeah, I'd be happy to. I might just quickly touch on what you're saying there about post-charmetic surgery, because we actually have a relationship to a clinic in London, and they actually refer clients to us if it's something they want to do to continue or accelerate their healing. So we do see the benefits in that particular cohort, obviously, when it comes to that fibroblast effect where you're increasing collagen and the microcirculation.

25:52So it's not just that, actually, it reduces the infection risk as well. So we've seen great benefit to two or three clients that have come through this particular clinic. And one of ours is actually on our website and give us a testimonial in Louise. What's interesting as well, actually, is some people were not so aware of this particular treatment to improve not only the recovery, but then they notice cognitive effects and increasing in their energy levels as well, which is, again, one of the kind of byproduct benefits. And actually, in the case of Louise, she went on to buy a chamber for that very reason.

26:20But yeah, when you're in a chamber, it's a kind of very relaxing environment. And it's funny because the optics of hyperbarics often lead people, if they see a chamber online, they'll think, oh my God, I wouldn't get in that. It's a terrifying little capsule. But when people are in front of a chamber, quite often the optics are different in terms of it's much bigger than they were expecting to start with. and when they're on the inside of it and it's pressurized of course it expands around them and it forms quite a nice comfortable space and we always make sure that we're always optimizing for comfort in our chambers even when people haven't requested it we always realize if you're increasing comfort you're increasing the likelihood of commitment to the sessions so we've got much thicker say for example padded mattresses in our lying chambers which are really comfortable kind of memory foam mattresses but you'll lay back and when you're under the influence of oxygen you're kind of taken into a parasympathetic nervous system so it's kind of rest and digest so even if you were a bit anxious before and going back to the comments about justin bieber so justin bieber does it and he's obviously part of his protocol is to treat anxiety it's very common for people even with high anxiety even withdrawing from certain medications people have been known to use hyperic oxygen chambers to just reduce that anxiety during the rejuvenation phase but in a moderate sense it does calm you so you'll lay back and you've got like a cushion there we encourage people to pad it out however they see fit.

27:39I happen to have two pillows in mine, and I even bring in the chamber. I've got a TheraBody massage mask that actually massages around my eyes. So when I'm relaxing, I'll lay back and have that on and sort of use it dual purpose to spend the time meditating and relaxing. But quite often, that's what people do when they're in the chamber. But you'll be wearing a mask that basically will be producing oxygen to around 93 to 96 % through the mask. So that's from an oxygen concentrator outside the chamber and that's producing it into the mask so it's relaxing you you lay back and it's very easy to kind of drift off basically but in a 1.5 ATA chamber it is safe to use electronic equipment but quite often people take this time to read as I say meditate and relax and it's so common particularly when we run client sessions and we have an elite level centre in just outside of Cambridge our Oxidise HQ where we're seeing clients per session and in that is so often if you go into the chamber area, people will be napping.