Nitrox diving = faster healing?

[DandyDon]

I pulled my back really bad one time. Got the load picked up and into the pickup bed, but gawd did that hurt. Horizontal was my life for a week...!

 

[tracydr]

I almost always have relief of my chronic neck pain from swimming and diving. I think it's the buoyancy allowing everything to reajust. That and exercise is just good for the spine, especially this type of exercise.

 

[piikki]

I had surgery on my spine year ago. I have been diving since I was cleared to dive, and I find that diving is good for my back most days too. I have to say I have not found that there is a difference whether I breathe air or higher concentrations of nitrox, re: back. I do mostly dive nitrox even on fairly shallow dives, and use even 36%. I am interested in seeing if multi-day diving using 100% for deco will change any of that but this far I would be more with the crowd that votes that it's just the general effect of getting the weight/twists off the back.

 

[Rhone Man]

Yes, but what does "not so much" mean?

I think the idea is that hyperbaric treatment usually involves long exposures to rich mixes. Nitrox diving involves much shorter exposures to much leaner mixes (although go deep enough and the ppO2 could be equal, although I don't know enough about the physiology to know if that "counts").

 

[Peter_C]

I AM NOT A DOCTOR!

BUT! I have suffered from degenerative back disease and a slipped disk for years. I Injured it wakeboarding (GIANT roll to revert) to the point I could barely move and it wasn't until I was put into PT that I was taught how to put "MY" disks, back into place by arching back wards, by laying on my stomach and propping myself up on my elbows. It helps big time. When I scuba dive and am in proper trim it is a very similar position. This may well be what is helping you?

The hundred pounds worth of tanks and often a scooter do not help me though. Although exercise is good. I dive nothing but nitrox and do not feel it makes one bit of difference towards my back pain. It does help with other things including longer bottom times.

 

[Jax]

I injured my back in June, just by falling asleep watching TV in a propped position. I don't know how that did so much damage, but after the acute phase treated with muscle relaxants, NSAIDS, and physical therapy I still had significant pain which I've been treating most days with Aleve. I'd recently quit PT and was thinking I'd have to have an MRI or further diagnostics, though regular stretching seems beneficial.

But the best thing I've done for myself since this happened was to go diving. I felt the injury during some dives and took Aleve, but the morning after our Keys weekend was over I woke up completely pain free. The last dives we did were long and shallow (lobstering), and all 6 dives over three days were on Nitrox (including Duane and Spiegal Grove). Today I feel the injury a little, but I think that I'm several steps closer to fully healed than I was last Friday.

I'm wondering if the increased partial pressure of oxygen helped speed healing? Should I dive again, soon, for medicinal purposes? :blinking: Would such a trip be a tax deductible medical expense?

Do you wear a weight belt?

I am not medical but do have severe spinal discs issues. I have found that 'hanging' by a BC, especially with a weight belt, relieves the pressue and sometimes relieves the pinch completely, leaving only the residual ache to heal. There's a lot of disagreement on the "goodness" of traction on the spine.

The other current physical therapy is swimming with a flutter kick. It strengthens the small "helping" muscles that align the spine.

Diving does both. You may have relieved the disc pressure enough for it to recede from pushing on the nerves.

Source: VA neurology

 

[Kksmama]

Thanks for all the replies! I think the arching trim position, kicking, and traction from weight belt may have been helpful, I might have to jump in the pool soon and give those a try.

It is good, and sad, to know other divers have similar ailments. Carrying and lugging stuff didn't seem to aggravate me, though I did let my buddy husband do most of the heavy lifting.

Pikki, please consider reporting your results here after the 100% deco stops?

 

[JonKranhouse]

Is it exclusively O2, or is it weightlessness? I think it's both.

Dr. John Sarno has written several peer-reviewed journal articles + lay books about the relationship between back & neck pain and oxygen deprivation. Sarno has never mentioned, to my knowledge, hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Before Sarno published his theory, he noted that various successful therapies for pain management all improved circulation to clusters of nerves; he deduced oxygenation was the common denominator.

Sarno claims that reduced oxygenation, most usually triggered in his opinion by psychological stresses, are the root cause to many back pain symptoms, fibroneuralgia, etc. His Rx for back pain is mild exercise, focus on breathing, and avoiding stress -- for all these improve oxygenation. Part 1 and part 2 of a MedScape interview with Dr. Sarno from 2004.

It's a serendipitous coincidence that we focus on full and proper breathing when diving.

Oxygen is carried to your tissues by the hemoglobin in the blood. Adding more oxygen to air, even at sea level does not help get more O2 into the hemoglobin....For the oxygen in the enriched air at pressure to have any effect, it would have to work by diffusion. Diffusion is a pretty slow process.

True, hemoglobin is practically super-saturated with O2 with normobaric air; even mild altitude does not reduce hemoglobin O2 concentration. However, just as nitrogen gets dissolved rapidly into solution under pressure -- into both blood plasma and cerebral-spinal fluid -- (which risks DCS when pressure is removed), oxygen is likewise rapidly dissolved into solution. But dissolved oxygen doesn't bubble out when pressure is released, as does nitrogen; O2 is metabolized by adjacent tissues. Also, there are blinded human HBOT studies that show beneficial effects at just 24% O2 at 1.3 ATA (NOT for DCS, but for non-diving ailments). A well proven phenomenon of HBOT for various conditions is a dramatic reduction in tissue inflammation (i.e. HBOT is an anti-inflammatory treatment). Surprisingly, per at least one study, inflammation reduction is caused mostly from the elevated pressure (within safe margins), and only minimally from the higher O2 level. (interview with Dan Rossignol, MD - see page 2).

From the OP:

Would such a trip be a tax deductible medical expense?

I'd like to be a fly on the wall when you try that on the judge at tax court...ROTFLOL.
To channel Henny Youngman,
Patient: "Doctor, doctor, it doesn't hurt when I do this!"
Doctor: "Then keep doing it."