Category: oxygen

The Bloodflow Show

In this post I’d like to look at a health documentary on a relatively mainstream TV channel that was presented by a doctor. The show, indirectly, touched on two aspects of methods I use to deal with the physical effects of this ‘theory’ of MS that just doesn’t seem able to be put to rest. I’d like to try and present in 400 or so words my frustration with relatively mainstream MS research.

On BBC4 last night Dr Michael Mosley’s Blood Show aired. It started off with him exploring ways to get more oxygen delivered around the body. Athletes train in a low oxygen environment (the equivalent of being at high altitude) to improve their athletic performance by encouraging the increase of production of red blood cells. My curiosity came as I am trying to achieve something along the same lines by breathing concentrated O2 at pressure.

Hopefully, similar results are being attained for people who have a variety of starting points on the wellness/condition scale. More oxygen is being made available to all tissues and cells of variously healthy bodies.

I have been taking this treatment mostly at least once a week for the last 4 years after an ultrasound on my neck showed blood was flowing slowly out of my head. This situation might also mean that blood is flowing slowly into my head too resulting in reduced oxygenation or chronic hypoxia. I talk about this state here.

Many people with MS helped set up a network in the mid80s of independent charities housing hyperbaric chambers across the UK believing increased O2 will counter some of the symptoms of MS. I’ve talked about O2 therapy most recently here and my brush with venoplasty in Brooklyn, here.

white polka dots on red

About halfway through the Blood Show (it’s real title is just as silly) turbulent forces in bloodflow were addressed. Dr Mosley was looking into what happens when mankind is able to do things before it really knows what it’s doing!

Being able to perform angioplasty is an amazing feat of physics, biology and faith. Cutting into an artery in the groin and feeding a tiny balloon all the way to the heart, through various valves and bringing the interventional radiologist out into a vein between the heart and brain describes the procedure I elected to have in 2012. A handful of thousand others with MS have had similar procedures since 2009* when a vascular surgeon from Italy went public with his way of addressing a very old theory.

The Blood Show was looking at reengineering stents as the current, straight ones kept blocking for some reason. An aerodynamicist pointed out the turbulent forces at play in the circulation of blood and, using my own analogy from GCSE geography of the formation of oxbow lakes, deposits were blocking stented, straightened parts of human vasculature.

From this observation the team ended up with a more organic, swirly shaped design. This is more like the shape the body has evolved over hundreds and thousands of millennia of the tubes to carry the blood in.

Circulation of blood is beginning to get taken more seriously, apparently…

But not if you have MS, it seems. Shouting this at the TV screen would only have raised my cortisol levels which is something I try and avoid. But I’m still on the look out for a healthy channelling of my frustrations!

(all suggestions gratefully received in a comment, please).

*records aren’t available for numbers of people taking this procedure as it’s not believed in or even being investigated by mainstream science, yet.

Oxygen therapy, what’s involved?


The choice of image at first glance seems to have nothing to do with oxygen therapy. Getting out into the garden on a bright, dry, early spring day when stuff’s growing and spring has almost sprung gives me a similar feeling to the state I’m in after oxygen therapy. I feel good in this environment. Views like this lift my spirits and heart. Future post on the science behind the beneficial effects of nature to follow soon.

So, back to the post at hand: why are there so many names for this oxygen treatment?

HDOT (high dose or high density Oxygen therapy) HBO (Not the American entertainment channel), O2 therapy.

two birds in a tree

The Hyperbaric part of the name refers to the decompression chamber we enter to breathe oxygen. Deep sea divers go into these spaces if they came up too quickly from a dive leaving them with the wrong balance of gas in their bloodstream (the bends).

The chamber recreates what it’s like underwater (no swimsuits required!)

The increased pressure causes oxygen in the bloodstream to become more concentrated, it increases in Density. The increased oxygen creates an improved healing environment in the body. Wherever we have an injury our body’s natural healing process is speeded up.

