{"id":30422,"date":"2022-09-05T15:46:19","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T20:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/blog\/?p=30422"},"modified":"2022-11-14T13:47:58","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T19:47:58","slug":"ozone-therapy-what-it-is-and-how-doctors-use-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/05\/ozone-therapy-what-it-is-and-how-doctors-use-it","title":{"rendered":"Infusions At Wholehealth Chicago #1: Ozone Therapy: What It Is And How Doctors Use It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you\u2019ve been to either of our centers, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen the large leather recliner chairs, often containing a patient, busy on their smartphone, tablet or reading a book and on the receiving end of an intravenous drip. Over the next few Health Tips, I\u2019ll be talking about what these infusions are used for and why it (correctly) seems you\u2019re seeing more of these occupied chairs with every visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although there are only a handful of medical centers in the Chicago area currently offering ozone therapy, their number is on the increase. Physicians of all stripes (M.D.\u2019s, D.O.\u2019s, D.C.\u2019s, dentists, nurse practitioners, and even veterinarians) are signing up for courses on ozone therapy, joining the American Academy of Ozonetherapy<\/a> and adding ozone modalities to their practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Ozone?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In case you were dozing that day in high school chemistry class, ozone is a form of oxygen made up of three oxygen atoms instead of our more familiar two atom oxygen. It\u2019s O3 rather than O2. High above the Earth, the fabled, but thinning, \u2018ozone layer\u2019 protects us from excessive ultraviolet radiation from the sun. A thinner ozone layer means more skin cancer and more climate change. Here on Earth itself, ozone levels correspond to the amount of air pollution, although the real villains in smog are hydrocarbons and nitrates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOxygen\u201d as therapy has really been around a long time. Once scientists learned how to generate oxygen and store it in tanks, oxygen became another tool in medicine, along with pharmaceuticals and surgical suites. If you\u2019ve ever been a hospital patient, you\u2019ve likely felt the plastic prongs in your nostrils from oxygen tubing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, pure inhaled ozone is definitely not therapy. Breathing in pure ozone is very irritating to your lungs and not good for you at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the confusion about ozone therapy, as well as the hostility toward it from conventional physicians, comes from a failure of perspective. We need \u2018water\u2019 for survival. If we drank five gallons of the stuff at once, we\u2019d get seriously ill and quite possibly die. Most prescription medicines are micro-dosed in \u2018milligrams\u2019 which is one thousandth of a gram. The tablet you swallowed was mainly filler and binder. A \u2018milligram\u2019 is too small to be seen by the naked eye. Even smaller, birth control pills are dosed in micrograms, a millionth of a gram. You don\u2019t take a pound of BCP, just a microgram. With ozone, like medicines, smaller is better. Or maybe like the famous quote from architect Mies van der Rohe, \u201cless is more\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Doctors use Ozone Therapy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So it goes with ozone therapy. Patients receive a tiny amount of this supercharged oxygen molecule, not for any one particular medical condition, but rather to make various systems in the body function more efficiently. Ozone heals the body and clears toxins simultaneously. It\u2019s used for a variety of chronic diseases<\/a> that are just not responding to conventional therapies alone. These diseases include cardiovascular problems, diabetes, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, \u201clong COVID\u201d (protracted symptoms after a bout of COVID), and chronic infections like Lyme and other tick borne illnesses, candidiasis, autoimmune disease, cancer, Parkinson\u2019s and ALS, Crohn\u2019s and ulcerative colitis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A quick pause here to insert something about \u2018aging\u2019. We all know we need oxygen to survive. No discussion. But as we age, our ability to efficiently utilize oxygen slowly but steadily declines. And with this inevitable deterioration of our oxygen extraction systems comes our susceptibility to chronic diseases. When toddlers get a bad cold or a skinned knee, they\u2019re usually all healed up in a couple of days. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve already discovered how your winter cold \u2018lasts for weeks\u2019 or that scratch on your arm is taking months to go away. A lot of this has to do with your declining oxygen utilization capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, here\u2019s today\u2019s takeaway. Ozone, administered in very small doses, seems to enhance our body\u2019s oxygen utilization systems. I\u2019d call the ozone dose \u201chomeopathic\u201d except conventional physicians get their knickers all twisted spluttering \u2018homeopathy\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, ozone works to:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n