HBOT Conversations:
Laurie Anderson (Part 3)
Healing COVID with HBOT
Dr. Laurie is a Doctor of Pharmacy, and a graduate of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) School of Pharmacy and the Pharmacy Practice Residency Program at the University of California – San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Laurie spent many years in clinical practice, first as a neurosurgery clinical pharmacist at UCSF Medical Center and then as a general medicine and critical care clinical pharmacist at Duke Medical Center. For the past 14 years Dr. Laurie has been working in industry, and is currently a safety scientist in early phase drug development, designing safety strategies for First Time in Human clinical trials.
Through her own journey navigating chronic illness, Dr. Laurie has explored and embraced many forms of alternative and non-traditional medicine to support her body for healing. She has gravitated towards practitioners and modalities that treat the whole patient, with the mantra that tending to mind, body and spirit is the true key to lasting health. Over the years, Dr. Laurie has discovered that this often leads to a ‘less is more’ approach. She discovered HBOT when she was struggling to heal from COVID, and now tells anyone who will listen about the power of oxygen and pressure.
Watch the Podcast
We continue Dr. Laurie Anderson’s HBOT News Network interview, diving in deeper to discuss our veteran population, does HBOT have a therapeutic index, and what is the research telling us about the HBOT industry.
Her interview has been released as a three part series. Part 1 and Part 2 has already been released with both focusing on her HBOT journey with COVID & Lyme Disease.
In Part 3 of Laurie’s podcast the conversation shifts. It starts with the medical industry and the unfortunate “bad rap” that Hyperbaric Oxygen sometimes receives. Dr, Laurie refers to HBOT as a gift, so it’s truly unfortunate when the media focuses on the negative instead of the positive, influencing the public to not even try this life saving therapy. Research trials are discussed, including the problems that the hyperbaric industry has identified in the sham, placebo and/or control group when researchers try to mimic HBOT with little pressure and they discover that everyone starts to improve. Those of us in this industry understand and effortlessly work to enlighten others that any amount of pressure is good and therapeutic.
The topic of our US military and the high rate of suicide among our service man and women arises. Is there a solution to the veteran suicide epidemic our country is facing? It appears there is. di Girolamo speaks of Patriot Hyperbarics in Tulsa, and the success they have had treating veterans with Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.
“The Patriot Clinics in Tulsa treated some 500 veterans with PTSD, with donated money, donated chambers, and healed them. Most of them war-fighters, were in a bedroom, locked in the dark for years and years, like seven, ten years. And then they found Patriot Clinics and they got 40 treatments and then they got their executive function back. Some of them starting businesses. I saw videos of guys, you know, in the car on their way to the clinic on the first day and then on the 40th day, talking about their experience, it was just amazing.
There wasn’t some combined study about that. 500 souls were saved that didn’t commit suicide, they worked their way out of it.”
Dr. Laurie, who is a Doctor of Pharmacy, brings up an excellent point, and one that we’ve never discussed before on HBOT News. We know that the FDA ultimately states that oxygen is a drug, and you are required to have a prescription for it. But does Hyperbaric Oxygen have a therapeutic index like other drugs? And if so… how would a patient know they have reached the therapeutic index and how long is a patient at the therapeutic index? She explains it like this…
“If I apply this to drugs, like with a drug we would want to keep the level, generally, we try to keep the level of a drug in the blood inside the therapeutic index, right? So sometimes, depending on the half life of the drug, you can be in your therapeutic index by taking it once a day so you trickle up and down in between that therapeutic index. Some drugs have a shorter half life and you have to take it twice a day to stay in that therapeutic index.
So what keeps you in whatever is the defined therapeutic index, if that can be translated to oxygen therapy, you know, is it daily? Is it twice a day?”
di Girolamo wonders if in 20 years from now the industry will look back on this conversation and be shocked that we weren’t more focused on the therapeutic index. He stresses that the hyperbaric industry can’t even come together and decide the specific definition of hyperbaric oxygen, much less all these variables that Dr. Laurie has opened our eyes to.