We can call the process natural as there are no extra substances on top of the air we breathe – there’s just more of it.

We don’t need to breathe extra deeply as the whole thing happens at a cellular level in the blood and tissues of our bodies. We start breathing oxygen through a hood or mask once lots of air has been pushed into the chamber itself to reproduce the effects of greater pressure underwater.

That’s why the chambers are almost spherical, there are portholes and really thick welds so nothing explodes! A similar thing happens when we go up in an aeroplane. To be able to breathe at high altitude we increase the pressure from the thin air at thousands of feet by pushing more air into the body of the plane.

The human body doesn’t feel the change in pressure in a plane or a decompression chamber.

Australian sports scientists and American footballers are just two groups who have known of the decrease in time off the pitch, track or field due to the improvements in bone knitting when players have sessions in the ‘tank’ while recovering from broken limbs.

That’s a layman’s description of what I try to do at least once a week once I’ve taken the risk described in a previous post.

I’m choosing to believe increasing circulating O2 using the above technique aswell as exercise as described elsewhere are worth doing for the state of my mind as much as the state of my blood! I think making the conscious choice to believe I’m doing myself good is just one of the aspects of the therapy that’s making a difference.

Risk:Reward?

It’s a good idea to try and keep aware of all the aspects of the treatments we’re choosing to take; water soluble vitamins (like vit C and some Bvits) don’t carry much risk as the body will get rid of any extra the next time you go to the toilet. The ‘oily’ vitamins (vit A,D,E and K)  also known as the sunshine vitamins) do carry a greater risk of toxicity as the body stores what it doesn’t need in our fat cells.

Depending on the health of our arteries High Intensity Interval Training (mentioned here and here) could bring on a stroke a la Andrew Marr. I’m not suggesting don’t exercise to save yourself! but do take it slowly if you haven’t exercised much recently. But exercise fast or slow is not what this post is about.

dog for the disabled enjoying a rest in the sun

Some of the things I am doing at the moment that I need to work out my risk:reward profiles for:

  • Taking hemp oil (a few drops under the tongue a few times a day) for its CBD (cannabidiol). This is entirely legal so carries no risk of locking me up and throwing away the key but may not be as therapeutic as cannabis derived CBD? I’m not sure how much of an effect it’s having but found this resource which shows one person’s opinion on the miraculous benefits attached to various cannabis derivatives.
  • Another thing I’m doing weekly is hyperbaric oxygen therapy. which I have mentioned here and here and there was a post recently about the therapeutic use of oxygen.
  • A few weeks very unusual interruption of supply via Amazon temporarily halted my supplementation with phospholipids as mentioned in an earlier post.  This Hiatus highlighted even more to me that strengthening the edges of my cells is worth doing. They communicate better with each other which perhaps caused less balance over the past few weeks? It may be down to something else entirely but I’m consciously choosing to believe that this substance is having a good effect.

Luckily, taking the hemp oil doesn’t leave the taker feeling ‘stoned’ or in any way chemically inconvenienced so doesn’t interfere with my driving to get to my local MS Therapy Centre which houses the hyperbaric chamber that creates the environment for increased density of oxygen molecules n the body.

The treamtment is 20 miles away along the main road leading out of one of the largest container ports in Europe. There are many collisions, near misses and stress in response to people driving very close to the car in front. On at least one side of the dual carriageway there’s stationary traffic inching its way past an accident in my 40 mile journey.

Every now and then I find it useful to assess the various supplements and treatments I do to see if they’re worth the time, effort and/or money.

I still believe it’s a therapy worth taking some risk for especially in light of this research. In the Journal Neurology and Neuroscience it has been noticed that there are some bloodflow issues in neurodegenerative conditions. Oxygen therapy, by increasing the level of O2 in the blood addresses possible hypoxia brought on by slowed venous return from the brain to the heart.

At the moment I figure it’s worth keeping my O2 levels topped up as mentioned here in a post from last summer.

