Normal Breathing
1 ATARed blood cells are about 97% saturated already. Very little extra oxygen travels in the plasma.
The science
How hyperbaric oxygen actually works
A plain-language look at the physics of pressure and oxygen. No hype, no medical promises. Just what happens, why it happens, and what the published research does and does not say.
Terms explainedEvery technical term explained.
Every technical term explained.
Become an expert in HBOT.
Every term you meet on this page and across the site, defined simply.
No jargon left unexplained.
Pressure & Physics
- ATA = Atmospheres Absolute
- Total pressure inside the chamber, from a vacuum. 1 ATA is sea level; OxyHelp runs mild, 1.3 to 1.5.
- Mild hyperbaric
- Low, comfortable pressure (around 1.3 to 1.5 ATA), for home and wellness rather than a hospital.
- Partial pressure of oxygen
- The share of total pressure that oxygen alone contributes. It rises with chamber pressure.
- Plasma
- The liquid part of your blood. Under pressure, extra oxygen dissolves straight into it.
The Chamber
Air & Oxygen
- Continuous ventilation
- Fresh air flushed through non-stop, so CO2 never builds up. OxyHelp's core difference.
- Oxygen concentrator
- Separates oxygen from room air. OxyHelp uses an AirSep concentrator.
- CO2 buildup
- Carbon dioxide gathering in a sealed chamber. Ventilation is what prevents it.
- HBOT
- Hyperbaric oxygen: breathing oxygen in a pressurised chamber. Non-medical wellness here.
Air & oxygen deliveryWhat happens to oxygen in a
What happens to oxygen in a
hyperbaric chamber under pressure?
At normal pressure, oxygen rides almost entirely on your red blood cells, which are already nearly full. Raise the pressure and oxygen also dissolves straight into your plasma, reaching places ordinary breathing can't.
Under Pressure
1.5 ATAThe red blood cells are just as full, but now oxygen dissolves into the plasma too, reaching deeper into tissue.
The pressure scaleWhat ATA means,
What ATA means,
and where wellness becomes medicine
Pressure is the whole point of a hyperbaric chamber. Here is what it means, how it is measured, and what actually changes as the number goes up.
Baseline
1.0ATA
Just normal air
Your everyday baseline, no chamber involved. Oxygen rides almost entirely on your red blood cells, which are already nearly full.
Home & Wellness Usage
1.3–1.5ATA
Home & wellness recovery
The gentle range people use for recovery, energy, sleep and relaxation. Comfortable enough for daily use at home, in clinics and in sports centres, with no medical supervision.
Only under medical supervision
2.0ATA
Where it stops being wellness
At 2.0 ATA, hyperbaric use crosses from wellness into medicine. It needs supervision, it is harder on the ears, and it demands stricter safety.
~2.8ATA
Standard hospital protocols
Most supervised medical treatments run between 2.0 and 2.8 ATA, in purpose-built clinical chambers. Nothing in this range belongs at home.
3.0ATA
Acute emergencies. The maximum.
The most intensive medical cases, in short sessions. Above this, oxygen becomes risky, so 3.0 is the practical ceiling.
10 m underwater = 1 ATA
Every 10 metres underwater adds 1 ATA, so 1.5 ATA feels like being about 5 metres down. Absolute pressure = 1 (the air around you) plus the pressure added inside.
1 ATA = 101 kPa = 14.7 psi.
The problem
The CO2 from your own breathing accumulates around your face inside the chamber
In a sealed chamber, the CO2 from your own breath has nowhere to go. It builds up, the air gets stuffy, and that stale air is often why a session in some chambers can feel like nothing at all.
The solution
OxyHelp chambers ventilate continuously
Fresh air is pushed in and stale, CO2-heavy air is pushed out, the whole time you are inside. The air never gets a chance to go stale.
What makes us different
Ventilation.Fresh air in ↓ CO2 out ↑
Put people in a sealed box and the air turns stale fast. Every breath adds carbon dioxide.
This is the part almost nobody explains, and it is exactly where OxyHelp is different.
