Here are a few suggestions from customers and my personal experience when getting started with your hyperbaric chamber at home. For your first session, start slow. I know, I know, we as humans want everything faster and right now😊
I was always that person that thought treat more often, lets increase faster, I can take more pills, let me push through this I am tough. I am sure you have heard this like I had, but it took me a good four years to learn that. Oxygen is a drug so be kind to yourself. Slowly is so much easier on the body.
Here is how I started:
Day 1 -When I started, I was very sick. I only completed 5 minutes at max pressure. I was so tired and cold I needed to go to bed after my session.
Day 2 -I did 7 minutes and felt the same way, I went to bed for the night.
Day 3-When I woke up the next morning my skin was so soft. I couldn’t stop touching my face all day long. I had never experienced my skin feel so fresh and soft, I was smiling all day because I felt something was going to change.
Each session I kept increasing my time little by little. I was in my hyperbaric chamber 6 days a week. I was not feeling good right away, I honestly was sick. I was experiencing a herxheimer reaction. A herx for short is a detoxification reaction in the body. As the body detoxifies, it can experience flu-like symptoms which include headache, joint pain, chills, nausea, and body aches. This is normal for a person with Lyme disease.
Here are a few suggestions on how to start slowly.
- Start at half pressure and don’t go to max pressure right away. Increase over the course of a week or two.⬆️
- Slowly keep increasing your time in your hyperbaric chamber. My doctor prescribed 60-minute sessions. I am the person that reacts to everything, so I knew I wasn’t going to start with an hour’s treatment.
- If you have added the oxygen concentrator start without your oxygen concentrator turned on. Work your way up to adding the oxygen into the mHBOT but don’t wear the mask quite yet. After a couple of weeks, you might add the mask 😷
- If you have challenges with claustrophobia. Lay in your mHBOT with it open for 10-20 minutes. When that feels comfortable to you zip up your hyperbaric chamber without it turned on and maybe take a nap or listen to music. When that feels good start your compressor.
Remember no one knows your body better than you do. Listen to it, write down your time and progress in your hyperbaric chamber each day. Log your days off and how you feel. As symptoms start to fade away, we sometimes forget they were there. We think we aren’t getting better because we are just consumed with being sick. Each one of those little milestones adds up and eventually your body will start to change.
I always wrote down my date and time I spent in my mHBOT, but I wished I had made note of all my positive or negative changes.
It took me a few months before I really started noticing much of a change in my well being. Outside of the herximier reaction in the beginning, hyperbaric oxygen therapy had the least amount of side effects and the biggest gain of all the modalities I tried! I not only helped restore my body, but it gave me my hope back.