Into
thick air
TODD KAUFMANN isn't grabbing his claims out of thin air.
The air in the coffin-sized chambers wedged into
his cramped Corte Madera office space is anything but thin.
"This is 1.37 atmospheres," he tells a
client, as she climbs out of a zippered compartment the shape of a giant pill,
Kaufmann describing the air pressure inside as the equivalent of "9 feet
of salt water." Kaufmann is the chiropractor and disquietingly zealous
booster behind the Hyperbaric Therapy Centers of Northern California. He has
three chambers in Corte Madera, another two in Santa Rosa. In an average week,
"50 to 80" clients pay as much as $75 an hour to zip themselves into
the pressurized bags and breathe oxygen-enriched air.
And they keep coming back.
"The minimum starting protocol is 40
treatments," says Kaufmann, who left a career as an emergency room nurse
to become a chiropractor. He learned about hyperbaric seven years ago, offering
it to clients for the first time in 1999. The chambers, Kaufmann insists, boost
oxygen levels in the blood and tissues, promoting all manner of healing. Larger
steel-walled tanks, capable of higher pressures, are used by hospitals for burn
victims and other therapies.
Kaufmann sees no need to stop there.
Sit with him long enough, after he's gone over
such widely accepted treatments as for diabetic ulcers and wound care, and
Kaufmann will boast of the beneficial effects of hyperbaric therapy on
everything from multiple sclerosis to cancer. "There really isn't a
situation it cannot be used in," Kaufmann boasts. While he will
occasionally limit the scope of his statements - "I don't go around
telling people this is a cure-all," he says - hyperbaric hyperbole is a
frequent tangent. He doesn't promote hyperbaric therapy as a weight loss
strategy, but people do lose weight, he says. "They say, 'My pants fit
better.'"
Kaufman insists that hyperbaric therapy is used
extensively in other countries. "Like Russia and China," he says. But
the practice is not a well-known concept in the United States. The average
person here might know little more than that Michael Jackson reportedly sleeps
in one.
That might be all they need to know.
Dr. Robert Baratz, president of the National
Council Against Health Fraud, calls hyperbaric therapy a practice "ripe
for misuse." "At best, you'd be wasting your money," says the
Massachusetts M.D. "At worst, you'd be compromising your lungs."
Hyperbaric chambers do have legitimate uses,
Baratz points out. Burn units use them to help patients recover. Diabetic
ulcers and stubborn wounds have been shown to heal faster with limited
hyperbaric treatment.
But even once-standard use of emergency care for
carbon monoxide poisoning is now in question. The accepted uses are few, Baratz
says. "And there are plenty of illegitimate uses," he adds.
Baratz is not alone. On his healthcentral.com web
site, Fairfax doctor and radio personality Dean Edell puts it bluntly: "I
wouldn't go near anyone advertising a hyperbaric oxygen chamber."
Kaufmann sticks to his pitch.
Hyperbaric treatment is not widely used in this
country because "there is no money in it."
"You can't sell air," he says. And the
use of hyperbaric treatment is "tightly controlled," he says.
Meanwhile a brochure from the manufacturer of the chambers used in his office
boasts "no special training" and "no license needed."
Indeed, Kaufmann claims he has sold
"100" such chambers to home users for OxyHealth, the Southern
California distributor.
Kaufmann claims there are studies, and lists M.D.s
who use hyperbaric therapy. A hyperbaric center run by a Florida doctor
recently made headlines with news that the center is treating the only American
victim of Mad Cow Disease.
And then there are his clients.
Kaufmann tells stories of people who credit him
with life-changing cures.
Marie Holman of Dixon drives 50 miles each way to
Kaufmann's office once a week to stave off an ailment for which she says
traditional medicine offered little help or hope. "My blood was very, very
sick and it wasn't flowing properly," she says of her hard-to-explain
condition. "I wasn't getting enough oxygen in my system." The illness
manifested itself in pain in her joints, leaving her, as she describes it,
"partially disabled."
After going to the Santa Rosa offices of Dr.
Robert Rowen, an M.D. noted for embracing alternative therapies, Holman sought
out Kaufmann's hyperbaric chambers. The changes came in just three weeks, she
insists.
"I started noticing the pain went away,"
she says.
When she couldn't make the trip to Corte Madera
for several weeks, the pain returned. Now it is part of her schedule. "I
think everybody should have this, the rest of their lives," she exclaims.
Everybody would need a fair amount of money to
accomplish that. Despite Kaufmann's protestations that "you can't sell
air," you can sell hyperbaric therapy. A one time treatment in one of
Kaufmann's two offices is $75. Twelve visits is $780. Most insurance companies
do not cover hyperbaric treatments beyond a narrow field of applications.
But you could always buy your own chamber.
Kaufmann will help you. They start at $9,000.
The money doesn't disappear into thin air. The air
in Kaufmann's office is anything but thin.
Contact Rick Polito via e-mail at polito@marinij.com.