Intermittent hypoxia: mechanisms of action and some applications to bronchial asthma treatment.
Being essentially cut off from the global scientific community, Ukrainian and Russian scientists have developed a new concept for the beneficial use of adaptation to artificial intermittent hypoxia in treating of many diseases. The basic mechanisms underlying intermittent hypoxic training were elaborated mainly in three areas: regulation of respiration, free radical production and mitochondrial respiration. Twenty-year experience of the application of intermittent hypoxic therapy for the treatment of chronic obstructive bronchitis and bronchial asthma allows affirming that the adaptation to this kind of hypoxia causes a significant improvement of the clinical picture or even a complete recovery. The absence of negative side effects, typically observed during drug therapy, and the stimulation of organism's general, nonspecific resistance, makes the hypoxic therapy a treatment with a future. A special note is devoted to the use of intermittent hypoxic training in industrial health care for the purpose of prophylaxis and treatment of professional diseases.
Serebrovskaya
T V
TV
Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology, Kiev, Ukraine.
Swanson
R J
RJ
Kolesnikova
E E
EE
D000818:Animals; D001249:Asthma / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D006931:Hyperbaric Oxygenation / Q000379:methods; D000860:Hypoxia / Q000503:physiopathology; D012138:Respiratory Therapy / Q000379:methods*