An age-old therapeutic machine is all the rage amongst the elite — but is it price the hype?
Kim Kardashian says she’s altering the approach she thinks about health and wellness, trading her former focus on attaining a picture-perfect physique for habits she believes will support a longer, more healthy life.
“I’ve switched my mentality, and now I’m coming from a place of longevity and cellular health,” the Skims founder instructed The Sunday Times.
Kardashian lately shared her focus on longevity, revealing she makes use of a stylish machine health consultants don’t absolutely support. Getty Images for This Is About Humanity
Part of that change entails a centuries-old machine many other celebrities and skilled athletes have also turned to — despite health consultants warning that the science doesn’t fairly support some of its purported advantages.
Kardashian lately revealed she’s “super into hyperbaric chambers,” which ship high concentrations of pure oxygen inside a pressurized chamber. The remedy has been touted for everything from slowing ageing and bettering reminiscence and mind perform to growing longevity.
The actuality star is just one of many who hype hyperbaric oxygen (HBO₂) therapy for wellness and longevity functions. Leann Rimes has said she makes use of it for “repairing the brain,” while Mayim Balik has turned to it for autoimmune flare-ups.
Biohackers Gary Brecka and Bryan Johnson, both of whom have made extending their lives and staying youthful a public mission, have also dropped lots of of hundreds on personal chamber setups. And skilled athletes including LeBron James and Michael Phelps have used hyperbaric therapy to fast-track restoration, as have three Philadelphia main league sports activities groups.
But despite the hype, there’s restricted evidence that the high-tech contraption delivers the advantages typically promised by wellness fanatics, Dr. Owen J. O’Neill, the founding medical director of the Department of Undersea & Hyperbaric Medicine at Northwell’s Phelps Hospital, instructed The Post.
Holistic wellness is shortly turning into all the rage among the wealthy and well-known, as effectively as on a regular basis people. fotofrol – stock.adobe.com
A remedy centuries in the making
First documented in 1662, hyperbaric oxygen therapy was initially developed to deal with circumstances including lung illness and decompression illness in scuba divers. The modern-day model makes use of elevated air stress to enable the physique to soak up considerably more oxygen than it would under regular circumstances.
The FDA has cleared hyperbaric oxygen therapy for a restricted record of 14 medical circumstances, including decompression illness in scuba divers, radiation accidents, carbon monoxide poisonings, extreme anemia and non-healing wounds.
“There are real biological effects from hyperbaric oxygen treatment that have created interest in aging research,” O’Neil said.
Breathing high concentrations of oxygen under elevated stress can have an effect on the approach cell’s perform, stimulate the growth of new blood vessels, affect irritation and help broken tissues heal, he defined.
“Those are important medical effects, but they do not mean that HBO₂ treatment reverses aging or makes people live longer.”
O’Neill also cautioned that modifications in organic markers — such as those seen in blood checks or mind scans — aren’t essentially evidence that someone will keep more healthy or dwell longer.
“For that reason, I would not recommend HBO₂ treatment to a healthy person simply for ‘anti-aging’ or longevity purposes,” he said, noting that much bigger and better-designed research are crucial.
Not all chambers are created equal
Hyperbaric chambers vary from giant, hard-shell machines sometimes used in medical settings to gentle, transportable “body bags” marketed for at-home use. O’Neill strongly advises against the latter.
“Many of these devices are not manufactured in the United States and may not meet the standards expected of medical hyperbaric chambers,” he said.
The FDA has also warned about the improper use of hyperbaric chambers and harassed the significance of machines assembly applicable engineering and security requirements.
There are vital variations between at-home gadgets and medical-grade chambers. Many transportable chambers operate at much decrease pressures or use compressed air rather than 100% medical-grade oxygen, which means the quantity of oxygen delivered to the physique can be vastly totally different.
And the potential dangers aren’t merely theoretical.
A collection of alarming accidents at personal holistic clinics offering hyperbaric oxygent therapy have raised security considerations.
In 2025, 5-year-old Thomas Cooper died while being handled for ADHD and sleep apnea at the Oxford Center in Detroit. A spark reportedly ignited a fire inside the pressurized chamber, killing the boy.
Three workers members were charged with second-degree homicide and involuntary manslaughter.
While hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been clinically confirmed to benefit people with particular medical circumstances, consultants really useful present process remedy only in an FDA-approved medical chamber and under the supervision of correctly educated physicians.
“Oxygen under pressure is considered a drug,” O’Neill said. “Like any drug, it has a proper dose, specific reasons for using it, situations in which it should not be used, possible and significant side effects.”
Those dangers can embody sinus or ear accidents, seizures, drops in blood sugar drops in people with diabetes, modifications in blood stress, extreme anxiety or claustrophobia inside the chamber and short-term modifications in imaginative and prescient.
