You should know that we follow the CDC safety guidelines and that all IV therapies are administered in a sanitized room by an appropriately attired staff member. You’ll be alone in the room during your 30- to 45-minute IV session, so bring something to read.
It’s definitely worthwhile to have a basic understanding of ozone therapy. If you’re perfectly healthy, you may not need the information now. But life being what it is, one day you might have a medical problem and it’s always helpful to know your options. Actually, a long while back I edited a book by that name for the express reason that patients confronting any medical challenge should at least be aware of all treatments, including those their doctor may not have told them about.
Ozone therapy might save you a lot of prescription pill-swallowing or, worse yet, going down the rabbit hole of a health care system where you’re shunted from one specialist to another as your energy and your bank balance trickle away.
If you Google “ozone therapy,” you might feel a bit overwhelmed by the apparently conflicting information. What you’ll discover, though, is that ozone therapy is a treatment administered worldwide. Germany has been using it since the 1950s and right now clinical trials in Japan, Italy, and Romania are investigating ozone as a treatment for Covid-19. In fact, you can type in virtually any country on the globe + ozone and you’ll see what I mean.
IV ozone therapy, the facts
Rather than tackle the often contradictory information sources, let me summarize this in a few bullet points.
- Like virtually all forms of alternative medicine, ozone therapy enhances your body’s self-healing mechanisms. It does so by providing your cells with more oxygen, enhancing immunity, and clearing both toxins and free radicals. This idea of enhancing self-healing is an important distinction from conventional medicine, whose language seems always to use war metaphors. We want to conquer cancer and take antibiotics, beta blockers, and immune suppressants. We even zap our poor little thyroid glands with high-dose radiation. From that perspective, your body is a battleground and your doctor a soldier in full riot gear, firing weapons and sharpening knives.
- With this self-healing approach, ozone therapy is useful as an adjunctive treatment for a wide variety of seemingly unrelated conditions. These include heart disease, diabetes, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, chronic infections like Lyme and viruses, candida, autoimmune disease, cancer, Parkinson’s and ALS, Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, and liver and kidney disease. It’s also a favorite among physicians who practice anti-aging medicine
- Here’s what happens. Ozone gas is a form of oxygen consisting of three oxygen atoms linked to one another (to form O3) rather than the oxygen we breathe to sustain life (O2). It’s a highly charged molecule with oxygenating properties that spread throughout your body.
- Most commonly, ozone is mixed with a small amount of your own blood and then re-administered into your body (this is called autotransfusion). This procedure delivers high levels of oxygen to your tissues, much higher than could be attained by breathing room air or even breathing oxygen from an oxygen generator. With higher levels of oxygen, your body functions more efficiently at all levels.
- Note that I used the word “adjunctive” in regard to ozone therapy. This means ozone is not a replacement for good care. Use ozone while still taking your heart meds, cancer chemo, or antibiotics. The only time you would use ozone by itself would be as part of an anti-aging program. Can ozone therapy slow aging? In theory, it should. In practice, it’s never been tested. Would I personally replace a high-nutrient diet and exercise with regular ozone therapy? Nope. We’ve proven beyond doubt that good nutrition and exercise promote healthy longevity. As much as I like ozone therapy, I’d use it as an add-on, not a replacement.
If you’re contemplating a course of ozone therapy for yourself or a loved one, do some homework and read a little about it first. If you have questions, leave them at the bottom of this Health Tip and we’ll do our best to answer them.
Your research on ozone therapy will reveal both yea- and naysayers. Don’t get swept up in unrealistic hype, but also don’t slam the door on a potentially useful therapy.
There are several centers in Chicago offering ozone therapy, including WholeHealth Chicago.
Since you’ll need at least ten treatments, consider both pricing and geographical convenience. I happen to know our prices are the lowest, but you’ll feel better if you verify this yourself. If you sense a hard-sell at any ozone center, exit pronto. Be an informed health care consumer.
And be well,
David Edelberg, MD