In my next post I’ll describe what goes on after the drive to the tank.

Oxygen: the stuff we breathe

This post (like most posts so far) will be about oxygen, the stuff we breathe daily (all being well) including links loosely connected to measuring and increasing oxygen in the body.

I started taking high density oxygen therapy (breathing 100% O2 in a decompression chamber) three and a half years ago.

When I first started the treatment there was a definite, noticeable effect: picture the dullness of a grey, overcast day and compare that with how we can feel utterly lifted on a bright, sunny, blue sky day. That’s the best way I could think to describe the therapy when I started.

Physiologically, I believe the sessions were addressing low level yet chronic hypoxia in me. I don’t notice those benefits quite so sharply now but I believe that’s because regular sessions keep the level of O2 where it should be and I was treated for CCSVI almost three years ago which I think addressed shortfalls in the easy circulation of blood around the head.

view through a decompression chamber porthole

As well as improving mood it helps bladder function and decreases my fatigue.

These things haven’t been tested although an interesting study in pubmed from April 2013 looks at the effects on an injured brain. Refractory (persistant, not easily fixed) depression they conclude improves with hyperbaric O2 therapy and doesn’t carry any of the adverse effects of anti-depressants. Removing the troughs but also the peaks of life seems a pretty rubbish side effect of something that’s supposed to bring you back to a place of experiencing joy in life.

Regular exercise has also been reported as good for depression perhaps by increasing bloodflow to the brain?

The brain not getting enough oxygen knocks all the brightness out of life. Literally, we’re not firing on all cylinders. Which is a very unscientific way to describe what a number of people with (and without) MS are experiencing every day.

A group of people who are interested in exploring the effects of less oxygen getting to the brain is NASA, in partnership with Paulo Zamboni and the Italian Space Agency. More is reported on the study here. An Italian astronaut has been measuring the effects of zero gravity on the human body’s ability to deal with slowed venous return from the brain.

This is a study, reported by the BBC and I wanted to highlight some of its crapness. As soon as folk start using the word ‘could’ they’re not making any claims that can be backed up, they’re just filling column inches. This ‘could’ be an interesting line of investigation but it is a study formulating a theory based on the patient’s own feelings. The study participants self reported on how forgetful they felt they had become and conclusions were drawn from that?

Now, I’m all for not putting all one’s hopes in what has been delivered to chronic conditions via the double blind placebo controlled trial but a whiff of scientific rigour might be nice.

The Cochrane Group do meta analyses of already published research. This is their section on studies of the condition of MS and other diseases of the CNS (Central Nervous System) and their analysis of the various treatments whose studies reach their requirements.

Oxygen and the Brain; The Journey of Our Lifetime is a book written by the professor who, I believe, has been advising to the MSTCs (Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Centres) since they were set up in the UK in the 1980s.

The therapy has been reported in The Telegraph it was also in the Daily Mail but I’d heard the Telegraph may be serialising parts of Prof James’ book in 2015. Both papers highlighted the benefits that injured returning soldier Ben Parkinson has experienced.

When trying to find an explanation of what happens during an hour’s breathing in a pressurised container I stumbled on this link.

Reduced oxygen it seems isn’t even good for our furry friends!

 

 

Improving Prognosis?

The image of ivy is from my back garden and illustrates one of the few things that truly thrive there.

NIHCE have issued guidelines to address which treatments might be worth the NHS providing for MS patients. Aside from the disease activity going on in our brains we have similar symptoms to many other chronic conditions. Some of those symptoms are brought on by our bodies becoming increasingly inactive due to deterioration in our brains. It’s even been cheerily suggested by a London research establishment MS could be rebranded as a form of dementia. With this in mind I thought I’d share a link I was sent that was made with seniors in mind but could be useful for anyone that doesn’t move as much as they used to.

