Anshu Bahanda: This is Anshu Bahanda on Wellness Curated. Thanks for joining me on this podcast. My mission is to empower you with health and wellness so that you can then go and empower others. Hello, Jaynee. Hello, Dr. Pender. How are you?
Jaynee Treon: Hello, Anshu, pleasure to be with you.
AB: Thank you. Welcome to have you here on the chat with us.
JT: Thank you, Anshu.
Dr. R Pender: Thank you.
AB: So, my first question is, what is wellness to you?
JT: So, wellness to me is more than being free of disease. It means having the health, and vitality to follow your passion with compassion. I think that it also engages in the connection between the mind, body, and spirit because every cell in our body is hearing every thought we have. So, wellness encompasses more than just being disease free.
AB: Beautiful. I love your line. What did you say? Passion with compassion. I love that.
JT: Yes.
AB: So, can you explain to us how this works? How do hyperbaric oxygen therapy and the chambers work?
JT: So, in the normal atmosphere outside, we are breathing 21% oxygen and we’re relying on the blood carrying it to all the tissues in the body. Most of us have got compromises. Either we don’t breathe adequately, have shallow breathing, a sedentary life, or environmental toxins. Demand for cellular oxygen is greater than it’s ever been. In the hyperbaric pressure chamber, you’re getting close to 97% compared to the 21%. And you’re not just relying on the blood, which is almost fully saturated with oxygen in most people’s cases, as long as they’re healthy. We are using the pressure in the chamber to oxygenate the plasma, the lymph, the interstitial cell, the cellular spaces, the liquids in the body, and the cerebral spinal fluid. They all get saturated with hyperbaric oxygen, and the pressure pushes the oxygen four times further than the blood can. So, anybody who’s got any microcirculation compromises, lung compromises, or sedentary life, would benefit from the pressure of hyperbaric oxygen. There’s no other way of getting more oxygen apart from hyperbaric.
AB: So, tell me, Jaynee, why do you need the extra oxygen? Won’t the body just take whatever oxygen it needs?
JT: Yes, the body will take what it needs. But we do have a lot of demand for the modern lifestyle because we have a lifestyle full of more than 30,000 new chemicals produced in the last few years… decades. There are environmental toxins; We’re not living in a forest. Nature was supposed to be part of our lives. We are living a very urbanized living. So, we’ve got a lot of inflammation and the highest number of chronic diseases to ever exist. And all of that requires even more oxygen than ever before. So, we know that having a lack of oxygen creates a pathological signaling, and there have been Nobel prizes given for that. And if the tissue detects the lack of oxygen in the distal area, it sets up pathological signaling. And even in 2019, there were three Nobel laureates studying how to deal with that signaling. So, we do have a greater demand for oxygen.
AB: Okay, and how is it different? Do you know how sometimes in the U.S. you see these cylinders everywhere and people taking oxygen? How is your chamber different from that?
JT: So, the cylinder will oxygenate the blood because you’re breathing it in. And most people’s blood is fully saturated, more or less 97% or so thereabouts, as long as they’re well. If they’re not well, okay, it drops down to below 95 % or whatever. So, it’ll saturate that, but it doesn’t drive it into the tissue the way the hyperbaric pressure does, because that’s still relying on the blood, for taking it everywhere. And the hyperbaric pressure pushes it into all the other fluids, including the lymph and the plasma, which delivers oxygen where the blood is unable to.
AB: Okay, so you’re saying that the blood doesn’t take the oxygen to the lymph and the plasma?
JT: Yes. Because if there are microcirculation compromises, the cellular compromises, the lung compromises, they compromise. And as we age, did you know as we age, even over the age of 50, we age partly because there are microcirculation compromises? That’s the process of aging. So, that’s the reason why recently, Professor Shai Efrati was able to do clinical studies to not just stop the aging, but to actually reverse aging using just hyperbaric oxygen. But intense sessions, lots of sessions, and good commitment is required for that. And he has got 20,000 people on his waitlist, by the way. And it’s a very high price point for anti-aging purposes.
AB: And tell me, how typically, are there a certain number of sessions that you would say to people that come and do— four sessions, three sessions, five sessions, before you can tell that it’s beginning to make a difference to you?
JT: It depends on individual cases and what they’re coming here for. There are people who have said to me that they felt so different after one session. They had a spring in their step, they had energy, especially for the long COVID sufferers. But I never make a claim that one session is enough to move a needle. All the trials are done over lots and lots of sessions, but I would say, minimum, a pack of five sessions close together, that begins to move the needle. You see the difference. Although I’ve had people say to me that one session was amazing, and that’s the reason they took the rest of the pack.
