When my wife was becoming anemic due to chemo (for breast cancer, not bone marrow disease) and I noticed initial research indications that Procrit/Aranesp might stimulate tumor growth, I did an enormous amount of research and discovered an experiment in an obscure journal that showed that oxygen breathing can "trick" your kidneys into ramping up their normal production of EPO (erythropoietin). We were able to use this technique to produce an Hgb response identical to that of Procrit. In fact, we started with 3 O2 breathing sessions per week but had to cut the frequency back because we got a greater 2-week increase in Hgb than is recommended when using Procrit.
I stumbled across this forum while searching for something else, and was just curious if anyone in need of elevating their Hgb had tried this technique. My wife is a private pilot, so we just brought the O2 bottle home from her airplane and used that with a cannula. The technique simply requires breathing pure oxygen for 1-2 hours a couple times per week. Just as with getting a pharmacological dose of EPO from a shot, you have to allow a couple of weeks to start seeing the increase in red blood cells. The technique assumes your kidneys can still produce EPO, but most can. In fact, I strongly suspect the recent discovery that dialysis patients treated at high altitudes need fewer blood transfusions is simply a direct result of the fact that dialysis patients treated at high altitudes are more likely to be given oxygen breathing during their visit.
The original researchers on this
originally experimented with healthy young men, but have since
reproduced the effect in ICU patients. I have published
a paper on my wife's case, and would be happy to email the full PDF to anyone interested (the journal technically owns the copyright, or I would post it publicly). Not much else has happened over the years; there's no way to patent an oxygen bottle, so I suspect it's real hard to get any research dollars to study it. Since EPO drugs have been the largest single-drug expense for Medicare for some years, I was real disappointed I could not get even insurance company researchers interested in studying this. Oh well!
