Hello everybody and welcome to the vP Life podcast, brought to you by vitalityPRO.

My name's Rob and I'll be your host on today's episode.

Today we're joined by Dr. Andreas Goddeeris, a medical doctor based in

Ibiza who has a passion for functional medicine and in particular ozone therapy.

During our discussion today, Andreas and I take a deep dive into what

ozone therapy is, its history, and why it's not more mainstream.

We also discuss how it works and why it's an effective option when traditional

treatment options fail or are ineffective.

As usual, we get through a lot in today's episode, so be sure to check out the show

notes and transcript should you need them.

Good morning, Andreas.

Thank you for joining us today.

I know we're going to have a pretty deep dive into Ozone shortly, but before we

sort of get that far into proceedings, would you just like to introduce yourself,

who you are, what you do, et cetera?

Well, thanks Rob for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

So my name is Andreas Goddeeris.

I am from Belgium, from the Flemish part, the north part of, uh, of Belgium.

So I'm, uh, graduated as a general practitioner.

I'm also emergency physician.

I worked 15 years on the emergency in the emergency room.

I also studied sports medicine and functional medicine.

And three years ago, I moved to Ibiza with my wife and two daughters to

start, uh, working in a practice here.

In Ibiza, where I mainly focus on, well, general practitioner, uh, and

functional medicine and ozone therapy.

That's amazing.

I mean, that, that's quite the, the move from Belgium to Ibiza, I assume

the sunshine was the major drawcard.

Was it?

Yeah, that's, uh, indeed, uh, a major one.

The climate here is fantastic.

It's almost always sunny and that does a lot to a human being.

And if you see the blue sky instead of the grey uh, Sky and rain.

So yeah, that's that's a big thing.

So that's it's great to be here.

Yeah No, I can definitely attest to that.

No, I'm sure I'm actually quite envious.

It's I love the UK It's it's it's definitely home.

But at this time of year, we're recording on October now You sort of open the

curtains and it is just grey and you know It doesn't really do much for your

state of mind when you're constantly Sort of surrounded by well, no sunlight

and We can definitely get into the melanocortican pathway and melanopsin

and sunlight at some stage, but maybe not just yet, but yeah, sunlight

is, is, is important, definitely.

And um, specifically ozone, what drew you to ozone?

I mean, I, and you, you mentioned that you're a functional

medicine practitioner, but.

Um, you seem to have found your, your group, so to speak, specifically

with ozone, what's, what got you specifically into ozone?

Why were you drawn to this methodology, say more so than maybe taking a gut

centric approach or an immune centric approach like maybe other physicians do?

Well, like in the beginning was when I was graduated, as I mentioned, I worked

15 years on the emergency department.

And so in the beginning I just did that.

So I was very in the classical system.

And I noticed that we can do a lot of things.

It's good that the classical system exists, that, uh, medication exists,

but it's mainly focuses on, uh, healing in a very advanced stage of sickness.

And it does, it doesn't do anything preventive, like the acute stage.

So.

Again, it's very good that it exists, that antibiotics exist, that we can do

cardiac surgery and stuff like that.

But more and more, I had the feeling I want to do more with what I do than just

treating people who are already that sick.

So yeah, I started looking and I came up to, in the world of functional medicine,

where it's a lot more preventive.

You can actually prevent of, of getting sick and it's, it's lifestyle medicine.

And that's what I find so intriguing that just by adapting your lifestyle

that you can prevent sickness.

It's, it's, it's incredible.

So I mainly focus on, on the typical things, food, movement, nutrition,

uh, stress reduction, uh, mindsets.

And those are like, for me, and, uh, you can add some stuff

into that, like supplements.

Other, uh, therapies, complementary therapies.

There are a lot of complementary therapies.

And for me, and say, because maybe also I'm a sports physician, I think the

ozone therapy is very nice to work with because you can do a lot on a systemic

level, but also on a local level.

For example, people with osteoarthritis, you can do ozone injections

directly in the, in the joint, or the knee, the ankle, the hip.

And you can use it systemically.

You can use intravenous treatment or rectal insufflation

to have a systemic effect.

So you can work with it on many domains and it's, it's for me, it's, it fits

right into the way I want to practice medicine, uh, to help people and to make

them feel better, to prevent sickness or to help them even better when they are

sick, but in a way that they don't have the adverse effect of certain medications.

And more to have a good effect in the longterm than just, ah, we're going

to give you a medication without also like knowing what is the cause of the

disease of what is really causing it.

So that's for me fits perfectly in what I want to do and how I want

to help people in my practice.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Specifically regarding the use of ozone quickly before we continue in joints.

Um, when you're injecting it into a joint, is that called prolotherapy?

Am I correct,

uh, prolotherapy

or is that something separate?

Is is one treatment you can do that's with, for example, prop

cocaine, CH reel, those are, uh, ingredients that you can inject.

And then you have the prolozone and that combines prolotherapy with ozone therapy.

Yeah.

So, uh, yeah, prolotherapy is it stimulates the healing, reduces

inflammation, and that you can combine with ozone therapy.

