Hyperbaric Medicine: Get Rid Of Your Chronic Fatigue Induced By Long Haul Post Covid

Paul Harch, MD

Well I’d always wanted to be a surgeon was in a surgical residency and was involved in a very bad motor vehicle accident and ended up having to take a medical leave, finished two years and needed another operation and took another medical leave and once out I wasn’t so sure that I could or wanted to continue. And I ended up finding a job just support myself in emergency medicine and evolved to accepting a what I thought was a temporary job in New Orleans. And when I went down there I joined an emergency medicine group that was also the diving medicine, hyperbaric medicine, wound care center for the city and for all diving accident, South central United States and gulf of Mexico. And we had the option of getting involved in diving medicine. Of course, it’s not taught in any medical schools. But I was interested in it and I thought, okay, let’s go learn about this. And as soon as I started seeing the patients, I was intrigued by these divers who would come in and you know, everybody’s familiar with the bends involving joints and you know, the kind of orthopedic presentation and spinal cord injury. But so many of these divers were just not right in their head. 

They were spacey and slow and you know, a little confused and just off and I started asking questions about it, you know, what’s going on in their head and we bubbles there that nobody knows. I go really well, what are we treating? No one knows well, what do you do? Put them in the chamber? Well, we put them in the chamber and they come out and they’re better, but they had residual neurological problems. I said, well, wait, did we treat the bubbles? No one knows well how many treatments to take to get rid of the bubbles and one knows. And I thought my God this is the most primitive Area of medicine. It’s been 80 years in the making. And they can’t answer some answer some very simple questions. And in the midst of it I started delving into and looking at brain decompression illness. And in particular the US Navy had published that single treatment. First treatment was curative in 90% of cases. We had about 40% and nobody could answer why turns out it was the delay to treatment. And we weren’t treating what the Navy was so New Orleans is 90 miles upstream from the gulf of Mexico. 

And by the time the divers would get in from the gulf by land then and maybe try to sleep it off and drift in a day two days later. Whatever we weren’t treating the same thing the Navy was. And then in the midst of it I made a discovery that it. Navy was telling us if it’s 24 hours or more forget it. They got what they got. They’re stuck. And I kind of took a flyer if you will with some of these divers who were significantly delayed and significantly damaged and I treated them at a different dose. And lo and behold these guys improved and we captured it on brain imaging when nobody was able to see this on C. T. Or M. R. I. We could see it on brain blood flow imaging. And and once we were able to prove this unequivocally and it was a clinical finding. I went running to scientific meetings to show this stuff. Nobody wanted to believe it. And it was resisted with vigor because I was showing this in the signature diagnosis that contradicted if you will what the navy had taught. 

And so the question then arose. Well wait a minute. We’re treating subacute maybe chronic brain injury here. What else? Well we simultaneously we’re treating a new Orleans boxer 23 years after his last about dementia pugilistic to and then the first cerebral palsy child old stroke toxic brain injury residual and this whole thing mushroom. And essentially what we were able to demonstrate is that hyperbaric oxygen is a generic drug for chronic brain injury and even sub acute brain injury almost irrespective of cause and that’s where we ended up. And then the latest edition was due to Juliet and what she started talking about with Covid. So that’s my story if you will was taking a clinical observation asking questions that nobody could answer that was so basically simple and then treating some patients that were untreatable and the result was so powerful I couldn’t walk away from it.

Eric Gordon, MD

And so what year was this? About?

Paul Harch, MD

1989.

Eric Gordon, MD

Okay well that’s just because what I like people to understand is how difficult and how slow change medicine are because I don’t think people appreciate it. They know the work and the dedication to keep going because this is you know 33 years now. Okay. And still hyperbaric therapy is one of the best kept secrets in America. You know 

Paul Harch, MD

And another little caveat here is that I showed this in divers but it was not new. The lower pressure treatment, hyperbaric auction for chronic neurological condition. My mentor, one of my mentors, Dr. Richard Neubauer had been doing this for 12 years and just getting all kinds of resistance. The Russians had done some of this back in the seventies and eighties other people along the way. But one of the problems was none of these people had academic positions. They were in free standing stairs or other places doing, nobody wanted to believe it. And they were easily discarded by the academic community. And I thought oh we gotta we gotta have an academic position. And my senior partner ended up and with I helped we started a fellowship at L. S. U. And we tried to do the academic track to this. But even with that it just trying to turn around 100 year old boat that uh the medical profession had discarded. It was and still is difficult progress but we’re making progress.

