I think we all know about the fantastic advances that have been made over the past 50 years in conventional medicine. From amazing surgical procedures to biological anti-cancer agents, people who once had no chance of getting past their illness, now have a chance. That said, we can always do better. And that is where combining conventional medicine with all of the advances in natural medicine comes in.

In upcoming issues of Second Opinion, I am going to report on how ozone therapy can be combined with conventional therapies for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and infectious diseases to improve results and limit side effects. In this month’s issue, I am going to focus on infectious diseases.

Let’s start by remembering that cardiovascular illnesses, infectious diseases, and cancer account for almost all the deaths and disability in the world today. These diseases are also responsible for the incredible increases in the cost of medical care. Additionally, as we saw during the COVID epidemic, doctors often need all the help they can get when it comes to infectious diseases.

Ozone therapy has been used in medicine for over 120 years and is suddenly gaining more and more attention as a way to both prevent and treat the big three. That’s because it treats most of the factors that cause them.

To understand why ozone therapy is so valuable in these diseases, you first have to understand what it is, how it works, and what it does. It all starts with oxygen.

The oxygen in the air we breathe consists of two oxygen atoms. That’s because a single oxygen atom does not have enough electrons to be a stable molecule. So, it has to pair up with another single oxygen atom so that they can share electrons. That makes the pair a stable molecule, and that is the form of oxygen that is in the air. Ozone is a different form of oxygen. And this difference is what makes it so powerful as a medical therapy.

Ozone is a molecule consisting of three single oxygen atoms sharing the number of electrons that make two oxygen atoms stable. In other words, ozone does not have enough electrons. This means it desperately wants another electron. Ozone is formed in nature when an energetic force, usually lightning or ultraviolet radiation, is applied to regular oxygen.

This energetic force temporarily splits the oxygen into its two single oxygen atoms. The single atoms instantaneously recombine back into oxygen, but a portion of them combine into ozone. Medical grade ozone is produced in an ozone generator when medical grade oxygen is passed through an electrode through which an electrical charge is passed. The electrical charge splits the oxygen into its two single atoms. Roughly 97-98% of the single atoms recombine to form oxygen, but 2-3% of them recombine to form ozone. This combination of gases, regular oxygen (O2) and ozone (O3), is then collected into syringes for use.

Because ozone molecules desperately need electrons, when a doctor applies ozone to either tissue or blood cells, it immediately steals electrons from the cells. This shift in electrons forms molecules called peroxides. It is these peroxides that account for the various effects in the body, which are often critical when it comes to treating the big three. Ozone can be safely injected into the bloodstream, cerebral spinal fluid, body cavities, skin, muscles, and joints. It can also be applied topically. No matter where it goes, it has the same effects. For this report, I am going to focus on bloodstream therapy.

The technique for treating blood with ozone is called Major-Autohemotherapy or MAH. In MAH, an amount of whole blood, typically 100-200 ml, is collected into a container. Ozone gas is then injected into the container. The ozone immediately takes electrons from the blood cells and the other molecules in the blood and forms an abundance of peroxides.

The treated blood cells, along with all the newly formed peroxides, is then returned to the body where the energized blood cells and the peroxides circulate through the entire body, including the brain. The process takes about 30-45 minutes and can be safely and easily performed in any clinical situation.

Here’s what those peroxides do. The first thing they do is activate the Nrf2 signaling pathway. This pathway forms all the antioxidant enzymes that the body uses to neutralize free radicals before they can damage our tissues and create the inflammation common to all diseases. Professor Velio Bocci and his colleagues exposed cells to various concentrations of peroxides formed from ozone and reported that they turned on Nrf2 signaling in a dose-responsive manner. The more peroxides they used, the greater the Nrf2 signaling and the greater the antioxidant effect.

Other researchers have discovered that when they gave men and women three MAH treatments on alternating days, the levels of Nrf2 increased immediately. They specifically measured an increase in the antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase and catalase. Let me emphatically state that no antioxidant therapy is anywhere close to as effective as ozone therapy.

