Dr. Derek Guillory of Root Causes Medicine in San Antonio returns to our Believe Big podcast today to talk about Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT).
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Dr. Derek Guillory of Root Causes Medicine in San Antonio returns to our Believe Big podcast today to talk about Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT).
Find out:
Connect with Dr. Guillory at Root Causes Medicine:
Root Causes Medicine
Suggested Resource Links:
Your donations power our podcast's mission to support cancer patients with hope, insights, and resources. Every contribution fuels our ability to uplift and empower. Join us in making a lasting impact. Donate now! 🌟
Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page and our friend Dr. Derek Guillory is back on the show with us to discuss the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. You may not have heard much about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, you may even think it's a newly discovered medicine. But it's not. Can you believe it's been used since the late 1600s? Dr. Guillory is the founder and medical director of Root Causes Medical Clinic in San Antonio, Texas. He became one of the first certified functional medicine practitioners in Texas in 2015, and has also been board certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine since 2005. Welcome, Dr. Guillory to the show.
Dr. Guillory:Thanks for having me. Good to see you again.
Ivelisse Page:Yes. So our listeners are always interested in discovering what our guest favorite health tip is. And the last time you were here, you shared a great one. You shared that we have incredible power over our health and that disease has two causes, deficiency and toxicity. Do you have another one you can share with us?
Dr. Guillory:Wow. It's a great question. I think if I had to give you a health tip right this second, I would say that water is one of the most important nutrients that we have, and I've been doing a lot of research on water for quite some time actually. But focusing on clean, pure water in your home, all the water that you consume and all the water that is put on your body and in all of the products and your cosmetic line and everything, it needs to be pure water. And then the other thing is hydrogen water. It's been an area of interest for mine for a long time, and so I'm coming up with some really good, the best, equipment. I'm trying to find the best equipment for hydrogen water, but be on the lookout for hydrogen water because it has some really broad reaching, exciting health benefits across many different conditions and for longevity and regenerative medicine. But for everyone else, just make sure the water you're drinking is pure and plenty of it.
Ivelisse Page:That's a great tip. And what do they say? You're supposed to drink half of your body weight a day?
Dr. Guillory:I go back to the the old thing, make sure that you drink when you're thirsty, don't wait. And it's better to drink right before you're thirsty. So when you're thirsty it probably means you're a little bit behind. 64 ounces a day is probably plenty depending upon your activity level.
Ivelisse Page:And one last question on water, super interesting. We're gonna definitely look out for the hydrogen water. You'll have to let us know once you find the right machine. But would you say clean, pure water you're saying is purified or do you recommend spring water?
Dr. Guillory:It's a great question. I think that you want to drink the best purest water that you can drink for your budget and your location. So if you look up on the Environmental Working Group website, you'll find the chemicals in your zip code, and it's remarkable. In my zip code here, there's 25 chemicals. Of course, they're listed as below the EPA limit of safety. But the point is they're present in the water. And many of these chemicals, I would say there is no safe level.
Ivelisse Page:Yep.
Dr. Guillory:And so you just wanna have as clean water as you can. So at my farmhouse, we have rainwater collection with a highly purified, I don't use reverse osmosis cuz I feel like that wastes a lot of water. But I have another filtration system that really cleans the water so that it's as clean as I can get. And that's gonna be different for every person.
Ivelisse Page:That's a great tip. And we'll add that environmental working group link for detecting your water in the show notes. Even here at the office, I don't know what purification system they use, but we have a Berkey water filter. So if you're not wanting to invest into something very expensive, like for your home and you wanna do something that's good for your office, then you know that's a great solution. And it's not too expensive, but you're right.
Dr. Guillory:I'm sorry to interrupt you. At minimum, I would have a bone char charcoal filter that removes fluoride from municipal water supplies. And then a Berkey to drink, that would be a minimum
Ivelisse Page:Okay.
Dr. Guillory:filtering system.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how it even affects your skin. So we have a whole home water filter that we have when we built our house. We added it after the fact. You can buy it on Amazon, and we had a plumber that installed it. Because you think, okay, I just have to drink purified water, but, the water that's coming into your shower and it's steaming and it's getting into your skin. I even bought a portable one for my daughter at college cuz the water where she was at her school was affecting her skin as well. So there's so many options that are out there, thankfully now, but that's a hidden toxin that a lot of people don't realize. Even the water that you're showering in. So that's really great information. Maybe we have you back on to just talk about water next time. There's so much that can be shared.
Dr. Guillory:It's a miracle of creation and of life.
Ivelisse Page:Definitely. So hyperbaric chamber what is a hyperbaric chamber for people who don't know what it is?