AB: So, the day I was there, I think you had a gentleman who was a long-COVID sufferer, and I think he’d come back after the first session that worked for him.
JT: Yes, most people come for the one session to try it out, and they feel the benefit, and then they take a path because the whole process is based on the cumulative accumulation of oxygen in the body. And that’s where the regeneration can begin.
AB: So, when I started reading up on it and watching YouTube like you were talking about Dr. Efrati, and there was another gentleman called, I think it was Ray Chaudhary. There’s a lot that’s available.
JT: I will go to the list, yes.
AB: It was fascinating. So, can you tell us some of the major benefits that you’ve seen? It just seems like it’s a whole minefield. There’s so much that it does.
JT: So, I had a wide variety of clients that come in here. My youngest client is four years old. He had learning difficulties. The mother was very distraught, and when she came, she was very sad because she was dealing with a variety of ways of helping him and nothing was really working. So, when she came to our clinic, she said to me, after five sessions— he was holding his pencil better, he was able to color between the lines; he was all very wild before, he was engaging; he had opened up, before he was all closed in and not engaging; his vocabulary increased… So, a lot of changes. So we have young clients and we have older clients because everybody can benefit from oxygen. It’s required for every cellular process. And when there’s any injury in the body, whether it’s internal or external, there’s a greater demand for oxygen. So, even currently, people who are breathing with the masks, they’re breathing in quite a lot of carbon dioxide, and that drops the immune system. They need more oxygen to be pushed into their tissues. So, basically most of the symptoms benefit from having oxygen because it’s required for every cellular process.
AB: Right. Okay, fantastic. So, you’re saying, you mentioned that it’s been used for COVID recovery, right?
JT: Yes, very successfully.
AB: Can it be used for increasing immunity or even increasing the efficacy of the vaccine?
Dr. R P: On the emphasis of the vaccine, we can’t claim that because it is a very new vaccine; but on many other medications, hyperbaric oxygen enhances the quality of medicines. This can be seen very much. When we look at cancer patients who are in chemotherapy, we find that the feedback from the patients and oncologists is that in combination with hyperbaric— chemotherapy is much more potent and much more successful. So, we can’t make claims about the vaccine for COVID just now, but what I have found reading the clinical trials, which are quite out of numbers now, it is very positive. COVID-19 affects the respiratory drastically. People who were fit and healthy, young people, suddenly are fighting for their lives within maybe an hour, actually on their deathbeds. And we have seen it on television. Those who come through it have been left with all sorts of problems [such as] memory loss, aches in the body, on the joints, and muscle fatigue. Then yesterday on a television interview of three or four people with long COVID, I was screaming at the television, you must do hyperbaric because it would help you recover much quicker. One case in particular, there was a gentleman there who had some fingers amputated because COVID cut off his oxygen supply, and he ended up with gas gangrene in his fingers. One of the major treatments for gas gangrene is hyperbaric. I spent three years in Serbia where mainly in the hospital there, they were treating gas gangrene whereas in the UK we would be amputating limbs. We were saving the limbs. I thought the man lost his fingers… his fingers [would have] stayed. If it was only hyperbaric, he would still have his fingers and it’s crazy. I would like to see it in every hospital that treats COVID because it’s not going to go away for two or three years, it’s going to be around for a longer time and we should have hyperbaric standing by to help post-COVID. It would also help…rather than ventilate patients, the equipment in the oxygen chamber and the dissolved oxygen under pressure would reach and replenish the loss of oxygen, which COVID seems to be doing.
JT: Can I just also add, it’s also a gene therapy because it activates 8,101 genes into growth and repair and downregulates inflammation? It’s also a stem cell therapy. You can increase your own stem cells by 800%, but that requires a commitment of 40 sessions.
AB: Wow, wow!
Dr. R P: But very, very, very effective.
JT: It kills the bacteria in the body. It’s good for the macrophage …immune system and kills the bacteria… anaerobic bacteria in the body. Very, very good for the immune system.
Dr. R P: I should say that there are some patients whom we can’t give hyperbaric to if they’ve had a perforated eardrum.
JT: She was going to ask that question.
Dr. R P: So, I think that’s important because rather than giving all the advantages, we’ve gotta make it clear that not everybody can have it. But that is why I come into a clinic and we make sure that their ears are right, we give a ticket history of their medical background and if there are any contraindications, then we wouldn’t treat [them]. So, it’s for the safety of the patient and obviously for the professionalism of the clinic.
AB: Okay. And tell me at one point, Dr. Pender, you had mentioned cancer, I think.
