Why Athletes Are Exploring Functional Medicine (and Breathing New Life into Recovery)
If you’re an athlete — whether you’re training for your next big event or just trying to stay active and healthy — you probably already know that performance isn’t just about how hard you train. It’s about how well you recover, how efficiently your body uses energy, and how resilient you are from the inside out.
That’s why more athletes today are turning to functional medicine. Instead of focusing only on symptoms or surface-level fixes, functional medicine looks at how your body’s systems work together — like your hormones, gut health, immune function, and more — to help you feel and perform your best.
One tool gaining attention in this space is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy or HBOT. By delivering concentrated oxygen in a pressurized chamber, HBOT may support faster recovery, reduce inflammation, and even improve endurance. And when it’s combined with other personalized strategies from functional medicine, the results can be even more powerful.
In this blog, we’ll explore how hyperbaric oxygen therapy fits into a holistic approach to athletic performance and recovery — and how functional medicine tools work together to help your body heal, adapt, and thrive.
Functional Medicine for Athletes — And How Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Helps You Recover, Perform, and Thrive
Athletes tend to focus heavily on training, which can include running harder, lifting heavier weights, and pushing farther. But the real gains come during recovery. And if your recovery is slow, your progress can stall.
Let’s say you’re dealing with low energy. Instead of just prescribing a stimulant, functional medicine would look deeper — perhaps your mitochondria (the energy centers of your cells) are stressed, your nutrient absorption is low, or your oxygen delivery is inefficient. One of the most promising ways to support these systems? Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT).
HBOT works by delivering concentrated oxygen in a pressurized chamber, allowing oxygen to dissolve more deeply into your body’s tissues, even in areas with limited blood flow. This boost in oxygen can have a significant impact on the very systems that functional medicine focuses on. Let’s dive deeper into the impact HBOT can have on your body.
Boosting Cellular Energy
Oxygen is fuel for your mitochondria. With HBOT, your cells get the oxygen they need to produce more ATP (energy), which supports endurance, strength, and faster recovery. A study published in the Sports Medicine journal found that athletes who regularly used hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) were able to take in and utilize oxygen more efficiently during exercise. Their cells were better at producing energy, two crucial factors that help the body perform better and recover more quickly.
Reducing Inflammation
Chronic inflammation is one of the most significant obstacles to recovery. HBOT can help lower inflammation by increasing oxygen circulation, promoting blood vessel growth, and supporting tissue repair. This means less soreness, less swelling, and better readiness for your next training session.
Supporting Muscle Repair
After a tough workout, your body needs time and resources to rebuild. HBOT accelerates this process by getting more oxygen to muscles and joints, speeding up healing at the cellular level. Some studies even show lower levels of post-exercise fatigue and better muscle force output in athletes using HBOT.
Helping Your Body Handle Stress
Functional medicine also looks at how well your nervous and hormonal systems handle stress, whether it’s physical, mental, or environmental. Oxygen therapy can support brain health, calm the nervous system, and enhance sleep quality, all of which play a role in performance and recovery.
Functional medicine and HBOT work especially well together because they both aim for the same thing: helping your body do what it was designed to do — heal, recover, and grow stronger — using natural, supportive tools.
The Bigger Picture — HBOT and Other Functional Tools Working Together
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy can be a powerful tool on its own, but it becomes even more effective when it’s part of a bigger recovery and performance plan. That’s one of the things that sets functional medicine apart — it looks at the whole person, not just one system or symptom.
At Hyperbaric Wellness Center, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) is just one of the many therapies we use to support athletes and active individuals. Here’s how it fits into the broader picture of functional performance care:
Nutrition and Cellular Fuel
Your body can’t perform well without the proper nutrients, and it needs even more support when you’re training hard. Functional medicine takes a close look at your unique nutritional needs, helping to identify and address any deficiencies that may be affecting your energy, recovery, or mental clarity. When combined with HBOT, proper nutrition helps fuel the oxygen-driven healing process at a deeper level.