- O2Oxygen
- CO2Carbon dioxide
CO2 builds up,
air goes stale
Sealed chamber
Fresh air keeps flushing CO2 away
Continuously ventilated
Setting things straight
Common misconceptions
Every one of these is checkable.
Apply them to us as readily as to anyone else.
Myth 01
"You'll be breathing
100% oxygen."Reality
Not by the time it reaches your lungs.
What matters is what reaches your lungs, not what leaves the tank. A mask that traps your own exhaled breath delivers oxygen mixed with your own carbon dioxide, and nobody quotes that number. Ask for the oxygen fraction at the airway, and ask where the gas you breathe out goes.
Myth 02
"A nasal cannula only
gives you 30% oxygen."Reality
That number is for hospital flow rates, not ours.
That figure comes from a hospital chart for a few litres per minute at sea level. It says nothing about a dedicated concentrator running roughly twenty litres per minute into a sealed nasal interface at 2 ATA. Same device name, entirely different physics.
Myth 03
"A silent chamber is
a well-built chamber."Reality
If it's silent, the air has stopped moving.
At stable pressure, a ventilated chamber has to make a sound, because air is moving through it. Total silence after compression stops usually means nothing is flowing, and everything you exhale stays with you.
In our chambers you hear a soft, continuous airflow for the whole session. That sound is the ventilation working.Myth 04
"Huge windows show
it's a premium build."Reality
Big windows need a reinforced shell. Ask for proof.
Every opening in a pressure vessel removes load-bearing material and concentrates stress at its edges, a square corner far more than a round one. Large windows are an engineering cost, paid for with wall thickness, reinforcement and calculation. Ask to see the calculation, not the view.
Myth 05
"It's certified as
a medical device."Reality
Very few are. Ours are non-medical, and we say so.
In the EU, that means an MDR 2017/745 certificate from a notified body whose scope covers hyperbaric chambers, with its four-digit number beside the CE mark on the chamber itself. Very few wellness chambers can produce this.
We don't claim medical status. Our chambers are commercial, non-medical, and engineered accordingly.Myth 06
"Here's the certificate.
See, it's approved."Reality
Check who issued it and what it actually covers.
Read who signed it. We have seen certificates issued by bodies with no competence to issue them, certificates naming a model the seller never built, and pressure-vessel certificates presented as proof of medical status. You may not know how to read one. An insurer, a landlord or a medical director does.
Myth 07
"The chamber holds
a pressure certificate."Reality
Was it tested after the doors and windows were cut?
Then ask whether the chamber that was tested is the chamber you are buying. A plain shell with no doors or viewports can be tested and certified, the openings cut afterwards, and the chamber sold on the original certificate. The paperwork is genuine. It just describes a different vessel.
Myth 08
"A certified chamber
is a safe chamber."Reality
A certificate covers one test, not daily use.
A certificate proves that a design met specific criteria on a specific day. It says nothing about how the chamber ventilates, whether CO2 is monitored, what the mask does to your breathing, or how the chamber behaves in its 4,000th session. Those are the parts you actually live inside.
From our InstagramHyperbaric, explained
Hyperbaric, explained
on video
Short videos from the people who build the chambers: how the physics works, and where the claims stop. Each one opens on Instagram.
Why pressure puts oxygen in your plasma
More pressure, more oxygen dissolved in your blood plasma. Physicists call it Henry's Law.
The Robin Hood effect is real
Under pressure, your body moves blood away from healthy tissue and sends it to what's injured or inflamed.
We cut the tube open and measured it
Hospital charts say a nasal cannula delivers little oxygen. Those charts assume low flow, so we measured ours.
A chamber you can train in
Movement and pressure in the same room, with the air monitored the whole time. Research on training this way is still early.
Not a universal therapy
Nobody walks out of one session a different person. The effect comes from repetition: sessions, not a session.
A 500 mg capsule is not a 500 mg dose
Only one to two percent of oral curcumin reaches the blood. Getting it from the blood into the cell is the other half.