Healing with Love and Fresh Ozone
June 1998
By Suma Varughese
Dr. Rathna Alwa brings to India the controversial ozone therapy, which has even been used in treating AIDS and cancer, as well as other systems from the cutting edge of medical science and stirs a hornets’ nest
It’s one of the crowning ironies of the 20th century that in our vaulting aspiration for a higher quality of life, we have systematically destroyed the basics of survival. There’s a global shortage of water, and what little there is, is polluted. Our ravaged and despoiled earth is a straw away from annihilation. As for air, well, hear Bangalore-based Dr. Rathna Alwa, MD, MRCP (Edin), etc, on the subject: ‘When we started out as oxygen-breathing organisms, the atmosphere contained 30 percent oxygen. Today, oxygen content is only 14 to 15 percent. And a recent newspaper report put the oxygen level in Indian metros at 11 percent. We are being continuously poisoned!’
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So there we are. No water, no earth, no air. Mobile in one hand, laptop in the other, wired to the web—is mankind gaily prancing into the sunset of life?
Possibly. But when it comes to air, Dr. Alwa has a solution. Ozone therapy. ‘Ozone is the treatment of the 21st century,’ she says presciently. The concept is virtually unknown in India. Even doctors smirk at its mention. ‘There’s a hole in the treatment,’ quipped one, referring to the protective ozone layer in the earth’s atmosphere which is developing a hole, thanks to global pollution, and is letting in ultraviolet rays harmful to humans. Certainly, ozone therapy has the outlandish air of a California fad. But extreme situations call for extreme solutions. We may be better off ascertaining its efficacy rather than questioning its conventionality.
Responses are mixed. Ozone therapy has a respectable lineage dating back to a century. In 1885, the Florida Medical Association published Ozone, by Dr. Charles J. Kenworthy, MD, detailing the use of ozone for therapeutic purposes. After nearly a century of usage, ozone therapy is a recognized modality in 16 countries. Over 3,000 municipalities the world over use ozone to clean their water and sewage. The Net is overflowing with sites singing praises for this miracle cure. Cuba is a leading user of the therapy, followed by Germany. Ozone therapy is practiced in Russia as well.
All of Dr. Alwa’s assistants are required to have the treatment they administer. Dr. Alwa herself has an ozone bath every alternate day and pronounces herself to be in perfect health. ‘I can still do shoulder stands,’ she says.
On the other hand, conventional medicine has set its face firmly against it. In the USA, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) are opposed to the therapy, so much so that practitioners such as Dr. Alwa have been virtually driven out.
‘Ozone generators, which produce a toxic form of oxygen gas, have been touted as being able to cure AIDS. This is still unproven, and FDA considers ozone to be an unapproved drug and these generators to be unapproved medical devices,’ says a statement from the FDA.
Adds Dr. Tarun Sahni, senior consultant in internal medicine at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Delhi, India, which canceled a plan to introduce an ozone therapy chamber because of its unrecognized status: ‘Ozone is an element which neither exists in nature in that form nor is it a component of the body. Thus most scientists believe that it has no business being in the body. It may help in treating diseases caused by the proliferation of anaerobic bacteria and heal wounds. Beyond this, I don’t believe that ozone has any beneficial effect, and I would not prescribe it for any patient.’
Dr. Rathna Alwa, however, affirms that: ‘Ozone can help in any condition—from abscess to cancer.’ Indeed, there are documented instances of ozone being used to combat diseases like AIDS, cancer, hepatitis, sickle cell anemia, multiple sclerosis, and other conditions caused by malfunctional cells.
In 1911, Dr. Noble Eberhart, MD, head of the department of physiologic therapeutics in Loyola University, Chicago, USA, used ozone to treat tuberculosis, anemia, chlorosis, tinnitus, whooping cough, asthma, bronchitis, hay fever, pneumonia, diabetes, gout, and syphilis. During World War I ozone was used to treat wounds, trench foot, gangrene, and the effects of poison gas. Dr. Albert Wolff of Berlin, Germany, also used ozone for colon cancer, cervical cancer, and decubitis ulcers in 1915.
As if to corroborate its validity, Dr. Otto Warburg of the Kaiser Institute in Berlin, Germany, announced that the cause of cancer is lack of oxygen at the cellular level. For his research on the subject, he won two Nobel prizes in 1931 and in 1944.
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Indeed, agrees Dr. Jayant Doshi, a liver specialist based in Mumbai, India- disease itself can be said to be caused by the lack of oxygen in the bloodstream. It seems only logical, then, that an infusion of oxygen should restore the balance of health.