So you can also inject procaine, thromale into, for example, a joint.

And after that, inject also the ozone.

And that's the combination of prolotherapy and ozone therapy, which

is also mixed in, in a word, prolozone.

I got you.

Definitely something we'll chat about in a minute.

Before we continue, I'd just really like to sort of maybe delve into

some of the history of ozone.

I know this is something you're fairly well versed in, but when did

ozone start finding its way into the sort of the modern medical system?

Well, maybe not the modern medical system, but into functional health

care or alternative health care.

When did it sort of first make its foray into it?

And, um, yeah, when we can go from there

well, it's,

it's ozone is actually already discovered in the 19th century.

So it's, it's already long used for, for certain things.

Uh, there already existed an ozone generator in the 19th century.

And in the beginning of the 20th century, it was already used to treat, uh,

like a dozen pathologies, pathologies.

For example, during World War I, they used it to treat gangrene or to

treat intoxications with mustard gas.

So people were really treated with that.

It was really a mainstream approach to, to treat infections and stuff like that.

And then by the year 19,

I didn't think there was, oh, sorry, sorry for interrupting.

I was just going to say, I didn't actually think there was, uh, there was

anything you can do about, uh, sarin gas poisoning or mustard gas poisoning.

I thought it was fairly final.

I think I remember the poem by Wilfred Owen, I think was Dulce et

Decorum Est. It was a particularly unpleasant poem about soldiers being

poisoned by sarin gas in the trenches.

Sorry, anyway, um, that's surprising to me.

I didn't

It is, it is very difficult to treat, of course, and, uh, but in those days,

they tried with the things they had.

It was not the stage yet where, where modern medicine

with drug therapy was used.

So, but they had ozone in those days, so they used it.

And in some cases, they could They had success with it, for example, to

treat soldiers with severe infections at the feet or other infections.

Well, ozone in high dose, it really kills bacteria, it kills viruses, so

you can really treat people with that.

So, but by the year 1929, there were already 114 pathologies who

were treated with ozone therapy.

And then in the in the year 1933, there was a big turnaround because then

the American Medical Association, they signed a mandate with the government

to actually eliminate and any medical treatment that's undermined or was

deemed to be competitive to drug therapy.

So that was really the rise of, of drug therapy at Big Pharma already started.

So they signed a mandate with the government.

And that was like, yeah, okay.

The suppression of the, the complimentary, well, in those days, not complimentary,

but, uh, for example, the suppression of ozone began and that's how it became

a complimentary treatment or also known as an alternative treatment.

It's not mainstream, but it.

It will still continue to be used, but not in as high quantity as before.

So, like you say, Big Pharma came and Big Pharma, again, it's good

that medications exist, but of course they want to make a lot of money.

And, um, for example, on ozone, uh, you, you, you cannot earn a lot of

money because you cannot patent it.

There's no, no, it is a gas that is in the environment and the atmosphere.

So you cannot say, ah, I'm going to patent ozone and I'm going

to make a medication of it.

And then I can distribute that and earn a lot of money with it.

So for big pharma, pharma, it is not very interesting.

So, but it's, it's, it's been continued to used a lot, maybe not in Europe

as much, but for example, in Russia, it states it kept on using a lot to

treat infections and stuff like that.

And nowadays, more and more, it comes up again, more to, to be used as a treatment.

In private medicine, maybe not in public health system, but in private medicine,

more and more people are using it, but because also they see the benefit of it.

And there's also more and more studies that come out.

People do.

Case studies or bigger studies.

Of course, you don't have with ozone therapy the big Million dollar

costing studies that big pharma does because there's no money for that

Yeah

but more and more you see that there are a lot of studies that's showing

that ozone works for example in 2010 The International Scientific Committee

on Ozone Therapy has been raised and that's in Spain by a Spanish guy and he

has, yeah, made a committee to be sure that there's also like more protocols to

follow because, of course, if something is not very good, possible to read

about, everybody does a little bit what he wants and what he thinks is good.

But since 2010, every five years, uh, so the, the ISCO makes a declaration and

it's called the Declaration of Madrid.

That's a big book where there are protocols, where there's, uh,

references, clinical applications, and that's a good reference book for, for

everybody who practice ozone therapy.

And in that way, there can be more like unified therapies, uh, if you work with

ozone protocols and stuff like that.

That's it.

There's a good reference and, and in that book, there are so many

articles, uh, on ozone therapy.

It's quite amazing.

Yeah.

And more and more it's, if, if because of that, it's, it can be seen also as a,

as a real complimentary treatment that is not like only alternative in my eyes,

of course, but, uh, but, uh, I hope that one day that ozone therapy will be used

again in, in classical system, because maybe In the future, there will be, for

example, for antibiotics, my opinion is that in maybe some decades that

antibiotics will not function as good as now because there's a lot of resistance.

Bacterias become resistant, there are already a lot of multi resistant

bacterias that cannot be treated.

And then ozone can be a very good alternative to, to use for, uh,

people who are infected and who do not respond on antibiotics.

Yeah.

That would be fantastic.

