Posted: June 25, 2004

Science of Sport: BIOMEDTECH previews new Personal hypoxicator AltiPower®

BIOMEDTECH previews new Personal hypoxicator AltiPower® that gives athletes the benefits of high altitude training while watching TV

MELBOURNE, 25 June 2004 – On the eve of the Athens Olympics, Australia’s athletes now have access to AltiPower® http://www.altipower.com an affordable, portable high altitude training system designed to improve sports performance.

AltiPower®, a new personal-use hypoxicator weighing less than 2kg. was developed by Melbourne biomedical designers and manufacturers, Biomedtech Australia Pty Ltd, with a help of federal government grant.

AltiPower® delivers Intermittent Hypoxic Treatment (IHT), which simulates the effects on the body of high altitude training where the amount of oxygen in each breath is less than at sea level. By improving the efficiency with which the body uses oxygen, IHT stimulates the body’s natural adaptation to high altitude (2,000 – 6,000 metres) to deliver significant benefits for sports performance and the treatment of a range of medical conditions, with no known side effects.

Previewing the breakthrough product at All Sports Expo, Melbourne, the inventor and developer Oleg Bassovitch announced that AltiPower® and the full-sized GO2Altitude® hypoxicator had received formal endorsement by the Australian Physiotherapy Association.

Biomedtech's GO2Altitude® hypoxicators are in use by a large number of elite athletes world-wide for a number of years.

A number of participants in the Sydney Olympics used and continue to use Biomedtech's products and other IHT products while elite sporting clubs and sports institutes around the world also use Biomedtech's hypoxicators.

Performance improvements of up to four per cent have been recorded in independent studies of elite athletes, for whom mere fractions of a percentage increase in speed or endurance may be the difference between first and last place.

Not only humans have been shown to benefit…racehorses have achieved international success at major racing carnivals after using Biomedtech's equine version of the hypoxicator.

“To date, the cost of IHT machines and the nature of the treatment regime have limited the practical application of IHT to only those professional and special interest groups focused on improving athletic and physical performance,” Oleg said.

“AltiPower® will enable IHT to become a feasible treatment for all people interested in achieving significant improvements in their health and wellbeing, or their physical fitness and sporting performance.”

Visit the website at: www.altipower.com.

About Oleg Bassovitch
Oleg Bassovitch, Managing Director of Biomedtech Australia is a former chief engineer at Moscow’s Bio-Nova Scientific and Technical Centre. He migrated to Australia in 1996 where he developed a number of biomedical devices for Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital before starting his own business and completing a Masters of Engineering Science at Monash University. Oleg has been granted six patents with others pending for his IHT designs.

About Intermittent Hypoxic Training
IHT was originally developed in the mid 1980s by Russian scientists searching for a way to acclimatise pilots, cosmonauts, athletes and mountaineers to altitude. They discovered that adaptation to low-oxygen environments could occur rapidly in a clinical setting without the side effect of altitude sickness. Since then IHT has been in use by large user populations and has been the subject of well document clinical trials and a wide range of research projects. No adverse side effects have been documented from IHT. Information relating to IHT clinical trials, scientific studies and the Biomedtech range of hypoxicators may be viewed at www.go2altitude.com or www.altipower.com.