In an age of increasing medical specialization, complex and sometimes questionable medical procedures, and expensive, often ineffective medications, many health care consumers are interested in getting back to basics. They are looking for safe and effective medical therapies that will naturally enhance their body’s innate healing powers. They are looking for therapies that cause a minimum of negative side effects and will not bring about their financial ruin.

Most of us feel that such therapies don’t exist. However, there are two simple, natural substances whose clinical use has been well documented in medical literature. Health care practitioners who have used these substances in this country have been threatened, harassed, and persecuted by state medical associations and the federal government, despite the fact that the substances have proved safe and effective in treating some of our most common serious health problems, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and HIV. Overlooked by the mainstream medical and dental professions, ignored by the government, and feared by the pharmaceutical industry, the substances are now being used by a rapidly growing underground of health care consumers. A small number of physicians who are tired of the expensive, dangerous, invasive, and often useless medical procedures used to treat these and other diseases are also turning to these substances, known as hydrogen peroxide and ozone, using them in a health-enhancing context known variously as bio-oxidative therapies, oxidative therapies, or simply oxygen therapies. Oxygen therapies have been used for over 120 years. They first appeared in mainstream medical journals in 1888. Since that time, they have been studied in many major medical research centers throughout the world.

Hydrogen peroxide is involved in all of life’s vital processes and must be present for the immune system to function properly. The cells in the body that fight infection (known as granulocytes) produce hydrogen peroxide as a first line of defense against invading organisms like parasites, bacteria, viruses, and fungi. It is also required for the metabolism of protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. As a hormone regulator, hydrogen peroxide is necessary for the body’s production of estrogen, progesterone, and thyroxine. It also helps the body regulate blood sugar and the production of energy in cells. Hydrogen peroxide has long been known medically as a disinfectant, antiseptic, and oxidizer. Clinically, it has been used to successfully treat a wide variety of human diseases—including circulatory disorders, pulmonary diseases, parasitic infections, and immune-related disorders—with few harmful side effects.

Ozone is one of three forms, called allotropes, of the element oxygen. Electrical sparks and ultraviolet light can cause ordinary oxygen to form ozone, which is probably why many people call ozone an energized form of oxygen. Ozone was first used therapeutically to disinfect wounds during World War I. It was later found that ozone can “blast” holes through the membranes of viruses, yeast, bacteria, and abnormal tissue cells before killing them. Ozone was the focus of considerable research during the 1930s in Germany, where it was successfully used to treat patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disorders, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and chronic bacterial diarrhea. As we will see later on in this book, there is evidence that ozone can destroy many viruses and abnormal tissue cells, including those related to hepatitis, Epstein-Barr, cancer, herpes, cytomegalovirus, and HIV.

Hydrogen peroxide and ozone hold great promise in helping to treat some of the most devastating diseases confronting humanity today. Together, they form the cutting edge of a new healing paradigm involving safe, effective, natural, and inexpensive forms of medical therapy. In the following section, I will introduce oxidative therapies and examine their theoretical basis.