Oxygen is used as a therapy to treat sports injuries, from acute injury to muscle contusions and ankle sprains. It is also used in treatment of joint, ligament, and tendon injuries with the main aim of reducing recovery time.
Oxygen is essential to the tissues in the body and any tissue injury requires oxygen for healing. The body normally heals itself using oxygen from air: increased oxygen concentration can extend the body’s ability to heal. Many athletes, both professional and amateur, are now becoming involved with their care, recovery and well-being. One of the treatments they are choosing is to breathe pure oxygen under pressure.
The benefits can include:
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Reduce local hypoxia (deprival of oxygen at tissue level)
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Reduce local inflammation and edema
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Reduce scar tissue formation
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Reduce muscle fatigue and muscle strains
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Heal soft tissues, ligaments and fractures faster
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Increase supply of oxygen to injured areas
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Regenerate bone and cartilage faster
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Increase stem cell activation
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Heal cartilage damage
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Improve mental focus
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Oxygen Therapy accelerates soft tissue repair by accelerating the growth of new blood vessels and increasing the number of stem cells in the body. These two factors accelerate recovery from injuries. Not only that, but HBOT strengthens your white blood cells, those are the soldiers that march around your body, ever ready to go to war against bacteria and viruses.
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Your athletic ability is limited to the amount of energy you can produce. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy or HBOT increases the amount of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in your body. ATP is stored in the mitochondria of muscle
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cells and literally powers them. The more ATP, the more power you have.
Calm under pressure
The pressure factor in oxygen therapy leads to the reduction of edema (swelling) to favor blood flow oxygenation to affected areas. Elevated oxygen levels reduce tissue swelling and facilitate faster recovery for various injuries, including muscle fatigue.
Reach peak performance sooner
Athletes that train under very high endurance programs can benefit from supplemented blood oxygenation to help inflammation, bruising, ischemia, pain and to improve the capacity to fight infection. To optimize performance, sports players need to find a balance between competition efforts, training and recovery.
There is a significant improvement when an athlete couples physiotherapy with oxygen therapy to reduce simple injury recovery times down to 70%.
