People who suffer from Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) often have difficulty completing everyday tasks. From walking a flight of stairs to writing with a pen, mundane tasks most of us take for granted are challenging and, maybe more importantly, painful for RSD patients. What is RSD? RSD is a disorder that causes chronic pain. Symptoms of the disorder include sensitivity to touch, swelling, increased sweating, changes in skin color, abnormal body temperatures, decrease in muscle tissue, chronic fatigue, anxiety, and depression. As you can imagine, people who suffer from the disorder lead uncomfortable lives (to put in mildly).
Fortunately, treatment for Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy are available. One of the more popular and successful treatments is known as hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Hyperbaric oxygen treatments are based on imbuing the body with concentrated oxygen in order to facilitate the body’s natural healing processes. The therapy involves placing a patient in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, a pressure-sealed chamber that increases the air pressure two to three times higher than normal atmospheric pressure. By doing so, the patient is able to receive more oxygen (through breathing and general absorption through the skin) than he or she would under normal air pressure.
Oxygen is incredibly beneficial for the body as it is trying to heal. It improves healing of damaged tissues, boosts oxygen levels in the blood, and generally improves the patient’s chronic pain. Though hyperbaric oxygen chamber therapy is wonderful for treatment for Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, it can be used to treat other diseases such as Lyme disease, radiation necrosis, AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, and decompression sickness. Hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment is approved by the FDA and is offered by many hospitals and clinics across the country. The success rate of this treatment is phenomenal.
For more information about treatments for RSD and other diseases, feel free to leave a comment or question at the bottom.