Red Light Therapy and Tissue Healing
While HBOT delivers oxygen deep into your tissues to promote healing, red light therapy uses specific wavelengths of light to help reduce inflammation, stimulate circulation, and support cellular repair. Like HBOT, it works at the cellular level — but through a different mechanism.
Where HBOT increases the amount of oxygen your cells can absorb, red light therapy encourages energy production within the cells themselves, particularly in the mitochondria. This can further support muscle recovery, joint health, and tissue regeneration, especially after intense training or injury.
Used together, red light therapy and HBOT can create a synergistic effect: improving how well tissues heal, reducing soreness, and shortening recovery time — all without medications or invasive treatments. At HWC, these therapies can be tailored to your needs, depending on your training load, recovery goals, or injury history.
Gut Health and Immune Resilience
Your gut does more than digest food — it plays a key role in your immune system, energy levels, and even inflammation. If your gut isn’t functioning well, your performance can suffer. Functional medicine can help identify and treat these hidden imbalances, which improves how well your body responds to every other therapy, including HBOT.
For more about balancing your gut health, check out our blog “Gut Health 101: The Foundation of Your Overall Well-Being.”
Personalized Supplementation for Energy, Recovery, and Resilience
Supplements can play a powerful role in athletic recovery — but only when they’re used with intention. In functional medicine, we focus on targeted supplementation that addresses your body’s specific needs, rather than taking a generic or “more is better” approach.
For athletes and active individuals, this might mean restoring nutrients lost through training, supporting muscle repair, or helping the body adapt to physical stress. For example:
- Magnesium to relax muscles and ease soreness
- Omega-3s to reduce inflammation
- B-vitamins to support energy metabolism
- Antioxidants to help repair oxidative stress after workouts
Because every body is different, supplement protocols are often guided by lab testing, symptom tracking, and your unique performance goals. When used thoughtfully, they become one more tool in a comprehensive strategy — supporting your recovery, enhancing resilience, and helping you feel and function at your best.
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With all of these tools working together, you create a recovery and performance plan that is truly personalized — one that supports your goals, your schedule, and your body’s unique needs.
At Hyperbaric Wellness Center, our goal isn’t just to help you feel better after a tough workout. It’s to help you train smarter, recover faster, and perform at your full potential — using natural, research-backed therapies that work with your body, not against it.
Rethink Performance from the Inside Out
If you are someone who takes your health, movement, or sport seriously, then you already know — real performance isn’t just about pushing harder. It’s about how well your body can recover, adapt, and stay balanced under stress.
Whether you’re training for a race, recovering from an injury, or simply trying to stay active and energized, your body performs best when it’s fully supported, not just pushed harder. Functional medicine and therapies, such as hyperbaric oxygen, offer a more thoughtful approach: one that works with your body to restore balance, accelerate recovery, and unlock your full potential.
If you’re curious about how HBOT could support your health or performance goals, our team at Hyperbaric Wellness Center is here to guide you. We’re happy to answer questions, share more about what to expect, and help you explore whether this therapy is a good fit for you. Contact us to take the next step in your wellness journey.
Resources
Branco, B. M., Kasaoka, K. C., Cendoroglo Neto, M., & Ugrinowitsch, C. (2016). The effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on post-training recovery in Jiu-Jitsu athletes. PLOS ONE, 11(3), e0150517. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26959652/
Finci, L., Hadanny, A., Barak, O., Tamir-Adler, L., Benvenisti, A., Bergan, J., … & Efrati, S. (2022). Effects of HBOT on mitochondrial respiration and physical performance in middle-aged athletes: A blinded RCT. Sports Medicine – Open, 8, 22. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35133516/
Qu, Y., Yang, S., He, C., Wang, B., & Liu, L. (2024). Effects of mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy on timing sequence recovery of muscle fatigue in Chinese university male athletes. Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness, 22(4), 305–315. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38721019/
Shimoda, K., Kubota, K., Kato, M., Nakajima, T., & Kawano, H. (2015). Effects of hyperbaric oxygen on muscle fatigue after maximal intermittent plantar flexion exercise. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 29(6), 1648–1656. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25785701/
