Medical ozone for detoxification

Medical ozone for detoxification

Ozone has an extra molecule of oxygen (O3) and that makes it a supercharged natural medicine tool.

by Mary Budinger — 

We often hear of ozone in connection with the Valley’s “brown cloud” of air pollution. This type of ozone is full of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides and other toxic compounds that are all irritating to the lungs.

Medical ozone is a very different creature — a simple medicine that can deliver great benefits — and it is created by passing pure oxygen through high-voltage tubes.

The body creates its own ozone, hydrogen peroxide and nitric oxide — called “reactive oxygen species” — to help itself detoxify daily. Increasing oxidants in the blood is the body’s way of reducing opportunistic pathogens. In today’s toxic world, however, we sometimes need extra help. Medical ozone can do a lot of helpful heavy lifting.

Dr. Robert Rowen of California took ozone to Sierra Leone, West Africa, to combat the Ebola virus outbreak last year. Ozone efficiently kills viruses in seconds. “Viruses have lipids and proteins in their structure that are highly vulnerable to damage by ozone,” he said. “It blows a hole in the cell membrane and the cell dies before it can repair itself.” The majority of Ebola victims treated with ozone recovered in two days. Ozone can also fight bacteria and fungus.

We are alive because oxygen (O2) makes our form of life possible. Oxygen is released into the air by photosynthesis — the reaction of sunlight with plants — and we living creatures breathe it in. Ozone has an extra molecule of oxygen (O3) and that makes it a supercharged natural medical tool.

“I use it for purposes of killing bacteria, viruses and organisms that are not helpful and are normally taken care of by the production of hydrogen peroxide in the cell,” said Dr. Martha Grout of Scottsdale, Ariz. “In our eight-week protocol for Lyme disease and associated infections, for example, we do it at least twice weekly. Ozone also can be inserted in the bladder and rectum for people with bladder infections or ulcerative colitis. It is not a complicated or expensive therapy.”

Typically, about one-fourth cup (60cc) of a patient’s blood is removed and mixed with ozone gas, which dissolves instantly in the blood. Then the ozonated blood is put back into the patient’s bloodstream. The procedure takes about a half hour.

Ozone’s gift of an extra oxygen molecule makes it a very efficient detox — if the body can handle it. “If the body is extremely polluted, then ozone can act like trying to flog a very tired horse,” Grout explained. “Inside each cell of the body are mitochondria — little factories that essentially turn food into energy. Ozone will stimulate the mitochondria to perform better, but the process naturally creates waste products.

“It is the same idea that if you are going to eat, you are going to poop.

“So when you amp up the mitochondria, you need the garbage collectors to be on the job too — all the antioxidants and their cofactors. Without those, it can be as if the garbage collectors are on strike and there is no place for all the garbage to go. This is why sometimes when people try to do a juice fast or diet, they feel terrible. They are liberating more than they can dispose of. It is all a question of balance.”

Antioxidants and their cofactors include vitamins C and D, the B vitamins, glutathione and lipoic acid.

Doctors trained in Functional Medicine like Dr. Grout often start with a nutritional evaluation and blood and urine tests to determine a person’s nutritional status. If the body is running on too few nutrients, it is likely the mitochondria are struggling. So the first step to any detoxification program is cleaning up the diet.

The use of ozone to treat various medical conditions was first developed in Germany in the early 1950s. Today, medical ozone therapy is common throughout Europe, and its use has gradually been spreading in the United States over the last 25 years. It has been used to treat people for infections, eczema, strokes, hepatitis, herpes, AIDS, macular degeneration, chronic bladder conditions, autoimmune diseases and most types of cancer.

Ozone can calm down an overactive immune system as in an autoimmune disease, for example. And when the immune system is underactive, as in cancer, AIDS and chronic infections, ozone will stimulate it. For those with coronary heart disease and diabetes, ozone improves circulation by enabling more oxygen-carrying hemoglobin to reach the capillaries. Pure medical-grade ozone, used according to established medical guidelines, has an impressive safety record.

When comparing supplemental medical oxidative therapies, ozone is not as hard on the veins as hydrogen peroxide or vitamin C because it immediately dissolves into the blood. Ozone increases antioxidant protection more than intravenous vitamin C therapy. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers, which use air pressure to force oxygen into the blood, tend to be claustrophobic for some people.

What all oxidative therapies can readily do is access areas that antibiotics cannot and usually with greater killing power. Oxidative therapies have no pharmaceutical side effects and the body does not build resistance to them.

Mary Budinger is a certified Nutritional Therapy Consultant and an Emmy-award winning journalist who writes and teaches about nutrition and integrative medicine. 602-494-1999.

Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 34, Number 4, August/September 2015.