hyperbaric oxygen therapy Archives - Amazing Health Advances

A Farm Where Animals and People Heal From Trauma Together

AHA Publisher — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 07:00:27 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – The three-legged fox, the chameleon that can’t stick out its tongue, and about 200 other creatures on the modern-day Noah’s ark of psychotherapist Yoni Yehuda are rehabilitating from disability, trauma or injury – as is Yehuda himself. Puffing on medical cannabis to ease chronic pain resulting from a 1987 army parachuting accident and a 1996 terror attack, Yehuda explains that he and each of the rescued animals at his Havayot Center outside Jerusalem is an equal partner with patients in his unique “Therapeutic Triangles” model of animal-assisted psychotherapy. “The basis of the work here is saving animals and taking care of them. We are responsible for their welfare as long as they are in cages in our possession, which is not where they are supposed to be.” As he speaks, he’s hand-feeding a bald baby parakeet while a mare named Venus gives a contented snort in her corral outside. Aside from those born here, all animals at the one-acre Havayot Center arrived after some trauma rendered them unable to survive in the wild, temporarily or forever. Some were former patients of the Israeli Wildlife Hospital; others were saved and brought to Yehuda by individuals or by the National Parks Authority. The Triangle Animal-assisted psychotherapy isn’t new. In 1961, American clinical therapist Boris Levinson wrote a paper titled “The dog as a ‘co-therapist’” and coined the term “pet therapy” in 1964. Animals are known to induce calm, self-awareness, compassion and emotional adjustment. However, in typical animal-assisted therapy, usually with dogs or horses, the animals are adjuncts to the therapeutic process. At Havayot, they are fully part of the process as the client and therapist jointly care for the animal’s needs. “We are together on the same level and there is a triangular connection with the animal and with the therapist,” explains Yehuda. “Everything comes from a lot of respect for the animals and letting them lead the process. As a therapist, I have to put my ego aside and then the client can project things on the animals and start to speak about his own world and reach for solutions.” The therapist must have the knowledge and observational expertise to decide which animal will have best therapeutic value for each client. Yehuda chooses from a large variety: insects, fish, reptiles, birds, rodents, an assortment of wild and barnyard animals, dogs and a cat. He gives each one a name and comfortable conditions for its needs. University of Denver Prof. Philip Tedeschi, an expert in animal-assisted therapy and founder of the Institute for Human-Animal Connection, has visited the Havayot Center several times. “Philip said this may be the only place in the world with such a large range of animals for therapy. It was certainly the first of its kind,” says Yehuda. Goldfish Are Therapists, Too When I ask how fish can be therapeutic partners, Yehuda points to Yossi, a handsome goldfish swimming in an aquarium. “Put your finger on the glass and tap it. Now move your finger to the other side and tap it. He will come over to you because Yossi loves to be in touch with people,” Yehuda instructs me. Sure enough, Yossi follows my finger. “Now, think about a very shy child. He may have selective mutism. You want to give him the feeling of connection with an animal, but with Yossi he doesn’t have to be in physical touch with it and he doesn’t have to speak to it,” says Yehuda. “If he wants to, he can try to read Yossi’s body language and become his spokesman. If a child doesn’t want to speak to me but starts speaking to the animal, then he can speak to me. The animal makes the change.” An empty Jack Daniels bottle was placed in Yossi’s aquarium by a client struggling with alcoholism ever since his birth to an alcoholic mother. “The water in the aquarium symbolizes life, the womb. The fish represents our ability to return to the womb and be reborn,” says Yehuda. “Leaving the bottle in the aquarium allowed this man to start over. He was able to stop drinking. And neither I nor the fish had to say anything.” Yehuda shows me a maze constructed by a child grappling with his parents’ divorce. The mouse begins from one house and learns to follow a long route leading to two houses — a mother’s house and a father’s house. Insects such as butterflies, walking sticks and gigantic Madagascar hissing cockroaches can be effective in treating various phobias and difficulties. Snakes help clients with sexual identity issues because of the way they shed their skin and develop a new one as they grow throughout their lifetime. It’s Personal When Yehuda was 13, his beloved cousin Noam was killed in action in Lebanon. The two boys had enjoyed caring for Noam’s pets including a sheep. They used to talk about how animals helped them understand their own feelings. At the time of this tragedy, the Yehuda family was living in England. Sensitive to their son’s grief and his connection to animals, Yoni’s parents signed him up for a class for gifted children at the London Zoo under Sir David Attenborough. At 19, after a military parachuting accident rendered him unable to walk for some time, Yehuda was one of the first wounded soldiers treated by equine therapy pioneer Anita Shkedi, who later founded the Israel National Therapeutic Riding Association. Thus, when he was shot in a terror attack nine years later, “I knew that I had to have animals around me because only with animals could I understand what was happening inside me.” Yehuda, now 54, has a master’s degree in special education and a PhD in psychology. A man of faith, he speculates that God was the first animal-assisted psychotherapist. “To save humanity, God puts Noah in the ark with all these animals. He could have just put him to sleep and woken him up after the flood. But God put people with animals to save their own souls,” he says. Clients need not share his religious beliefs to benefit from his therapeutic model, he emphasizes. The nonprofit Havayot Center, built with Yehuda’s own hands and funds on the grounds of his home in Elazar in 1998, is supervised by the regional veterinary authorities and other governmental agencies and ministries. The center accepts private clients and is an authorized provider for victims of terror attacks and war. Yehuda opened a School of Animal Interventional Therapy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and traveled extensively lecturing about his work and teaching his protocols. In 2009, the Israel Postal Service issued a series of stamps recognizing the influence of Yehuda’s Therapeutic Triangles model in the field of animal-assisted therapy in Israel and around the world. Saying Hello to Each Animal But Yehuda’s ongoing physical and emotional rehab forced him to take a step back. He grapples daily with PTSD, fibromyalgia, CRPS (complex regional pain syndrome) and other ailments including osteoporosis from intensive steroid therapy. He has daily physical and hydrotherapy and periodically receives hyperbaric oxygen therapy for PTSD. Currently, he’s donating his services to members of an Israeli organization that helps people dealing with PTSD; the Jerusalem-area group encompasses more than 70 families. “My innovation was that I work with the families as well, because they are neglected,” says Yehuda. “No one ever asked my wife, Liat, if she needed help. When I was in a wheelchair, the need for help was obvious. But when you have PTSD, it’s hard for people to understand the hell that’s happening in your head and how it affects your family.” The Bernie Madoff financial scam and the Covid epidemic have left the Havayot Center struggling. Yehuda had to let go many staff members and rehome some horses. But despite his limited energy, time and money, he is carrying on – as much for himself as for his clients. “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have the feeling of responsibility to wake up every morning and spend three hours saying hello to each animal,” he says. For more information, click here To read the original article click here.