Dr. R P: Yes, right. The 1933 Houses of Parliament Act doesn’t allow anyone other than an oncologist to advertise or say that they treat cancer. That is the law. But what we do say is that hyperbaric oxygen helps the body fight cancer. If I can try and explain one of the things with cancer is that: cancer tumors and cells thrive in a low oxygen level. If I can try and explain— if you have a tumor or a cancer cell, the immediate [reaction] that happens in the body [is that] information gathers around that cell and restricts the amount of oxygen getting to that area. And cancer tumors and cells, like that moist low oxygen environment and actually sensitize their growth, almost like rogue cells. They feed on low oxygen but they still need feeding. So, then you find that the cancer cells will look around the body for food. So, they’re looking for glucose. So, we get the secondaries all over the body. In my experience and the experience of many who have been involved in hyperbaric oxygen— as soon as the cancer cells and tumors are hit with hyperbaric oxygen, which has a bigger impact of hard oxygen, the inflammation is moved out of the way. The oxygen goes right into the cells. Then the cells start to shrink themselves. We will not call it a cure but it will reduce the effect of the cancers. There’s a professor and a doctor in Kings with Cancer Research UK— he did a study looking at tumors in low oxygen and how massively they grew, and then when they were given more oxygen, how their growth was restricted. And that can be found on the web quite easily as King’s College Cancer Research UK trial and research, backing up just what I said.
JT: There’s also Thomas Seyfried— Professor Thomas Seyfried. He’s done a lot of work on hyperbaric oxygen and that cancer is a metabolic disease and how ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen… Chris Williams is another one. There’s a lot of YouTube videos they have done on this subject, explained in detail.
Dr. R P: Certainly, it is a great assist to help fight…. a great assist in helping the patient to fight cancer. And I think safely to say that… to say that cure, I would not say, but it gives the patients the best chance that they can have.
JT: It’s also the only protocol of radiation damage.
Dr. R P: Yeah, radiation…[for] radiation damage, the first line of treatment is hyperbaric oxygen.
AB: So, then tell me something, why is it not used more? It sounds mind-blowing, right?
Dr. R P: Okay. There’s no patent for oxygen, right? There are patents for lots of drugs, which means money to the drug companies. And you’ll find that a lot of hospitals, a lot of consultants worldwide, are sponsoring research with pharmaceutical companies. I’m not saying the pharmaceutical economy is wrong, but what I’m saying is oxygen is not a patent. It’s sent from God, as it were, and we don’t have to pay for it other than we store it and give it as a treatment. But we walk around every day breathing oxygen. I can go without food for a long time, and I probably should because I’m getting a bit heavy. I can do without water for a length of time, but three minutes without oxygen and I’m on the floor and [any] longer, I won’t be here.
JT: Dr. Pedro looks after children who’ve been deprived of oxygen at birth and brain damaged. So, he flies around the world and gives consultations to those children.
Dr. R P: Like autism and cerebral palsy. Autism is a very complex immune system, but I’ve seen some amazing recoveries and improvements. Cerebral palsy is usually caused by the starvation of oxygen at birth. We can never promise the parents that the child will come back to her. They should be perfect. But if you can get a 50-year-old boy who can’t stand up, suddenly he’s standing up, and he goes to the toilet and urinates on his own and there’s his mum going with him and helping him— that is the end. And these are the things that I’ve seen happening.
AB: And what are the side effects and in what situation should one not use it? Like you said, one with the eardrums, right?
Dr. R P: If you’ve had a perforated lung…. a collapsed lung. The other thing is claustrophobia, but it’s something that we can manage with a patient. In 35 years, I’ve only had one person having to abolish treatment because he felt claustrophobic. And that was a pure military boy who had severe burns, been in the tank during the war and the tank went on fire when he was in the chamber, he had a flashback. Really, claustrophobia we can handle and we can get the patients to relax. And you’ll find that the chambers are very, very spacious and they feel very comfortable.
AB: Yes. And it was glass, so you don’t even feel like you’re still inside.
Dr. R P: Dr. Mira is here and Jana is here. There’s always somebody here, so they’re never left in the room alone. In a room, there’s always someone there and there’s an intercom for speaking. So, it’s a very peaceful, relaxed treatment.
AB: And in your 30 years of experience, Dr. Pender, what is the best recovery that you’ve seen using a hyperbaric?
Dr. R P: Right, there are two that I could mention. There is one young boy, he was eleven years of age. His mother telephoned me saying that— ‘The oncologists have just said, my son’s got 24 – 48 hours to live. Can you bring an oxygen chamber into the hospital for him? I’ve heard about what you’re doing with children’. And I said, oh, I would love to do that, yeah, it could be done, but the red tape is going to take six months. As simple as that. If it was my son and he was given 24-48 hours to live, I would bring him home to die in my own home. If you do that and you’ve got them out, then we’ll arrange to get hyperbaric oxygen.