  • NIHCE have suggested no longer financing injections of B12 to try and reduce fatigue (unfortunately, I’ve never been able to get hold of any through any number of GPs) but perhaps with more people asking for some basic maintenance strategies from their GP things might change?
  • Vitamin D supplementation is involved in many processes carried out in the body every day and helps regulate the body’s own immune activity. it might be wise to address both of these deficiencies in the general public aswell. A GP can carry out this test.
  • On the pharmaceutical side NIHCE would also prefer not to pay for Fampridine and Sativex. There wasn’t enough evidence to show statistically significant efficacy for all four supplementation approaches.

ivy up close

News of the Commonweath Fund’s conclusions about the brilliance of the NHS in a global league table of developed nation’s healthcare systems (as long as you don’t have a long term condition) I’ve mentioned in another post. The NIHCE use all sorts of equations and algorithms including weighing up loss of tax earnings for the country if these citizens can no longer earn and contribute. Perhaps  the measure for the wellbeing of patients with long term health conditions needs to be adjusted?

I’m conflicted about withdrawing a therapy that has worth for some people but then I remember that the NHS doesn’t have bottomless pockets and whilst some people are missing out on marginally increased walking speeds, baby units and end of life care could perhaps benefit from the spare cash? I’ll still be buying my own supplements even if it doesn’t clearly contribute to improving prognosis  on the NIHCE scale of improvement as I’m choosing to believe when their effects are all added up, these therapies are worth applying to help keep my body working as best it can. I think this outlook involving positive thinking may bring its own benefits.

A UK MS researcher agreed that good things appear to happen during O2 therapy after being asked for his opinion on a study on this website where Israeli long term stroke patients found new brain cell growth/synaptogenesis after receiving intensive O2 therapy in a decompression chamber. There are things we can do for ourselves that might help a little. I appreciate this isn’t a very rock and roll closing statement but it seems we, as owners of chronic conditions are in charge of improving our prognosis.

Simple strategies for living well

Take a piece of string, measure your height with it and fold it in half, does it fit around your waist?

Waist to height measurement is a pretty good indicator of whether you really need that extra helping of… cake/pie/favourite foodstuff!

A balanced diet is made up (thanks to Paul Chek for this simplification) of food with eyes (protein and fats) and food with no eyes (carbohydrates). Avocados and nuts are exceptions to that rule but generally vegetables growing above ground like leafy greens will be less starchy than vegetables grown below ground: potatoes, sweet potato, beetroot, parsnips and carrots to name a few.

Why does all this matter?

There are a growing number of people that believe the gut is at the heart of most disease. Hippocrates got there first over two thousand years ago but a growing number of people alive today are also questioning the quality of the food we eat nowadays and are looking for simpler/less procesed foods to eat. Stuff that our bodies have evolved to digest over multiple dozens of millennia.

There are many different versions of the ‘Just Eat Real Food‘ sentiment. Eat food, not too much and mostly plants is the simple guideline given by journalist Michael Pollan in his book In Defence of Foods.

Food = Epigenetic information. Which is a new way to think of our morning break fast.

Every piece of food we eat ‘talks to’ the cells in our body. These conversations can shape how our bodies continue to exist in their environment. I think but am not fully read up on the research yet, that what we eat over time can impact how our bodies respond to everything around us. And our decendants!

Epigenetics is a fascinating area of research: A 2nd WW dutch famine had repercussions for the grandchildren of those who lived through it. Our DNA forms the building blocks of who we are but those building blocks can be shaped by the world around us, too.

This nutrition lark seems to be far from straightforward!

I attended an online summit called the Evolution of Medicine at the end of September 2014. In it a number of functional medicine experts and enlightened ‘regular’ doctors were interviewed and issues were identified that needed to and were beginning to change in mainstream medicine.

We have a slew of chronic disease – much of it could be considered to be mediated by the way we live. Type II diabetes is better dealt with by addressing what you eat and how you move now rather than waiting for a profoundly reduced insulin response to turn into heart disease, stroke, nerve damage, wonky eyes (my wording)… the list goes on.