Eric Gordon, MD

Okay well I want to get to Juliette and long and and covid but I just want to emphasize again is that if there was a way to make a billion dollars on this, this wouldn’t be a problem. Okay, that’s why I just I think I’m not sure if it’s every recording I say this, but it’s frequent, You know, in this day and age we have um, you know, evidence-based medicine. And I always like to remind people that it is really evidence bought medicine. If you have, you know, $100 million you can start the study. If you don’t have 500 million, you’re not gonna get it to the FADA. You know, and maybe even a billion. I mean it’s that much money to get something new really approved from the ground up. So just people have to understand that this is not from any bad intent. It’s just what happened. We kept trying to protect ourselves to the point now where we have a big big fences to prevent us from helping ourselves because the work that you’re doing, the work that you did in 89, you might not even be able to do today. And I mean if you were in a medical center, they wouldn’t let you.

Paul Harch, MD

Well, none of this has been done at the university, all has been done in our clinic and right under at times the umbrella of an institutional review board, you know, to do the experiment. But all of this has been done in our little clinic.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yes. But okay, so enough about that it’s not really the politics. It’s just the unfortunate realities of medicine today. And I said maybe one of the unsung blessings of this of what Covid is bringing is we’re going to have enough people look at things differently. Maybe you know there’s a lot of money being thrown around and some really smart people. But let’s maybe nice to get some of it thrown your way and we can publish a little more, you know? But so Juliette. How did this, so how did you get in the middle of Covid and hyperbaric?

Juliette Harch, RN

Well in February of 2020 I kept on nagging him to write something about H. B. O. T. For Covid because once you know when with hyperbaric oxygen, once the red blood cells are completely saturated to 100% the oxygen under pressure dissolved in the plasma. So I thought that’s a way to get oxygen to the lungs because these people were suffocating on the respirators and it also reduces inflammation. So that was what I saw as the problem. And also it worked for the Spanish flu. So I kept on telling would you please write something so we can post it on the answers. Like they’re later. You’ve got to write something about this And then he finally did. And boom go ahead.

Paul Harch, MD

It started with her questioning at all. Yeah. Don’t you think hyperbaric oxygen should work for this. You know, it’s a lung problem. You’re breathing in 100% oxygen. There should be a direct effect on the lungs. And that’s what people are dying of with Covid. What do you think? And I said, well Everybody, you know, history bears remembering in medicine. Everybody forgets anything that’s 25 years or more old. But what was the advent of hyperbaric oxygen into the or hyperbaric therapy into the United States, 

Juliette Harch, RN

Spanish flu. 

Paul Harch, MD

Spanish flu pandemic. And then we went over and then discuss the whole story of this 1918. Dr. Cunningham in Kansas City. Anesthesiology professor was in Colorado in the Rockies vacationing. And he got to thinking, you know about why the mortality for Spanish flu patients was so much higher in the rockies. And he said it’s got to be due to the high altitude, low pressure and low oxygen level. What would happen if we gave the Spanish flu patients more pressure and more oxygen. An epiphany raced back to Kansas city and he bought an old pillar and cobbled together hyperbaric chamber the day it was operational. He had all these planned animal experiments and he was brought a dying Spanish flu patient. He was a medical student. And yeah. And it’s described in a book and in a separate journal article in the laryngoscope by one of his residents. How they brought this patient in agonal breathing blue gray. Taking his last breaths. They put him in the chamber and they didn’t have bulk oxygen at that time? It was just compressed air and they described this guy pinking up his labored breathing, starting to breathe better. 

They did one treatment a day for four days and the guy was salvaged. And next thing you know there was a steady stream of dying Spanish flu patients brought to him. They were overwhelmed with it. They ended up building 100 and eight ft chamber than a five story steel ball hospital chamber. And that’s how hyperbaric medicine start in the United States. So I was talking to Julia, I said man this has been done before and she knew the story and reminded her oven, she said why won’t you announce it? So we put an announcement on the web about this. Look there’s no treatment for this but this has been done before, Spanish flu coronavirus, they’re nearly identical. They caused death by respiratory illness you know a R. D. S. And so on. And the day after I posted that on March 10th she found an article out of Wuhan china where some hyperbaric doctors had treated a handful of patients. And one thing led to the next to the next we have an interview with these doctors, the treating doctors in Wuhan through a translator. 

