GlassHead,

Be prepared to let the money 'burn' rather than provide a benefit.

Don't risk money you can not afford to risk.

What symptoms are you hoping to get relief from?

I canīt afford the treatment anyway so itīs not really an option

I would like to regain my ability to concentrate and as far as i know, no other therapy helps in that regard.

Maybe QEEG neurofeedback can be used instead of the HBOT.

The best way you can relearn to concentrate starts at a very basic level. The first thing you need to do is reduce and/or eliminate excess stimuli. I wrote about this on another thread. I'll see if I can find the discussion.

See my painfully detailed response in the thread 'Has anyone tried Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy?': neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread164251.html

Sorry to post in an old, dormant thread rather than in this one - I didn't realize that this new thread existed.

Bottom line is that I have had a good experience.

Also, GlassHead - I tried qEEG feedback about a year ago. As with HBOT, it was a bit difficult to tell how effective it was, but I have liked HBOT much better. With qEEG, I did feel pretty good at the end of the month or so that I did it (3x/week) but each session made me feel tired and foggy.

The overall improvement could be due to the qEEG biofeedback or due to time. As I said in my post on the other thread, I tend to improve slowly (over the course of many months) unless I experience a setback.

The worsening of symptoms after each session could be because the session was making my injury worse, or because my brain was tired but rebuilding (like muscle soreness after a workout). Since they use visual or audio stimulation to provide the feedback - I used a video-game-like interface, watched movies, and listened to beeps at various points in my therapy - my brain was really irritated even though it might have been learning new, better patterns.

Eventually I stopped going because I didn't like feeling crummy after each session.

Also, I believe qEEG was even more expensive than HBOT, but I don't remember exactly off the top of my head.

Hope this helps, good luck if you do try it.

Thx for the feedback, glad you had good experiences with the treatments. I will think about these treatment options as the next step in my recovery plan.
Might be years before I can afford them though.

keg,

It would be great if you could elaborate about your experience with HBOT.

How many sessions? How often?

What improvements did you notice?

How far into your recovery did you start the HBOT?

How much did you have to pay?

Your qEEG neurofeedback sessions were likely too long. Shorter sessions more frequently might have been better. Exercising the brain to fatigue would be counter productive. Most neurofeedback is designed for ADD/ADHD where the longer sessions are not a cause of fatigue.

Was it the kind of neurofeedback where you tried to modify the wave forms as a sort of video game?

Mark,

I posted many details in the thread "Has Anyone Tried Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy?". I'm reposting my entire response below. It's quite lengthy, but you can scroll down to the bottom for a short summary.

I will agree that my neurofeedback sessions were likely too long. You are right with your guesses that the office was probably ADD/ADHD-focused and that the feedback was delivered in the form of a video game. We did try multiple versions of feedback, including:

• straight up video game (a la Asteroids) - you score more points if you make the correct wave patterns
• listening to beeps - the beeps get louder and steadier if you make the correct wave pattern [this one was the WORST - not recommended for MTBI patients!]
• watching a movie - playback stops if you make the wrong wave patterns
• reading on the internet - screen goes black if you make the wrong wave patterns

Ultimately, all of them made me feel less than great. However, this doesn't mean neurofeedback itself is useless; it just means that I wasn't using it correctly. Some of the problems could have been:

• I was using feedback mechanisms that were too stimulating
• I was doing it for too long
• We were targeting the wrong areas of my brain (unlike in ADHD, there is no specific area that is responsible for MTBI symptoms)
• We were manipulating the wrong brain waves (again, I believe is no broad agreement on which waves - e.g. alpha, beta, delta - are implicated in MTBI symptoms, plus every injury is unique)
• The office environment itself made me feel bad (many fluorescent lights), and this negated the treatment's positive effects

If you are desperate for help, as I was, I would not write off qEEG neurofeedback, though I would seek out a practitioner who works with brain injury patients. I would try HBOT first, though.