Therapy #2: Mild Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy******************************************************************************

OK. For me, this has been the most effective treatment, without a doubt. Now let me throw in a caveat, it only works so well for me because I give myself treatments religiously, and I also am doing many other complimentary therapies that give mhbot (mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy) the biggest bang for the buck.

Having said that, of all the therapies I do, I would rate this one at the top of my list. Is it a silver bullet? Well, let me put it this way. Flour is the largest ingredient for pancakes. Without it, you have something closer to scrambled eggs. But just flour doesn't make a pancake either. Get the point?

My mhbot use started about 6 years ago. I had been on antibiotics (abx) for several years and had been slowly improving over the years. It was very much two steps forward, one step back. But, over time, it was definitely a positive progression. I had only been doing orals and had been on several different kinds over the years.

Finally, just after the second year, my gut started to give out on me. Candida was fast becoming systemic in my system, and I started to get these sharp and deep pains within my lower abdomen. I knew I was headed for IBS, Chrohns, Ulcerative Colitis or some other awful disease. I am a huge proponent of not trading one problem for another. It was a scary and difficult decision for me. Scary, because I felt so bad without the antibiotics that I knew I would not be capable of work. If I couldn't work, I couldn't pay my mortgage or have a life. I was certain my marriage would eventually fail, and I would, at some point, become destitute. Difficult because I new I had little choice but to find another option other than the abx.

My mother once told me: "there are no problems, only solutions". I actually believe that. That's why I say knowledge is power. For every action out there, I do believe there is an equal and opposite reaction. The question is, can you find or discover it? So, with that in mind, I set out to find something that would be as powerful as abx, but with fewer side effects.

I had been reading like mad on the message boards, and of course, it is through others that I had heard about mhbot and regular hbot. I read a very intriguing study done in Texas (I will post it below) about how Dr. Fife at Texas A&M put 91 patients who had failed abx therapy (difficult patients to treat) into an oxygen chamber at 2.36 ata which is the equivalent of scuba diving down to 45 feet, but instead, breathing oxygen, not air.

There are three theory's surrounding hyperbaric oxygen. The first is that lyme simply does not like nor can it live in high oxygen concentrations. The second is (and has been shown in test tubes) that starting at around 12 feet of water, the pressure starts to kill off the cell wall. Third, its also been postulated that the flood of oxygen into the body, especially at lower pressures, is an immune system boosting treatment. There are arguments that deeper depths, such as done in this study, are actually immune suppressive.

Whatever the technical analysis is, the response was overwhelmingly positive for hyperbaric oxygen. So why doesn't everyone do it? Great question. I've got two answers. First, its really really expensive. Usually well north of $100 a treatment. Secondly, the effect appears to be transient. In my research, I came across lots of posts like this one:

A typical post on Lymenet about HBOT: this was pulled from WildCondor posted in May 2003 and still on the net:

Hi there!
I have done about 125 Hyperbaric treatments. They work awesome and I highly recommend them. Yes, they are extremely expensive ($150-225 per treatment) adds up to well over $24,00 not including lodging, food, and medications.It was so worth it though!It has to be done while on aggressive antibiotics like IV Zithromax and Bicillin and Flagyl, which was one of my combinations.

It also has to be done at 2.4 atm for 90 minutes twice a day. Once a day at 60 minutes did not work for me. It also has to be done in a monoplace, not multi place chamber. Many Lyme patients have used Multi place chambers (3 or more people in there and you breathe through a hood that leaks) including myself, and I got zero results from that.I will not do multi place chamber therapy again, it does not penetrate the skin and its annoying and uncomfortable and no where near as effective.

Monoplace chambers rule, your entire body is receiving 100% pure oxygen at 2.4 atm for 90 minutes twice a day and you herx your ass off. These treatments plus the heavy duty aggressive antibtioics brought me from 10% functioning to 65% functioning in less than a year and I have remained at this higher level ever since.
Breathing out of a canister wont do anything, dont waste your $$$.
I have a list of all the Hyperbaric Oxygen centers in the USA. Email me if you'd like info.


After reading dozens of self evaluations such as this one, I had actually given up on the idea of hyperbaric oxygen for obvious reasons. But then I came across a gentleman in Atlanta whom I started speaking with. He too in the past was vastly affected by lymes ravages, but seemed to be doing much better. His Secret: Oxygen and Heat. (I'll get to the heat in another post). Lance had built himself a full scale monoplace chamber. We're talking a round, welded steel structure. Lance, out of necessity, built himself a chamber that would normally cost $100,000 dollars. Wow.

I learned that lance had put himself in the chamber for months, but after feeling better, he realized that there were some downsides to repetitive deep dives. (and there are). He eventually came across a company called Oxyhealth that made mhbot bags that compressed to 1.3 ata, or roughly 10 feet of sea water. Lance starting using these bags instead of his home steel chamber, and by the time I caught up with him, had been doing it for years with great success.

Suddenly, I had hoped I found the solution. You see, Lyme, which you will learn if you continue to read this blog, has the ability to protect itself. It morphs itself into many forms. The dormant state where it rolls itself up into a ball is un-affected by abx, mhbot, rife and a whole host of other therapy's. So getting rid of lyme is practically impossible (in my humble opinion). But mhbot offers a way to control it. You kill a bunch of the active lyme with a dive, and since your doing shallow dives, you can continue to suppress the active lyme, or at least keep it at low levels, practically indefinately.

I wish I had found mhbot before abx therapy. But I didn't, so thats that. In any case, I did find it, and for me it has been the most useful tool by far. How do I know. Well, I have had to move several times and during those periods had no access to my chamber for several weeks. The process is the same. I'm usually good for about 10-14 days, and then like clockwork, my symptoms start coming back in force. The pain, sleep disturbance, fog, joint pain and the list goes on.