Juliette Harch, RN

And he helped the doctors in Wuhan translate their research into English

Paul Harch, MD

And we couldn’t get it. Yeah well what ended up happening, they finally decided to publish it in a Chinese speaking journal. And so it’s in two journals. But I took what they had done part of it that have been released on the internet and had a commentary that got published in English speaking journal medical gas research. And it said look at this, there’s precedent for it. And now here the Chinese have done this in Wuhan and salvage six patients, one on a ventilator and next thing you know things they’re multiple studies have been done.

Juliette Harch, RN

And so you can imagine how excited we were. Absolutely know that hyperbaric was healing people in Wuhan and we just thought that would be like on the front page of the New York times on the six o’clock news. It went well. 

Paul Harch, MD

It at least well yeah I mean we put this in front of governor.

Juliette Harch, RN

We got we did get it in front of… 

Paul Harch, MD

And Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards I got to explain this. He was so supportive, he gave us a million dollars to do this and not get the hospital to approve the study. L. S. U. S. I. R. B. Did but the hospital would not. 

Juliette Harch, RN

So we could never do it. 

Paul Harch, MD

And we were right here at the epicenter one of the epicenters country New Orleans high mortality. You know sick people but

Juliette Harch, RN

You know what you know what he did. He wrote the I. R. B. And we published the I. R. B. And sent it to everyone. We could possibly and put it on the internet so that other other doctors could use it at other hospitals all over the world. And we got emails from doctors from all over the world.

Eric Gordon, MD

It’s still I mean just one question for I mean is that in you know but I thought in the beginning in New York that when they were intimacy to discriminate for me and for our audience the difference between being intubated because I think I think the pressure obviously has a lot to do with this. The pressure on the body not just shoving oxygen into the lungs because that didn’t seem to work so well.

Juliette Harch, RN

Yes it was the intubation was damaging the lungs.

Paul Harch, MD

2 points there. Yeah I’m sorry go ahead. Did you finish?

Eric Gordon, MD

No no I just know you got the idea. Just just tell us the story about what’s the what really is happening physiologically why it’s so different. 

Paul Harch, MD

Because it is the effect of barometric pressure appears to be primarily. And this is what when I pointed this out to the treating doctor in Wuhan I said to her are you familiar with what happened with Spanish flu in the United States hyperbaric medicine doctor or Bill Cunningham. No they had no idea. I said inadvertently you have duplicated what he did but he did not have oxygen. He just used compressed air and it was likely a little bit of oxygen effect there. But the pressure itself barometric pressure is bio active. And she just was this animated explosion of conversation between her and the translator and it went on for almost two minutes and I finally said to the translator, what is she so excited about? And he said she was trying to tell her fellow doctors in Wuhan that she didn’t think it was the oxygen that it was the pressure. 

Because what happened was when they would bring the patients down for the hyperbaric treatment, they’d have to take them off their oxygen, put them in the chamber on oxygen and then they shut them in adjoining and connected to it was another chamber with the medical staff in. But they never went in the chamber with the patients. And what would happen is once they shut that door, some of the patients, their mask would come off. They wouldn’t get it on adequately and nobody went in there to help them out. But what they noticed was that even when the mask came off and they just were breathing chamber air, not oxygen. Their pulse oximetry didn’t drop. They didn’t deteriorate. They were okay on chamber air. And there is so much literature on the effects of barometric pressure, but ignored by the clear hyper hyperbaric medicine field essentially for 360 years. And that’s what we were trying to point out is that it is not only some degree of oxygen, but it is the barometric pressure that is so bio active and anti inflammatory.

Eric Gordon, MD

That’s so interesting. I mean I always like to tell people, you know, that’s when they’re you know that when the people who can predict the weather, when the barometric pressure is dropping. Exactly.

Paul Harch, MD

Exactly. And look at high pressure days. Funny high pressure days that people feel good.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing. We are very we are connected to this world.

Paul Harch, MD

We are under pressure all the time. And atmospheric pressure varies on a day to day basis as much as 2%. In fact, they’ve shown that when pressure drops from front coming through, I see your mortality is go up.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah. Because the inflammation goes up. Yeah.

Paul Harch, MD

And reduction in oxygen level.

Eric Gordon, MD

Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s true. That’s enough to throw somebody over. This is so exciting. Okay, so but so you got this and then you basically weren’t able to treat acute covid stations.

Paul Harch, MD

No, no, we were not. Even with the governor giving us this million dollar gift we had everybody lined up. We had diving company was going to bring in this big multi place chamber having all outfitted put right on the ER doc next to the hospital. And just as an aside, this could also be done with every commercial airline. You can pull any jet up to the hospital. They are pressure vessels.