But, uh, but yeah, I don't have a mirror ball, so, uh, I cannot predict the future,

but let's hope that it, uh, it will come.

Yeah.

No, it's definitely made a resurgence of late.

I think specifically in the, again, the functional medicine sphere and

the podcast sphere, I think it's just.

It's becoming more well known by a lot of people and especially a lot of individuals

who have got these retractable, sort of, should we say, just to stay safe,

post viral fatigue types of issues.

We won't be saying the C word in case we get moaned at.

But, um, yeah, it's definitely made a resurgence of late.

Sort of looking at the mechanics of it then.

What is ozone actually doing?

I know it has a hormetic effect in the body.

But beyond that, mechanistically, how is it treating individuals with

such a wide variety of conditions?

Uh, it seems to be effective in everything from bacterial infections

to viral infections to, to gut issues.

And as you pointed out earlier too, issues that are more systemic and

sort of almost inflammatory in nature.

So your immune conditions like arthritis and such.

How does it, how does this sort of fairly, is innocuous the right word,

little molecule have such a wide, uh, sort of gamut of, um, use cases?

Well, so if, if ozone therapy, if we speak of a ozone therapy, so we

use the ozone gas and to, to have a beneficial effect on the body.

So how do we make that?

And that's, that's quite important that to say that ozone is made from oxygen.

So you need an oxygen bottle, you need an ozone generator, and then there's

made a mixture of ozone and oxygen.

So there's always, it's always a mixture that is administered.

And ozone being a combination of three oxygen molecules.

Yes.

Ozone is.

Like if you speak, if you speak of, of ozone, it's O3 and uh, oxygen is O2.

So ozone is a, a gas, it, it actually comes from the name ozein.

That's a Greek word.

And that means to smell because it has a very, a very penetrant, uh, odor.

It's, if you smell it, you immediately, oh, what's that?

What's that smell?

So ozone comes from that work, uh, words.

And it's also.

For example, when lightning strikes on the earth, it's, it, ozone is formed, right?

It's also formed when, uh, in certain laser printers, yeah?

So that's why they are, uh, in most cases equipped with active, uh, coal filters,

because if ozone comes in the environment, It's not good for the airways.

That's why it has a little bit of a negative people in most

of the connotations because for example, if there's a lot of

smog, it's a byproduct of smog.

If there's a lot of pollution, very hot weather, ozone is also formed.

And then they say to people who have airways who are not good, like asthma.

COPD, uh, to stay inside.

Mm-Hmm.

. Because if you inhale ozone, it's not good for the airways.

And the reason for that is that ozone, uh, that the, the cells on the airway

tract are not equipped with antioxidants.

Uh, that can, uh, because ozone is very, very oxidative substance.

And that's, uh, exactly what it does in the body.

So when you, when you inject it in the body.

The ozone will interact with certain substances.

For example, the polyunsaturated fatty acids.

And the interaction of ozone with, for example, the lipids

of polyunsaturated fatty acids, it makes an oxidative reaction.

And that makes that in the body, reactive oxygen species are formed.

Like hydrogen peroxide, superoxide, hydroxyl.

And these have a very precise effect on immune cells, on red

blood cells, on the bone marrow.

And that's actually what the ozone does.

What also has formed are LOPs, and those are lipid oxidative products.

And these are lipids that are oxidated.

And the difference between the reaction oxygen species and the LOPs

are that the reactive oxygen species are, have a very short half life.

So they are formed and they do their, they do their work and they disappear.

And the LOPs, they have, they tend to accumulate.

And that's why.

If ozone therapy is administered, uh, frequently.

So these, uh, LOPs they tend to accumulate and have better

and better effect on the body.

And the, the effect exactly is a hormesis effect.

And it's like you said at the beginning.

So.

It's, it's, it's all about the dose and hormesis is like in medicine is the

phenomenon that substance in high dose can cause damage to the body, but in low

dose it can have very positive effects.

And that's the same with ozone.

You can compare it with, for example, if somebody does weight

training and he has a certain weight.

He has to lift with his muscle.

If he does, if he uses the right weight, the muscle will, will get better.

And we'll say, okay, I have to react better to that

step on adaptional reaction.

If you use from the beginning, for example, too heavy weights, you can

damage the muscle and That extends that there's more damage than healing

and that your muscle is going down or your tendon is, is, will be broken down

and there's more damage than healing.

So it's a hormosis effect of the ozone therapy that is very important.

Okay.

Just to touch on something very quickly, you mentioned that when ozone

enters the blood, it, it binds to, uh, was it polyunsaturated fatty acids?

Was that correct?

Would that not then produce oxidized unsaturated fatty acids, which are

potentially fairly atherosclerogenic?

There's obviously a lot being said in the sort of the health

sphere and the diet sphere at the moment about these unstable fats.

Uh, so not necessarily your saturated fats, but your polyunsaturated

fats becoming damaged and ending up as a sort of a peroxide as such.

Is ozone then sort of damaging those fats to the extent where they are

then becoming damaged, uh, damaging to epithelial or anything in that

extent, or is it more transient?

Yeah,

it's a transient effect.