So what is ozone and how does it work?
Ozone is an activated, unstable, trivalent (three atoms) form of oxygen. Oxygen is O2; ozone is O3. Over a period of 20-30 minutes, ozone breaks down into two atoms of regular oxygen by giving up one atom of singlet oxygen (O). This singlet oxygen is a powerful oxidizing agent. When ozone enters the bloodstream and separates into O2 and O, the healthy cells, armed with antioxidants, absorb the O2 and repel the O, which zeroes in on the diseased cells and neutralizes them. At one shot then, ozone nourishes healthy cells and destroys malfunctioning ones. Ozone therapy, thus, provides all the benefits of oxygen therapy—which is believed to have anti-aging properties, improves body functioning, and promotes longevity by preventing cell death.
Ozone is also gradually but silently finding non-medical applications in India. An ozonized water bottle brand ICE was launched in 1994 by Renee Brar, a Delhi-based, Indian businesswoman, with Canadian collaboration. Water is passed through an Ozonator to ozonize it. ICE sells 500 cases (12 bottles each) a day, mostly in Delhi and other neighboring Indian states. Its retail price is Rs 14. Brar, who drinks only ICE, believes that it purifies the blood and keeps the blood pressure down. Some enterprising beauty parlors have also started using ozone in facials and other beauty and rejuvenation treatments.
Dr. Alwa is possibly the only doctor in India offering ozone treatment. A gentle, agile 70-year-old, Dr. Alwa was a practicing allopath in the USA with a virtual alphabet soup of degrees behind her—MD, NMD, MRCP, DTMH, FRSH, FICAN, FACIP, DipChel,—when she became interested in alternative therapies. Earlier she had specialized in obstetrics, gynecology, and plastic surgery. ‘I had a severe irregular heartbeat. Being a doctor, I decided against going to a cardiologist, because I knew I would become a cardiac cripple. At a seminar on nutritional therapy, I saw a doctor attempting acupuncture of the ear. I asked him if he could treat an irregular heartbeat. That night, for the first time in a long while, I slept without fear.’ Since then Dr. Alwa has added many more strings to her. One of these is ozone treatment.
Dr. Alwa’s house-cum-clinic, Bio-Oxidative Research Group, is a spacious two-storeyed structure at Kalyan Nagar, Bangalore, India, where she moved in from the USA some time ago. Her treatments have already attracted attention, thanks to a couple of articles in a local magazine.
In a small room sits a short-haired dynamic-looking woman, in what appears to be a plastic canopy that obscures all of her people save her face.
This is the Pegasus Aerobic Bath, invented by Dr. Alwa’s son and his partner, for which she holds the world rights.
Leelavati (46), a businesswoman, is in the midst of her seventh ozone bath and shows the zeal of a convert. Having suffered for 35 years from a very severe case of psoriasis that covered her with lesions and hard white scales, she is today, barring a few faint scars, as smooth-skinned as a newborn.
‘I would like all psoriasis patients to know about this treatment,’ she says earnestly. ‘I had earlier tried every available therapy.’
Her sister Soudamini has found relief from her eosinophilia after two ozone baths. ‘I no longer wake up breathless,’ she affirms.
All of Dr. Alwa’s assistants are required to have the treatment they administer. Dr. Alwa herself has an ozone bath every alternate day and pronounces herself to be in perfect health. ‘I can still do shoulder stands,’ she says.
Says Dr. A.B. Rao, a retired Air Force medical officer who is now assisting her at the center: ‘She came to the Institute of Aerospace Medicine for a lecture. When I retired, I helped her out because the treatment interests me.’
He himself has had some six baths and extols the treatment which creates well-being. A nagging groin strain also disappeared like magic after three baths. ‘A miracle,’ he exclaims. ‘Since it is a new field, it will take time to become popular, but it has a great future.’
Most of Dr. Alwa’s patients voice a similar refrain. Young Srinivas Nakul’s congenital bronchial nasal congestion has been considerably eased by the use of ozone baths and other therapies used by Dr. Alwa such as detoxifying an individual of his allergies. ‘About six weeks into the treatment, for the first time my son stopped coughing,’ says his visibly relieved mother.
Twenty-six-year-old Samantha Phillip, an air hostess with Lufthansa, was treated for inflammation of the kidneys with strong allopathic drugs including steroids. As a result, her skin started peeling and became covered with suppurating sores. Now, under Dr. Alwa’s treatment, she says: ‘The boils have vanished. My skin has not only stopped peeling but the texture is also better than it ever was.’ Her treatment included autohemotherapy.
