In this episode, we explored ozone insufflation, a lesser-known therapy that’s gaining attention for its potential benefits in supporting the health of breast cancer survivors. Ozone, a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms, is commonly known for its role in the atmosphere, but in a medical setting, it can be used to help our bodies in various ways.
I’ll break down how ozone therapy works, and share some fascinating research findings with you.
If you’re interested in a non-toxic therapy that helps with pain relief and tissue repair, might reduce the harmful side effects of chemotherapy, and can support our immune system.
This episode is for you.
While ozone insufflation shows promise, it’s important to remember that it should be used under professional guidance to ensure it’s right for your individual needs. Overall, this therapy could be an interesting addition to your wellness toolkit, helping you feel more supported on your path to recovery.
Every very step we take toward supporting our health is a step in the right direction.
Referred to in this episode:
Better Than Before Breast Cancer™ Life Coaching Membership
Ozone therapy in musculoskeletal medicine: a comprehensive review
Systemic Ozone Therapy by Rectal Insufflation for Immunoglobulin A Deficiency
Follow me on Social Media:
Read the full transcript:
0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach, I'm your host, Laura lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills on the insides and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis if you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to episode 374 of better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura lummer, I've got some great stuff for you today. First, I want to start off with a little update, a little bit of an insight. Last week, I did an episode, and I talked about my healing adventure on soniva Fushi and island in the Maldives, and I talked a lot about what the slow life meant and how just being really connected in that island, on that island, to the people on the island, caused me to really pause and start thinking about what I'm creating in my life. And I think ever since I started and created an online business, something that I really am proud of is that I'm not afraid to change things. This business, what I do has evolved and changed so much from when I first started, from what I thought it would be and what I thought it would look like. And it's so exciting to me, that whole adventure, the whole experience of watching something develop and grow and evolve, and I've grown and evolved with it. I mean, going from just recovering from a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment to building a business, leaving my career, you know, becoming a coach, living my dream, getting a stage four cancer diagnosis, working through what that meant, meant to me, and continue to keep going and to even add more to my business, learn more, get into more courses like it's been a wild ride, and I think I've been able to take that ride because I'm just willing to risk it, I'm willing to make changes, and I'm not afraid to look at something and say, This isn't working for me anymore. And so I'm going to switch it up, right? I have to be able to evolve with my business and have my business evolve with me. And I think that by doing that, I kind of set the example of walking the walk, or walking the talk for the people that I do work with, because change can be big and scary and intimidating, but also I feel like if I'm growing and evolving my business with me, then I feel like I'm serving my people better. I just feel like the whatever it is that is coming to me and the messaging and the voice that I hear that says change this or move here or incorporate that, I think it's needed in the world, and that's why I believe that the universe guides me in that direction. So all of that being said, one of the decisions that I have made is that I am going to go back to doing one podcast episode a week. You know, I added the Tuesday terrain talk episodes, which this is I added them when I first started studying with nation winters, because I was so excited, and still am extremely excited about the metabolic approach to cancer and everything I was learning, and I just wanted to share as much of it as I possibly could, and I still intend on doing that. But what has happened is, as my practice has evolved in incorporating metabolic health coaching, it's really blown up, and my schedule is busy and getting busier and busy in in the greatest sense. And so one of the things that I want to do is serve people more right. I want to have my as much time available to connect one on one with people and guide them and encourage them and coach them into creating the healthy lifestyles that they want to live into supporting their healing and producing podcast episodes take a lot of time, especially the Tuesday terrain talk. I definitely do research and everything behind the scenes. You know, you hear a 2030, minute clip, but there's several hours that go in behind each of these podcast episodes. So I really feel it's in the best interest of me, of my business and for everyone out there, I'm going to go back to one podcast episode a week to free up a lot more time to work a lot more closely with my clients and my members. So I'm pretty excited about it. There's it's not going to go away in the sense that I'm not going to talk about terrain specific things, but really, everything I talk about is terrain specific, and that kind of was a little bit of an insight for me, right? It's not that there's separate planes, so to speak. It's not that one part is mindset and one part is physical. It's all connected. So it's all a part of the same show. I always wanted it to be part of the same show, but I wanted just to get where in front. Information out there, right? And really focus on tangible steps you can take. Because I know that almost everybody goes to the tangibles first, that it's easier for us to start to change things like what I eat or how I sleep or how I exercise. These types of things are easier than digging into the really deep emotional work, but they