Juliette Harch, RN

Hundreds of people at the same time. And they’re plums of oxygen. We could have saved so many lives.

Eric Gordon, MD

So that you know, I mean we had a small story, you know, I as I’ve told many times on this set, we were spared um you know, the ravages of covid in Marin County where we were because by and large, I mean there was covid but it was minimal, especially the first year because everybody lockdown, nobody left. You know, everybody were, I mean, except you know, except the nice people who had to work in the stores. But everybody else just hid in their homes. And we had proposed an I. V. Vitamin C. Therapy the same idea because it’s we the data on this and we were gonna and you know, nobody wanted to help. I mean the hospitals just nobody was interested, We talked to them and it was all the same thing. You know, there were so many ideas that just got shut down. I mean, you know, it’s incredible. But yours is especially because you had, again, well actually we all had data from, from china from history that this stuff works and it just blows my mind that we couldn’t. That I mean that even in New York where people were dying like flies. 

Juliette Harch, RN

People at N. Y. U. Langone. 

Paul Harch, MD

Yes. That’s what one of the studies was done was N. Y. U. It was the long island campus that did the study Dr. Gornstein and that’s published and they used a matched control group to show that they had a reduction in mortality and an improvement in overall outcome for patients. So and now there are I just as I was telling you earlier today for our L. S. U. Hyperbaric medicine fellowship every Wednesday is our didactic grounds. And I gave them this exact electron hyperbaric auction covid disease. There are I think 11 studies now that have been published on it and the bulk of them that they’re almost all positive. And the most recent one was just earlier this year. It was a randomized trial in uh south America. I believe it was. And they stopped the trial prematurely at an interim analysis because there was such a discrepancy between the hyperbaric oxygen and control group. The hyperbaric oxygen group had normalization of their oxygen levels in three days versus nine days. The patients in the control group and they stopped it.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah we got now we just got to get people to do it. So that’s acute covid. And obviously we don’t have any we don’t have many buyers on that front in America. And now so you know long covid because you know as you know, we’ve been talking to people. Yes this isn’t we do believe this is a local or an inflammatory disease, you know.

Paul Harch, MD

Yes exactly.

Eric Gordon, MD

So just tell us about hyperbaric and inflammatory disease. And also while you’re at it? I’d love the details on, you know how like you know you so how much oxygen versus how much pressure? I mean you can throw that in the story anywhere you want.

Paul Harch, MD

And we question so it’s just a little backtrack here. What’s hyperbaric auction house? It worked. Nobody has really understood this for 360 years. However we have here happy genetic therapy. So you know it’s been used primarily for wounding condition one type or another and to treat a wound and heal it. You’ve got to stimulate growth of tissue, stimulate growth tissue, got to go through the nucleus. Somehow you have to signal the cells to multiply and divide. And what has been shown is that a single hyperbaric treatment human cells you and turn off over 40% of the protein coding genes in our D. N. A. Which is 8101 of our 19,000 genes from a single treatment. In the 24 hours ensuing when they’ve looked at the actual genes turned on the largest clusters are the anti inflammatory genes and the growth and repair hormone genes, largest clusters of the suppressed genes are the pro inflammatory genes and the genes that code for cell death. 

So every treatment we’re inhibiting inflammation stimulating tissue growth and turning off cell death. Well as it turns out the pressure component of it. So oxygen and pressure pressure component is more the effect on anti inflammation suppressing the pro inflammatory genes and the oxygen effect has more of an effect on stimulating the anti inflammatory genes. So that question of what pressure, how much pressure, how much oxygen it’s not exactly known but what people have done is they have now been I I was actually the news CBS news in New Orleans. One of the reporters came to me and asked me if I had treated any long haul covid. So I said no I’m dying too because I know they’ll respond because it’s an inflammatory thing. Hyperbaric auction multiple review articles has anti inflammatory effects. And anyway she referred some people and I went about treating them but the point was subsequently in the literature some case reports started appearing and then 10 patients and then finally a randomized trial. These were all done at high oxygen pressures but using Q. E E. G. And just clinical dosing. Also I have had people now I’ve had over 25 long haul patients and I found they can respond along a whole pressure range and oxygen but its individual to them. So it’s finding what dose is best for them.

Juliette Harch, RN

Because not all the process of doing not all long haulers have the same symptoms. It’s they’re all full of inflammation but you know some of them have new onset arthritis. Some of them have skin conditions. A lot of them have brain fog. A lot of them complain of fatigue. Well it’s like variety and then also people come in with a variety of health conditions before they got Covid, you know, the athletic type compared to maybe the chubby. not so athletic. Actually there’s all different types.