It's a very short burst that, that is given to the body, which, and that's the

hormosis effect again, or hormesis effect.

If you, and that's the depend on the doses.

If you give a very high dose, then you can have more damage than the short transient

effect of the reactive oxygen species.

And that is why, if you give it too high dose, you can give more damage.

Uh, so with ozone therapy, we also, we always start low, we see what reaction

is of the body and then we can move up, but we, it's better not to go too high

because then you can cause damage also.

So I stand, I tend to stay at low dose, see what happens.

And if, if a patient reacts good, then I'm not going to higher

dose more and more and more.

It's.

In ozone therapy, it's not the higher, the better.

It's, you find the sweet spot and there you stay most, most of the

times, or you, you go down a little bit even, but you always see what the

reaction is of the, of the patient.

Okay.

So it's acting very much like a traditional antioxidant would, uh, would,

it's got a sort of direct on target effects and then it's also sort of.

I assume upregulating a number of endogenous antioxidant mechanisms

like NRF2, for example, that then produce a number of other

antioxidants, your catalases, etc.

Beyond that, though, how's it affecting viruses?

For example, I know it's, as I mentioned earlier, it's oftentimes used in In

viruses like EBV, Epstein Barr, and cyclomega, uh, CMV, what is it doing

to those viruses that is making it so effective at treating them when When

other sort of modalities oftentimes fail.

Well, that's so you have if we talk about ozone therapy You have the fast

effects and the slow effects and the effect on the immune system is quite

one of the fast effects And so what happens when you administer ozone it

has an influence on the immune cells and so A lot of people think, ah,

there's ozone in my body, the ozone will destroy the viruses or the bacterias

in the body, that's not the case.

So, if you do an external treatment with ozone, for example, limb bagging, that's

when you have a, for example, a wound.

At the exterior side of the body, you can do limb bagging, that's

with a plastic bag over the foot.

You administer ozone in very high dose, and then the ozone has a direct

killing effect on the bacterias.

But in the body, it's a completely different effect.

It doesn't actually kill viruses or bacterias instantly, directly.

But it has an effect on the immune system, which, uh, so it has affected

the reactive oxygen species, had an effect on the immune cells and

it improves the cytokine delivery.

For example, interleukin, interferon alpha, and that will have the

effect on the immune system, so the immune system can combat the

virus or the bacterias much better.

And so that's the effect on the immune system, not directly on the virus because

the ozone will not kill the virus, but your own immune system will do that.

And then I assume it's doing the same thing in these

autoimmune conditions as well.

It's helping to modulate the Immune system activity to

potentially quell inflammation.

Is that

correct?

That's correct.

So you can use it for, uh, many types of infection, inflammatory

diseases, autoimmune diseases.

So it has actually a modulating effect on the immune system.

And in that way, it's, it improves your own body's reaction to an infection.

So it can be used just also to prevent infection, people who use ozone and in the

case for longevity, uh, prophylactically, you can use ozone to, to, to have a better

immune system and to, if you're in contact with a virus or bacteria, you will be,

you won't get sick so fast or you won't get sick so bad, or you just heal faster.

Okay, and what do you think about, I suppose, maybe going more

down the gut health route now?

What do you think about the use of ozone helping to combat infections

that are maybe wrapped up in biofilms?

Do you think ozone is effective in that respect?

Uh, obviously biofilms are generally speaking very hard to treat, but does

ozone have any clinical efficacy there do you think, uh, for these sort of,

again, these treatment resistant issues that just don't seem to want to go away?

Well,

you can always try it to, you can never say, ah, we're going to use ozone

therapy and there's a hundred percent chance that an infection will go away.

But you don't have any adverse effects.

You don't have any downsides.

So why not try it?

And in most cases, people respond very good.

Of course we have the effect on the immune system.

We also have effect, have effect of, for example, red blood cell system.

So red blood cells can easily capture oxygen, deliver it more

easily to the, to the tissues.

So that also has an effect.

And so that's like the, the, the fast effects.

Maybe there's a lot of things we don't know yet what it actually does, but

we see when we, we start with ozone therapy, people get better and we know

certain kinds of things, how it works, but maybe not everything, but it does a

lot of good things and you don't have the downsizes of, of, uh, normal drug therapy.

Uh, in some cases, like for example, cortisone treatments and the long run.

You have a lot of down, uh,

damaged cartilage yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaking of side effects, I was just going to ask about things

like Herxheimer's reactions.

I assume you're going to get a fairly sort of traditional die off reaction

with ozone as you would with any other, well, treatment option when you're

trying to rid the body of an infection.

Are these, again, common with ozone, maybe less so than other, than other,

uh, therapies or, or is it sort of much of a much less do you think?

Well, they, they happen.

I've, I've seen it frequently that somebody after an ozone treatment lets

me know I'm feeling a little bit fluish.

I have some muscle pain, a little bit fever.

It's, it's, it happens.

It's like you say, a Herxheimer reaction.

We don't actually know a hundred percent how that comes, but

for me, it's, it's a good sign.

It means that the immune system is reacting, something's happening

and it's a transient effect that.

in most cases, passes after 24 hours.

