Oxygen "Therapy"

If you had an interesting chemistry teacher or even an interesting general science teacher you may have heard the rhyme: "Little Billy is gone from earth, his face you'll see no more- because what he thought was H2O was H2SO4." H2SO4 being colorless and liquid at room temperature, it has no apparent smell and if still is indistinguishable from water by sight alone. The implication of the rhyme is that poor little Billy was thirsty and accidentally drank some sulfuric acid (H2SO4) instead of water. While it's unlikely you'll ever come across a glass of sulfuric acid and drink it thinking it's water there is another colorless, ordorless liquid you could potentially fall victim to- especially if the wool has been pulled over your eyes by a proponent of so-called "oxygen therapy". This third clear liquid I refer to is H2O2- otherwise known as hydrogen peroxide.

Now, I'm not exactly knocking hydrogen peroxide here. I use both tooth paste and mouth wash that contain hydrogen peroxide and I keep a bottle of it to use as a disinfectant or to clean clogged ears or an ear infection. In fact, hydrogen peroxide has many safe as well as beneficial uses. You can use it to disinfect your counter tops and cutting boards, remove tough organic stains from clothing (be cautioned that it may also remove the dye) or organic residue from other surfaces, sanitize your toothbrush, clean small cuts or abrasions, and many, many more things. However, keep in mind that the hydrogen peroxide you buy in a drug store in that brown bottle or what is used in products like mouthwash is actually an incredibly low concentration of hydrogen peroxide and the label on that brown bottle explicitly warns you that it is intended for external use only. Both my mouthwash and toothpaste also state that they should not be swallowed and if they are swallowed to contact the nearest poison control center.

What I do intend to knock is something called "oxygen therapy". Oxygen therapy does not recommend, as you might expect, heading out to the nearest California-style oxygen bar and inhaling green apple flavored concentrated oxygen for an hour while you facebook on your netbook and pay exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege. The oxygen therapy guidelines don't even recommend deep breathing or quitting smoking or, in fact, any activity that increases the amount of oxygen in your blood stream beyond a single mentioning in a disconnected statement with no follow-up, that deep breathing, fresh air, and exercise are also 'very important'. Instead the proponents of oxygen therapy tout the manifold and seemingly miraculous medicinal benefits of hydrogen peroxide. Not the kind of medical benefits I was referring to before such as disinfecting cuts or unclogging cerumen-filled ears but outrageous claims like killing cancer cells or preventing cancer from forming as well as helping people suffering from AIDs, flu, asthma, heart disease, and gangrene among a long list of medical maladies.

The "science" behind their theory is based on two main things. One, that every cell in your body can produce H2O2 in order to fight bacterial infection and viruses so obviously ingested or injected hydrogen peroxide absolutely must have wonderful medical benefits for your body. After all if a little hydrogen peroxide breaks down a single bacterium that wormed into a cell surely a lot of hydrogen peroxide ought to break down cancer, get rid of gangrene, help people with AIDs, Multiple Sclerosis and even people with Alzheimer's disease. Two, hydrogen peroxide is a fairly unstable molecule and will quickly break down into water and oxygen. 30 ml of 35% hydrogen peroxide breaks down into 3.5 liters of oxygen. Since we as human beings need oxygen to survive surely getting more of it must be good for us. Really? Then why is it that there's also the wildly-popular antioxidant health craze? Perhaps because oxygen is what breaks down our cells (indeed, just like ferric metals people rust or more truthfully oxidize, too) and causes us to age? Right? So, why would you want to flood your system with it when you're already getting enough to survive (after all if you weren't you'd be dead)?

I first learned about "oxygen therapy" from a regular customer at the store I work in who comes in each day to buy a newspaper. This man is eighty years old (something that I wouldn't believe if I hadn't seen his birth certificate once the day he was renewing his driver's license) but I'd say he looks more like he could be in his sixties. He still works, seems to have energy and rarely seems to get sick. He talks up the "oxygen therapy" he's been doing every chance he gets. He claims that his original hair color is coming back in in his hair because of it and while to me it still looks totally gray he does have a lot of hair for a eighty-year-old man. He talks about the power of oxygen fighting cancer and just the other day was telling me a new one about how the arthritis in his hands the last couple of months has felt so much improved because of it.

Despite the fact that he's been doing this thing for a while I never thought much about it because the way he described ingesting it seemed bizarre. Basically, according to him and the website he told me I should check out (drinkh2o2.com) you have so many drops each day of "food grade" hydrogen peroxide. I, at first, assumed he was crazy because you can't have "grades" of a molecule. You can have solutions of a chemical but what they actually mean is that this hydrogen peroxide does not contain the normal stabilizing agents in typical drug store style hydrogen peroxide that are known to be harmful if ingested. And if he is doing so many drops in so much water that means he's drinking the kind that comes in a molarity that is 35% hydrogen peroxide. Not the few drops of the 3% kind I have in my cupboard that probably wouldn't cause too many problems but a concentration more than ten times higher? Even in relatively small amounts that can kill you. Hell, even in "relatively small" amounts 3% hydrogen peroxide can kill you. And proponents of "oxygen therapy" don't just recommend that you drink it they also suggest shooting up the stuff as a method of delivery.

When you use 3% hydrogen peroxide in a normal way and you get it on your skin it's recommended that you flush the area thoroughly with water. When you ingest it you can cause chemical burns and ulcers in your gastrointestinal tract as well as a dangerous build-up of gas in the stomach among other symptoms. If injected hydrogen peroxide will create bubbles in your blood stream and much like the clots and plaque they recommend you use it to destroy those bubbles can cause cardiac arrest with equal effectiveness. But that's not all you can win by ingesting or injecting hydrogen peroxide! All those claims about getting rid of gangrene and helping asthma and AIDs patients? All based on the fact that your cells produce hydrogen peroxide in order to help destroy bacteria and things like that. And that is a fact but the theory that ingesting or injecting it will have the same or greater effect inside your body is shaky at best. After all, hydrogen peroxide is produced in the cells in response to bacterium or viruses but hydrogen peroxide introduced into the body all the time does not have a specific purpose and can destroy your tissue as well as viruses and bacteria. Oh, and lest we not forget that claim about curing and preventing cancer it is completely and totally unsubstantiated. It even says that on the website (as per FDA regulations).

So if the bottom line is that it doesn't actually do what it claims and it can seriously harm or even kill you then why in the world would you do it? Aside from typical human irrationality there's the fact that their website trails into related and unrelated biological technical jargon mixed with complete bullshit and outright lies. Most of it sounds more or less legitimate because it's couched in scientific language but it only takes a little knowledge of highschool-level biology (if that) to start unraveling the supposedly scientific basis for believing their loads of crap. The rest you can easily turn up as lies through a few quick google searches that reveal actual scientific definitions and the context for facts and real data on the subject.

So if you've been considering (or encouraged to use) so called "oxygen therapy" I strongly recommend you do not do it. A good diet and exercising will be far more beneficial (and certainly not detrimental) to your health than hydrogen peroxide. And if you still don't believe me just read the FDA required disclaimer, the list of lovely potential side-effects, or google something like "poison control ingestion of h2o2". Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to run up and down the stairs a few times to get some actual health benefits from increased oxygen.