Paul Harch, MD

If medicine were all individuals, it’s like you any doctor you’re treating trying to treat each patient individually as opposed to one size fits all. And some canned protocol.

Eric Gordon, MD

We are now living in the world in the age of can protocols, you know? And again like.

Juliette Harch, RN

We don’t look in that world. Yeah,

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah, because canned protocols work their band aids. You know, I’m at best they very rarely will ever get to the this the basis of healing for the individual, but they’ll stop the bleeding. I mean that and you know, and that’s modern medicine and you know, like I said, just even like when you think of hyperbaric, I mean it really, you know, warfare is, you know, the is where we develop these tools and then we have to figure out how to use them intelligently rather than in mass production. But again, we’ve lost that skill set and so on. I’m hoping that as long as people like you are out there coming up with ideas and and and persevering and publishing. I mean that that’s the point that I really want to make is how important it is that you actually keep, you know writing and getting information out there.

Paul Harch, MD

I am actually in the past about 3-4 years ago I decided that, you know, I’m in a unique position by history by what happened by just so many different events that have coalesced and that my greatest contribution I think at this point is to try to get as much of this in writing and to amplify and disseminate this. That’s the way we can. So that’s kind of I’m still seeing a lot of patients and all but my responsibility is now at the university are more for one day a week teaching and then I’m spending time putting all this stuff together. So you’ll see more and more coming out.

Eric Gordon, MD

Oh good good good. And it’s just getting it out because you know, I’m I yeah I’m constantly amazed um how many amazing therapies are out there? You know, they you know, like you said nothing works all the time but when you have but we have so many things that work a lot of the time and and and we don’t know about them. I mean you know, and hyperbaric is such a perfect example. But so tell us more about. So when you what got you to um start using the QEEG cause that’s a you know, quite a different idea. I don’t think many people would think about QEEG and hyperbaric in the same at the same time. So what’s the evolution and how has that changed your ability to to treat people?

Paul Harch, MD

It’s a great question when when we when we made the initial discovery on treating chronic brain injury. One of my mentors Dr. Richard Neubauer who had been doing this 12 years. He was never able to capture the improvements that patients would experience on C. T. Or M. R. I. Now we’ve since been able to do that but it’s a special circumstance to grow enough new tissue with hyperbaric oxygen to see it grossly on A. C. T. Or M. R. I. However you are changing function through all of this gene expression through all of the other things that are happening. And so you can capture it on functional imaging. And in 1990 he published a single case. It’s called the idling neuron letter to the editor of Lancet and it was a 60 year old lady 14 years post stroke severe severe deficits. And they did a brain blood flow scan and then put her in the chamber the next day and took her out and repeated the scan and right in the homologous area on the C. T. Scan where the densest part of the infarct was. It lit up with brain blood flow and it turns out it was the area of the brain that controlled facial motor and oral motor. 

Now she was hemiplegic drooling no speech and unable to swallow chew and had essentially no facial and oral function on that side. And I was saying is that that brain tissue that on C. T. Is presumptively dead In fact is living but not functional. It’s stunned and this is known in cardiac muscle. It’s known in other tissues. But of course never in the brain was the victim. And what happened with repetitive treatment This lady required function and eventually was able to talk stop drooling swallow eat by mouth. And she even had assisted ambulance nation. And so what we decided to do was Look at this with divers. And the first cases had been published in divers decompression sickness in the brain. You can only capture little tiny T. two spots in about Oh gosh 10% of patients with brain decompression illness. And exactly exactly. And you just see a few of them but it’s a diffuse microscopic size When the bubbles go through it. And so what happened though? They started in England in 1988 doing brain blood flow scans on these divers who were coming in with neurological symptoms. And almost every one of them they were positive you could see it. So we decided to start looking at any chronic brain injury including the divers. And that was the first one where we showed this then the second one to talk about it in my book and show the images. 

But we would do the scan after we done emergency treatment for them. But they had residual injury. We do the scan next day put them in the chamber and after they came chamber we re scan them and you could see these really unbelievable changes in brain blood flow that corresponded symptomatically they would feel better. So we started doing that sequence for anybody with a chronic injury. But the second scan gave us information about that single treatment right before it. And what we saw in the scan was 3.5 hours after they came out of the chamber. So was the delayed effect of what happened the chamber. But you could never look at the brain in the chamber as you were delivering the oxygen and pressure. And I finally decided I said wait a minute. What modality can we try to look at? Live E E G and E E G s had been used before to look at oxygen toxicity in animals. Even in humans in journey this was done but nobody had looked at it to try to dose somebody. And so I ended up kind of adapting this and then testing it. And I have a wireless headset. We also have gel cap that we use that are wired out of the chamber. But I can put someone in the chamber after doing a q E G outside the chamber, looking at it, getting it all quantitative, putting them in and going through a dozing profile of a variety oxygen levels and pressures and look at the brain live record it and get it quantitative,

Juliette Harch, RN

You can see the brain change

Paul Harch, MD

Instantaneously.