And then again, it's necessary to follow the patient very good and maybe

next time to give a lower dose, uh, because there was a Herxheimer reaction.

But it's not a bad thing.

And actually that's, yeah, the only adverse effect that can happen,

that the patient feels like for 24 hours or less, or a little

bit more, a little bit less good.

But again, that's transient and afterwards, in most cases,

patients feel better again.

I know that there are a number of, uh, sort of contraindications

to ozone therapy, including things like a G6PD deficiency.

Could you, could you just touch on that quickly and sort of maybe we can just talk

about who should be careful with ozone?

Because, yeah, again, I don't think it's been tested in pregnancy.

And I believe there's a, again, another contraindication with

people who have hypothyroidism.

Yeah, that's correct.

So, so a G6PD deficiency, it's a deficiency of a

certain enzyme that's Exists.

So it's, it's mainly with the male population.

It's rare among the North European population.

Uh, it's mainly in African and Asian populations.

So if I would have an African patient or an Asian person, I would test But

in most other patient person, I don't test because the deficiency in most

cases gives anemia and most people know that they have that some, some don't.

And so it's, it's important to know a little bit when to test or not to test,

or if you see that a patient, if you have.

Started to treat with ozone and you see that he doesn't respond.

Well, then you can test and see okay Is there a G6PD deficiency or not?

And then you can still test if it's positive Okay, then, you know he

this person is not suited to have ozone therapy Again with pregnancy.

Yeah.

Okay.

Do we have to test every?

Woman who comes to the practice.

I don't think so, but it's, it's, uh, you can, you can ask it of course,

but I had at one time that I treated, uh, a woman, uh, and afterwards she

had some, some, uh, sessions and afterwards she said, I'm pregnant.

It was, uh, not planned.

So that happens, but again, it's not a big problem.

It's something that will not damage.

But I stopped the treatments, of course, because one of the problems is that

with pregnancy, you don't have a lot of studies, and so you have to be careful.

Again, with hyperthyroidism okay.

So most people who have that, they know that and they know if

they follow a certain treatment that they have to mention that.

So I always ask her to take medications, things like that.

And if they would have hyperthyroidism then I would see it at the

medication that they take.

But again, it's being noticed if it's necessary, but it's rarely

that there are contraindications.

Okay, just to touch on the hypothyroidism side of it again, do you think that

the ozone is sort of improving the mitochondrial function around the

thyroid or is it improving thyroid production to the point where it can

then exacerbate the condition by sort of getting rid of potentially the

underlying inflammation that is maybe causing something like Graves disease?

Or is it sort of more of a direct interaction with the thyroid itself?

Do you know?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I don't exactly know the mechanism, but it's tends to stimulate even the, the

making of T3 and T4, the thyroid hormones.

So, but the exact mechanism that's, I don't know, but if you, ozone

stimulates a little bit, the, the, the, the making of the thyroid hormone.

So if you're already have hyperthyroidism so it's better not to

stimulate that too much, of course.

Of course.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And just as, as an aside, I think G6PD, we'll hopefully get that right

at some point between the two of us.

That's also a test that's commonly done in people undergoing

high dose vitamin C therapy.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

That's also, there can be a problem if you do high dose vitamin

C. That can also be a problem.

Okay.

And then sort of moving into sort of use cases.

I know you mentioned, I'd love to chat about how ozone can be sort of

utilized to support athletic endeavors.

Do you get a lot of athletes in your, in your practice?

And are you using ozone to help them to recover and to improve their

performance in their, in their output, uh, in competition and in the gym?

I don't have professional athletes, but I have.

More amateur athletes who do that because yeah, it can improve you stimulate

your ATP production you stimulate your oxygenation your Tissue oxygenation

you can you have left that tendency to get sick So it's actually very

good to do that as a complementary treatment, of course, and when you talk

about professional athletes and you have to be careful, but because ozone

therapy is is considered as doping but

Yes

So, but the reason therefore it's

unbelievable

is not because the, because the doping agency, the WADA uh, the world Anti-Doping

Agency is, is a classical system.

So in their eyes, they don't say ozone works, but they say,

okay, do a blood extraction.

Uh, you ozone, uh, ozonate the blood and you infuse it again.

So it's a, a, a form of blood doping.

You extract blood.

Yeah, and you put it back.

So that's for them blood doping.

But the way I use, uh, ozone therapy, I use it as a IV saline infusion.

So I, uh, ozonate in, uh, a saline

infusion,

uh, saline solution, and then I infuse it afterwards.

So actually I don't extract blood and I don't give it back.

So.

Normally, the WADA could not say that is, uh, a doping because if

they would say, ah, that's doping, then they would actually say,

ah, ozone therapy has an effect.

And they don't want to do that because they don't acknowledge

that as a, as a, as a treatment.

That's interesting.

That's a nice segue into sort of discussing how ozone is administered.

I know there are a number of ways, uh, I think we already touched on it

previously limb bagging, et cetera.

But you get various different form, you'll see different types

of ozone practices advertised.

Uh, sort of single infusions, 10 pass, five pass, et cetera.