Back in the USA, Dr. Alwa successfully treated a wide range of maladies, including the mother of all ailments: AIDS. Here is a case study from her logs there:
‘W.W., a 40-year-old, was brought in a moribund state, in the full grip of AIDS. His skin was deep yellow, indicating liver failure, the arms and legs were covered with Kaposi’s Sarcoma, his breathing was shallow and he was all skin and bones. Without much ado, I started ozone. Direct infusions as well as autohemotherapy. After the first day, the skin started to grow pink again. On the third day, he was able to walk. By the end of his treatment, his Kaposi’s had disappeared, his lungs had cleared. Today, he is living a normal life.’
Dr. Alwa treats AIDS patients in Bangalore too, though she is reluctant to take critically ill patients as she feels the need to concentrate more on healthy patients and help them stay that way. ‘Until you reach the point of no return, there is every possibility of attaining and maintaining perfect health,’ she says. AIDS and cancer patients, she maintains, have gone beyond the point of no return and must be careful all their lives, even if they have been cured. She adds: ‘I don’t claim to cure anything. The body is born with a self- healing capacity.’
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Dr. Alwa is currently experimenting with ozone gel, made by passing ozone through olive oil. ‘I had severe gum pain which disappeared after massaging it with ozone gel,’ she reveals. Then she straightens up and turns serious: ‘Ozone has no side-effects and no toxic effects. I can guarantee this.’
Why then was she hounded out of the USA and why is ozone treatment so controversial?
For those outside the circle of conventional medicine, the answer is obvious. ‘The drug companies are dead against it,’ says Dr. Alwa, ‘because it cannot be bottled or made into a pill. Ozone therapy is effective. It is easy. It is quick. But most importantly it is cheap. What are they going to do with all that AZT if people like me can treat AIDS patients for a fraction of the cost?’
The Internet is ablaze with reports indicting the FDA and AMA for their prejudiced stand. One site asserts: ‘In 1933, the AMA headed by Dr. Simmons, set out to destroy all medical treatments that were competitive to drug therapy. The suppression of ozone therapy began then, and it continues to this day.’
Others accuse the FDA of sabotaging AIDS clinical tests involving ozone, or of turning an indifferent eye to its many proven successes in treating AIDS. Dr. John Pittman of North Carolina had his offices closed down in the middle of the treatments for not having FDA approval. When he presented evidence of two HIV+ patients who turned negative after undergoing ozone treatment, government officials allegedly said: ‘We see no reason to pursue this.’
The medical community’s retort to this, as seen by Dr. Sahni of Apollo Hospital, Delhi, India, is: ‘Since ozone doesn’t come cheap, its promotion has fallen into the hands of commercially motivated companies who paint a rosy picture of the benefits without going into the side-effects and contraindications. Without knowing these, the therapy will not gain popularity, let alone acceptance by the masses or the doctors.’
Pro-ozone advocates have a reply to this. They quote an FDA report that stated that 1.5 million people in the USA were hospitalized due to the side-effects of allopathic drugs (prescribed and over-the-counter medications). In contrast, in a German study involving 1,044 ozone therapists and 3,84,775 patients, side-effects were noted at .000005 per application-much of which was caused by an error in operation.
Accusations and counter-accusations rage on. Where you stand in the matter perhaps depends on your stand on alternatives as opposed to conventional medicine in general.
Not that ozone is totally free of harm. ‘Ozone has one fault,’ reveals Dr. Alwa, ‘it is highly irritant to the mucous membrane, hence it cannot be breathed in.’ However, she dismisses fears of infection through baths patronized by AIDS patients: ‘The water and then the ozone are recycled after running it through ultraviolet rays.’
So what’s an ozone bath like? To get a firsthand experience, I decide to take one. It is my fourth day in Bangalore and I am dead beat. Also, I have about diarrhea and have been feeling enormously weak. After stripping, I enter the Pegasus bath. I pass the towel I am wrapped into the attendant, who hands me a small nozzle and seals the edge of the bath with the towel to keep the ozone from oozing out. The bath is switched on, and warm, nay hot, water spurts out of the nozzle. The attendant tells me to train the nozzle on all parts of the body, particularly the painful and troublesome spots. I have just been treated for a cyst in my navel area, and I ask her if the shower will damage it. I am instead told to train the nozzle on it for healing. For 20 minutes I spray myself vigorously. It is hot in the bath, but a fan placed close by keeps me refreshingly cool. I enjoy myself thoroughly and the exhaustion disappears like magic. The attendant returns to release me, lifting the towel from the edges of the bath. I get a whiff of the forbidden gas. But it smells, alas, of thunder and the seashore-ozone is naturally released into the atmosphere during a thundershower. It is also abundant at seashores.
