Here's a few photo's of our latest HBOT experience.
It takes a total of 23 days to complete a round of 40 dives. That means we dive two dives a day spaced at least 3 hours apart Monday through Saturday. Sunday's are usually off unless we need to make up a dive. Which I've had to do twice due to being sick.
We rented an apartment for the month and ended up staying in a pretty nice place just outside Charlotte. It's a nice community where everyone walks everywhere.
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| Sitting on the couch with Elmo. |
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| The living room of our cute little apartment. |
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| Diving with Daddy. |
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| What the chamber looks like. |
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| Fancy building where Charlotte Metro Hyperbarics is located. |
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| The lobby with the pretty waterfall. Liam and Norah love this thing. |
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| Liam loves getting to watch his favorite movies twice a day. |
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| What the controls look like for getting us back and forth on the dive. |
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| Video monitor so they can keep an eye on the divers. |
This trip we have been able to dive to a deeper pressure. We are diving to 2.0 ATA which is the equivalent of being 33 feet under water.
Why do we do this? The short and sweet version is that when the brain is injured is sends out a signal that stem cells can 'hear'. When you put the body under pressure in the chamber it opens up the capillaries and allows the stem cells to move. When you dive to 2.0 ATA it increases the stem cell production by 8 1/2 times allowing those stem cells to move to the injured areas and heal them. Some parts of the brain die off and those areas can not be healed. But we know that the brain has a lot of plasticity and can heal and regenerate growth especially in the early years and we have seen good improvements in Liam by doing HBOT.
It takes a bit for the stem cells to get to the damage which is why you usually do a round of 40 and then continue to do dives for as long as you are still seeing positive results.
When we finish up here in Charlotte Liam will have completed 120 dives. His developmental pediatrician said he should get at least 300. But it's pricey and time consuming since we don't have a chamber nearby and not something can be done quickly. But I'm thankful to say we are almost halfway to that goal.
