Everton midfielder Amadou Onana has employed the use of hyperbaric oxygen to help increase is recovery time, although it’s benefits are yet to be proven.
That’s according to Het Laatste Nieuws, relayed by Voetbal Primeur, who explain why the Everton midfielder is occasionally seen wearing an oxygen mask on his social media profiles.
The newspaper explains that the Belgian star, who was again a key player for his country in the win over Romania, has sometimes been seen on his social media accounts lying in bed with an oxygen mask on his face.
This, they say, is not anything of concern but a planned process to help him recover better after games.
It’s mainly used in hospitals, as one might expect, but has been taken up by top athletes and performance artists as well.
Tennis superstar Novak Djokovic started doing it years ago and Onana’s Belgium teammate Romelu Lukaku has been photographed wearing such an oxygen mask in the past too.
The process is called hyperbaric oxygen therapy and sees the user alternate between breathing normally and breathing through the mask for short periods of time. This allows them to absorb a total of ten to fifteen times more oxygen than normal.
The benefits of it have been questioned, though, with HLN reporting that scientific research is yet to prove anything other than minor gains.
Sports people often employ anything they can to achieve marginal gains, though, and it seems the Everton star is a proponent of this technique.
