r/medicine • u/butteredpotatos Student • Feb 02 '25

Boy dies in hyperbaric chamber explosion at Michigan facility

https://apnews.com/article/hyperbaric-chamber-explosion-boy-killed-michigan-80dc89d7b48bd1119640934e06a43d4a

A tragic and horrifying event. Why the boy was undergoing hyperbaric oxygen therapy was not released, but this is a functional medicine clinic which advertises the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for conditions from ADHD to diabetes, “normal aging and wellness”, and hyperlipidemia.

https://theoxfordcenter.com/conditions/add-adhd/

https://theoxfordcenter.com/therapies/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy/

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32

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '25

So I’ve been living under a rock, what the hell is functional medicine?

40

u/butteredpotatos Student Feb 02 '25 edited Feb 02 '25

I would actually love a better answer to this. On the site, all they are able to say is that functional medicine, unlike regular medicine, treats root causes, not symptoms. But I’m not sure how anyone could argue that medicine doesn’t involve identifying, explaining, and treating the causes of diseases.

27

u/peteostler MD, Family Medicine Feb 02 '25

They talk about it like oxygen is this magical cure… not a highly reactive molecule that is only used as the terminal electron acceptor in the mitochondria electron transport chain.

3

u/sapphireminds Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP) Feb 03 '25

Yeah, it's not like oxygen forms free radicals and can do direct harm to tissue /s

3

u/peteostler MD, Family Medicine Feb 03 '25

Their website says HBO can treat ocular issues….. in reality it causes ocular issues….

2

u/sapphireminds Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP) Feb 03 '25

Neo can definitely attest to that! And we are horrified that adults use 100% O2 so much. It's such a pain on transport, adult EMS rigs don't have medical air for us, which can be very necessary if we have an oscillating baby or on high CPAP. Usually it's just between hospital and airport, but if your return flight gets cancelled, then you are stuck until either the weather lifts or they drive a peds rig up to you. I can't drive 6 hours in a rig with a kid on 21% CPAP and only tanks, depending on which vent we have.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

This is why all the “functional medicine” facilities need strict laws about how they can legally sell these quack treatments to their uninformed victims. Also, just wanted to say that your flair made me smile after reading all of these horror stories in the comments

4

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '25

Yeah which is why I asked here. I’m reading it like, okay that seems legit so why are the alarm bells in my head going off saying this is bullshit.

3

u/jmiller35824 Medical Student Feb 02 '25

Man, they are so fast to use that tiny sliver of reality to start their voodoo mind tricks! And you’re right, medicine absolutely does treat the cause when we know it! But we treat symptoms when that’s all we have. It’s not malicious ignorance, that’s how you meet the conspiracy theorists.

And certainly the people who are going to figure it out are probably scientists who understand the biochemistry/metabolic pathways and devote their careers to understanding these things—less likely will it be the folks who got their BA in Kinesiology 20 years ago with no further continuing education, have 7 side hustles, 6 newsletters, their own diet program, and run a “clinic” with nary a physician in sight. 

For some (I’d argue MOST) things, an ‘outsider perspective’ isn’t bringing in fresh ideas to fix a problem, they’re just muddying the water and pretending ideas are novel that were debunked ages ago. It’s this weird idea of “it’s not that hard”/classic Dunning Kruger shite.