I assume the five pass would technically be illegal because it's

from my understanding infusing the blood extracorporeally, however

you say that word, and then reintroducing it back into the body.

How do you, what do you think of these various ways of utilizing ozone and

which is your preferred, um, sort of.

Yeah, methodology thereof.

Yeah, that's, so that's the major orthohemotherapy.

That's the most well known form of ozone therapy.

So you extract blood, you ozonate it, and you infuse it again.

And then you have, like you say, the 5 pass, the 10 pass.

Well, you can do a lot with those things.

But, like I said before, we have the hormesis effect.

And for me, it's not the higher the dose, the better.

Because with a 10 pass, you really give a high dose.

And that, in my eyes, is not always the best treatment.

Some people can also have damage from that.

So, I tend to use a lower dose.

And go up as we go along and see how the patient goes.

And at a certain time, I don't, I don't hire the dose anymore.

Uh, but again, in every treatment there are opinions and different

ways of how to look at it.

Uh, but my way is low dose and start low and go, go slow.

That's my, my, uh, my tendency.

But again, other practitioners will say, Ah, no, I have the, I do the 10 pass.

I have very good results.

I only do that.

Okay, that's, uh, everybody is entitled to an opinion, but

that's not what I tend to do.

I rather go slow and start low.

That's, that's how I do it.

Because I don't want to bring damage to the, to the patient.

Yeah, and there's obviously, uh, a greater likelihood of developing

things like Herxhormus as a result of a, of a, of a high dose.

I think that's, that's just common sense and it should be, uh, it almost doesn't

need to be said, but obviously we do have to say that you should always sort of

start with the lowest effective dose of any treatment option and then sort of move

forwards to the next most effective dose.

When you're sort of dealing with an ozone treatment protocol,

are you utilizing anything post treatment to sort of maybe help?

uh, quell some of the inflammatory response.

I mean, I've seen that advertised quite frequently.

Practitioners will provide ozone therapy and then utilize something

to help maybe blunt the excessive oxidative stress component thereof.

I'm in two minds about that.

I think obviously it may be beneficial to the, the patient in terms of, um,

them not feeling as bad afterwards, but I assume you also want that immune system

response to an extent, and if you're sort of going to drive too many antioxidants

into them post procedure, you might.

Decrease some of the benefits of that therapy.

Do you think that's the case or is it not really?

Well, I I never Uh when I administer ozone therapy I'm not going to combine it with

for example vitamin c infusions or even b vitamins magnesium I never combine it

why also we don't know for 100 percent yet What it what the the ozone does if you

infuse also nutrients like magnesium for the same You get, uh, all the magnesium

that you inject will be magnesium oxide, and that's not the best form of magnesium.

So I never combine it.

I know, again, there are practitioners who do it, but I don't, because

we don't know a hundred percent yet what, what happens after that.

So that's not my way to do it.

Yeah.

And I mean, that's, that's, that's a really good thought.

You would have didn't think about that.

But yeah, if you sort of add magnesium and oxygen together, you're going

to end up with a, another sort of oxidative distressor in the body.

Okay.

So, you know, a fan of running concurrent IV therapies.

What about other sorts of therapies that you can tack on other ways of sort

of improving mitochondrial production and, and health things like methylene

blue and those sorts of agents.

Are you finding those particular products, supplements, treatment

options effective in your practice.

Do you use them or if I was to rephrase what other sort of more interesting,

should we say, uh, molecules are you using at the moment in your patients?

For injection, you mean then, or

just sort of, uh, alongside ozone as well, have you sort of looked

into methylene blue potentially as a electron donor or, uh, any of

these other molecules that I don't

use.

But what I do do is I give magnesium infusions, vitamin D, glutathione, I do

them, but never At the same time, but what I sometimes do is I do a series of

ozone injections and or ozone sessions and then I leave one week between them or

48 hours and then I can do an infusion or an injection with for example magnesium

and B vitamins That's something I do but not methylene blue that I don't

I don't have any knowledge about it.

Also.

I never did extra things with that so that I cannot respond to.

No, that's fine.

No, it's a, it's a fascinating little molecule.

It seems to be able to act as a direct electron donor and bypass a number of

the complexes in the mitochondrial, uh, in the electrons onto the chain.

And by doing so, if there's a blockage in potentially one of those.

Those complexes, it can actually bypass that and then get straight

into the, into the mitochondria and start producing NAD that way.

Yeah, no, it's, it seems to work quite effectively for people who have sort of.

Again, sort of recalcitrant fatigue and energy issues.

Then just going back to your practice, I always find this fascinating to ask,

but how generally do you treat patients?

What's your flavor of functional medicine?

Aside from ozone, obviously a lot of practitioners who are in the

functional space will obviously take a very GI heavy approach to medicine.

Start off with trying to treat the gut before anything else, whereas

others sort of start to look at it more from a nervous system standpoint.

How are you treating patients in your practice who are sort of otherwise

in ill health and have these sort of more long term chronic infections?

Well, I always like to look at five things.

And that's, uh, first of all, What is the nutrition like?

What do they eat?

