OXYGEN THERAPY

                                                                

 

                                            

        The Handbrake for Multiple Sclerosis

 

 

Before outlining the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for multiple sclerosis, it must be understood that this therapy is not a cure for this condition. The main aim is to stabilise the patient’s condition and improve the quality of life.

 

This is why it has often been termed as the ‘Handbrake’ for MS.

 

After HBO treatment many MS patients report improvements in their overall symptoms and their function ability. Patients have reported improvements with their ataxia, numbness in their fingers and hands, balance, visual fields, concentration, pain, weakness, and dizziness. It has been shown that most often, improvement can be achieved in bladder-bowel disorders.

 

HBO treatments should be initiated as soon as the condition is diagnosed and before irreversible lesions have become established. However this does not mean that patients with a diagnosis longer than 5 years will not benefit.

 

Oxygen is essential to all tissues in the body and especially to injured tissue which require oxygen to support and improve the healing process. Recent research in the University of Dundee has shown that with the inflammation that is typical of MS, the transport of oxygen is severely limited by tissue swelling. It has shown that, there may be a severe lack of oxygen in the affected areas during a ‘MS flair’ so that when oxygen is needed most to reduce swelling and help prevent scarring or plaque formation, it cannot reach the tissue in sufficient quantity. With the help of extra oxygen, the body’s ability to heal and limit some of the damage the disease causes is possible.

 

 Under hyperbaric conditions, breathing 100% oxygen causes vasoconstriction which causes dilated leaky blood vessels in MS to constrict back to normal size and reduces the swelling, due to fluid gathering, which can lead to cells dying. Oxygen is often described as the safest “drug” available when administered by trained professionals.

Despite the involvement of patients with advances disease in trials, the results are very impressive. A combination of HBOT, other therapeutic agents and diet can help ensure a positive outcome.

 

Reports from four countries describing benefits from hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) in the 1970’s led to the first controlled trial conducted at New York University which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in1983. The outcome was very positive despite choosing chronic progressive or stable patients with minimum disease duration of over 11 years.

 

The second trial, published in the Lancet in 1985 also recruited chronic patients with disease duration in excess of ten years. It demonstrated statistically significant improvements in bladder function. The final report of this study found that at the end of a year of follow-up there was less deterioration of cerebellar function in the treatment group.

 

The improvement in bladder function after a course of twenty sessions generally lasted for six months. In 1986 a London group published a preliminary report in the British Medical Journal. Positive effects were reported for bladder function and several other symptoms. A 1988 study used patients with a low disability score and compared 22 controls with 22 patients treated every week for a year. They detected an appreciable difference in outcome. In 1986 Pallotta et Al published a follow up of 22 patients over 8 years. All received an initial course of 290 HBO treatments, and 11 were treated thereafter with 2 exposures every 29 days. The frequency of relapse decreased dramatically in the prolonged treatment group whereas they gradually increased in the group which received only an initial course of treatment. Oxygen delivered hyperbaric conditions is the only agent to have resulted in improvement in patients with chronic progressive and chronic stable MS.

 

England has treated MS with HBOT for over 25 years and has long-term studies showing persistent long term benefits of this therapy. There are 60 centres devoted to treating MS throughout the UK  and over  2 million HBO treatments have been performed

Oxygen treatment sessions at our centre is simple, non-invasive and painless, and once you become accustomed to the procedure most people find the sessions pleasurable and relaxing.