Ozone is also a potent immune regulator. During MAH, the peroxides also act to strongly stimulate the activity of the immune cells in the blood being treated. When they are reinfused into the body, these highly activated immune cells home in on the spleen, bone marrow, and lymph nodes where they further activate the entire immune system. The result is an enhanced, focused immune response to cancer cells and infections. This immune effect is also important for cardiovascular disease because infections are virtually always a significant part of what causes atherosclerotic plaque to form.

In addition to its antioxidant and immune-stimulating effects, ozone is also a metabolic stimulant. These three factors, Nrf2 activation, immune system enhancement, and metabolic stimulation are critical for both treating and preventing virtually every disease there is, including the aging process. Let’s look at how ozone therapy assists the conventional treatment for infections.

Perhaps the most notable clinical effect of ozone therapy is in the treatment of both acute and chronic viral and bacterial infections. Incidentally, ozone is not foreign to the human body. Researchers at Scripts Institute have shown that ozone is formed naturally by our antibodies so that they can neutralize microbes before they are engulfed and destroyed by special immune cells called macrophages.

Without this neutralization by ozone, our macrophages not only wouldn’t be able to destroy the microbe but would very likely be destroyed by the non-neutralized microbe. But that is not the only way that ozone controls and eliminates infections.

Cytokines are specialized proteins that regulate the immune response in many ways. One way is to keep the TH1 and TH2 helper cell immune systems in a state of balance. This is critical for viral infections because while the TH2 system is primarily needed for bacterial infections, the TH1 system is required for viral infections. And if one of these systems gets out of balance, it suppresses the other system.

Studies have shown that because of toxins, stress, poor nutrition, poor hygiene, recreational and pharmaceutical drug use, and vaccines, many people have a depressed TH1 system. This makes them very vulnerable to viral infections. The good news is that MAH ozone therapy stimulates the immune cells to produce the cytokines gamma interferon and IL2. These cytokines promote, activate, and strengthen TH1 immunity which is the key to eliminating both acute and chronic viral infections.

In addition to stimulating TH1 immunity, the peroxides formed from ozone directly damage the membrane (called a capsid) that surrounds and protects the virus from the immune system. This makes the now unprotected virus susceptible to antibodies. Ozone peroxides also interfere with the ability of the virus to reproduce by blocking its ability to penetrate and infect cells.

So, ozone therapy acts in three ways to help the body kill viral infections. One is by increasing the antiviral activity of the TH1 immune system. Two, by damaging their viral capsid so they can be killed by antibodies. And three, by blocking their ability to infect cells and reproduce.

A striking example of how ozone therapy can dramatically improve how we can treat even difficult viral infections was published by Franzini. I reported on this study when COVID-19 was active. The study looked at the effect of MAH ozone therapy on fifty COVID-19-positive patients who were admitted to the hospital with “severe impairment” of lung function.

All the patients presented with acute respiratory distress syndrome requiring oxygen-assisted ventilation along with CT-confirmed interstitial pneumonia. The average age was 75 years. Of these, 96% had other illnesses that made them extra vulnerable to dying: 24% were obese, 36% were obese and on medication for high blood pressure, 32% were obese and had type-2 diabetes, 2% had type-2 diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure, and 2% had chronic lung disease. Not a healthy group by any standards!

All were treated with standard medical care that included steroids, vitamin C, antibiotics, and fluids. Additionally, the patients were treated with MAH, 3-5 times a day for five consecutive days. What happened was amazing.

These patients had a survival rate of 96%. The published survival rate for similar patients in the USA treated with standard care alone is 25%. Do the math. That means that because we didn’t use ozone therapy in addition to standard care, 71% of the patients who died here from COVID-19 died needlessly. That is a shocking statistic! And that’s not all.

