Ozone treatment

[CLLBill]

Does anyone know about ozone treatment for cancer? I've talked with a naturopath doctor who is positive about it. He says he can treat CLL by infusing blood with ozone, outside the patient, then sending it back in via IV. He says it's a very common treatment in Germany but not in the US. The ozone is supposed to be good for healthy cells and kills cancer cells.

[Wchdale]

I would sure like to know more about it? Have they got any clinical data available?

[AussieNeil Administrator]

Ozone treatment is considered an alternative therapy and to quote Wikipedia 'Ozone therapy is a form of alternative medicine treatment that purports to increase the amount of oxygen in the body through the introduction of ozone. Various techniques have been suggested, with purported benefits including the treatment of cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis, among others. There is no credible, peer reviewed evidence to support the use of ozone as a type of medical therapy.' (My emphasis) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone...

Under Safety, the Wikipedia article mentions 'Serious complications reported from the use of this therapy include the development of hepatitis and also include five reported fatalities.' referencing the book by Ernst E (January 2001). "A primer of complementary and alternative medicine commonly used by cancer patients" Professor Edzard Ernst is the world's first professor of complementary medicine and has studied homeopathy and practised this and many other alternative treatments.

This PubMed article on Ozone Therapy: A clinical review

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

That article shows that it may have promise in a few medical areas but no cancer treatment trials are listed.

I note from your reply to the recent IVIG post that you've had CLL for 8 years and have stable blood counts. You may never need treatment, other than IVIG to maintain your immunoglobulin levels, which tend to drop (but not always) after living with CLL for many years.

These links provide three lists of recommended CLL specialists. I strongly recommend you seek one near where you live, for the simple reason that seeing a CLL specialist has been shown to extend survival time by several years compared to seeing a non-specialist.

cll-nhl.com/p/cllnhl-doctor...

cllsociety.org/toolbox/cll-...

Meanwhile, this 3 part series includes a collection of our community's tips for living well with CLL:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Neil

[JosephVidmar in reply to AussieNeil]

Dear Neil,

I am not surprised that you responded. I expected it. It is a pattern that if anything about alternative medicine or healing is mentioned, you are all over it like a bulldog on a bone with this evidence-scientific proof-peer review stuff. After you read the books of Drs. Goldacre and Ionnides and remember that only 30% of 5-star peer reviewed studies can be reproduced, then your point of view will be more balanced so that you will not quote the out-of-context claims of right wing CSICOP fanatics like Prof. Ernst.

In matters of evidence and proof, there are two basic errors that are made in science....

There is tough proof (Type II error), which eliminates most possibility of accepting something false, but the price to pay is to reject more often those things that might be true.

There is soft proof (Type I error), which is more likely to find something true, but is more likely to accept something false also.

Although I was the managing editor of a refereed journal in psychology, I am Type I. I can do both. You present yourself as Type II in a "my way or the highway"

context. It is a choice and it would be correct to respect each other's choice.

There is little evidence for IV Ozone Therapy because there is no 10,000% profit in it. Ozone is free, the practitioner can make it in their office and it cannot be hijacked by patent. The CEOs of pharmaceutical companies have said they are not humanitarian organizations doing philanthropy. They have a legal obligation to make maximum profit for their shareholders.

They have a 50 year old paradigm they have driven into the dust that does not work. They make more "profit" if their drugs do not work. If the drugs they sell for thousands of dollars worked and the patient was cured, then the patient wouldn't need the drug anymore would they.

It is my hypothesis that allopathic medicine will never find a cure for cancer. They would lose too much money. I will continue to be Type I and continue to look for alternatives and I do not expect to be sneered at by anyone who does not know their science.

In conclusion Neil, I think you are absolutely brilliant and the most knowledgeable person about CLL I have ever read. Time and time again I have learned from your posts and I thank you for that. I would trust your judgment more than the six yoyo oncologists I have been to see this last year.

The last scenario before I left for Goa was that the oncologist thought I had CLL and the hematologist thought I had lymphoma. I think I have a co-morbid condition of Toxic Mold Syndrome. Who knows? Sound familiar?

Dr. Joseph

Prof. Psychology and Gifted Education (Ret.)