Dr. Guillory:So, hyperbaric chamber is a closed chamber where you push air in to raise the pressure surrounding your body, which, forces oxygen into your tissues at a level that's much higher than breathing regular oxygen. It's really, the only way to achieve tissue concentrations of oxygen at that level. And so there's a common misconception even among physicians when I get docs that call me and want their patients to get in the chamber. The common misconception is that the oxygen is working topically. So it's commonly used for wound care healing, but the oxygen is not working topically. The chamber is actually filled with air, but the oxygen molecules are pushed closer together, and when we breathe that it, it pushes oxygen through our lungs, into our blood, and deep into the tissues at levels that are much, much higher than even breathing a hundred percent oxygen by face mask. Athletes on the football field, in the NFL, sometimes when they're winded, they're breathing that oxygen mask. hyperbaric oxygen is much, much higher than even breathing a hundred percent oxygen. So that's basics of the chamber. You get in a chamber, it's a closed chamber, and we pump air in there, and you breathe oxygen through a mask.
Ivelisse Page:that's incredible. So when Jimmy and I visited your center a few months back, you had ones that you lay inside of. I have never gotten into one because I'm very claustrophobic, but I know they have so many different kinds. Can you share with those listening what types there are, and I believe you were getting one that you can sit in. Maybe that one I won't feel so claustrophobic in.
Dr. Guillory:Yeah. Yeah. So we have a couple chambers now. The basic distinction is a soft chamber and a hard chamber. So there are soft chambers that are relatively affordable, that you can purchase for home use. Obviously they don't tolerate the higher pressures. And then the hard chambers can go up to very high pressures for particular indications that need high pressure.
Ivelisse Page:Okay.
Dr. Guillory:And then, there's settings on the chamber to determine how much oxygen you're breathing and then what pressure you want to achieve a tissue oxygenation level. Basically some real important things, again, the framework, right?
Ivelisse Page:Yes.
Dr. Guillory:There are two priorities for all disease. It doesn't matter which disease, but in cancer, this is true. Same two priorities, symptoms and causes. Important thing in cancer is that tumors are symptoms. Okay, so you have to treat the tumor, which is a symptom, and then you have to treat the cause. And oxygenation or oxidative therapies, and particularly hyperbaric oxygen, actually treats both. So it's a symptom treatment because it has direct effect on tumor cells and it's a cause treatment because hypoxia has actually been known for a really long time to cause cells to become cancerous and also to cause cancer cells to become more aggressive and to metastasize. So hyperbaric oxygen is a really exciting treatment that treats both symptoms, which are tumors and causes of tumors.
Ivelisse Page:I also read that there's published research in neuroregeneration that hyperbaric oxygen therapy may also be useful in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and, so many different kinds of injuries and indications. So what other things besides cancer, do you typically use at your practice, the oxygen therapy?
Dr. Guillory:It is actually approved for use by the FDA for a number of conditions, and then it is commonly used for many conditions. And the reason for that is we have to remember oxygen is a nutrient, so it's essential for normal or optimal cellular function. So that's the nutrient function of oxygen. But it's also a signaling molecule, and so it does some really powerful things as far as messaging between the little parts of the cell and between cells and between tissues and organs in our whole complicated body system, right? So I use hyperbaric oxygen for neurodegenerative disease like dementia and others. Actually there are some studies showing benefit for peripheral neuropathies, for wound care, for sports injuries, for traumatic brain injury, for stroke, and then obviously for cancer. There's quite a bit of research that's published on hyperbaric oxygen. The most important bit of research, I would say, right off the bat is that there is no convincing evidence that shows that cancer promotes tumor progression. So there are some conflicting studies and there's a big misconception in the cancer community that you don't want to use hyperbaric oxygen because it might make your tumors worse. There are a couple of good review articles showing that there's no convincing evidence that would happen. There are some conflicting studies. There are some invitro studies, some cell line studies, some animal studies that there's conflicting evidence, but there's no convincing evidence. And the really important thing with, of course, cancer treatment, but all patient conditions is when you treat a person, not a condition, you're way ahead because synergy is what we're after. So when we are treating a person with cancer, with hyperbaric oxygen, we're not using it as a standalone therapy. Which is what almost all trials are looking for. They're looking to see, does this treatment affect this disease? And they remove all other variables, but real importantly, in whole person and root causes medicine and integrative oncology, we're treating a person and we're using more than one modality and carefully thinking about that person, which is totally different from just using oxygen to see if it helps with cancer.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah, that is excellent. I love that you said that you're treating the person not the condition and that it's not a standalone treatment. And I was always told, and isn't this true that cancer can't thrive in a highly oxygenated environment? Is that true?