The hospitalization time was less than one-half of what has been reported with standard care only. The inflammation marker CRP (C-reactive protein) was reduced by 48.15%, D-dimer levels indicating excessive clotting decreased by 35%, PaO2/FiO2 increased by 4.5% indicating an almost complete recovery of normal lung function, and blood oxygen levels increased from 85% to 98%. All these effects play an important role in who lives and who dies from viral diseases.

Over the past 35 years, I have treated all kinds of acute viral infections from Hantavirus to West Nile virus, to influenza to Bird flu to meningitis virus and the results are always the same. The infections are quickly resolved when combined with standard care.

COVID infections are acute viral infections. But ozone is also effective for chronic viral infections such as herpes, Epstein-Barr, and hepatitis. Although many reported studies show this, I’ll report on just one because it is so remarkable. Zaky and his colleagues treated 52 patients with chronic hepatitis C who were PCR positive for hepatitis C and who had elevated serum liver enzymes for more than 6 months. They treated 40 with ozone. The other 12 patients served as controls and were treated only with herbal therapies.

There were significant improvements in the symptoms of the patients in the ozone group in comparison to the control group. The liver enzymes normalized in 57.5% of the ozone group compared to 16.7% in the control group. After 30 sessions with ozone, the PCR tests for Hep C became negative in 25%. After 60 sessions with ozone, that number increased to 44.4%. Negative PCRs happened in only 8% of the control group. These are truly amazing numbers!

Ozone therapy also works for bacterial infections that do not respond to antibiotics. I have seen this over and over in my 38 years of using ozone. Here’s an astonishing case of how ozone therapy saved a man’s arm and shoulder.

A young man called me up from out of state and told me that he had developed an infection in his shoulder after a shoulder surgery 18 months before. During the 18 months, his doctors did everything they could think of including two more surgeries and 18 months of intravenous antibiotics. Nothing was working and now the doctors said the only way to save his life was to amputate his shoulder and arm.

When he came to the clinic, he was still on his IV antibiotic, which had not been working. He had a fever, and his arm and shoulder were red, swollen, hot, and tender all over. He could not move his arm at all. I kept the antibiotic IV going and also treated the entire arm and shoulder with injections of ozone. At the same time, I gave him MAH treatments twice a day. In 6 weeks, his arm and shoulder were perfectly normal, and he was off the antibiotic.

You might wonder why I kept him on the antibiotic even though it wasn’t working. It’s because I have learned that the reason that antibiotics often fail is because they don’t work well in patients who are immune-system suppressed. Improve their immune system with ozone therapy and all of a sudden the antibiotic works. Professor Velio Bocci showed us this way back in the early 1990s.

First, Bocci generated peroxides by exposing blood to ozone. Then he exposed human immune cells to the peroxides to see what would happen. Immune cells kill microbes by producing molecules called cytokines.

When he exposed the immune cells to the peroxides, he discovered that the levels of whatever cytokines they were producing were increased by a factor of 200-400%! He found that the peroxides greatly amplified the immune response. This was true for every cytokine he measured including IL-1, IL-2, IL-6, IL-10, IL-8, IFN-g, IFN-b, GM-CSF, TNF-a, and TGF-b. It is this amplification of the immune response that has been shown to greatly improve the effectiveness of antibiotic medications while reducing resistance – something all infectious disease specialists should wonder at.

That’s just the beginning for ozone. In future issues, I will be reporting on how it can significantly improve the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

You can find practitioners who have been trained and certified by the American Academy of Ozonotherapy. If you are a practitioner and have not been trained in ozone therapy, please do yourself and your patients a favor and attend one of the academy training courses.

We have hands-on courses in the U.S. and in the U.K. and soon in the Middle East and India. You can learn more at the American Academy of Ozonotherapy. Whether you are a cardiologist, an oncologist, an infectious disease expert, or a homeopath, whatever specialty you are in, your results will be significantly better when you add in ozone therapy.