Stepping out of the shower, I dry myself and dress. I am then asked to lie down on a wooden slide, with my feet on the higher end. The idea is to restore to the brain the blood supply that the bath has drained away. With my cheeks a fiery red, I return to Dr. Alwa, ready to take on the world.
There is a corollary to this. My diarrhea disappeared, but on returning home, I found my navel filled with pus. Obviously, the cyst has reopened. My allopathic doctor, whom I call from Bangalore, warns me not to do anything to it and return to Mumbai. I do so, and am subjected to a stiff course of 12 injections, the alternative being surgery. I give in, but write to Dr. Alwa for advice. The ozone must have released the pus trapped inside, she tells me, and a few more baths would have healed me. Perhaps she was right. But would I have dared to take the risk? I recall my cure from indigestion and my sense of rejuvenation with gratitude. Perhaps if Dr Alwa had been in Mumbai, I might have taken those baths—and allopathy be damned!
Alwa’s futuristic treasure box
Ozone therapy is merely one in a large spectrum of therapies that Dr. Alwa practices. She says: ‘We offer the patient complete evaluation, detoxification, desensitization, nutritional and diet counseling, and appropriate treatment which may include chelation, ozone treatment, craniosacral therapy, orthomolecular therapy, acupuncture, hypnosis, heavy doses of vitamins-all based on the patient’s unique needs.’
Here’s how Dr. Alwa’s treatment works:
When a new patient enters her clinic, he is put through a thorough examination. This includes checking reflexes, heartbeat, pulse rate, and noting down personal history. The patient is then put through the biotron, a rectangular box with two cathodes, one of which is held by the patient. Dr. Alwa takes the other and gently uses its tips to probe various acupressure points on hands and feet. This gives a good picture of the state of your organs, and therefore, health.
The next step is to check out toxins within the system. Tiny vials of mercury, lead, etc are placed on the biotron. Your body’s reaction to these substances is then registered via the cathode into a calibrated meter.
The same technique is used to identify allergies within the system. According to Dr. Alwa, almost everyone is allergic to something or the other. These allergies, when neglected, cause toxins to build up within the system, eventually leading to ill-health.
Finally, a few drops of blood are analyzed on a fiber optic neutron microscope. This is known as live cell analysis, for the blood is analyzed while it is still ‘alive,’ rather than after being contaminated through preservatives. The microscope is connected to a TV monitor which presents a blown-up picture of the state of your blood. The sight is fascinating, as Dr. Alwa points out red blood corpuscles and white blood corpuscles. My RBCs were slightly elongated, a sure sign of exhaustion, and clumped, which meant poor circulation. Dr. Alwa traces these shadowy images with an expert’s ease, building up an accurate and detailed picture of the patient’s health. The treatment is outlined on this basis.
An elderly couple was sitting in the main hall, with what seemed to be a drip-like device attached to one arm each. This is the chelation-a treatment that involves being fed intravenously with a solution of EDTA (a synthetically produced amino acid), minerals, vitamin, and longevity supplements. ‘Chelation rids blood vessels of plaque and prevents aging,’ says Dr. Alwa. ‘It also neutralizes free radical damage.’
The husband, M.V. Nath (62) is here seeking relief from a 70 percent blockage of arteries. On to his sixth chelation, Nath’s nightly chest pains have ceased and he feels more active. However, he hasn’t as yet had a medical test to determine any actual reduction in the blockages.
Nath’s wife Gita (52), an amateur singer, suffered from a damaged voice and ulcer after taking an antibiotic. That she is at all audible is thanks to chelation treatments and the simultaneous detoxification.
Other treatments that Dr. Alwa specializes in are oracular therapy, acupuncture on the ear, hypnosis, and cranio-vascular therapy. This last involves manipulating bones of the cranium to treat autism and attention-span disorders.
The crux of Dr. Alwa’s treatment, however, lies in detoxifying and desensitizing: she administers drops to rid the body of accumulated toxins as well as to desensitize it from allergies. Her recipe for healthy living is: ‘Detoxification, nutrition, hydration, oxygenation, and exercise.’ Her idea of a nutritive diet is free of processed food, cola, pork, and beef.