Can Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Be Used for Cancer Patients?

In 2011, Chris Francis, of Newport, Australia, underwent radiotherapy after having a small skin cancer removed from her shin. Not only did the treatment destroy the cancer cells, but also the surrounding tissue. According to Chris, ‘I had a great big hole in my leg. Just to stand up and clean my teeth and go back to bed was agony.’ Eventually, she was referred to a therapy that would improve her wellbeing forever.

In January, Chris went to Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital’s hyperbaric unit. It took six weeks of daily therapy and regular wound care until her ulcer was ‘looking really good’, and now it has all but disappeared. The main health concern that people believe hyperbaric oxygen therapy is used for is “the bends” or decompression sickness in divers. However, most of the patients undergoing hyperbaric therapy at hospital-based hyperbaric units across Australia are similar to Chris; with half of the patients at PoW being treated for damage to bone or soft tissue incurred during radiation therapy. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is also used to improve the wellness of those with necrotising infections, carbon monoxide poisoning and Crohn’s disease.

While in normal air under water is 21% oxygen, for the treatment you sit or lie in a sealed chamber and breathe 100% oxygen at depths equivalent to 10-20 metres. Your lungs are saturated with oxygen while the increased atmospheric pressure drives the gas into your body’s tissues much more quickly than under normal atmospheric conditions. Therefore, your tissues can get the blood and oxygen it needs to heal to begin the healing process.

Associate professor Mike Bennett, a doctor at the PoW unit and president of the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society, explains that for some people with cancers in the pelvic area, for example, and have suffered tissue damage during their treatment, ‘their problem is just unremitting and the only solution until recently [has been] very major, radical surgery – removing the bowel, removing the bladder, having all sorts of bags and tubes permanently attached to your tummy.’

‘Hyperbaric has turned around some of these people’s lives,’ he notes. ‘It allows the tissue to repair itself, so the bowel or the bladder or whatever’s damaged, over a period of weeks to months, slowly repairs itself and normal function, or close to normal function, is restored.’ Chris enthuses, ‘Just to be able to walk outside and hang the washing on the line, do housework – I never thought I’d enjoy that, but I’m just enjoying all that. Being free.’

Categories: cancer, chris, hyperbaric, hyperbaric oxygen, Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment, normal, normal function, Oxygen, oxygen therapy, The Bends, therapy

How Even Casual Smoking will Affect your Workout

People go to the gym for different reasons. Some want to tone up, others want to get seriously bulky and there are those who want to improve their stamina. Whatever reason you may have to hit the gym you might also want to consider giving up on the smokes. Pharmacist and online doctor Chemist Direct asked a broad selection of health experts if the combination of cigarettes and the gymnasium is a good one. Interested in their answers? Here they are:

 

We kick off with homeopath and pharmacist Margo Marrone. We asked her how smoking affects your body’s physical performance. She notes that during physical performance oxygen is vital. The harder you work out the harder the heart pumps in order to transport oxygen to muscles. Smoking is counterproductive to your workout.

 

Marrone: “Smoking competes with oxygen for haemoglobin in red blood cells and wins, which means there is less oxygen flowing in the blood and less oxygen available to the muscles. This in turn makes the heart work even harder putting more stress on the heart. Smoking also constricts blood vessels making it harder for blood to flow through them and therefore an increase in the risk of heart attack. It also constricts the airways in the lung through inflammation and a build up of mucous which causes more lack of oxygen.”

 

Second and third up are Mark and Kathy Brown from Fitness Sitacise. They are personal trainers and have trained with Olympic athletes. They have seen first hand how smoking retards the growth and development of muscles. Just like Marrone, Mark and Kathy Brown note that smoking cuts down the amount of oxygen in the blood. They also mention that smokers that go to the gym have to work extra hard to achieve the same results non-smokers do.

