Mixed Martial Arts: From Octagon Cage To HBOT Chamber

Punches, kicks, elbows, knees—mixed martial artists take more physical punishment in one 5-minute round than most athletes endure in a lifetime, and today's top cage fighters are helping popularize hyperbaric oxygen therapy for rapid rehabilitation and superfitness training.

In Saturday night's pay-per-view bout, HBOT maven Urijah "The California Kid" Faber (photo left) was gunning to reclaim his featherweight championship title from Brazilian phenom Jose Aldo. Faber lost by unanimous decision. But by 4 a.m. the next morning he was already telling his 40,000 Twitter followers he was in the hyperbaric chamber to reduce swelling in his badly bruised left thigh. In 2009 he had overcome a fractured hand and climbed back into contention with the help of hometown physicians at the Hyperbaric Oxygen Clinic of Sacramento. Our hats off to the man.

Veteran cagefighter and broadcaster Frank "Twinkle Toes" Trigg (photo right) uses his personal chamber to enhance his training methods and is endorsed by OxyHealth Portable Hyperbarics. The leading manufacturer of mild hyperbaric (mHBOT) chambers has sold over 7,000 units in the last 10 years.

Accelerated healing. Superhealth and fitness. Elite athletics. Personal hyperbarics. Once more we find common clinical practice running at a breakneck pace ahead of the scientific evidence, and the mainstream HBOT market struggling to catch up with a whole new generation of healthcare consumers, inspired by celebrities and moving fast in social networks. It's not the blood sport for everybody. But we can't seem to look away.

Aussie Cricketer Dominates Holiday HBOT News

All through December about the only thing our usual newsfeeds wanted to know was, Will the Australian cricket skipper Ricky Ponting be healthy for the Boxing Day Test? To speed healing of a strained tendon in his elbow Ponting spent the night of his 35th birthday in a hyperbaric chamber. Seems to have worked. Yes, he played December 26, and played brilliantly, by all reliable accounts.

So we add another high-profile testimonial to a growing list of elite athletes using and promoting hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). And it's not just a fad. More and more professional athletes, trainers, and sports medicine professionals are choosing HBOT as an alternative or adjunctive treatment for sports injury rehabilitation. Even if claims of speedier healing don't find much support in the clinical literature, there's no stopping a trend this strong.

We're fascinated by the growing popularity of HBOT for sports rehabilitation. But could hyperbaric oxygen be considered a kind of performance-enhancing drug, like blood doping? Does room air at mild pressure (mHBOT) do any good? What dosages of pressure and oxygen work best for various types and severities of injury?

In time, today's active practitioners will find the answers in the clinic and spread the word among their peers. We're on the beat and on the side of healthcare consumers seeking useful information and easy connections to local clinics and physicians.