We eat a diet so far removed from what our bodies have been designed to cope with, no wonder they’re ‘slipping up’ and creating disease in us. It’s not just GM foods that could be storing up trouble for us and our children. Food is just one aspect of how we can make our lives a little better.

Small changes to how and how much we move can have surprisingly satisfying results. Getting outside and going for a walk every day is good for the soul as well as our heart and lungs. I’ve been performing my own version of HIIT (high intensity interval training) on my exercise bike. I can’t walk very far and have a wheelchair for events that call for more walking than say, getting round a supermarket with a trolley to hold onto so it’s not often that I can achieve a change in my heart rate.

There are a wide variety of websites I visit and gather what I hope is useful information to me and I assume others including a number of strands of research from around the world. Change in my body (including not getting out of breath so quickly) seems to be happening… slowly but I think getting the heart rate up must get more blood pumping round the body and that includes the brain so, a handful of 30 second bursts on the static bike every other day with the resistance turned up is giving my brain a treat. It also has a happy side effect of warming perpetually cold hands and feet!

To a continually pumping heart the brain is just another extremity (like hands and feet) that the pressure and circulation doesn’t always reach. Gravity works against the brain here, unfortunately.

Always low blood pressure can be as problematic as high BP resulting in fatigue perhaps partly because the brain isn’t getting enough glucose or oxygen to function optimally.

I read this in a fascinating book Why Isn’t My Brain Working by Datis Kharrazian. He has used a similar functional approach to identify strategies to improve an underperforming thyroid.

It’s always a good idea to get an MOT from your gp to check that your body can cope with the changes you’d be asking of it with a new exercise regime. I never used to be much of an exercise person but I was also a smoker as a youngster so i wasn’t really caring what my body may have been trying to tell me!

Small things can make a difference and some simple strategies have got to be worth a go, no?

Zietgeist? Shine a light!

 

 

porthole in a decompression chamber
room with a view


This post will be about issues brought up in Face the Facts on wednesday the 16th July.


The radio show was talking about the how parents of children with a chronic condition were feeling compelled to pay for treatment that might benefit their autistic children as that particular chronic condition, in their opinion was falling through the NHS’s net.

I appreciate there are a number of folk that say autism IS curable through dietary strategies (I’m hoping one of them will do a guest post on here in the future) but for the moment we’ll call cases of autism manageable at best. Parents feel they have no choice but to look for alternatives to the standard NHS care offered to them.


This is a copy of my letter to the face the facts show:

Hello, I have MS (another chronic condition that is chronically underfunded by the NHS). 
An interesting report from the Commonwealth Fund came out a matter of weeks ago (on an earlier post ‘The NHS is Tiptop… and not‘). In it a US think tank (with an axe to grind about the US’s aversion to adopting universal healthcare perhaps?) released an analysis on the state of Western healthcare, the NHS came out on top with the US spending the most and coming in bottom on nearly all measurements. The UK was bottom of the list of ten for chronic conditions.

 

I have been taking hyperbaric O2 at my local MS Therapy Centre for the last three years, this sh*t works. I’m not cured but it helps bladder and fatigue issues and, as an added extra, a session in the tank lifts my mood (Look up effects of chronic, low level hypoxia).
It’s like the difference between going out on a blue sky day compared to a grey day – you can’t measure the difference but there is one. MS Therapy Centres might become another subject for John Waite’s Face the Facts?
If he’d like to look into a therapy that is providing benefits to a range of conditions including stroke I’d be happy to be a first point of contact as a trustee for my local centre. They can also be contacted centrally here.

