Hyperbaric Oxygen to Promote Post-Exercise Fatigue Recovery

Hyperbaric oxygen is effective in the treatment and rehabilitation of sports injuries and sports fatigue, including acute muscle strains, joint ligament injuries and chronic overuse injuries. Hyperbaric oxygen can not only relieve the inflammatory response caused by sports and reduce pain after sports injuries, but also soothe their emotions and improve sleep. It has been well received by many top coaches and athletes at home and abroad.

LeBron James, basketball fans should be very familiar with him, a nearly 39-year-old superstar, in the professional top basketball league to achieve brilliant achievements, sports career is very long and can maintain the top level of sports, hyperbaric oxygen therapy as post-exercise fatigue recovery, is one of the important treatment means.

More and more famous athletes or sports teams at home and abroad are already using hyperbaric chambers for rehabilitation or treatment. With the secret weapon of hyperbaric chamber to recharge oneself when daily training and major competitions are approaching. It can restore the body function to normal level in a shorter time. It helps to withstand more intense training, so that you can perform even better. For example, Vinicuis Tobias, the famous footballer of Real Madrid, is also doing hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

It has also long been documented in China that hyperbaric chambers have been used by Chinese sportsmen to recover athletes from overexertion and sports-related injuries. Many large events or training bases, began to introduce hyperbaric chamber treatment and rehabilitation.

How does hyperbaric oxygen therapy work on post-exercise fatigue?

• 1、It not only increases the oxygen content in the blood and relieves the relative lack of oxygen after strenuous exercise, but also accelerates the rate of lactic acid removal in the body and improves the recovery speed of the body after strenuous exercise.
• 2、Promote the recovery of hemoglobin and oxygen partial pressure, because in the state of hyperbaric oxygen, the number of oxygen molecules in the blood increases faster, the ability of hemoglobin in the blood to combine oxygen increases, thus increasing the blood oxygen content and enhancing the aerobic metabolism of the body, which is conducive to the rapid elimination of fatigue of the body after heavy exercise.
• 3、Promote the re-conversion of lactic acid into glycogen in liver cells, as well as the increase of lactic acid excretion in kidney and skin. The body’s energy supply mode will achieve a shift to aerobic oxidation of sugar, so that lactic acid and urea nitrogen production in the blood will be rapidly reduced, thus facilitating the removal of lactic acid, urea nitrogen and other acidic products. Moreover, the volume of urine will also increase after pretreatment with hyperbaric oxygen, thus reducing the reabsorption of urea nitrogen in the renal excretion process, and the fatigue level will be reduced as a result.
• 4, hyperbaric oxygen therapy can make the serum creatine kinase activity return to normal level faster within 120 minutes after exhaustive exercise, promote the recovery of damaged cells, increase the partial pressure of oxygen and oxygen content in body fluid, reduce the permeability of cell membrane, and facilitate the elimination of exercise fatigue.

• 5. The liver blood sinusoid of liver tissue is enlarged and blood circulation is accelerated, which can rapidly discharge metabolites and transport in nutrients. It can promote the recovery of liver cell structure to normal level, which can obviously change the function of liver cells, eliminate fatigue and promote recovery.
• 6、The effect on cardiomyocytes after hypoxia is mainly manifested as slowed heart rate, slowed myocardial conduction, weakened myocardial contraction and reduced myocardial oxygen consumption, which can rapidly replenish the large consumption of nutrients caused by exercise, increase the body’s glycogen reserves, improve the body’s hypoxic state, and have a certain role in promoting the recovery of fatigue after eliminating exercise.

In brief:

• (1) after a long period of strenuous exercise, the oxygen demand will increase with the increase in oxygen consumption of the body. At this time, the body is forced to carry out anaerobic respiration, a large number of fatigue-prone lactic acid and other acidic metabolites will accumulate in the muscle and blood. Therefore, one of the important causes of exercise-related fatigue is the relative lack of oxygen in the body.
• (2) Hyperbaric oxygen helps blood-related indicators (such as hemoglobin, lactate, oxygen saturation, creatine kinase, urea nitrogen, etc.) to return to normal levels after exercise.
• (3) Hyperbaric oxygen can restore the function of liver cells and cardiac muscle tissue cells to the pre-exercise level after exercise.