lead to it as well. So I think it doesn't matter which path you come into your healing journey on, they're going to join at some point. If it's all emotional, you're going to have to work through the emotions to be able to change the physical. If it's all physical, you're going to have to learn to get in touch with yourself and work through the emotions to be able to support the physical changes in the most loving way. So this will be the last Tuesday terrain talk episode that comes out on Tuesdays, and we're going to go going back to regularly scheduled Friday episodes that would begin the month of September. So from September on, you'll be getting one episode a week on Fridays, and I hope you enjoy them, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can always email me or message me, find me on Facebook and Instagram. As the breast cancer recovery coach, I love to hear your thoughts. My main goal in my business is to be able to support you all as much as I possibly can. But my main goal in my life is to support healing first and above all. And so I think that you know something that we talk a lot about, my members, my my clients, and that I'm very passionate about is purposeful planning, intentional living, using the 168 hours that we have in a week to create a life we love. And when I say 168 hours out loud, do you think to yourself, Wait, there's got to be more hours in a week than 168 I know I thought that I checked my mouth over and over again before I finally put that out, like in the journal, when I was creating my purposeful planning, creating time for you workshop, I thought 168 hours. That doesn't seem right, but it is right, and it makes you think about how precious each one of those hours are, and how we have to just guard them, guard them in a tender, loving way, as you would with anything that's precious to you. To take them and say, How am I using these 168
7:14
extremely precious hours? And if you need to change them up and move them around to support you better, then I'm all for it. And in fact, this is such an important topic, it aligns with the whole, you know, living the slow life and be able, being able to have downtime and support yourself, that I'm actually focusing on this for the entire next quarter. So for September, October, November. Am I better than before? Breast Cancer membership, we are digging deep into intentional living, into using 168 hours in a week to create a meaningful, wonderful life. So if that sounds good to you and it sounds like something you think might serve you, come and join me and get into the better than before breast cancer membership. You can find all the details on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com you will love it. Not only what we're going to be working on for the next quarter, but the year's worth of content, coaching, calls, workshops, all kinds of great stuff, all kinds of lessons that are inside that membership. It's a really valuable experience. All right, so I got all of that off of my mind. Let's talk about what's going on for today's Tuesday terrain talk. So I was introduced to a therapy that was pretty amazing and that I've learned a lot about when I was at the retreat in Maldives. And this therapy was called ozone insulfation. There's so many really fascinating naturopathic complementary medical therapies and treatments available to us, and it's wonderful to learn about them. You've heard some of the common ones, I'm sure, hyperbaric oxygen, high dose vitamin C, and it's so interesting to go into detail and learn how these different therapies work in our body and how accessible they are to us. So one thing that was more than what I expected when I got to sonivaushi Was that not only had Dr nation winters and Dr Ahmed el saka gone through all of my medical history and everything that I had given them on my diagnostics and labs and all that, but they had already set up a treatment plan for me. So I had treatments every day set up based on their intake of me and my information and what they believed would best benefit me. And one of those treatments was ozone insultation. Now I had never heard of that before, so it was funny, because when I saw it on my plan, I asked somebody, Hey, I have ozone insulfation that I'm going to be doing here today. What is that? And everybody would kind of grin at me, and they'd say, Oh, I'll let the doctor tell you when we get that, when you get there, right? Because there was a naturopath that was administering this treatment, who was a resident doctor on the island, and. So I was like, Okay, maybe it's complicated, you know, maybe this person didn't know a lot about it. So I asked two or three people, I got the same response. Then I get in there to do my treatment, and I meet this beautiful doctor. Her name is Michelle, and I said, Dr, Michelle, what? What is this ozone insulvation? And she starts to explain to me, and she says, Oh, well, we take this we take this tube, and we're going to insert ozone into your rectum. And I said, Oh, okay, now I know why. Everybody just kind of got a grid in their face and didn't tell me what I was in for. It. Didn't want me to have any preconceived notions of what was going to happen in this room, right? But I did do this therapy, and I have to tell you that that combined with photosensitive and Sona, or photodynamic and sonodynamic therapies that were administered onto the lymph node where my pet scan showed activity, it really made a huge difference for me in the range of motion and the amount of pain that I was or discomfort, I would say, that I experienced in that area. So it's something treatment that I'm continuing to do now that I've gotten home. It's actually the ozone insulfation itself is not just for people who have active disease of any kind, but overall wellness as well. And that's why I wanted to tell you a little bit more about it. And it's actually something you can do at home. So I was, they refer to ozone machine to me. And you know, I'm going through the training and stuff to be able to administer this therapy at home. And let's talk about why that's important. So first of all, what is ozone? When you hear the word ozone, do you