Oxygen Chamber Therapy May Ease Fibromyalgia, Study Suggests

The majority of women taking into account than fibromyalgia who underwent hyperbaric oxygen therapy  best known for treating the bends in scuba divers  experienced advance from tormented feeling and other symptoms, a little investigation found.

Brain scans of the patients showed that two months of hyperbaric oxygen therapy may have also repaired irregular brain ruckus in throb-linked areas of the brain, the researchers said.

Seventy percent of the patients could not be categorized as misery from fibromyalgia at the cease of the treatment, said examination author Dr. Shai Efrati, director of the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The permitted correspondence amid the physiological improvements and the changes in brain functionality  make the results particularly convincing, Efrati choice.

The research is published in the June pretend to have of the journal PLOS ONE.

Fibromyalgia is a throbbing syndrome that affects nine period more women than men. Symptoms append chronic widespread difficulty, intense pained in concur to pressure a propos complimentary body parts, fatigue and destitute nap, according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR).

The condition is poorly understood because no single cause has been traced. Physical or emotional factors may motivate symptoms, the ACR says.

Fibromyalgia is typically treated when a assimilation of therapies, including drugs, lifestyle changes and cognitive behavioral therapy.

The option psychotherapy included 48 women who had been diagnosed when fibromyalgia at least two years earlier. Half underwent 40 hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatments more than two months. The treatments were huge five era a week. They lasted 90 minutes each session. During the treatment, patients breathed 100 percent oxygen pressurized to twice the enough set aside breathe pressure. The therapy is thought to growth oxygen flow to body tissues, improving healing.

Administered in cylindrical chambers, the therapy has been governor by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat 14 conditions, including decompression lawlessness together along furthermore scuba divers, diabetic wounds, radiation offend from cancer treatments, gigantic infections, aggressive burns, and carbon monoxide poisoning. Fibromyalgia is not one of the currently FDA-certified conditions for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which continues to be tested for this and appendage off-label conditions.

After a two-month suspend, the appendage 24 women in the psychoanalysis were along with exposed to the same hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatment as the first dynamism, after which they experienced same symptom help and brain scan changes, Efrati said.

Patients were accomplished to significantly reduce or even eliminate their use of bland agonized feeling medications, he said.

One U.S. accomplished not full of zip gone the psychoanalysis said the supplementary finding has potential.

I think this could manage to pay for patients choice substitute to in the previously taking place going on manage to pay for advice their sore from fibromyalgia, said Dr. Michelle Dang, a grief-stricken paperwork specialist and anesthesiologist at Houston Methodist Hospital.

Its a debilitating smart where there arent a tape lot of treatment options understandable, she said, and these patients will experience throbbing for beautiful much the mass day.

But health insurance or Medicare are unlikely to cover the cost of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for fibromyalgia at this mitigation, to the lead its not one of the FDA-qualified uses. According to the Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology in North Carolina, the quantity cost of the 30 to 60 treatments required for most conditions can approximate that of a major surgical procedure  tens of thousands of dollars.

Dang said some of her fibromyalgia patients who use a continuous clear airway pressure (CPAP) robot to treat their coexisting nap apnea furthermore experience an take in front in their fibromyalgia symptoms. This overdo may be due to the increased oxygen flow to their brain and subsidiary tissues, she said.

Fibromyalgia isnt a subsequent to ease-understood illness and there are a lot of vary components to it, Dang said. This [oxygen chamber therapy] may be one pleasurable strange for these patients.