Juliette Harch, RN

You can see the brain picking up the oxygen changing colors.

Paul Harch, MD

The software is so cool because there are three D maps you can look at as well as connectivity maps with rotating brain phantoms and the delay from live brain to the computer is 30 milliseconds. I mean it’s essentially real time. It’s really, it’s stunning. But I can now look at someone’s brain and I can see where we are putting that brain in its best function at what dose and or interpolate between doses and that becomes the starting point for treatment. You still have to manage them clinically. I mean it’s not perfect but guiding it’s helpful and it’s now looking into the brain real time. I mean it’s just too cool.

Eric Gordon, MD

I can imagine because otherwise, you know, I mean you have so many choices of oxygen, you know, pressure and so much pressures to to to play with and you know, I over the years you’ve learned but like you say, the problem is you you’ve learned what works for the situation but then you still have that individual who’s in the chamber and maybe they’re different. They’re, you know, they’re hardier there. What else, what why they have the inflammation. I mean that that is is the thing, I think that would be so interesting, you know, treating people with you know long covid is just because one of the things that we discuss a lot in the series is how most of the people had something underlying? Maybe it wasn’t obvious in a big way? There was a little fatigue. There was a little like maybe when I overdo it takes me longer to recover than it used to. You know, there was often a little hint of some chronic inflammation that your body was handling and then you get Covid and you kind of lose control and um and so what you’re doing is just kind of globally putting back a little the control again, you’re you’re you’re you’re giving your rebooting, you kind of rebooting the system. I mean, in a way it’s kind of turning it on, turning it off and see if you can find a new balance.

Paul Harch, MD

That’s a great analogy. You know, it’s kind of like what happens and why you don’t give a vaccine in the setting of an acute infection with inflammation in a ramped up immune system. So, people with a chronic problem and low grade systemic inflammation, Covid now is this massive immune response, depending on your co morbidity, ease and genetics and everything else. And yes, it it just amplifies your underlying problem.

Eric Gordon, MD

And so in general, I mean, I I know I always ask you generalities when everything is about the particular patient, but still um, you know how many, when you’re treating somebody with, I don’t know if you have enough long Covid patients. But yeah, when you’re treating someone? Say with long Covid, have you found that you need more or less treatments than you do for other other issues

Paul Harch, MD

It depends on how soon you can get to them. And the fact that it’s immune related hyperbaric oxygen and no other treatment will kill the memory cell responsible for the pathology. Unless you do a total chemical ablation of your bone marrow and you know, start all over uh with a bone marrow transplant. I mean we don’t have any way of really killing the immune response of cells that are causing problems you suppress them. And hopefully by the time people have gotten spike protein out of their body and the and the ongoing stimulation of the immune system from it, the immune system can eventually die down. But you can suppress any response with the hyperbaric treatment. And the other thing it does is the inflammation and the injury it has caused hyperbaric oxygen can help repair that. So depending on when you get it can be less treatment or by the time they’ve had it for a while. You know, you’re getting up in the 4.5 56 month region I tell people is to guarantee they’re gonna need about 40 treatments which is what it is for chronic wounding in just about any diagnosis in hyperbaric medicine, chronic wound diagnosis, chronic condition, sub acute and acute it’s less, you can suppress it easier.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah, there and there’s you know, you have you really need time for healing. I mean that that is the thing the body does take healing does take time. I mean the nice part is that, you know, many times we can ignore the healing happens kind of quietly in the background when we’re sleeping but when you really have an injury it takes a lot longer than we’d like it to take. You know, six weeks, six months is more likely. Exactly.