Dr. Laurie ends her time here with HBOT News stressing that for her HBOT healed her during a very sick time with COVID, and it helped her with many of the Lyme Disease symptoms she struggled with for years. It worked for her, and she said it’s definitely worth a try to see if it can work for you.
Guests
Dr. Laurie Anderson, Pharm.D.
Through her own journey navigating chronic illness, Dr. Laurie has explored and embraced many forms of alternative and non-traditional medicine to support her body for healing. She has gravitated towards practitioners and modalities that treat the whole patient, with the mantra that tending to mind, body and spirit is the true key to lasting health. Over the years, Dr. Laurie has discovered that this often leads to a ‘less is more’ approach.
When not working, Dr. Laurie is an avid gardener, ballroom dancer and traveler with her husband. Remaining curious and finding joy in every day are her super powers.
Subscribe Now, It’s Free!
Recent HBOT News
Clinical Trial – Quality of Recovery After General or Spinal Anesthesia for Inguinal Hernia Repair
Different anesthetic techniques have been proposed for carrying out Inguinal hernia repair,
including local anesthesia, regional and general. There are no recent data on the application
of a validated questionnaire to assess which anesthetic technique, local infiltration under
general anesthesia or spinal anesthesia, would provide better quality of recovery in the
opinion of the patients undergoing inguinal hernia repair. The aim of the study is to perform
a randomized clinical trial comparing the quality of recovery (QoR-40) after local
infiltration under general anesthesia via laryngeal mask (LMA) or spinal anesthesia for
unilateral inguinal hernia repair. METHODS – Seventy patients aged 18 to 65 years old, who
were scheduled to undergo unilateral inguinal hernia repair at Santa Lucinda Hospital will be
enrolled in the study. The anesthesia will be performed according to the following sequence:
L Group – intravenous (I.V.) propofol and alfentanyl, followed by LMA positioning. The
anesthesia will be maintained by propofol. For local anesthesia, approximately 50 ml of 0.5%
ropivacaine will be infiltrated along the line of incision in the subcutaneous plane,
followed by peripheral nerve block technique (e.g., ilioinguinal-hypogastric nerve block) and
local wound infiltration at the fascial level. S Group – spinal puncture followed by
intrathecal 15 mg of 0.5% hyperbaric bupivacaine injection and sedation with propofol by
continuous infusion. Pain will be assessed every 15 minutes at Post-anesthesia Care Unit
(PACU) using a 0-10 numeric pain rating scale and I.V. morphine will be administered to
maintain the pain score below 4. The QoR-40 will be administered by a blind investigator 24
hours after surgery.
Clinical Trial – Fascia Iliaca Compartment Block for Proximal-end Femur Fractures
Fracture femur is a common injury which is associated with excruciating pain. Positioning for
neuraxial blocks is always challenging because even slight overriding of the fracture ends is
intensely painful .It can causing major patient distress which accompanied by well-known
physiological sequelae such as sympathetic activation causing tachycardia, hypotension, and
increased cardiac work that may compromise high-risk cardiac patients.
Fascia iliaca compartment block is highly effective in blocking lateral cutaneous nerve of
the thigh and femoral nerve. Fascia iliaca compartment block is not only easy to perform but
it is also associated with minimal risk as the local anesthetic is injected at a safe
distance from the femoral artery and femoral nerve. It is always safe to perform the fascia
iliaca compartment block prior to spinal anesthesia as the patient can respond during
administration of the local anesthetic and can prevent intra-neuronal injections
MicroRNA-148b is a potential prognostic biomarker and predictor of response to radiotherapy in non-small-cell lung cancer.
Abstract: miR-148b has been found to be aberrantly expressed in various tumor types. It has recently been reported to be involved in regulating radioresistance in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. However, its expression level and association with...