LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) Every day 153 people in the U.S. die from traumatic brain injuries, that’s according to the CDC.

And for one Acadiana man, he’s found a promising therapy that he says has given him his life back.

Slurred words, spouts of anger, off balance.  That was the reality for Lafayette resident Paul Bosworth.

Back in 2007, he choked on chicken fried rice, and banged his head multiple times resulting in a traumatic brain injury.

“I had the thought cross my mind, this is not good,” Bosworth said.

Bosworth couldn’t go back to work, having to re-learn how to process of everyday experiences.

He then discovered hyperbaric oxygen therapy, breathing oxygen in a pressurized tube, to aid the body’s natural healing process.

Bosworth originally went 68 times, once a day, five days a week.

“It’s kind of like crawling into a fort when you’re a kid and you breathe out of an oxygen tank and the tank breathes the breath of life back into you and it wakes up cells that are idle,” Bosworth said.

However the treatments can be controversial.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the evidence is insufficient to support claims that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can effectively treat on the other hand, Bosworth says the oxygen treatments gave him his brain back, as seen in his scans.

“This is after two months of oxygen therapy. You can see that I got some brain back,” Bosworth said.

He says his symptoms have lessened or disappeared altogether.

And so he’s made it his life’s mission to get more research for hyperbaric oxygen therapy and to also make treatments more affordable.

“It’s time for people like me to get the word out to realize there’s some value in this. There’s something to this that can impact somebody’s life,” Bosworth said.

Because he says for those with a brain injury, getting your life back is a gift.