AB: And you were able to recover him?
Dr. R P: And we got him back. At 11:00 that night he was taken out of the hospital; at 02:00 in the morning we started oxygen. And then over the period of a year, a very generous businessman in London, they needed a chamber for him to be installed in his home and I supervised the treatment. That young boy is now back at school. That was four years ago. He had a brain tumor and spinal tumor and he’s totally recovered. I’ve got four videos to show you that.
AB: Oh my God! What an amazing story?!
Dr. R P: Yeah, absolutely. And then the other one was a woman who had fibromyalgia. Couldn’t get out of her bed for three years, just getting into the bathroom and bathing was all that she could manage. Eventually, her husband persuaded her to get hyperbaric. A private ambulance brought her to the clinic. And within three months, she’s walking on the beach and her marriage is back in place. And she thought her life had come back again.
AB: Wow, wow!
Dr. R P: Just by the oxygen. Not me, not the chambers, but just by the power of oxygen.
AB: I know. Amazing. But that also makes me think, I mean, what Jaynee and what you’re doing, Dr Pender, is incredible, because people don’t need to wait until that stage. They need to know that as prevention.
Dr. R P: Oh, gosh, yes. For having optimum health, it would be good for people maybe to have a couple of sessions per month, to keep their whole thing topped up. I’m 79 and still working.
JT: I’m lucky to have had his experience for 79 years.
Dr. R P: I don’t feel 79. And thanks to the oxygen.
AB: Okay, fabulous. Our aim is to empower people with health and wellness. With that in mind, what advice do you have?
Dr. R P: I think the first thing is important for a general thing: worry and stress causes so many illnesses. And my advice before you come to see any doctor or someone is to get a mentor, get something closer. And if there’s something bothering you— talk, talk, talk. Get it off your heart, off your shoulders. Doing that before you have any treatment is so, so important. That’s my advice. Not promoting hyperbaric, not promoting pharmaceuticals, get a friend and start talking. Marriages break down because there’s no talk. Families break up because there’s no talk. People commit suicide because they harbor everything into them. So my advice is open out, get a mentor, get a friend, get something around you. Don’t face life on your own.
JT: I would say something extra. I would say that get in touch with nature, go into the sunshine, hug a tree, and earth yourself. See the connection between mind, body, and spirit, and go for everything that’s natural to boost your immune system. That’s where you start, I think.
AB: Right. That’s lovely. How can you use hyperbaric for beauty and for skin?
JT: It’s very good for skin elasticity and collagen. Because the wrinkles are formed with the lack of micro-circulation. And if you’re pushing micro-circulation to the periphery area, you get pink cheeks.
AB: All right.
Dr. R P: You stop the oxygen reaching your skin, you get gangrene.
JT: Sorry. He’s saying that if you stop the oxygen reaching to the skin, you get gangrene. But there are many stages before that.
AB: Yes. Okay. Like you were saying that if someone is just coming for maintenance or to get to optimum health, you would recommend once in two months?
Dr. R P: No, twice a month.
AB: Twice a month. Can you overdo this? Is there a limit where you would say, okay, no, you should not be coming anymore?
JT: 40 sessions. I’d say you need 40 sessions before you think you need a break.
Dr. R P: It depends on what you’re treating. If you’ve got osteomyelitis of the bone, an infection in the bone, sometimes you go into 60 treatments, and for every different clinical condition, there are different pressures for different illnesses. It depends on what you do. If you go to your doctor, he will give you a prescription for an antibiotic of various strengths. It’s the same with the hyperbaric. The pressure determines how deep and how quickly the oxygen reaches every part of the body. So, it depends on what we’re treating that we decide that.
JT: Most of the clinical studies are done five days a week, 40 sessions to double atmospheric pressure. So, it’s quite intense. So, I would say get a certain amount of sessions close together and then think about top-ups.
Dr. R P: Yeah. For memory, anything neurological, you tend to go 1.5 to 1.7 bar. The studies show that is the most effective.
JT: Very good for the brain fog, very good for the memory, very good for multitasking and mental sharpness.
Dr. R P: I have seen an 89-year-old gentleman, his memory recovering. He had quite severe Alzheimer’s and it wasn’t perfect, but he remembered what bus stop to come off. He came with his partner and when he came near the bus stop to come to the clinic, it was the next stop, and his memory started coming back.