think of Wait, that's the ozone layer, right? That's the stuff that's out in the atmosphere that we hear about, and there is ozone in our atmosphere. So ozone in our atmosphere is very different, though, from the ozone insultation and ozone therapies that we're going to talk about today. So atmospheric ozone is primarily found in two layers of our Earth's atmosphere, in the stratosphere and in the troposphere, so in the stratosphere, that's what we hear about, the ozone layer, and it protects life on Earth by absorbing the majority of the sun's harmful UV radiation. And in the troposphere, the layer that's closer to the Earth's surface, ozone can act as an air pollutant and a component of smog. And so that can actually be harmful for us to breathe in, and it can cause respiratory problems. So the tropospheric ozone, the ground level ozone, is a pollutant, and it can irritate the respiratory system. It can exacerbate asthma. I can remember when I was a kid and we would have smog alerts at school, we wouldn't be allowed to go out into the out to play recess outside. We had to stay inside because there was too much smog and it could really harm the respiratory system. Medical ozone is highly purified, and it's used in controlled concentrations. So it's generated specifically for therapeutic purposes, to ensure that it doesn't contain any impurities that can be harmful. And in medicine, ozone is used for its oxidative properties, meaning it oxygenates things, so it stimulates biological responses, like improving oxygenation, the movement of oxygen through our body, improving and enhancing our immune function, aiding our body in the process of detoxification, which we talk about a lot here on this show, and it's applied in a very controlled setting, in small amounts, and it's usually administered in a way that minimizes exposure to sensitive tissues like the lungs. And so when it's used appropriately in a medical setting, ozone can have a lot of therapeutic benefits. Okay, so now that you have an understanding of what ozone is. Let's talk about how ozone insulfation works. In this type of therapy, ozone gas is introduced into the body, often through the rectum, but it can also be administered through ears and through the vagina. It can be put into water, so you can put ozone the gas itself and put it into your water and get benefits from that, and then different medical doctors can actually administer it through IVs. And of course, that's never something you would want to do at home. You want to have a medical professional. And I guess I should put a disclaimer out here, because we're talking about something that you do apply to your body. This is not medical advice. I'm just putting this out there to give you information on what ozone insultation therapy is, so that if it's interesting to you, you can look more into it, and you can discuss it with your doctor, your naturopath, and see if it's something that might be beneficial and helpful to you in your treatment, in your healthy lifestyle, right? Never introduce something into your body that you're not sure works with the plan you already have, and of course, that doesn't endanger you. So this should not be construed as a medical treatment or medical advice. I just want to educate you on what ozone insultation is, okay? A California mindset, Always cover your butt, right? Okay, so let's break down what ozone insultation or ozone therapy. Does so first, ozone therapy is known to improve oxygenation in the body. Now, especially for those of us recovering from breast cancer, this is important, but it's important for anybody, because having an efficient oxygen supply is crucial to a healthy body. Cancer cells often thrive in low oxygen environments. So by increasing our oxygen levels, ozone therapy can help to inhibit the growth of these cells. That's why lifestyle recommendations like exercise, breath work, cold exposure and maintaining a healthy body weight are recommendations for supporting a lower risk of breast cancer recurrence and for supporting better treatment outcomes, because all of those practices help to improve the levels of oxygen and the distribution of oxygen and the use of oxygen throughout our body, which is crucial to being healthy. So secondly, ozone can boost the immune system, and as we know, a strong immune system is our first line of defense against infections, cancer recurrence and ozone ability to stimulate the immune system can be a game changer in our healthy lifestyle routine. It can help our body stay resilient. Another benefit, a significant benefit of ozone therapy, is detoxification. So of course, cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation generate a lot of toxins in our body, so they're doing good work, and they're generating toxins as well. Kind of so does exercise, right? Is doing good work, it's also producing free radicals. And so we're constantly going to be supporting our body in the process of detoxification and ozone aids in breaking down toxins in our body and helping to remove them so it potentially reduces the toxic burden on our body to improve the overall quality of our health and our life. So let's look at what some research says. I think a lot of times we hear about complementary therapies and we think it's woohoo, and I have people say to me on a regular basis, it's all anecdotal. There's no evidence behind that, and it's simply not true. And research is very important to me. Science is very important to me, but anecdotal evidence also is important. My own experience in a therapy is significant, right? It's important. It's meaningful to me, but I like to look at the science too. So there was a study published in the European Journal of Medical Research, and it looked at how ozone therapy helps with conditions like low back pain and osteoarthritis. And this research found that it's not only improved the oxygen levels in the body, ozone therapy but also reduced inflammation and helped to repair tissues. And this is really relevant for those of us who might be experiencing pain or mobility issues as a side effect of treatments, a side effect of medication, a side effect of a sedentary life and of