A promising new treatment for PTSD | Global News Avenue

Idit Negrin will try everything to overcome the trauma that has plagued her since attending the Nova Music Festival on October 7. When Hamas massacres hundreds of civilianss. “We saw the terrorists and they started shooting at us,” she said. She ran for her life.

After that, “I would wake up every night, screaming, sweating, shaking every night around three o’clock. I think a day later, or two days later, I felt like I was going to collapse and cry.”

We met with her this summer, two-thirds of the way through her 60-session course of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). This is a treatment long used to combat compression disease and non-healing wounds in divers. But at the Sagor Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research in Bel Yakov, Israel, they are now also treating a very different disorder: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Negrin described her experience with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): “You feel like you’re going crazy. I’m calling people and screaming, ‘There’s another terrorist attack!’ And then you understand you can’t Take control of your brain.”

Negrin is working to regain control, along with some 650 survivors of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who suffered from Oct. 7 at the Sagol Center, now the world’s largest hyperbaric oxygen facility. Center) works with veterans to receive free therapy.

Dr. Shai Efrati runs the clinic, which treats up to 350 patients a day, and is at the forefront of this type of medicine. “What we’re doing is actually tricking the body,” Efrati said. “Lack of oxygen, the lack of oxygen, is the most powerful trigger that sets off all the cascades of repair mechanisms.”

Efrati said they are inducing repair mechanisms in the body and brain in these pressurized chambers, which feel like scuba diving at a depth of 30 feet. The patient inhales pure oxygen. Under such high-pressure conditions, the amount of oxygen absorbed by the human body can reach 16 times the normal level. Then, remove the mask every five minutes.

“The drop from very high levels to normal levels can be interpreted as a level similar to hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygen,” Everati said. “This causes the body to trigger stem cells, which we see for the first time even in humans.” The creation of new neurons, the creation of new blood vessels in the brain, it’s exciting.”

The therapy has been described as “unapproved” and “unproven.” “When we talk about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, this is how it should be,” Efrati said.

“You mean, there’s a lot of scams out there?” Dawn asked.

“It is. And not only is it bad, it can even be dangerous.”

Dr. Efrati is constantly experimenting with new ways to use this therapy. At his clinic near Tel Aviv, we see how they give athletes high-pressure drugs (“If we can shorten the recovery time, you can work out harder”) and help brain-injured patients with new neurons in the brain and Growth of blood vessels.

“It’s not like we’re going to improve his running,” Efrati said of an athlete’s performance. “We’re repairing the brain.”

They have published several studies exploring PTSD in veterans. Someone discovered it today 68% of patients showed significant improvement. Another reported PTSD remission lasts at least two yearshigher than other established treatments. “We want to evaluate everything objectively,” Efrati said.

For the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), this was conclusive enough to ask Efrati’s team to stop testing and start treatment. The doctor said that while you can always ask for more data, “you’ll see the evidence right in front of you.”

Shachar Mizrhai was one of the IDF veterans referred to participate in the initial clinical trial in 2018. He was a soldier taking part in the Israeli offensive on Gaza in 2014 and was sitting in an armored vehicle when he was ambushed. In the short term, he was thinking about survival; the pain came later. “I couldn’t sleep at night,” he said. “The moment I put on the uniform, I felt like I wanted to die. I smelled blood. I smelled war.”

He tried medication, therapy and sleeping pills. He considered suicide. “Nothing can really help restore life,” he said. “I heard it might help and maybe this is my last chance before I end my life.”

Dr. Keren Doenyas-Barak, director of the Sagol Center’s PTSD program, followed Mizrhai through 60 sessions and showed us his brain scans from June 2018 and March 2019, highlighting the tools used to effectively regulate emotions or processes. Activation information for the region. Later brain scans lit up; this had not happened before treatment.

“Many people tend to think of PTSD as a psychological phenomenon rather than a biological phenomenon,” Donias-Barak said. “So we treat PTSD very similarly to other brain disorders.”

For Mizrhai, the treatment changed everything: “It was the first time I felt anything.” I started sleeping at night and I was less scared. It made me feel alive again. …I was a dying man, and after this, I was a living man. “

“If this treatment is available in Israel and has such good results, why don’t we offer it in the United States,” said North Carolina Republican congressman and physician Greg Murphy.

That’s the question Murphy, a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, asked in the halls of Congress. One in 10 of his voters are veterans. “I love our Veterans Administration,” he said. “But if we have 22 suicides a day, we are not reaching a certain segment of our veterans. If we are doing something and there is a treatment that has shown clear results, I don’t think that treatment is being offered The solution is medical malpractice” for our veterans. “

In 2023, he introduced the Veterans National Trauma Treatment Act. “We basically just want the Veterans Administration to do a pilot study within their own confines to see if they show that hyperbaric oxygen is effective,” he said.

What did he hear from the Veterans Administration? “They just don’t want to do anything; just put their hands up,” he said. “The reason we’re hearing is, ‘Well, the results are mixed.'” Well, if you look at the findings over the past 15 years, we’ve seen studies on Parkinson’s disease, migraines, even multiple sclerosis and neurological diseases absolute effect. “

Sunday Morning requested an interview with the VA, but they declined to comment.

In Salt Lake City, Utah, we met with Dr. Lin Weaver, who practices hyperbaric medicine at Intermountain Health. They treat approximately 20 patients per day, which reflects the large number of people treated every day in Israel (350 per day). He said they rarely use hyperbaric chambers to treat PTSD patients because it’s expensive, but he’s seen positive results: “I’ve treated some patients. Everybody gets better surprisingly well,” Weaver said.

But insurance companies say there’s not enough evidence that it’s effective for post-traumatic stress disorder. In the United States, out-of-pocket costs soar to more than $50,000.

“What is necessary is a drug trial,” Weaver said. “But these trials take years to complete. It all depends on ‘Is there a plan? Is there funding?'”

Dorn asked, “But if doctors like you feel so strongly that this works, why aren’t people like you motivated enough to say ‘prove it’?”

“Well, believe me, we did our best,” Weaver replied. “I have submitted proposals to off-campus funding agencies. So far, they have not accepted it.”

Dorn asked Dr. Everardi: “You are on the cutting edge of medicine. Is this dangerous?”

“As a scientist, I would always tell you I need more research, I need more data,” he responded. “But as a doctor, when I sit in front of you and look you in the eye, you have a problem right now. That’s our job as doctors.”

Edith Negrin said the treatment gave her hope that she could escape the nightmare of the Nova Music Festival. She hopes that with treatment, she can move on with her life.

But while undergoing treatment, she wore a reminder – a Nova necklace. “I wouldn’t let her off my neck,” she said.

Her progress inspires Dr. Efrati to innovate and think about the future so that his patients can process the past.

“Some people will listen and say it sounds too good to be true,” Dorn said.

“Yeah, I know,” Negrin said. “But it’s true.”

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Story by Sari Aviv. Editor: Ed Givenish.

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