Stem cell therapy is becoming an increasingly important treatment option for a wide variety of serious diseases.
The most well-known and often practiced kind of stem cell therapy is the transplantation of blood stem cells for the purpose of curing diseases and abnormalities of the blood and immune system or for repairing the blood system after treatment for certain cancers.
There is emerging evidence that hyperbaric oxygen therapy, when combined with stem cell therapy, can significantly expedite the healing and regeneration of cells that have been damaged or are dying.
Because of the wide range of conditions in which this combination of therapies has proven helpful, it is essential to have an understanding of how stem cells work and how hyperbaric oxygen therapy is beneficial.
What are Stem Cells?
Our bodies are made up of many different types of cells, each of which performs a unique function and will continue to do so until it reaches the end of its natural existence.
When this takes place, the cells will be unable to divide or replace themselves, and as a result, they will start to deteriorate.
Stem cells, often referred to as naïve cells or progenitor cells, are the cells in the body that are in charge of making new cells that can either repair damaged cells or replace cells that have died.
This may also include cells that are particular to an organ.
Examples of such cells include muscle cells and brain cells. They are capable of restoring damaged tissues in some cases.
Stem cells are found in the bone marrow of both humans and animals.
These cells have the ability to differentiate into a wide variety of different organs and tissues. These cells, in reaction to being damaged, migrate from the bone marrow to the injured location.
Once there, they undergo differentiation into cells that participate in the healing process and contribute to its overall success.
Stem cells are able to be activated by a wide variety of stimuli, including pharmacological drugs and treatments involving hyperbaric oxygen.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has a substantially lower possibility of its patients experiencing adverse effects, in contrast to the likelihood that patients may experience adverse effects when taking medications or prescription drugs.
What is Stem Cell Therapy?
Stem cell therapy is a type of regenerative medicine that uses inflammation and immune modulation to repair damaged cells within the body.
In other words, Stem Cell Therapy is used to speed up healing. Because of this phenomena, stem cell therapy is now a potential treatment option for a wide range of medical disorders.
Stem cell therapies have been utilized to treat autoimmune, inflammatory, neurological, orthopedic, and traumatic illnesses, with studies being undertaken on use for Crohn’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus, COPD, Parkinson’s, ALS, stroke recovery, and other conditions.
While stem cell therapy does not always give a cure for these disorders, the idea is to allow the body to mend itself sufficiently enough to alleviate the symptoms for extended periods of time.
In many circumstances, this effect can significantly improve patients’ quality of life while also delaying disease progression.
Why are Stem Cells so Important?
Stem cells are responsible for the generation of all of the body’s cells and structures during the entire human life cycle, from conception to death.
There are three primary categories of stem cells, as well as a number of other types of stem cells that are specialized to different tissues.
Stem cells extracted from patients’ bone marrow have been utilized as a treatment for individuals suffering from blood malignancies like leukemia and lymphoma since the 1950s.
Donating stem cells is now just as easy as donating blood in most cases.
In addition to being a rich source of stem cells that may be found in bone marrow, cord blood that is collected at the time of birth is routinely used to treat cancer and other rare genetic disorders that can affect infants.
Multiple disorders, including spinal cord injuries, strokes, burns, heart disease, macular degeneration, osteoarthritis, autoimmune diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases, stand to gain from the possibility to harness a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues.
These diseases include:
Stem cell therapies, gene therapies, and other recent technical developments have given rise to a whole new field of medicine known as “regenerative medicine.”
This branch of medicine focuses on the body’s innate ability to heal or cure disease, as opposed to treating the condition directly.
There are already a wide variety of methods available for storing stem cells for potential future use.
If they are needed to treat a disease or repair an injury, there is no risk of rejection because they are the donor’s own cells. This makes them suitable for use in situations when they are necessary.
It’s not uncommon for doctors and hospitals to provide new parents the option of harvesting stem cells from their newborn’s umbilical cord and storing them for the child’s potential usage in the future.
At the present time, transplantation therapy makes use of stem cells derived from cord blood in order to rebuild healthy blood and the immune system.
The preservation of cells through banking of cord blood is important for the development of future therapies for approximately 80 different diseases and conditions.
Cord blood cells are only found in children, but they have the potential to treat other patients if they are kept properly.
What is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy?
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, also known as HBOT, is an effective treatment for a wide range of conditions, including infections and damage to tissue.
To be more specific, this treatment includes the utilization of a hyperbaric chamber in order to increase the oxygen tension in the tissues to roughly 400 mm Hg.
Patients who are treated in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber will take in 100 percent oxygen despite the fact that the normal atmosphere at sea level contains 21 percent oxygen.
Only the red blood cells are stimulated by this quantity of oxygen when it is consumed when appropriately above ground.
However, considerable dosages of oxygen that were employed in the chamber dissolve into all of the body’s physiological fluids, including plasma and the fluids that make up the central nervous system.
When consumed, this oxygen immediately increases the levels of DNA found within each cell, which considerably speeds up the recovery process.
Healing is not going to be feasible if there are insufficient amounts of oxygen reaching the tissue.
The increased levels of oxygen in the body that result from being submerged in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber cause the oxygen to be absorbed more quickly.
This results in a vital stimulus that will enable areas of the body that are not obtaining enough oxygen to increase their oxygen consumption rates as it dissolves into the bones, plasma, and internal fluids of the body.
This is because the vital stimulus is caused by the dissolving substance.
It is possible for hyperbaric oxygen therapy to improve circulation and oxygenation by making it possible for oxygen to create and repair damaged blood vessels, as well as by promoting the formation of collagen, which is a tissue that helps the healing process.
The reduction of edema and the subsequent improvement in blood flow can be helped along by an increase in pressure.
How Does Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Benefit Stem Cell Therapy?
Hyperbaric oxygen has the power to significantly increase the number of stem cells in your body.
In fact, studies reveal that after 40 treatments of hyperbaric oxygen, your body creates 800% more stem cells.
Because stem cells can grow into any type of cell the body requires, your body uses them as additional resources to heal and recover.
Even when toxins and pathogens have been removed from the body, bodily tissues in the case of arthritis may need to be restored.
Hyperbaric oxygen-derived stem cells are capable of repairing this damage.
According to research, hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) leads to an increase in the production of nitric oxide, which in turn causes stem cells to be released.
The inflammation in the body is reduced by HBOT, which in turn regulates stem cells. This is done by putting the body in a state of regeneration.
By releasing our own stem cells into the area that is already being treated with an increased number of stem cells, putting the body in a state of regeneration actually prepares it for stem cell therapy.
In 2005, researchers conducted a study which found that after 20 combination treatments, stem cell concentration increased by eightfold.
This finding led to the discovery that HBOT stimulates the activity of stem cells.
This research has recently been backed by a more current study that was carried out by Neural Regeneration Research.
This study demonstrated that patients who experienced Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in conjunction with stem cell research scored better than those who simply underwent one treatment.
In the future, the combination of treatments could be utilized to aid patients who are suffering from long-term degenerative diseases, in addition to people who have neurological disorders such as migraines or traumatic brain injuries.