Dr. Guillory:It's a little bit of a misrepresentation of the truth. It's close to the whole truth. Hypoxia, areas of low oxygen seem to promote cancer. And the cancer itself actually seems to create areas of low oxygen. One of the reasons it does that we think, because cancer is smart, is that it promotes angiogenesis. When you have low oxygen tension, blood vessels want to be created. So all these little signaling molecules get created to help the tumor to spread or grow, right? Invade, adjacent tissues. And it seems as though hypoxia or low oxygen tension is an area where cancer thrives. but that the reverse is not entirely true because cancer can live in an area where there is oxygen, right? A subtle difference, but we use that to our advantage, and particularly in a thoughtful or synergistic way for just a few things. Like I always will combine oxidative therapies with immune supportive therapies and metabolic therapy, because it's very simple to do and you're adding pressure to the tumor cell. So that's three things, right? Immune, oxidative and metabolic. But in this situation, one plus one is not three. It might be 50 because of the synergistic effect of those three treatments at the same time. And so real important for people that are curious about hyperbaric oxygen, two reasons not to go get a chamber and just get in it and not just go buy a bunch of sessions in somebody's hyperbaric oxygen. Because number one, it's costly. Number two, you need to go see somebody that knows what they're doing. And number three, maximize that time in the chamber because if you can do something really simple and get additional benefit from that time in the chamber, it's a huge win.
Ivelisse Page:So how would they get additional benefit in the chamber?
Dr. Guillory:By combining a metabolic therapy and an immune therapy with hyperbaric oxygen.
Ivelisse Page:So give me an example of a metabolic and then an immune therapy for those who aren't familiar with those two.
Dr. Guillory:Immune therapy is like mistletoe.
Ivelisse Page:Yes.
Dr. Guillory:Anything that's immune supportive could be considered immune therapy there. There are many things that we do. Mistletoe is the most common one. And a metabolic therapy would be, it's actually required in my patients, they need to be in a state of therapeutic ketosis to get into the hyperbaric chamber because you're adding this additional pressure to the tumor cell. Tumor cells have a hard time dealing with ketones and they love sugar. And so you make the ketones high and the sugar low, and then I'll add high dose melatonin, which is way more than just an antioxidant in a sleep agent. It's also a metabolically active agent. So that puts a little bit of pressure on the glycolysis process, which is what the tumor cell likes to use for energy. So you add this metabolic pressure with the oxygen pressure and then a little bit of immune support with mistletoe or mushroom extract, like turkey tail, something like that, that you're cycling in. I'll use peptides and other things, but those synergies really duplicate the benefit of the hyperbaric oxygen.
Ivelisse Page:Yes, it's like a one two punch I love that.
Dr. Guillory:Yeah, it's more more like a, like one eight punch or one eleven punch
Ivelisse Page:There you go. Let's knock it out. Let's knock cancer out. You mentioned it and so I want to make sure people who are not in the San Antonio area where you are what should someone who has cancer, what should they look for in a practitioner or in a facility that's doing HBOT or hyperbaric oxygen therapy? What are some guidelines that you would say they should look for?
Dr. Guillory:I think the main one is just that they have someone thinking about their individual unique scenarios. Our network that we're building with some providers, naturopathic doctors or medical doctors that have just spent some time thinking about that scenario. And then the main one is you do want to have somebody available, like a technician. We use a certified technician that's trained in hyperbaric oxygen, so that would be a bonus. Those two things, the main one is that somebody has thought about their condition. And is hopefully thinking about synergies that might work. And this is in the research. There are some papers that show hyperbaric oxygen has no benefit, for instance, in this particular colorectal cancer study. But when you add hyperbaric oxygen to thoughtful chemotherapy or radiotherapy, radiation therapy, you get an obvious, statistically significant benefit.
Ivelisse Page:Yes.
Dr. Guillory:So that is what we call adjuvant therapy. When you put two therapies together and they're both better than the individual ones added to the other one. That's the main thing is just that somebody's brain that cares about you as a patient is thinking about your scenario.
Ivelisse Page:Yes. that's really good advice. I read that inside the pressurized chamber, your lungs are able to gather up to three times more pure oxygen than it normally would. What is the typical treatment process? So you mentioned that you require your patients to go into ketosis then what happens?
Dr. Guillory:Actually it's higher than that in certain cases. Very high levels of tissue oxygenation are possible depending upon the pressure. There really is one thing that's super important for people getting in the chamber, and that is you have to be able to clear your ears. You don't want to go in there when you have a sinus infection or an ear infection or a lot of mucus and drainage. That is very painful and you get in the chamber, you sit and you clear your ears early and often while the pressure is going up in the chamber. And other than that, it's a very peaceful, good time to focus on yourself and meditate or pray. and you just sit there for an hour or 90 minutes.
Ivelisse Page:Does the patient feel anything during the treatment? do you feel like a breeze or is it just you're just laying there breathing air?
Dr. Guillory:We have all of our patients breathe with an oxygen mask. And, you just breathe. You feel the pressure, like if you're diving to the bottom of a swimming pool.
Ivelisse Page:Yes.