Paul Harch, MD

But what this therapy does is it stimulates all of those healing processes so it accelerates the healing curve by all this gene expression by all the other targets that hyperbaric auction addresses. So it speeds healing.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah. Well once again it and you know the amazing thing about the body and about, you know, we talk a lot in this series and and other things that I’ve done about chronic inflammation and having, you know chronic infections but chronic infections um generally, you know, some sometimes you need to kill them, but most of the time you just need to reestablish immune surveillance and maintenance. You know, because a lot of these bugs are you know, can coexist. You know, we especially like the viruses they co evolved with us. You know, they’re doing a dance with our system if we can just get them to get back two step and that’s what it sounds like the hyperbaric is doing. It’s giving your it’s like rebooting your immune system back to a place where it was stronger when the balance between inflammation and and pro inflation nation and anti inflammation was a little more imbalance.

Paul Harch, MD

It on most defenses. Exactly. 

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah. So we still might need to kill a few things but hopefully less.

Paul Harch, MD

And that’s what it’s doing in acute covid it is tamping down this tremendous cytokine storm and inflammatory response until the body’s defenses and the immune can become more balanced or or regulated.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that is you know, my story of chronic illness on all levels is just a failure to communicate. You know, I mean when the system is in a balanced communication, um, you know, recovery does happen just like it’s supposed to over a few weeks people get better and when you don’t, most people don’t remember, Paul Newman. And what was that? Cool hand Luke. Cool hand Luke. What we have here is a failure to communicate. That was one of the and that’s what we have in chronic illness. So I, you know, it’s giving the system a chance to recover. I just can’t get over how, you know, on one hand, it sounds so simple and just before we go. So do you have a one way of looking at like in your mind, why has this knowledge not gone far enough? I mean what’s been so frustrating.

Paul Harch, MD

It’s that’s actually the subject part of the subject of a book that I wrote is that when I was in medical school, my junior year, uh very first rotation in the hospital, Basic medicine. I’m walking down the hall with the junior resident and you know, junior resident is the main one who’s doing all of your clinical teaching. And we walked by a group of doctors rounding outside this room of four patients. And I overheard one of the doctors say, well, how about hyperbaric caution for this patient? And you know, as a third year medical school, you don’t know anything and you wait until we were out of earshot. And I asked the resident, I said, what is hyperbaric oxygen? He said, oh forget it. Don’t even ask another question about it. It’s unscientific. Been thoroughly disproven, charlatanism, snake oil sales and fraud. I said, okay. And I, that was tucked away. This was gospel. You know.

Juliette Harch, RN

Johns Hopkins.

Paul Harch, MD

Yeah, Johns Hopkins. And eight years later I’m down here in this diving medicine practice. And I went to the government course on physician diving accident management talk by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. And it was also embedded in it was all this hyperbaric oxygen therapy here were all these animal studies and some clinical studies sewing the science of this. And it’s like where is the disconnect? And a lot of it happened. It was hyperbaric medicine in the United States, nobody really knew it knew anything about it in 1959, And as people started using it, people stood up and were making claims about it. Oh my gosh I grew hair or this patient with a stroke got better. The specialty of hyperbaric medicine which was so immature, could not explain scientifically what was going on. And then my mentor stood up and published some an article on treating some multiple sclerosis patients. And he was treating him for what was one of the accepted uses, a bone infection in their foot. And he said, wow, they’re neurological deficits got better, their M. S. Got better. And there was a firestorm of controversy because now he was saying that you could treat a chronic neurological disease that the entire neurology specialty had taught us it’s impossible to treat a neurological disease well. And just to finish the story here was this fledgling specialty fighting for credibility. They had now gotten it re emerged in the hospital setting and he was charging 1/8 of the amount in the outpatient setting. And the medical society. Everybody went after this guy and you know, the science of what he was saying was totally ignored. It was just the whole thing got discredited. The medical society walked away from it and didn’t want anything to do with it. And hyperbaric medicine got disparaged as you know, for diseases, nobody understands it etcetera. And so my generation of doctors was essentially taught it was a fraud. And it’s tough reversing that misunderstanding.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yes, it is. Yes. Yes, yes, Yes, yes. Yes, yes. I can only say and and people it’s yeah, it has to, it’s one doctor at a time. I mean, that’s the unfortunate thing, you know. 

Paul Harch, MD

One patient at a time too. 

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah. I mean, and it’s not and I wish I want people to always remember that. It’s not that there’s this evil cabal, it’s mostly just ignorance and um an ego, you know, gay getting together because you know, and it and that we depend on in medicine, we depend on a few people to know the details because there’s so much to know and when those few people make pronouncements, everybody else listens. And if those people are being motivated by their own self importance, things don’t move well. And just just reminder that it was in 1980. My surgical resident, my chief surgical resident told me that, you know, as far as he was concerned, a total anything other than a total mastectomy was malpractice. And you know, the Italians had proven in the sixties that it was useless, but it took how long, you know, I mean, So, yeah, it’s just so be kind doctors are not out there to hurt you, they really out they want to, they want to help, but we just are human. And um, again, ego and ignorance keeps us not moving forward sometimes.