[AussieNeil Administrator in reply to JosephVidmar]

Hi Dr Joseph,

With your speciality, I expect you should be able to explain why intelligent people such as yourself prefer alternative treatments such as ozone therapy, where it is impossible to find reputable evidence of the treatment being effective for CLL rather than proven treatments like the gold standard CLL treatment FCR, where there are thousands of papers describing what genetics correlate with what remission and survival times, what side effects to expect and how to mitigate them and so on. Irrespective of type I and II errors, we have hundreds of community members that can personally attest to how FCR gave them their life back, with a dearth of members reporting anything like that for any alternative treatment. A friend I met through the Australian Leukaemia Foundation owes his life to the FCR CLL8 trial and I'm hopeful that given how long he has been in remission, he is in the group of approximately 30% of FCR patients that are effectively cured.

Can we agree that alternative medicine is a huge industry, less well regulated than evidence based medicine, but still provided by practitioners that make a living out of providing services, not philanthropy and purchase equipment and services to run their businesses. Ozone generators are available from about $800: promolife.com/ozone-oxygen/... with calibration testing services from $175: promolife.com/ozone-generat...

Or did you really risk your life with an ozone generator from Alibaba (available from about $200), or one put together by Dr. Aggarwa? I expect that Dr. Aggarwa purchased the ozone generator from a reputable company, rather than making it using free components and free labour and providing your 47 sessions free.

I can appreciate how difficult it must be to not know what blood cancer you have, but again, perhaps you can explain the thought processes of why you'll travel to India for treatment for an ill defined cancer and not go to a CLL specialist that could tell you exactly what you have. We know that cancer treatment success critically depends on knowing which body cells are cancerous, which for B-cell lymphomas, of which CLL is just one, varies by lymphoma type. You may have more than one lymphoma - it's rare, but a few other members have reported having several lymphomas. Sadly, lymphomas do impact our immune system, so unfortunately, we are more susceptible to fungal infections which can be extremely difficult to eradicate. Again, CLL specialist centres have experience in successfully treating fungal infections in lymphoma patients.

Surely you recognise that through your hypothesis that allopathic medicine will never find a cure for cancer, you are preventing yourself from at least achieving a remission from your condition and possibly even a cure?

Neil

[gymbunny1 in reply to JosephVidmar]

I just read your post on ozone therapy. Wondering if you went ahead.im going to try it soon

[JoanneIO]

Related but not the same:

A clinical trial on hyperbaric chamber as part of conventional treatment for metastatic cancer. Lead researcher is Dom D'Agostino in Florida.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[JosephVidmar]

I just got back from Goa, India where I had 47 sessions in 3 months of Ozone Therapy with Dr. Shika Aggarwal, MD at her very nice, clean clinic in Sangolda, 15' from the beach.

When I got to Goa Nov. 2016, I felt I was at death's door, that all my life energy had been sucked out of me. After Ozone infusions every which way- IV, out of the body/infusion with ozone/back in again-in the ears-rectal- I felt life's energy again and able to take care of myself. It was a significant change. Many of my friends on Candolim Beach commented about it.

For me it was not a cure, but it was definitely an improvement and a support. Supposedly it increases efficacy of the immunological system. I was having 4 sessions a week and Dr. Shika was quite honest about it requiring a booster session at least once month. Unfortunately for me, although it is relatively common in Europe, Germany, India, there is not one doctor here in Taiwan that I can find who is doing IV Ozone Therapy so that I can follow up,

Dr. Shika's website is healthyhealinggoa.com or just google search for a medical practitioner closer to where you live.

[AussieNeil Administrator in reply to JosephVidmar]

Thanks for stating that ozone therapy from Dr Shika's clearly alternative medicine practice was not a CLL/cancer cure - and I would hope that after 47 sessions you'd find it provided improvement and support!

You might find this 2010 PhD paper investigating the effect of ozone treatment on Erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein and Glutathione - important markers of body inflammation and blood antioxidant status. The introduction mentions that 'Scientific papers that described studies on the effects of ozone and/or ozone therapies in relation to blood provided contradicting results.' scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/...

The paper concludes: 'The results obtained in this study demonstrate the difficulty that previous studies had in pinpointing an effect of ozone therapies. It appears clear that the ozone therapies have to be tailored for the individual as there is no general formula for their effectiveness. It is also possible that the blood may not be an appropriate media for testing the effect of ozone therapies as the blood antioxidant capacity may be able to counteract some of these effects.'

As is common with many alternative treatments, there doesn't seem to be any strong evidence for its effectiveness., which is why it remains alternative medicine rather than simply 'medicine'.

Neil