Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Josheph Dituri, who spent 100 days at a depth of 22 feet beneath the sea, says prolonged exposure to the high pressure improved his sleep, reduced inflammation and cholesterol, and boosted testosterone.
• His experience is evidence for the benefits of high-pressure atmospheric environments on land, like those of hyperbaric chambers, he says. Meanwhile, experts caution there’s no solid evidence yet that this kind of therapy actually extends your life.
• However, studies are now underway to testthe effects of hyperbaric oxygen for life-changing measurable health benefits.

In 2023, biomedical engineer Joseph Dituri, PhD, spent 100 days in a tiny enclosure 22 feet beneath the waves of Key Largo, Florida. For more than three months, Dituri lived in a 100-square-foot room, forgoing sunshine and human touch and subsisting on microwaved meals. After cracking his molar on the 12th day of his confinement, Dituri endured 88 days with a searing pain in his jaw.

But on the June morning he finally emerged onto dry land, Dituri had never felt better. “I was on fire both mentally and physically,” he says, “that was due to some of the good results you get from being in a hyperbaric environment.”

Dituri’s underwater stay had been motivated by his interest in hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), a medical treatment that involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber, allowing the body, blood, and lungs to absorb more oxygen. Long used to treat decompression sickness, or the bends, more recent research has shown HBOT can mobilize stem cells and rebuild telomeres—the ends of chromosomes, which shorten with age.

While the mechanism behind hyperbaric treatments is well-understood, nobody knew how the human body would respond if that pressure was applied over a long period of time. So Dituri, a University of South Florida professor who had used hyperbaric chambers to treat veterans with traumatic brain injuries as well as people with long COVID, MS, and autism, decided to find out.

The 14 weeks he spent living at 1.6 atmosphere absolute (ATA), or 25 pounds per square inch (psi), provided a slew of health benefits, claims Dituri, who underwent a battery of medical and psychological tests before, during, and after the experiment. By comparison, the pressure at sea level is 1 ATA, or 14.6 psi.

Though his diet remained unchanged, Dituri shed eight pounds and 72 points of cholesterol. His inflammatory markers “dropped precipitously,” he says, including his cortisol levels. Because HBOT triggers a powerful inflammatory response, these results weren’t all that shocking to the 60-year-old researcher. But the corresponding uptick in his testosterone levels was.

“Seven times the testosterone,” he says. Boosting the hormone in men has been shown to improve sexual function, increase muscle mass and strength, and heighten energy. “That was a really good surprise to happen.”

Before he relocated underwater, Dituri blocked out the windows and dropped the temperature in his Tampa home in a bid to replicate the sleeping conditions in the enclosure and allow comparison between the two settings. The scientist reported he experienced much better rest in the high-pressure environment, logging twice as much REM sleep as he did in bed at home. As a result, an electroencephalogram (EEG) of Dituri’s brain showed an increase in coherence—meaning stronger and more efficient communication between neural networks.

“All these things in one fell swoop was absolutely incredible,” he says.

Not every outcome was positive. Dituri shrank by three-quarters of an inch during the experiment thanks to the compression of the vertebrae in his spine. He was able to regain the height by hanging upside down once a day for a few months.

Shrinkage aside, the results of his underwater experience have convinced Dituri that HBOT has serious potential to reverse aging and help people live longer, when combined with a healthy lifestyle. A month-long protocol of daily 45-minute sessions of HBOT, he now believes, will reduce a patient’s age by 10 years.

“I want to be really clear about this: This is a one-shot wonder,” Dituri says. “Not only does it reduce your age, but it gives you the ability to live longer.”

Not everyone in the field agrees.

“There are literally many thousands of patients who receive daily HBOT treatments for one month or more,” says Neal Pollock, an expert in diving physiology at Laval University in Canada. The FDA has approved the intervention for 14 specific conditions, including non-healing wounds, carbon monoxide poisoning, and injuries from radiation therapy. While HBOT is very good at treating those conditions, Pollock says, “there is no evidence of systematic changes in life expectancy. Efforts at extending youth simply have not been borne out.”

In fact, the Israeli researchers who found that HBOT can lengthen telomeres have also said that those results were largely misinterpreted, stating that their small study did not provide meaningful proof a patient would live longer by undergoing HBOT.

Kinjal Sethuraman, the medical director of the Center for Hyperbaric and Dive Medicine at University of Maryland Medical Center, says she would steer patients away from expensive HBOT treatments in a bid to extend their lives. “That money is better spent on healthier food, regular exercise, reducing stress, restorative sleep, and being part of a community. Those are the pillars of aging well.”

The emergency medicine doctor believes HBOT has potential to treat more conditions than the FDA currently approves it for, but that “good, rigorous research is what the field needs.”

That’s just what Dituri is up to now. The scientist recently joined the Arizona State University Healthspan team, a collection of scientists working to win a $101 million XPRIZE, a seven-year global competition to extend a healthy human life by 20 years. As part of the project, 200 study participants will spend 45 minutes a day in a custom-built multibaric chamber—capable of simulating conditions from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom of the ocean—breathing pure oxygen.

“My 100 days underwater was a great start, but that was an n of one,” Dituri says. “There are 200 people in this study. That’s real, solid research.”

But at least one person in Dituri’s life isn’t waiting around for the results. “I can’t keep my mom out of a hyperbaric chamber,” he says. “She’s hooked on it.”