We are a network of 50 or so independent charities around the country that were set up by people with MS for people with MS in the early 80s to initially provide this therapy in particular. Now many other therapies are available to  more than just those with MS.
They set this up before the internet and JustGiving! that’s a story right there, isn’t it?
MS has a similar set of symptoms to stroke (stroke’s vascular aspect takes an acute form) while MS has been described as a slow motion stroke and shining a different type of light it has also been suggested we rebrand MS as a form of dementia (the brain atrophy we experience from early on in the disease process is the same brain shrinkage seen in the elderly)

 

I’ve been reading and trying lots over the past 20 years to try and reduce some of the symptoms of this condition. I think I’ve learnt what NOT to pay too much attention to but I’m always interested in hearing about more stuff.

mainstream and less so

night scene of a Brooklyn sidewalk

I took this image when I was getting a form of angioplasty to counter some of the effects of MS in 2012. It hasn’t stopped the disease but my heat intolerance and brain fog is still vastly reduced two years later. I don’t believe the auto-immune theory answers all the questions that MS poses.

The auto immune theory lies at the base of mainstream, accepted MS treatments (see below for details and links on most).

An auto-immune disorder arises when the immune system, the body’s bouncers get confused, go a bit postal and start attacking the body’s own cells. In the case of MS the bodyguards appear to start beating up the nerves’ protective coating (myelin). There’s still big questions about proof that this is what’s happening in MS. MS auto-immune and/or neuro degenerative?

In the vascular model, researchers hypothesize that these bouncers are merely sweeping up at the end of a particularly rowdy night rather than attacking these cells themselves. It is theorized the damage was a side effect of vascular disruption.

The autoimmune model believes that these bodyguards go rogue and kill perfectly healthy and functioning cells. They can no longer distinguish between foreign cells (whose presence would rightly cause an immune response) and self.

The alternative MS theory has been explained most recently by Paulo Zamboni of Italy. He considers MS to be mostly a vascular disorder and a name for this disorder is Chronic Cerebro Spinal Vascular Insufficiency (CCSVI). There are a number of people who don’t agree with the theory that has its roots in the 19th century.

I felt the theory was worth further exploration and went to Brooklyn to get someone else to explore my vasculature for me.

The standard medical approach to multiple sclerosis includes disease modifying therapies, DMTs that don’t really address symptoms as such and require quite a leap of faith in your belief of your caregiver’s ability to alter the course of your disease. That could encompass having a belief in your yoga teacher as much as the men in white coats.

Having some sort of belief in something appears to be good for your brain to get on with its own healing (our brains consist of about 7% stem cells that could, in theory replace our own damaged myelin. Choosing to believe in something I don’t believe is silly.

MS medical treatments started with Copaxone, Rebif, Avonex Beta-Seron (fondly referred to as the CRAB drugs by past patients) which form the cornerstone of accepted MS modification. These guys have a pretty exhaustive list of some treatments available to us. The first of them was released in the US in the early 1990s and the fair prescribing of them brought about the creation of NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence seems to have changed its name once or twice and now stand for NIHCE… Health and Care Excellence rather than Clinical.

Newer treatments include Tysabri which has a very chequered history including being withdrawn from market and then brought back and still being responsible for some of its users contracting another brain disease entirely, PML!

Campath or to give it it’s newer name Alemtuzamab works by knocking out certain proteins in the patient’s immune system. This therapy was first used to treat cancer – decide carefully about the risks and benefits attached to taking any treatment but perhaps especially a recycled cancer drug?

Alternative treatments I’ve tried include hyperbaric oxygen therapy HBO, treating CCSVI, physiotherapy, Feldenkrais Method, Shiatsu, Reflexology, diet modification (gluten, dairy and sugar free), as wide a range of exercise as is possible, mindfulness, MBSR emotional freedom technique EFT, vitamin and mineral supplementation, Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), Inclined Bed Therapy (IBT), and are discussed further on other pages on the site.

I also take cannabis using a vaporiser as it seems if big pharma are trying to replicate the real thing with Sativex why don’t I just get hold of some of the real thing?

I feel having a chronic condition calls for becoming an active participant in our own health rather than sitting back and taking what’s offered.