So for me its a no brainer. It works. It will not cure you over night. It takes time. You'll spend a hundred waking hours a year or more inside a tube (not fun), but it works. So in the end, I have to highly recommend it.

My next post will focus on which tube to buy, and the benefits and disadvantages of the current options. Lucky for you, there are really only two to consider. But first....Dr. Fife's study which I promised you:


Effects of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy On Lyme Diseaseby William P. Fife, Ph. D. 29 January 1998
The purpose of this study was to determine if hyperbaric oxygen therapy affected Lyme disease caused by the spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi. The spirochete B. burgdorferi is a microaerophilic organism carried by the Deer tick (Ixodid) and transferred to humans and other mammals by its bite. Symptoms often begin by a bulls-eye rash and erythema migrans.

Symptoms may include pain in joints and muscles, sore throat, fever, swollen glands, and mental " fogginess". If not diagnosed within the first one or two months, the disease may become a chronic infection. At that time it apparently becomes sequestered in fibroblasts and other cells which, in turn appear to protect it against effective treatment by all known antibiotics so far tested. The disease is difficult to diagnose without serological findings and requires the skill of a highly qualified physician, experienced in treating this disease.

Rationale:It was shown by Austin that the spirochete could not survive if transferred in air to another host, but would survive if transferred in a gas mixture of 4% oxygen. This demonstrated that the spirochete could not survive in an oxygen partial pressure of 160-mm Hg (the partial pressure of oxygen in air), but could survive in a partial pressure of 30-mm Hg (which is the partial pressure of 4% oxygen at 1 atmosphere, absolute (ground level pressure). Therefore, it seems clear that a lethal level of oxygen for the spirochete falls somewhere between 30 mm Hg, and 160 mm Hg.

It also is known that while the inspired partial pressure of oxygen is approximately 160 mm Hg, at the tissue level, the partial pressure of oxygen normally is approximately 30-35 mm Hg. Thus, it would not be expected that breathing air at ground level would cause any damage to the spirochete. However, if the patient were placed in a hyperbaric chamber and the pressure increased to 2. 36 atmospheres, absolute (ata), the total barometric pressure would be 1794 mm Hg. If the patient were then to breathe pure oxygen the inspired partial pressure of oxygen would be 1794 mm Hg.

Inspired oxygen is diluted by carbon dioxide and water vapor in the alveoli, so that the arterial blood would be exposed to an oxygen partial pressure of approximately 1700-mm Hg, and the tissue oxygen would be between 200 and 300 mm Hg. This clearly would be above lethal oxygen levels for the spirochete since it is expected that oxygen normally would diffuse throughout all cells of the body. This partial pressure of oxygen can be safely achieved in a hyperbaric chamber, and the patients can tolerate this level for 90 minutes or longer quite successfully.

Protocol:This study was approved by the University Institutional Review Board. Subjects were selected from those referred by clinical physicians who were experienced in the treatment of Lyme disease. All subjects presented with a positive diagnosis of this disease according to the CDC criteria, including a positive Western blot serology of the proper bands.

All had failed intravenous antibiotics, and many were continuing to deteriorate even though still on various antibiotics. Subjects were given a briefing on the use of the hyperbaric chamber, including the risks, and signed a waiver and release in accordance with the Belmont Report. They were placed in the multiplace chamber and compressed to 2.36 ata, whereupon a plastic helmet was placed over the head and pure oxygen was administered. The oxygen flow pattern was such that the subject inspired 100% oxygen with each breath.

Subjects were able to communicate with the attendant in the chamber as well as with each other. Treatment duration was 60 minutes on oxygen, and in most instances the treatments were administered bid for 5 days followed by a two-day rest. Several different series were tried, ranging from 10 treatments to 30 treatments. One subject received 145 treatments over the course of 3 months.

Results:Ninety-one subjects completed a total of 1,995 hyperbaric oxygen treatments, although nine were eliminated later due to the presence of another medical problem not apparent during their treatments. These other medical problems were such things as babesiosis, ehrlichosis, hepatitis C, and previously unidentified neurological problems. Two subjects were eliminated due to the development of septicemia from IV catheters, and one because of recent breast cancer, although all three of them later showed an improvement of Lyme symptoms with hyperbaric oxygen administration.

Subject evaluation was carried out by an abbreviated questionnaire taken from a standard questionnaire used by several Lyme specialists as part of their evaluation. This questionnaire was designed so that zero reflected no symptoms, while ten reflected severe symptoms.

Although additional statistical evaluation still is being carried out, it appears that approximately 84.8% of those treated showed significant improvement by a decrease or elimination of symptoms. Only 12 subjects (13.1%) claimed no apparent benefit. Before treatment, the subjects had an average score of 114.12 (of a possible 270), and after treatment they averaged 49.27. This reduction of 64.85 points was statistically significant in a paired t-test (p=0.000).

The variability of the scores from patient-to-patient declined as well after the treatment series. The standard deviation of the scores was 56.00 before and 44.14 after treatment. The p-value of this reduction is 0.057 in a Fisher's F-test. Further, 58% of the respondents had score reduction of 41.86 points or more.

All except one of the 91 subjects developed severe Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction, usually appearing within the first 5 days of the beginning of hyperbaric oxygen treatment. In most cases, the Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction continued throughout the series of treatments, and in many instances continued for up to a month after the treatments were finished.

Most subjects then began to show major improvement that in some instances has continued for 8 months.