How Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Helps With Long COVID Syndrome

Taking a short journey through COVID-19 is bad enough, but three in 10 people who are infected with this respiratory virus end up with long COVID syndrome. As of March 2024, about 17 million Americans reported having long COVID symptoms and, as the name suggests, these symptoms linger well past the couple of weeks that a normal virus runs its course. 

Treating long COVID has been a moving target largely because researchers have identified more than 200 different symptoms. One treatment that’s having great success in treating a wide range of long COVID symptoms is hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). 

At Clover Oxygen Hyperbarics and Wound Center, Dr. Leon Tio and our team have witnessed the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in treating long COVID. Here’s what we want you to know.

Long COVID basics

We titled this section “long COVID basics,” but there's nothing basic about this health issue. Long COVID encompasses a constellation of symptoms that linger for three months or more after infection. These symptoms can go away, flare up again, and follow many different patterns. Long COVID can also lead to long-term disability in some people.

As we mentioned, more than 200 symptoms have been identified and we won’t cover all of them here. For many, long COVID often acts like chronic fatigue syndrome with symptoms that include:

• Fatigue, including post-exertional fatigue
• Ongoing fever
• Shortness of breath
• Coughing
• Chest pain
• Heart palpitations
• Brain fog
• Joint pain

Long COVID can also exacerbate pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy delivers what the body needs

A lot of what happens in your body when you have long COVID is due to an inability to get oxygen to your tissues. This is what makes you tired — your body is running on empty when it comes to its most critical resource: oxygen. 

Without oxygen, your cells struggle; oxidative stress can occur and free radicals in your body can run amok. This can lead to a wide range of health issues.

With hyperbaric oxygen therapy, we push 100% oxygen into your body at two to three times the normal sea level pressure. Not only is your body getting the additional oxygen it needs, but we’re also ensuring that it gets deep into your tissues with the added pressure.

This oxygen boost is proving to be very helpful for long COVID patients. To give you an idea, one study recorded the short- and long-term results of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for long COVID and reported that “HBOT can improve the quality of life, quality of sleep, psychiatric and pain symptoms of patients suffering from long COVID. The clinical improvements gained by HBOT are persistent even 1 year after the last HBOT session.”

At our practice, we’re seeing these same great results as patients with long COVID finally get to the other side of the infection thanks in large part to hyperbaric oxygen therapy. 

If you’re struggling with long COVID, we encourage you to explore how this treatment can make quick work of your symptoms and improve your overall wellness, often very quickly.

To schedule your hyperbaric oxygen therapy, contact Clover Oxygen Hyperbarics and Wound Center in Aledo, Texas, today.