The Colon Club

Is hyperbaric oxygen good for cancer treatment? Thoughts?

"Studies on hyperbaric oxygen therapy and cancer have up to recently focused on whether enhanced oxygen acts as a cancer promoter or not. As oxygen is believed to be required for all the major processes of wound healing, one feared that the effects of HBO would be applicable to cancer tissue as well and promote cancer growth. Furthermore, one also feared that exposing patients who had been treated for cancer, to HBO, would lead to recurrence. Nevertheless, two systematic reviews on HBO and cancer have concluded that the use of HBO in patients with malignancies is considered safe."

source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510426/

From that article, I'd say the evidence is extremely weak for HBO as a cancer treatment. I've not seen it showing up as a good option in any of my research on CRC. Not worth thinking about in my opinion.

from the paper linked
... evidence that implies that HBO might have tumor-inhibitory effects in certain cancer subtypes

One of the occasional visitors here had his son treated with HBO and a metal ion adjuvant, for brain cancer, $$$$$$. The son showed a lot of response, with tumor shrinkage in multiple MRI scans, buying some months (6?). Also SkiFletch, a former stage IV patient here, now NED after several steps, had a passing interest in HBO, since he actually did experimentation for diver breathing mixtures.

My exploratory thoughts for our situation were that we'd have to invest in a home HBO unit and training, as a frequent adjunct to metronomic immunochemo treatments, for hypoxic cell areas. A need for HBO reflects hypoxia effects, perhaps evidenced by elevated LDH or LDH5, HIF-1a, HIF-2a, KRAS mutants, BRAF, or CA19-9.

One of the continuing problems that I see for many people is that they over rely on individual alternative therapies as monotherapies rather than as well monitored and measured, incremental additive ingredients.

I had 8 weeks of daily HBOT at a government funded hospital last year to repair pelvic bone necrosis caused by chemorad in 2011. It was a high pressure chamber for 6 people with a nurse in the chamber with us. It worked very well, scans showed my fracture healed, but they did say I would need to repeat the treatment in 4 or 5 years as the radiation damage would recur.

When I first met with the HBOT specialist we discussed whether the oxygen boost to grow new capilliaries in my bone would also cause cancer cells to grow faster. He said they had been concerned about that too but their observed effect on patients they had treated for other things was that the HBOT seemed to cause a decrease in cancer growth. This was just their thoughts, not proven scientifically, and they were not using HBOT for this purpose.

I asked about whether the small individual lower pressure chambers were of any help and the staff at the unit thought maybe but maybe not, no-one knew. However, they suggested I contact a former patient who had received HBOT at the hospital for radiation damage and now had set up a low pressure HBOT facility. This former patient told me she had been using low pressure HBOT for over six years and her radiation damage had not recurred, she also felt that the low pressure HBOT had been of help to her general health too.

Like rp1952 I have been combining many treatments which might help and which don't harm and my oncologist had no concerns about it, so I bought one of the low pressure inflatable chambers and use it at home most days. I don't know if it will prevent tumour growth but it is quite relaxing, if a little strange, lying inside what looks like an inflated body bag.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is a well-established treatment for cancer and other diseases. Through breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized room, patients lungs’ can gather up to three times more oxygen than would be possible breathing pure oxygen at normal air pressure. The patient’s blood carries this pure oxygen throughout the body to stimulate the release of growth factors and stem cells. The release of the stem cells and growth factors promote healing.