About Me
My name is Dan Fredrickson. I am the President of Advanced Hyperbarics and Training Director for the Association of Diving and Hyperbaric Professionals.
Many of you wonder what Hyperbarics is and what it does. Let me start with how I first learned about hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). I was introduced to hyperbaric oxygen as a student while attending U.S. Navy dive school in 1977. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers were used to help divers with decompressing or eliminating excess nitrogen from their bodies from deep dives. Or in the worst-case scenarios treat “the bends” or decompression sickness if things went wrong. I was a Navy diver for 22 years and had many experiences using HBOT to help people.
A few years later, I taught Navy Dive school in Hawaii. I was also on the emergency medical dive team to treat diving related injuries to the civilian population. We treated over 75 bends or decompression injury cases. I was an inside chamber medical technician on over 350 treatments during this time. It was very rewarding to see people come into our chamber with serious injuries and in many cases walk out feeling almost completely normal after we were done treating them.
Some of our diving patients had injuries that took several treatment sessions in the hyperbaric chamber over a few days to completely bring them back to their old selves again. In addition, we noticed that many of our patients that had more than one treatment made comments that other things that had been bothering them before were now healed. Our doctors took note of this and we started getting medical patients that had circulation and infection problems. Our first 5 patients were diabetics and all over 75 years old. All of them had been scheduled to have their legs fully or partially amputated due to diabetic circulation issues. We were able to save 4 of the 5 legs completely healing them and reduced the amount amputated on the fifth to her ankle. During this time, one of these patients was also suffering from dementia and was basically non-verbal at the start of her 30 session treatment schedule. Her name was Mary and a full-blooded Hawaiian born in 1900. After about 5 treatments, Mary began talking to me and by the time she completed the 30 treatments, she started telling me story after story about the early days of her life. Her husband of 65 years told me with tears in his eyes that we had brought his Mary back to him both physically and mentally. These were the first of many after that. I’ll never forget these patients and how they inspired me to pursue hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a career later.
A few years later, I taught Navy Dive school in Hawaii. I was also on the emergency medical dive team to treat diving-related injuries to the civilian population. We treated over 75 bends or decompression injury cases. I was an inside chamber medical technician on over 350 treatments during this time. It was very rewarding to see people come into our chamber with serious injuries and in many cases walk out feeling almost completely normal after we were done treating them.
After I left the Navy, I didn’t directly enter the medical side of hyperbaric because at that time there were not enough studies or concrete proof that this really worked. So, there weren’t any jobs or clinics treating people yet. The momentum for this type of business was slow in starting. I worked as a contractor, traveling and building hyperbaric oxygen systems for the Navy and then all over the U.S. for commercial diving companies. After Hurricane Katrina, I was project manager on many projects to build Saturation diving systems, where divers live in these chambers at deep depths for up to 45 days.
After many trips out in the Gulf of Mexico to train company employees on how to run their new dive systems, we ran into some very nasty weather and I was injured going to one job 200 miles offshore.
After recovering, I decided the offshore life wasn’t for me anymore and started instructing at the College of Oceaneering in Southern California. I taught Physics, Physiology, dive station operations, underwater welding, equipment maintenance and salvage operations, and hyperbaric oxygen technician certification.
During this time, I studied and passed my certification test for Boiler and Pressure Vessel inspector. Now I could build, inspect and certify anything involved with hyperbaric systems. I was asked to come by a hyperbaric clinic near my house to inspect it for a couple of friends that were interested in buying it. I inspected the system in Stanton, CA., and saw this as my opportunity to start my dream. I negotiated a partnership in the business and we were on our way.
It has been 6 1/2 years now and we have 3 clinics, Stanton, Brea, and Upland. It hasn’t been easy but it definitely has been rewarding. We have had many fantastic breakthroughs and the industry has grown by leaps and bounds. It seems like every time I turn around a new success is found using hyperbarics. The best part has been the new Brain scans, MRI’s and detection devices that have come out that prove hyperbarics works. Now all the great things I have seen with hyperbarics and said for years can now be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The best part of all has been taking people that were given up on by the regular medical industry and give them HOPE. Time and time again we have brought them to the path of healing and a reason to not give up. This is the reason I am in this career to bring people’s lives back and I wouldn’t want to do anything else.
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