Novel/Unconventional Methods for Cancer Treatment (3)

(3) Ozone Treatment: Using Oxygen to Kill Cancer Cells

How does the ozone treatment work?  First of all, we need to explain the difference between ozone and oxygen.  Ozone is a pale-blue triatomic gas (molecular formula O₃), that converts into oxygen (molecular formula O₂) under normal condition.  Ozone is a very strong oxidizing agent and maybe that is why it is being used instead of oxygen.  Secondly, it is believed that cancer cells are anaerobic and they will die under a higher oxygen condition.

One example of ozone therapy involves removing part of the blood from the body, saturating the blood with ozone, and then putting the ozone-rich blood back into the body.  Another example is to simply inject by I.V. a fluid saturated with ozone or oxygen into the body.  In both methods, ozone is gradually converted into oxygen in the body.  Both methods are based on the same theory that high oxygen concentration in the blood will kill cancer cells.

I may not disagree with the theory but I am not sure if this technology is good enough in practice.  In my opinion, there are potential issues to be answered: Will the method be able to deliver high enough concentration of oxygen to the tumor to kill cancer cells?  How about the potential side effects to normal cells?  It is known that too much reactive oxygen species (ROS) can be increased by chemotherapy, radiation, and many other factors.  In this case, the high oxygen concentration in blood could increase ROS in different organs and could be potentially harmful to some normal cells.

Some people believe that under higher oxygen concentration, cancer cells will die.  Theoretically, if cancer cells are placed under any conditions that are not suitable for them to grow, they will die.  The same thing happens to normal cells.  As I mentioned in the early sections, most cancer cells are derived from normal cells, thus, they are similar to normal cells in many ways.  Macroscopically speaking, for any conditions that normal cells can grow, cancer cells will grow.  However, cancer cells can grow under certain conditions that normal cells cannot grow. 

With that understanding, it is reasonably to conclude that a simple oxygen treatment might not work satisfactorily for cancer treatment and significant improvement may be necessary.  

© Jiajiu Shaw, 2016

All contents posted in this blog are extracted from the book "IS CANCER IN US", available at Amazon.

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