Paul Harch, MD

Yes. And you know, one of the other problems was the specialty of hyperbaric medicine couldn’t define its own therapy.

Eric Gordon, MD

What they had done was when asked, well, what’s hyperbaric auction?

Paul Harch, MD

They said, well, it’s a therapy for recalcitrant hopeless and otherwise. Yes, expensive recalcitrant and otherwise hopeless medical conditions. And so they defined it certain hopeless, expensive recalcitrant and hopeless medical conditions. Well, the certain was determined by this little committee of hyperbaric doctors and they, what they did was they tied the definition to this list of diagnosis that hyperbaric oxygen is this. It’s the treatment of these diagnosis. Well, those were historically ones that have been applied to successfully, but it didn’t tell you what you exactly we’re treating there. And so when people looked at that list, a diabetic foot wounds, air embolism, chronic bone infection, compromised flap and nobody could draw the connection and the rest of the medical profession looked at it like what? We don’t understand this and in the confusion is another reason why this got discredited. Now we understand it. This is an epigenetic therapy with two drugs, pressure and oxygen. You created a new definition.

Juliette Harch, RN

So, state the new definition.

Paul Harch, MD

Well, it’s the use of greater than atmospheric pressure and pressure of oxygen to treat disease. Path of physiology. So what we’re not treating is we’re not treating a diagnosis per se. What’s been shown is hyperbaric auction treats the underlying disease processes that cause the disease. And those disease processes are actually common to many different diseases. So what we have is a treatment for the underlying problems that are causing the diagnosis and it’s somewhat generic the effect on them. 

Eric Gordon, MD

Right. And it’s your 100% right. And now we just gotta get the F. D. A. To understand that. That’s a reasonable thing because at this point unless you have a specific diagnosis, the FDA isn’t going to approve it for anything. You know, 

Paul Harch, MD

I agree with that. 

Eric Gordon, MD

And I hopefully they’ll change their minds because you know, this will be as we begin to understand more and more the underlying drivers of disease, we can find treatments and understand that the names we attach to syndromes don’t necessarily serve treatment.

Paul Harch, MD

Unquestionably. Unquestionably there. They’re descriptive. You look at neurology, their descriptive boxes that if you have certain constellation of symptoms, you kind of fit that diagnosis but it’s not necessarily defined by the underlying areas of the brain that are involved in the process is causing it, you know?

Eric Gordon, MD

Well, it’s very hard that I again I this is my theme is that medicine is not science. And we can until we and we have to apply scientific principles when we can. But if we worship the god of science, it doesn’t be the god of science requires single variables. Okay. And that’s not treating people until we figure that out. We’re gonna be very disappointed. We’re gonna treat, you know like we’re going to do very well at some cancers that we can identify three or five genes, but the rest of medicine, we’re gonna be band aid pushers anyway, but I think when the optimistic note is hopefully we’re gonna help get the word out and get more people to realize that um there is hope for a lot of the problems they’re having and especially um you know, the long haul people with the neurologic diseases and the long and the lung issues, you know, hyperbaric oxygen is something to think about, you know, And yeah, thank you so much for your work. 

I said I don’t know if the Patients who who I mean I’ve been kind of not, I’ve been in a kind of a student of medicine for a long time and you know, I’ve seen I myself have gone down that path of being told that something is garbage and you put it aside sometimes for 20 years until you bump into it again. And so that happens over and over again in medicine. So please keep an open mind to things folks, we don’t know everything just because the fancy doctor at you know that they hire for tv says something, you know, it could be true, but look a little deeper. So anyway, Juliette, Dr. Harch, Paul, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it and sharing your wisdom and your life’s work. It’s a beautiful thing. So thank you.

Paul Harch, MD

Thank you. I want to say this last thing Dr. Gordon? This never would have happened. We never would be at this point, had it not been for Juliette, this has been a team effort and I can’t go into all the details. But I would just say so much of this has happened because this was a joint effort.

Eric Gordon, MD

So I saw that from the beginning. That’s what doctor who had the privilege of meeting you both um recently, you know, told me, you know, she met Julia and it was like, huh. She could see it. Because it takes a team.

Paul Harch, MD

It does.

Eric Gordon, MD

Thank you both.

Paul Harch, MD

Thank you. It’s a great pleasure.