 

Kathy Brown: “Smoking causes blood flow to slow down and decreases the amount of nutrients, protein and minerals transported to the muscles during and after the workout. Smoking also slows down your development because you cannot train as hard or as intensely as you could if you didn’t smoke so you now must work out longer to try to achieve the same results. You also get tired more quickly and your recovery time is longer and is not as complete as it is if you didn’t smoke. Your endurance, recovery and your total physical performance is reduced by about 10%.”

 

Non-smokers perform better than smokers in the gym. Gym goers that want better stamina will do themselves a significant favour if they put down their cigarettes. Studies have shown that a smoker’s lung capacity is hugely reduced. This cuts down on smokers’ ability to achieve maximum efforts and the most noticeable results. When you are a smoker and you’re looking to buff up you’re also shooting yourself in the knee.

 

Mark Brown: “Non smokers’ heart beats are 25-30% slower than smokers’. They can generate more power and explosiveness for a longer duration. Non-smokers also have better focus, concentration and coordination to perform complex combination exercises. The potential increase in performance that quitting smoking has will be noticeable in the areas that require the greatest effort. Bench presses, squats, deadlifts and endurance power movements will improve from 10 to 20%. All super setting movements and other routines that require moving from one exercise to another will improve because of increased lung capacity and endurance.”

 

Now that we have established that smoking is bad for your gym performance it is time to come up with a solution. Personal trainer Luke DePron knows exactly what to do to increase a smoker’s performing ability.

 

DePron: “Similar to most bad habits, people fool themselves in thinking healthy eating cancels out the negatives of smoking. While healthy eating does better equip to the body to deal with environmental stresses, smoking cessation would offer the greatest benefits. Trying to cancel out the negative affects of smoking with healthy nutrition is akin to fanning out smoke while a fire still burns. Putting out the fire or in this case the cigarette would have the greatest impact.”

 

It looks like there is only one solution for all the smokers out here. If you are serious about your gym regime, make sure you quit soon rather than later as it will positively affect your performance in the gym in a huge way.

Categories: casual, Healthy Eating, kathy brown, lung capacity, nbsp, Oxygen, performance, physical performance, smokers, Smoking, Workout

Do You Need an Oxygen Concentrator if You Have COPD?

Approximately 21% of the air you breathe is oxygen, which is absolutely essential to your wellbeing. Oxygen is used for the function of every cell in your body, and becomes transported to each and every one of these cells through your airwaves and into your lungs. This is why anything that might prevent the air from going unobstructed into your lungs can cause wellness problems, which may be the case if you suffer from COPD.

For some patients of COPD, enough air is brought to the alveoli but their capillaries don’t allow enough of the oxygen to pass, and the low oxygen levels the low oxygen levels create hypoxemia. Therefore, COPD patients may need to receive small amounts of oxygen can to allow the air to enter at a higher rate than the original 21%. That way, the oxygen will be more able to push through the capillaries.

Not every person with COPD needs oxygen therapy, but your doctor can measure whether or not you need it by finding out the amount of oxygen you already have in your bloodstream. You might find out you need oxygen when walking, eating, or performing another lifestyle activity that requires it in bigger supply, but some patients may require oxygen 24-hours a day. It works just like any other medicine prescribed by a medical professional; oxygen needs to be taken as directed.

Your doctor will explain the rate your oxygen should be set to ensure that your treatment is only at the level that your body needs, often over 89%. You should never stray from your doctor’s prescribed dosage as too much oxygen will slow your breathing, and not enough can lead to brain problems and heart problems from lack of oxygen. Your doctor may tell you that you only need to take oxygen while exercising and sleeping, or you might find you need to use it for as long as possible throughout the day. If your doctor instructs you to use continuous oxygen then you should not go off it. However, if you need to, for whatever reason, make sure you go off your oxygen while not performing any physical activity, which includes sleeping. You should only be sitting and relaxing.

Do You Need an Oxygen Concentrator if You Have COPD?

Categories: COPD, doctor, Oxygen, oxygen levels, Patients, problems, treatment