Ozone chelation in clinical practice

By Katherine Shagoury

Environmental medicine providers should incorporate ozone chelation in to clinical practice, said Isadora Guggenheim, ND, at the 2019 Integrative Healthcare Symposium in New York City.

Ozone therapy is a form of chelation therapy, a medical procedure that involves administering chelating agents to remove heavy metals from the body.

Ozone has no receptors—its pharmacological mechanism of action is indirect, through its mediators, said Guggenheim. The response is dependent on the activation of nuclear transduction mechanisms’ signals, including nuclear factor-like 2 (Nrf2) and protein synthesis.

Ozone therapeutic indications are based on the idea that a low physiological dose of ozone may play important roles within human cells. Ozone does not work through free radical mechanisms, Guggenheim said. It works through the generation of many species of lipid peroxides.

While ozone itself lasts only microseconds in the blood, the reaction of ozone and blood lipids leads to production of more stable, while still highly reactive, oxygen species, such as peroxides. These react similarly and could mimic the pro-oxidant mechanism of immune system defense.

As soon as ozone is dissolved in plasma, or in water present on the skin surface or in interstitial fluids, it reacts with instantaneously with several substrates, including soluble antioxidants, albumin, and unsaturated fatty acids.

Ozone therapy has many benefits, Guggenheim said. It improves blood circulation and oxygen delivery, and enhances general metabolism by improving oxygen delivery. It upregulates cellular antioxidant enzymes and decreases free radical production. Ozone therapy also activates the immune system and enhances the release of growth factors, controls viral replication, kills microbes, and kills cancer cells, said Guggenheim. Activating the Nrf2 pathway has also been shown to prevent cancer, according to a 2011 study in Medical Gas Research.

Additionally, ozone therapy stimulates the neuroendocrine system, activates neuroprotective systems, helps to liberate heavy metals from tissue storage, and protects the inner mitochondrial membrane and entire electron transport chain. Maximal oxygen utilization as a result of ozone therapy means better fat burning, regulating nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD/NADH), and oxygen delivery to all tissues.

The numerous biological responses to ozone therapy also include increases levels of direct antioxidants, stimulating glutathione regulation, increasing levels of enzymes that detoxify oxidants and electrophiles, increasing phase II enzyme levels, inhibiting cytokine-mediated inflammation, reducing iron overload, recognizing, repairing, and removing damaged protein, protecting from apoptosis induced by oxidative stress, and increasing DNA repair activity.

Ozone is classified as a toxic gas, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has long prohibited use of ozone in medicine. However, persistence in the research and medical communities have brought ozone therapy back to focus, and there is renewed enthusiasm for efforts to allow the acceptance of ozone therapy in medicine.

“As in my opinion and evidenced by clinical cases,” Guggenheim said, “ozone chelation is a safe, effective, and time efficient protocol to reduce and eliminate heavy metal toxicity.”