Dr. Guillory:You feel that pressure in your ears, and so you have to pop that to release it. And so we just make sure we take the pressure up very slow ly and then it gets a little warm when you're diving, when you're raising the pressure, and it gets cold when you're coming out of the chamber because the air molecules are moving closer together, that's heat and moving farther apart, that's cold. Other than that, you don't really feel anything.
Ivelisse Page:Okay, so I know that the number of treatments will vary based on the stage of cancer that a person is in or even a condition, but how many treatments on average have you found to be the most beneficial for cancer patients?
Dr. Guillory:That's a great question because it really is a process. And it depends on the person. So in some people we're pressing, and then we take a break and we press, press and take a break. And in other people it's a stability. We just are going over time. So I find it across the board In most conditions, you get a lot of benefit from between 20 and 40 sessions in the chamber. But cancer is its own thing. And so generally speaking, we work in six week cycles and we try to put some pressure, put some pressure and then take a break and see where we are and reassess. Many times people are doing it quite a bit because, it's a different way of thinking, right? What we're doing. It's living with cancer, it's managing your symptoms. Of course, we're always aiming for remission or the resolution and that happens. But every person is so unique, it's hard to say.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah, but is it expensive? I know you said it, it can be costly. So what's a typical session or what do most facilities charge on average?
Dr. Guillory:There's quite a bit of variability based on geographic area, but on average it's about$200 for an hour
Ivelisse Page:Okay.
Dr. Guillory:to be in the chamber.
Ivelisse Page:Okay.
Dr. Guillory:Some places are a little bit more like hospitals for instance in the big hospital chambers, it's$3,000 per hour.
Ivelisse Page:Wow. Oh my goodness.
Dr. Guillory:Yeah, that's what insurance companies are being charged, because it requires so much regulatory effort and staffing and everything. For the lifestyle wellness centers and things like that, there are places that might sell a hundred dollars for the soft chamber. Which is a very low pressure We're$200 per hour, which is about average. There are some places that$250, maybe$300, those are generally in big cities and high dollar areas.
Ivelisse Page:Okay. And is it covered by insurance? So you were saying that hospitals, when they're, it's done in a hospital maybe, but how about at your center or others? Would insurance cover it?
Dr. Guillory:No, it's only covered for the FDA approved indications, which there are not very many.
Ivelisse Page:And cancer's not one of those?
Dr. Guillory:Cancer's not one of them, no.
Ivelisse Page:Okay. So are there any risks or side effects to this therapy?
Dr. Guillory:As with every medical treatment, there's always a benefit and a risk. So the risk with hyperbaric oxygen therapy is mainly the cost and the time and discomfort with your ears and sinuses. Other than that, it's an extremely safe, very low risk. There are a few things that we have to watch out for certain people. People with underlying lung disease, with big cysts in their lungs and things like that. But the main one is you have to be able to clear your ears and, heart disease, lung disease, things like that, they can cause trouble. But, in most patients, very safe.
Ivelisse Page:Okay. Super interesting. I know our time is already coming up to a end and so I wanted to ask you, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you think would be beneficial for people to know about this therapy?
Dr. Guillory:I think, the main thing I always love to educate people with is, I want them to have hope, and to feel how much power they have over their own health. And so you're not alone in this. There's so many resources like, Ivelisse, what you're doing with education and with charitable grant funding. There's so many people out there doing this sort of thing, but I want people to feel that power. And then for just a minute, if they can recognize that synergy. So the most important thing is that people have this incredible power, and when you put a thoughtful plan together, you can have great success. I talk about this a lot, with every condition, we're all stuck in a trap. And the trap is the acute care medical model, which is asking the question, what is the name of my condition and what's the cure for my condition? And it's a trap. It's every minute of every hour of every day working out the causes of disease. Does that make sense what I'm saying?
Ivelisse Page:Yes, definitely.
Dr. Guillory:We have such power when we have peace and joy and contentment and forgiveness, right? When we eat nutritious food, when we fast, when we deal with environmental and emotional toxicity. This is the solution to chronic disease. It is not what is the next pill and the next magical treatment? I mean, we see a lot of patients with end stage disease, and we have to put together complicated healing plans that are thoughtful and synergistic using all these different tools. But even in those people, when we get them over the hump, it's hour to hour, working out the causes of disease.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah, and many of them aren't what we assumed, we, again, we always focus on the physical side of healing. But there's so much on the emotional and the mental side that we have to address that sometimes we kind of stuff down in there. So I'm glad that you spoke about that with forgiveness which brings to peace. So thank you so much. You are absolutely right. It's the person, not the condition. I think that's something that we'll remember, when we're talking about all these different therapies that can aid a patient in their wellness journey. And so thank you again for joining us and taking time out of your busy schedule to share with us about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. So thank you.
Dr. Guillory:It's my pleasure. Thank you, Ivelisse.