For more than a century, medical ozone has been used to disinfect and treat diseases, improve the body’s intake and use of oxygen, and activate the immune system. Ozone was proven to heal wounds, increase blood flow and provide anti-inflammatory relief during World War I, and was used as a treatment for people with HIV long before pharmaceuticals for the condition were available. Researchers say it is a safer alternative to conventional medicine to treating diseases such as arthritis, cancer, SARS, viral diseases and macular degeneration by inactivating bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, yeast and protozoa.
Despite its history of therapeutic benefits, there’s been much debate regarding the safety of ozone therapy. Critics, particularly the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), argue that ozone is a toxic gas and its use in medicinal practices is both dangerous and unethical. Most people understand the gas as the layer found in the earth’s stratosphere that protects the earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation or the air pollutant at a ground level commonly known as ozone pollution. This type of ozone is created when certain gases react with sunlight causing harmful air conditions.
It is true that ozone is harmful to the lungs but when we extend its use to the medical world, proponents of ozone claim that environmental ozone and breathing ozone is different from ozone therapy. According to ozone expert, Dr. Velio Bocci, ozone yields a different response based on the tissue that it’s exposed to in which when a judicious dose of pure, medical-grade ozone is applied just above the threshold level, it can stimulate a beneficial response in the blood.
He says, “this concept echoes an old intuition by Paracelsus (1493–1541), who wrote that: ‘the body possesses the high art of wrecking but also restoring health… Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.’”
Dr. Velio Bocci
Like any drug, including the ones prescribed by a doctor, we take on the risk of experiencing potential adverse effects. Ozone therapy is not without its own yet despite millions of treatments, it has a low number of published accounts of side effects.
As of 2017, ozone therapy is approved in twelve countries including Spain, Russia, Greece, China, Dubai, Brazil, and Italy. While it is not approved by the FDA, many doctors and practitioners from the U.S. continue to use ozone therapy and many organizations have emerged to represent them, the primary organization being the American Academy of Ozone Therapy. Their mission is to educate practitioners about ozone therapy and enhance its scientific credibility so that one day, it will be seen as a real medical drug of the future.
