“The world is facing a crisis of antibiotic resistance,” writes Dr. Robert Rowen in a paper just published in the journal Medical Gas Research.
Thousands of patients die yearly in the USA from infections that have failed to respond to anti-infectives. Alarms have been ringing about bacterial infection fatality resurgence, the end of the antibiotic era, a calamity in progress.
But where mainstream medicine keeps looking toward the possibility of new medications – or at least stemming antibiotic overuse to keep our current arsenal effective – they overlook one very important tool that exists in the integrative physician’s medical kit: ozone (oxygen) therapy.
As we’ve discussed before, ozone is kind of a supercharged oxygen. Instead of two-atom molecules – the form that the oxygen you breathe takes – ozone has a third atom. This makes it unstable – and what makes it a powerful antimicrobial.
But there’s more to it than that. As one 2017 paper put it,
copious volumes of research have provided evidence that O3’s dynamic resonance structures facilitate physiological interactions useful in treating a myriad of pathologies. Specifically, O3 therapy induces moderate oxidative stress when interacting with lipids. This interaction increases endogenous production of antioxidants, local perfusion, and oxygen delivery, as well as enhances immune responses.
As such, medical ozone – which is made by passing oxygen through a corona high arc discharge, resulting in a gas mixture of 1-5% ozone in oxygen – has a wide number of applications. Just as it can be harnessed for its antimicrobial power, it can also be used to relieve pain and support healing from chronic conditions ranging from coronary artery disease to autoimmune challenges to fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.
It can also be used to take your current good health to a higher level by supporting robust immune function, improving circulation, stimulating oxygen uptake by the cells, increasing antioxidant protection, and stimulating mitochondrial function.
Or it can be used to treat infection, as in the tick-borne illness case Dr. Rowen presents in his new paper:
A 56 year old male presented with an acute right thigh cellulitis from a tick bite which occurred 1-2 days before. At presentation he was afebrile, but with a rapidly spreading rash on his upper leg….
The patient was a long-term patient of our clinic. He had received ozone from us 3 years before for Lyme disease (without antibiotics), and fully recovered. He was offered antibiotics to take immediately for medical-legal reasons but refused due to his past success with ozone therapy. He did depart with a written prescription upon my demand. He received ozone therapy by the hyperbaric method described above, receiving 144,000 μg over one hour at an average pressure of 1.9 ATA. He returned the following photograph two days later reporting that he made good on his decision not to take antibiotics. The rash began disappearing the following day and disappeared on the second day.
We’ve seen similar results in our own office, as well. For instance, there was one patient with chronic Lyme who incurred a classic bullseye lesion with abruptly increased joint pain and paresthesias (a prickling or tingling feeling caused mainly by pressure on or damage to peripheral nerves) while on antibiotics for her primary infection.
Dr. Joe immediately provided direct intravenous ozone therapy plus an additional antibiotic. Within two days, she reported feeling better. By the third day or so, the lesion had cleared.
This is much faster than antibiotics can typically take effect.
More, the patient reports that she feels better than she has in more than a year, and we continue to see her improve.
This is the kind of patient story we love to see unfold – and even more, love to share!