How is their gut health?

Do they take supplements or not?

That's a very big one because if you have a deficiency in something,

that has its effects on the body.

What you eat is so important.

Do they get enough fiber, fruits, vegetables?

Do they follow certain diets?

And how is the gut health?

And, uh, in those cases, uh, sometimes probiotics, prebiotics, uh, can, can help.

So that's a major one.

And then I also look at, uh, movement or sports, uh, sleep.

That's the third one.

Stress is a big, a very big one.

A lot of people are stressed and you can have stress, but if it's too big amount

of stress or too long, it has an effect.

And of course you don't have a treatment for stress and say

that can give a pill for that.

But.

In a lot of cases, it's a part of the treatment, just not.

Just to talk about it and say, okay, can you do something about that?

And most people know that, but it's, uh, they have difficulties to

lower their stress level, but it's something that has to be always.

And then the mindset is a fifth one.

How, how, how do the people, how do people stand in life?

Are they positive, negative?

Do they know where they want to go?

Do they have a meaning in life?

Things like that.

It's, it's, it's.

It's so important if you don't have that, then that's also a factor in disease.

So I tend to combine all those kinds of things.

I ask a lot of questions.

People talk a lot and yeah, my opinion is if in those five domains, there's a good

balance that in most cases everything goes well, but if there's a disbalance

in one or more of those five pillars.

then you can work on those kind of things and you can find your balance again

and then most cases things get better.

Yeah, no, the body is amazing.

It's sort of finding homeostasis and auto regulating itself as a result of

just dealing with the basics, which I think is oftentimes overlooked,

especially from a stress component.

I don't think people understand that that stress is such a major trigger for the

immune system, uh, by sort of obviously upregulating your, your catecholamines and

your other stress hormones like cortisol.

Uh, which then feeds back directly into all of these inflammatory processes

that then degrade the function of the nervous of the immune system and allow

these infections to then take root.

It's something that I definitely feel is overlooked for the most part in.

In most, uh, functional medicine practices, uh, yours

seems to be an exception.

Well, I try, but it takes a lot of

time.

You have to talk a lot.

You have to take your time.

And I try to do that because it's, it's really important, but in most cases

it's, it's very busy and then time is not taken to, to, to have a decent anamnesis.

And, uh, but I, I, I, Continue to try to do that because it's so important.

Yeah, no, definitely.

And I think a large sort of part of the problem is, is that people have

always been stigmatized and believing that's therapy and that it's not just.

You, you're, you're a doctor, you're, they're there for a pill for a

solution that doesn't require effort, maybe that they're just there for

you to sort of fix them by means that they don't necessarily require

a lot of input and effort from them.

Um, I think it's, it's very easy to look at these problems that are maybe viral or

chronic in nature and say, well, I just want a solution that involves needle in my

arm or a handful of pills every morning.

Whereas, um, unless you're dealing with the underlying as we've.

Said a few times now, sort of psychological, you're never really going

to sort of solve the underlying issue.

It's super important.

And, uh, sometimes I, like I'm a doctor, it's like you say, uh, we

are learned to, to give medication.

Uh, and that's what a lot of doctors, if there's a patient coming to the,

to the clinic and they, they don't give a pill, they don't feel good.

Because it's like they didn't do anything, but a conversation of 30 minutes can do,

uh, a wonder with a patient who is just more at ease, who knows, oh, there's

nothing serious, but I have to work on my lifestyle and it will get better,

and that is a treatment in its own.

But for a lot of doctors, they don't feel good about that because

they didn't prescribe something.

And that's something that is not correct in, in the way

medicine is practiced nowadays.

It's, you have to, you have to, you have a patient, he comes, you

have to give a pill and voila.

And I did my job.

But it's, it's not always the best solution for something.

No, well, I think to a large extent it is the fault of the system.

I mean, doctors, we've talked about this previously on the podcast, but I think

doctors oftentimes get thrown in the bus for saying that they are only willing to,

to hand out pills, to hand out medication.

But in a system where you are basically trained as a pharmacologist, sort

of almost a clinical pharmacologist, you, you, you're taught what a drug

does, what symptoms it links up to and, and how to use that drug.

You're not always taught sort of basic, uh, functional medicine practices.

And I think a lot of patients and again, doctors alike, uh, obviously do miss that.

But I think patients oftentimes may be.

Get inpatient with physicians when it's not necessarily the physician's

fault, I should say, because they just haven't been trained in that way, uh,

unless they sort of furthered their education in a functional aspect.

So, yeah, it is, it is definitely, there's two sides to that coin.

I'd just like to go back to ozone quickly.

Uh, it's something that sort of sprung to mind is that I've started to see a lot

of people utilizing ozone, ozone at home.

Uh, they're not necessarily running just as sort of a direct ozone IV.

I don't think that would be considered, uh, safe.

Um, even if you, uh, do have a propensity to stick needles into yourself, but what

sort of, but again, there are various ways you can do it that I'm aware of.

So, uh, I think rectal insulfation with ozone and those

sorts of treatment options.

Um, do you sort of ever work with people on that front?

