BREATH FOR THE BRAIN

Hyperbaric oxygen is being used to treat a host of brain conditions, from stroke to cognitive impairment. Celeste McGovern investigates

- 

Keren Trebelsi, a 46-year-old mother of two and CEO of an international cosmetics company, was on a flight from South Africa to Israel two years ago when she began to feel unwell.

By the time the plane landed, she was “really not well.” Her husband rushed her straight to the hospital, where she was admitted for an ischemic stroke in the right side of her brain. 

The left side of her body was paralyzed, and after she underwent a three-hour surgery, the prognosis was not good, she recalls. “They weren’t optimistic. They thought it didn’t look good at all.”

In the months following her stroke, the paralysis in her arm and leg became less concerning than the changes she noticed in her mental function. “It was almost like my mind was playing ping-pong. I was feeling so stupid all the time,” she says. “Filling a form on the internet was such a struggle.”

Keren wondered how she could ever go back to work and function. “I was like, oh my gosh, how will I ever be able to cope in life? It was very, very scary.”

Fortunately, she happens to know Shai Efrati, a professor at the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University (TAU). Efrati is a leading researcher in the field of raising oxygen concentration in patients with brain damage. He’s also a founding director of the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, which treats up to 200 patients with hyperbaric oxygen each day. He got Keren into hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

The healing power of oxygen