aging. So an important, potentially important therapy to help to reduce pain and stiffness. There was another study published in the Journal of antioxidants, and this one explored how ozone therapy could help reduce the toxic side effects of chemotherapy. And the research found that ozone therapy might protect healthy tissues from the damaging effects of chemotherapy by triggering the body's own antioxidant defense system. There we go. This supporting the detoxification of the body, and this could mean fewer side effects and better quality of life during and after chemotherapy. And then finally, there was an immune function study that was published in psi ELO, and it highlighted how ozone therapy could enhance the immune system in patients with compromised immunity, and particularly those with an IGA deficiency. And so this is a big deal for us as breast cancer survivors, since our immune systems often need extra support, especially during recovery, we got to support our body and bring it back a lot of times different therapies are avoided during treatment, which is why you wouldn't want to just go out, if you're in treatment, and buy an ozone machine and start, you know, doing ozone and sulfation on yourself, because you don't understand what your body needs. And there's times when we don't want to detoxify, because what the medications or treatments or therapies you're undergoing are doing is that there we have antioxidant therapies and oxidative therapies, right? So if we're putting too much oxygen in or pulling too much oxygen out, you know, we could be counteracting one of the therapies that you're going through that may be helping to save your life. So we never approach this as if we're the doctor. We always go to a doctor, a naturopathic doctor, or a standard of care doctor who understands cancer and cancer therapies. That's a really important point that I want to emphasize. There's a lot of great naturopathic doctors out there, but if they don't specifically work for cancer patients and their focus is overall health and wellness, they may not be as knowledgeable. Or trained in what treatments can exacerbate cancer or what treatments can counteract cancer therapies. So it's very important, and this is why, whenever anyone asks me about a naturopath or who they should look for, always send them to the metabolic train Institute of Health, that practitioner list. And I'll link to that here in the notes for this episode, because it's so critical that the doctor you're working with understands the state your body is in, all right, that your part, that the metabolic health part, the health and nutrition, the lifestyle, that's all good, that's all things that you can control. But when it comes to therapies and supplements and medications and things like that. Please get a licensed medical opinion on that kind of thing. It's really important. Even if the therapy is something thought of as natural, it's powerful. Okay, so it's important to remember that while ozone insultation has benefits, it's not without risks. It is a powerful oxidant, and improper use can lead to too much oxidative stress in the body, which can damage healthy tissues. Now, I think, as with so many natural therapy therapies or complementary therapies, I've cited some research for you, but more research is is so badly needed in all of these areas when it comes to complementary therapies, and we see that evolving, which is wonderful, and emerging evidence is very promising when it comes to ozone insultation treatment, which is exciting, because that could add a whole layer of support as we continue to move forward on our healing journey and learning about what is healthy For our body and
21:40
what benefits us. Something else I also love about natural therapies and complementary therapies is that they're really designed to work with standard of care therapies in the best way for those of us who are in active treatment and using standard of care therapies. I don't know if I mentioned it last week when I talked about my experience with Dr nation winters and Dr Ahmed Osaka, but what I loved so much was the way they embraced everything I was going through. They looked at what I had been through, what my test said, what my scan said, what medications I was on. And you know, I think sometimes we're intimidated when we go to standard of care. We're afraid to tell them what we're doing from a naturopathic perspective, because they might judge us. And when we go to a naturopath, we're afraid to talk about what we do through standard of care, because they might judge us. We get all this judgment in our head. What I loved about it was this embracing. This is why I follow the metabolic approach, because it's an integrative approach. It takes all the tools, brings what's best for us into practice and welcomes everything, because nothing should be excluded, if it might work well to benefit our ability to heal. And what I loved was, as we went through my case, that they would make comments like, okay, zoloto is working great, wonderful. So what's going on with ex jeba? Let's look at this. Oh, ex Jiva is working well, and this supplement could support it better. And you know, they just really had this wonderful exchange of how the best things from both worlds could come together to support my ability to heal and support my quality of life while I'm going through this healing journey. So I encourage you do your research. I'll link to the studies I mentioned here in this podcast episode, but look into them. Check them out. See what you think, develop your own opinion, and if it's something you're interested in. Again, I will link to the practitioners at the metabolic train Institute of Health. Or if you already have your own practitioner, definitely ask them about it and see if it's something that might help you. All right, friends, I will talk to you again next week, and until then, Please be good to yourself, and I hope I see you in the better than before breast cancer membership, where you can work with me on creating your best life in 168 hours a week. All right, I'll talk to you soon.
50% Complete
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.