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Could Oxygen Therapy Reverse Alzheimer’s Disease?

AHA Publisher — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 07:00:19 +0000

Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman via Jerusalem Post – For the first time, a non-pharmaceutical clinical trial has proven effective in reversing the main activators of Alzheimer’s disease, according to Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Shai Efrati, whose study on the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) to improve brain function was published Thursday in the peer-reviewed medical journal Aging. The study, which combined use of HBOT in the treatment of animals genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s and a group of individuals over the age of 65 who were already experiencing memory decline – the stage before Alzheimer’s – yielded several positive results. These included improvement in vascular function, of blood flow to the brain, memory capacity, attention and information processing speed, as well as a drop in brain amyloid load. Amyloids are non-soluble proteins. Amyloid beta deposits in the brain’s blood vessel walls are the most common vascular pathology in Alzheimer’s. “The therapy triggers our body to do the repairs that are needed to reverse the process that culminates in Alzheimer’s disease,” Efrati told The Jerusalem Post. A press release by Tel Aviv University explained, “Hyperbaric medicine is a form of therapy that requires patients to be kept in special chambers in which the atmospheric pressure is much higher than that normally experienced at sea level. In addition, they breathe air composed of 100% oxygen.” The treatment is already used for other indications and is known to be relatively safe when managed by a medical professional. A previous study by Efrati and a team from Shamir Medical Center in November found that when healthy adults over the age of 64 were placed in a pressurized chamber and given pure oxygen for 90 minutes a day, five days a week for three months, not only was the aging process delayed – it was actually reversed. This study was carried out in two stages. First, mice were exposed to HBOT and then investigated using two-photon live animal imaging. Through examination of the mice’s brain tissues, “it was proven conclusively… that a certain therapeutic protocol brings about an improvement in vascular function and the creation of new blood vessels,” the release said. “It also prevents the deposit of new amyloid plaques on the brain cells and even leads to the removal of existing amyloid plaque deposits.” The positive results on the mouse models were discovered in correlation to the findings of the treatment on people over 65 with cognitive decline. The therapy included a series of 60 sessions of HBOT in pressure chambers over a period of 90 days. Efrati described the process as having participants sit in a chamber that looks like an airplane with an oxygen mask. In the chamber, the individuals were administered HBOT utilizing 100% oxygen in an environmental pressure higher than one absolute atmosphere to enhance the amount of oxygen dissolved in the body’s tissues. AT A CERTAIN point, the participants were asked to remove their masks, bringing their oxygen back to normal levels. However, during this period, researchers saw that fluctuations in the free oxygen concentration were interpreted at the cellular level as a lack of oxygen – rather than interpreting the absolute level of oxygen. In other words, repeated intermittent hyperoxic (increased oxygen level) exposures induced many of the mediators and cellular mechanisms that are usually induced during hypoxia (decreased oxygen levels) – something Efrati explained is called the hyperoxic-hypoxic paradox. The effects of the therapy on the brain were evaluated using a high-resolution perfusion MRI. “After a series of hyperbaric treatments, elderly patients who were already suffering from memory loss showed an improvement of blood flow to the brain, as well as a real improvement in cognitive performance,” said Prof. Uri Ashery, also from Tel Aviv University, who helped with the study. “Consequently, we succeeded in demonstrating the latent potential of hyperbaric medicine for treatment of neurologic conditions that originate from hypoxia – that is to say, a deficiency of oxygen reaching the cells”. Another member of the Tel Aviv research team, Dr. Ronit Shapira, said, “The combination of an animal model from which we could learn the pathology of the disease, together with existing and available therapy, raises the hope that we will now be able to fight one of the greatest challenges to the Western world. According to our findings, hyperbaric therapy given at a young age is likely to prevent this severe disease entirely.” Efrati explained that until now it was thought that amyloid deposits were the primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease, but now it is understood that amyloids are just a “biomarker of the disease,” and the primary cause is related to vascular damage. “By treating the root problem that causes cognitive deterioration with age, we are in fact mapping out the way to prevention,” Efrati said. “It is likely that hyperbaric medicine can potentially provide the opportunity for living with good brain function without relating to chronological age. The idea is to commence therapy before the onset of clinical symptoms of dementia and before deterioration and loss of extensive brain tissue. This is the stage at which blood vessels become occluded and the blood flow and the oxygen supply to the brain are diminished – a phenomenon that can already take place at a relatively early age.” How early? “This is still an open issue,” Efrati said, adding that the study is part of a long-term and comprehensive research program and that he hopes more answers will come soon. To read the original article click here.

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