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If this summer’s World Cup has taught us anything beyond the football, it’s that recovery has become the new performance. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has been widely discussed throughout the tournament, with several high-profile players reported to be using it as part of their recovery routines. Jude Bellingham even sparked a brief health scare when he was pictured wearing an oxygen mask ahead of the Argentina game. It emerged he was simply receiving HBOT to support his recovery. Today, sports stars across a range of global sports use the treatment as part of their daily routines. What was once the preserve of deep-sea divers and specialist hospital units is now, quite visibly, part of the conversation around elite sport and everyday wellness alike.

We understand the appeal and the benefits. It’s why we built our clinic. At Biowell Health, we believe oxygen, delivered properly, can be one of the most valuable tools in a health journey: supporting recovery, energy, sleep, cognition and healing in ways the research continues to explore. But as the profile of the therapy has grown, we’ve felt something else alongside the excitement: a responsibility to talk about standards. Because visibility is not the same as quality. And in hyperbaric medicine, quality is not a luxury. It is central to the treatment.

Why Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Standards Vary So Widely

Here’s something we see clearly from inside the industry: not all hyperbaric oxygen therapy is the same. The market spans everything from hospital and clinical-grade facilities to consumer products designed for home use, and those categories can differ significantly in the pressures they reach, the way oxygen is delivered, and the level of clinical oversight involved. For someone new to the therapy, those differences are not always easy to spot.

Regulators internationally have begun to draw attention to this. In June 2026, Health Canada issued a public alert stating that certain unauthorised soft-shell hyperbaric chambers may pose safety risks and advised consumers to check that a device has been properly authorised. The Undersea & Hyperbaric Medical Society, a leading professional body in the field, has published guidance for consumers on the differences between chamber types. In the US, the FDA has clarified that it clears hyperbaric oxygen therapy for specific medical indications, and that many general wellness claims fall outside those cleared uses. The UK is rapidly evolving it’s approach to oxygen regulation with expectations for this to come forward later this year.

The point is not to alarm anyone. It’s that the people who study this for a living are encouraging more scrutiny, not less, and we think that’s the right instinct, whether you’re a professional athlete or someone booking a first session after reading about it online.

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How Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Works, And Why More Is Not Always Better

Part of what makes oxygen so useful is also why it deserves respect. Oxygen behaves like a therapeutic agent, and like any therapeutic agent, the way it’s dosed matters.

Delivered at an appropriate pressure, for an appropriate duration, under a considered protocol, hyperbaric oxygen increases the amount of oxygen carried in the blood plasma and available to the tissues. That’s much of where the benefit is thought to come from. The research also suggests that oxygen exposure needs to sit within a sensible therapeutic window: very high concentrations, for longer than intended, can contribute to increased oxidative stress, where the balance between free radicals and the body’s antioxidant defences is disturbed. This is one of the reasons clinical settings pay such close attention to pressure, concentration and time.

That focus on precision is exactly why the delivery environment matters so much to us. Controlling the dose, and having qualified people responsible for it, is a meaningful part of what separates a clinical setting from an unsupervised one.

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The Biowell Health HBOT Standard:

CQC-Registered, BIBS Delivery And Clinical Oversight

This is the space Biowell Health was built for, and rather than comment on anyone else, we’d simply point to how we choose to operate.

We are registered with the Care Quality Commission, the independent regulator of health and social care in England, which means our clinic is held to recognised inspection standards. In an area where formal regulation isn’t always required, we chose to seek it. Nobody obliged us to. We felt it was the right standard to hold ourselves to.

Our chambers use the BIBS (Built-In Breathing System), a medical and hospital-grade delivery approach also used in clinical and defence hyperbaric facilities. This is an important distinction. In a free-flowing oxygen chamber, oxygen is released into the whole chamber environment, which means the concentration a person actually receives is harder to define precisely and the raised oxygen level in the surrounding space is a recognised consideration for fire safety. A BIBS instead delivers medical-grade oxygen directly to the individual through a dedicated hood or mask, while the chamber itself is pressurised with air. It’s an approach designed to give clearer control over the dose each person receives, while pressure, oxygen concentration and session duration are managed carefully throughout the session by trained staff.

Every treatment sits within evidence-based clinical protocols, with oversight from experienced doctors: screening before anyone enters the chamber, individualised treatment parameters, supervision throughout, and defined limits on pressure and exposure. The aim is always to keep treatment within the therapeutic window the evidence supports.

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Oxygen Deserves Care. So Do You.

To be clear, we are enthusiasts, not sceptics. We believe hyperbaric oxygen therapy is one of the most interesting tools in modern wellness and a genuine cornerstone of a thoughtful biostack, whether the goal is recovery, healing, energy, healthy ageing or simply feeling more like yourself. The attention the therapy has received this summer is, on balance, a good thing.

But as interest grows, so should the questions we all ask of it. Whichever provider you consider, these are worth asking: Is the clinic regulated, for example by the CQC? What kind of equipment is used, and is there clinical oversight? Who is responsible for the treatment protocol and for supervising each session?

At Biowell Health, we welcome those questions, because we built our clinic around the answers.

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FAQs on HYPERBARIC OXYGEN Therapy

Biowell Health is a CQC-registered clinic. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is not suitable for everyone; all clients are clinically screened prior to treatment. This article is for general information and is not medical advice.