Athletes across the sporting spectrum have developed various mechanisms to deal with the stress and strain that training and competition have on their bodies.
The competitive within sports has also intensified, which increases injury risk and necessitates more critical and ingenious treatment approaches.
While using ice and heat as first-line recovery methods have become the norm, the sporting world has in recent years started exploring more innovative means to address injuries.
The rise of mHBOT
Many athletes, both at professional and amateur levels, are turning to Medium Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, commonly referred to as mHBOT in the medical world, as a suitable medical treatment.
Joseph Winer, an mHBOT practitioner and MD for Oxygenate, explains that the treatment involves placing an athlete inside a pressurised chamber, where they breathe in air that is almost 100% saturated with oxygen.
This helps to counter inflammation around an injury and the hypoxia (a decrease in oxygen) that a sportsman experiences during an injury.
This contemporary method of treatment is fast becoming an invaluable resource with the added benefits of:
- Promoting cell growth and regeneration
- Improving both the short and long-term sports injury prognosis
- Facilitates a quicker resumption to pre-injury activity levels
- Boosts a sportsman’s endurance and recovery time
- Stimulates neovascularization (new blood vessels) and osteogenesis (stimulation of collagen and bone growth)
- Enhances leukocyte function, therefore, decreasing the chance for infection.
Enhanced oxygen saturation
“When a sportsman breathes close to 100% oxygen in a pressurised chamber, the oxygen dissolves into all the bodily fluids, including plasma, central nervous system fluids, Lymph and tissues which are oxygen-deprived (such as injured tissues), opposed to just into the red blood cells,” adds Winer.
