You may wonder why we would need oxygen therapy when oxygen is plentiful in the air around us. However, the truth is that our air is not what it used to be!
Analyses of air bubbles trapped in fossilized amber show that in earlier times, our air contained about 35% oxygen. Scientists believe that remained true until just a few hundred years ago.
Today, the average oxygen content of our air has plummeted to about 20%. In some polluted urban areas, that number can dip as low as 15-16%. This becomes very concerning when you consider that air with less than 7% oxygen cannot support human life.
Some scientists speculate that the lowered level of oxygen content in our air could be partly responsible for the dramatic rise in cancers of all kinds, cardiovascular diseases, and chronic degenerative diseases.
Oxygen therapy can even increase oxygen levels in areas where blood supply is blocked or restricted due to strokes, injuries, illness, or long-term substance abuse.
Scientists and doctors used to believe that damaged brain tissue could never heal. However, it has now been shown that oxygen therapy can actually lead to healing of brain tissue and restored function, even in the case of old injuries.
Because oxygen thins the blood and increases circulation, it also speeds up your metabolism. This means you burn more calories just by breathing!
Furthermore, oxygen is food for our cells. When our cells have enough oxygen, they are more likely to function properly. However, when our cells lack oxygen, they send signals to our brain, demanding to be fed.
Since 90% of our energy is derived from oxygen and only 10% from food and water, it makes sense that being better oxygenated would lead to feeling less hungry.
According to Dr. Max Gerson, founder of the Gerson cancer therapy, oxygen plays a vital role in preventing and curing cancer.
And in 1926, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Otto Warburg of Berlin declared that the cause of cancer was lack of oxygen at the cellular level. Therefore, any therapy that improves oxygenation of the body is likely to benefit the fight against cancer.
In addition, oxygen therapy is known to boost immune function, which is also critical in fighting cancer. This is because a healthy immune system is able to fight off the mutant cells that, if unchecked, become cancer.
According to George H. Sands, M.D. of the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, oxygen treatment of headaches was first mentioned in literature in 1939, when the breathing of pure oxygen was used successfully by Dr. Alvaraz at Mayo Clinic for severe “migraine” attacks. Dr. Alvaraz found that 80% of “migrainous” headaches were completely or significantly relieved with oxygen treatment.
The bottom line is that oxygen is vital to every physiological function of the human body.
In addition to all of the benefits above, oxygen therapy has demonstrated positive results for depression, aches and pains, digestion, circulation, memory, physical stamina, and endurance.
