Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment for Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s Disease is often an unpreventable, seriously mentally crippling disease. Dementia is often caused by Alzheimer’s, though it’s also caused by various other diseases and conditions. There are different treatments for patients experiencing symptoms of these conditions. However, the experimental use of a hyperbaric chamber for Alzheimer’s and dementia has some amazing results.

Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Though often associated with each other, Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia are not the same thing. Alzheimer’s is a disease that affects brain functions and commonly causes dementia. However, dementia is also caused by diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease and Huntington’s Disease and can also be a result of infections such as advanced stages of syphilis. In addition, Alzheimer’s is often genetically transferred through families, as well as other common genetic abnormalities that cause dementia.

Dementia causes issues with brain functions such as memory loss or decline and reasonable thinking. Similarly, Alzheimer’s can cause dementia and the symptoms associated with the condition. However, Alzheimer’s disease results in brain cell damage that can result in serious behavior changes and disorientation. As the brain worsens, eating, talking, and walking can decline as well.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy consists of the patient breathing in pure oxygen within a specially designed pressurized chamber. Oxygen may seem like something so mundane that is can’t possibly be a medicine for people so ill. However, this hyperbaric process pushes oxygen through the cerebrospinal fluid, blood plasma, and lymph fluids. These high levels of oxygen cannot be consumed by breathing regular levels of oxygen within the environment. By the brain consuming higher levels of oxygen than it normally takes in, brain cell damage can be more effectively healed. This helps people suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s by increasing the blood flow within the brain and improving cognitive abilities, such as memory and reasoning.

Proven Results

Though hyperbaric oxygen therapy for alzheimer's disease and hyperbaric oxygen treatment for dementia is still in its experimental stage, there have been positive results. A study treated six elderly patients that had increasing memory loss with this therapy. This study had the six patients undergo sixty sessions of the oxygen therapy, allowing frequent but short breaks every twenty minutes. These sessions lasted three months and, with the use of MR imaging, proved that blood flow within the brain improved up to 23%. This study proved to researchers that this therapy restores the structure of blood vessels, improving blood flow and cognitive function with the brain.

The cruel reality is that, though dementia can sometime be prevented by living a healthy lifestyle, Alzheimer’s and dementia afflicts many aging individuals and is suggested to rapidly increase the number of people it will damage in the next twenty years. Therefore, now is the time to utilize and study new treatments, like hyperbaric oxygen treatments, to reduce the progression of the symptoms of these issues and maintain cognitive functions.