Maybe people who just sort of come to your practice.

Occasionally, do you ever sort of provide them with ozone bags

or anything in that respect?

Or is that not something you generally recommend?

Well, I've

never had patients who asked me to, to supply them with, with ozone filled

bags to do rectal sufflation at home.

I do it in the practice.

Because it's, it's not always easy to get all the materials.

So at home, you have to have an ozone generator and you have to have oxygen

and it has to be pure oxygen, 99.

9 pure oxygen.

Some people use an, uh, an oxygen concentrator, but the problem is that

you don't have pure oxygen and then.

Again, you can have the problem with the dosage.

And if you don't know exactly how much oxygen is going in your

ozone generator, you can never be sure about the exact dosage.

So if you do it at home, you have to have the correct material.

But it's like you say, an ozone insufflation is very easily to do at home.

You just need a rectal probe and some syringes or a bag and you can do it.

And actually rectal encephalation has 80 percent of the effect

of an intravenous treatment.

So it's a very good treatment to do at home or with people who,

for example, also in the practice who are difficult to puncture.

With an IV it's difficult and to do always an IV again, you

can do rectal insufflation.

Uh, and at home there are other things you can use, ozonated

oil, you can use a steam sauna.

You can also even do, uh, ear insufflation, vaginal insufflation is

also things that all can be done at home.

But again, you have to have the correct material and you have to

know what, what the dosages are that you have to treat yourself with.

So that's important if you don't know that.

Then you're freestyling a little bit and then it can be dangerous again.

Yeah, just a bit.

And from a rectal standpoint, if you are inserting large quantities of

ozone into the colon, is there no sort of issue surrounding it creating gut

dysbiosis or potentially killing off good bacteria further upstream of the

colon, uh, in the small intestine, the gut, et cetera, or from that

aspect, is it a pretty safe therapy?

Again, so, so if you give very high doses of ozone, it will have a

bacteriostatic or a virostatic effect.

So you kill bacteria or viruses, but if you would administer a very

high doses into your colon, you will also damage your, your colon

cells, the cells in your intestines.

So I would not do that.

The effects again, um, On the colon is more the modulating

effects on immune system.

It has also a local effect on the microbiome, but not that you

really kill certain bacterias, but it has a modulating effect again.

So also when doing insufflation rectally, I would not go in the high,

high doses like you do, for example, with limb bagging or, uh, nasal

insufflation, for example, with somebody with sinusitis, then you can do that.

It's a short, uh, burst and that can have a good effect.

So if somebody does want to do it at home, it's, uh, it's

definitely a learning curve.

And obviously you would suggest that they work with a practitioner first

to at least get an idea of how they're going to react to this sort of treatment.

Are there sort of any best practices that people can, uh, use to utilize

these sorts of therapies at home, just generally, or is it something you would

just, again, recommend off the bat that they go and work with the practitioner?

I

think the best thing is first to go to a practitioner who does ozone therapy.

And you can then see how, what, what the effect is on you.

And then if you say, okay, I like the effect I want to do that, uh, to

do with that home, then you can ask maybe, okay, what dosage can I use?

And then you can continue with, uh, with that dosage and you

won't do yourself any harm.

But to, to, to start without any pre knowledge, I think that can be dangerous.

Also, if you do rectal insufflation, one of the most, uh, complications is that

people insufflate too much ozone and that they have too much air in the colon

and that can give a lot of discomfort.

Some people go to the, I heard that some people end up in, uh, in the

emergency department because they insufflated so much air that they

have so much pain that they had to go to the emergency department.

So, yeah, be careful what you do, I would say.

Stick to the protocols.

Yeah, definitely.

And is, uh, I forget the, the Madrid.

Declaration.

Declaration.

Yeah.

Declaration.

Thank you for that.

Uh, is that, is that freely available for people to peruse through and get

an understanding of, or is it a sort of a practitioner's only document?

No, you can go to the website and it's For people who, again, like you said,

who would want to do it at home, they can go to there and find protocols.

So that's a possibility.

It's a free website, an open website.

That's an amazing resource.

Andreas, I think that is potentially a great place to stop.

I think that covers at least the basics for most people on Ozone and

it's, it's, yeah, it's definitely a lot of information to take in.

Going forwards, where, if people do want to work with you, I

know you are obviously in Ibiza.

Um, so maybe you don't have people flying in from all over the world, but

if people do want to work with you, um, where's the best place that they

can find you and connect with you?

Yeah, uh, through my website, all my details are on my website.

That's drhodiris.

com, so d r g o t d double e r i s dot com.

I'm also on Instagram, if people want to find me on Instagram, I

make, uh Uh, posts every week about, uh, health, uh, to stimulate people

to have a healthier lifestyle.

Also a little bit on ozone therapy so people can find me there and yeah, that's

the, the, the best channels I think to contact me if anybody would like that.

That's perfect.

Thank you.

And obviously we'll link to all of those, uh, resources in the show notes too.

And those links that you've just mentioned.

Andres, thank you very much for your time.

It's, it's been great.

I've definitely learned a lot and yeah, I look forward to

doing this again with you soon.