JT: For the Alzheimer’s person. Yeah.
Dr. R P: That was amazing. That was amazing. And he was treated at 1.6 bar.
AB: So then why does every hospital not have a chamber?
JT: Because you can’t patent oxygen.
AB: I know, but it just seems like they can charge people for going inside. It’s not the same as charging people for huge amounts of treatment, but you can charge.
Dr. R P: Diabetic leg ulcers are crippling our health service. It costs us billions of pounds every year in treating diabetic leg ulcers. If they have chambers and put the patient in the chamber, these leg ulcers would heal. Instead of that, they go to the surgeon three times a week, get [the ulcer] bandaged, and dressed by the nurse. If it doesn’t heal, it goes into gangrene, they get amputated, then they’ve got to get rehabilitated and go on. That’s lifetime care, whereas if you had hyperbaric… if you go over to Serbia and Russia, they always treat diabetic leg ulcers with hyperbaric. Same in Canada. They are very, very big. The National Health Service in Canada has an amazing study on the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen for diabetic leg ulcers. Any sore, any wound that needs healing, oxygen is the best.
JT: We know gut inflammation is a very big problem now, right? Because of the things we are eating like industrialized food, processed food, eating out. So, gut inflammation is an internal wound. So, you need more oxygen to repair it. We just have to join the dots. It’s required for the cellular processes of repairing.
AB: So basically, I think everyone needs to at least try one session.
JT: Most people try one session, then they book a package.
AB: Just the last thing. Will you explain the process? How does it work when someone comes to you?
JT: When the people come in, they fill in a form to give me a little indication about what they’re suffering from, what their conditions are, and what are the precautions I must take in terms of how slowly I must go on the pressure in the chamber. So, if they’re particularly sensitive to flying, the ears don’t pop easily. Then you go very slowly because it’s a mono chamber. You go at the pace of the client, so you’re completely in your own space. It’s sterilized and you can listen to music, you can read a book, and it’s spacious, quite spacious. And so, I just want to know how slowly I must progress. There’s Dr. Mira. She’s got seven years of GP experience, so she also is very sensitive to and keeps an eye on the intercom and how you’re feeling. And then we gradually go up in pressure. And then if anybody’s got a complex problem, Dr Pender comes in and he has a look, examines the ear, looks at the chest. Any problems, any indicators why you shouldn’t authorize maybe slightly higher pressure, and that’s the process.
The minimum session is usually an hour long and some people come in for 90 minutes. 90 minutes is a good protocol because then when you go up and down a little bit, you release even more stem cells, so you need a longer time to do these things. So that’s it. It’s very easy. Everybody who’s come here has loved it because 90% of my clients are recurring clients. They’ve done ten sessions. They see the benefit, they do another ten sessions, and they see the benefit more. And then they read about Professor Shai Efrati’s anti-aging. And then I’ve had athletes. I am a preferred supplier to the British Athletic Association. And there are some athletes that come with a broken ankle or something like that and they’ve tried to find a quick way of recovering and they’ve tried the hospital because there are some hospitals that do have hyperbaric oxygen chambers, which crosses the nearest one to London, but because it’s FDA approved drugs, for about 14-15 conditions, and these are the ones that the drugs don’t manage well. So, he got in contact with the Whipps Cross. May I come in? I need to repair my ankle quickly to take part in the competition. And they said, no, you’re not within that category, so, we can’t help you. So, he had to come into us and I set him two-hour sessions. Oh, Dr. Pender was there. He prescribed 20 days of two-hour sessions. He was repaired and he could take part in the competition. He would have taken many months [to recover]. I see people suffering with problems and they live with it. We get used to the suffering, we get used to the problems. We think that’s a natural process, but we have options now.
Dr. R P: A lot of professional football clubs, Premier League clubs, use hyperbaric for recovery of injuries. And I’ve treated most of the Premier League football club’s top stars and famous stars. Because of my patients, I will never give names, but they come in, they get treated and they recover quickly.
JT: A lot of celebrities and a lot of sportsmen, they all use this. Djokovic has got the exact same chamber… Justin Bieber. A lot of these people, there are a lot of people who are using it in their homes, even. But it’s expensive to buy it for your home.
AB: One quick question before we go off. Is it safe for people with low blood pressure?
Dr. R P: Yes, it is.
AB: Okay. fabulous. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jaynee. And thank you Dr. Pender.
JT: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you. It’s a great pleasure to share this with everybody.
AB: It’s fantastic. I’m totally blown away. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Hope you enjoyed the Wellness Curated podcast. Please subscribe and tell your friends and family about it. And here’s to you leading your best life.