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Oxygen is good—even when it's not there; alternative medicine's claims for the efficacy of supplemental oxygen are less than convincing—especially when the supplement contains no oxygen
Skeptical Inquirer, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Harriet A. Hall
Oxygen is not just in the air; it's on the shelves. It has been discovered by alternative medicine and is being sold in various forms in the health supplement marketplace. Back when I was an intern, we used to joke that there were four basic rules of medicine:
1. Air goes in and out.
2. Blood goes round and round.
3. Oxygen is good.
4. Bleeding always stops.
Alternative medicine has latched onto rule number three and won't let go. The rationale, apparently, is that oxygen is required to support life; therefore more oxygen should make you more healthy. It's not clear how this relates to alternative medicine's advice on anti-oxidants, but that's irrelevant.
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OXYGEN IS GOOD, so we should put it in our soft drinks and breathe it at oxygen bars. Take an oxygen tank home with you--you might feel better. The oxygen vendor might feel better, too. Dr. Andrew Well, the renowned health guru, tells patients with chronic fatigue to ask their doctors to prescribe oxygen for a home trial. Sure, why not? The money it costs will literally vanish "into thin air," but who cares? OXYGEN IS GOOD.
Ignore the fact that you could find out whether you need oxygen by testing your blood oxygen saturation with that little-clip-thingy-they-stick-on-your-finger-in-the-ER (aka pulse oximeter). Who cares if your blood is fully saturated with oxygen already? OXYGEN IS GOOD. If your oxygen saturation is a little less than 100 percent, there is no evidence that raising it will help with anything. If it is a lot less, and you do need oxygen, any competent doctor should be able to figure that out. But try an oxygen tank anyway: OXYGEN IS GOOD. Is this starting to sound like a mantra? It should. This is religious belief I am talking about, not science.
Oxygen Therapies
Just breathing oxygen is boring: any dumb animal can do that. Why not drink it? Alternative medicine found ways to use oxygen in a liquid form. No, not liquid oxygen; that's kind of chilly (around minus 298 degrees Fahrenheit). You could buy a $1,600 home water cooler to infuse oxygen into your drinking water and call that liquid oxygen. Or you could use chemicals that release oxygen. Ozone gives off oxygen. So do hydrogen peroxide and chlorite compounds. They're corrosive chemicals, but if you mix them with liquid and drink them, they will release friendly little oxygen bubbles in your stomach and dilution will counteract the corrosive effect. Corrosion may be bad, but OXYGEN IS GOOD.
Proponents of hydrogen peroxide found it worked wonders for everything from multiple sclerosis and cancer to hemorrhoids and the common cold. They tried bathing in it, drinking it, injecting it into their veins, and pumping it up their rectums. The proponents of hydrogen peroxide never reported any adverse effects. On the other hand, the medical literature reported that hydrogen peroxide caused deaths from gas embolism, gangrene, seizures, strokes, and other complications. How could that be? Didn't those scientists know that OXYGEN IS GOOD?
Could oxygen cure cancer and AIDS? They tried ozone by enema. They tried oxygen under pressure in a hyperbaric chamber. They even put cancer patients into a coma with overdoses of insulin in the hope that it would somehow regulate oxygen delivery to the cancer cells. Scientists insisted there was no proof that these therapies worked, but they couldn't prove to the true believers that they didn't work. Scientists insisted that these therapies could be harmful, but how could anything as natural as oxygen possibly be harmful? OXYGEN IS GOOD.
Invention proceeded apace. Alternative "science" found a way to put "electrically activated" oxygen in water. No one knows what "activated oxygen" means, but it sounds impressive. OXYGEN IS GOOD, and if it's activated it ought to be even better.
Once it has been "activated" in water, you can take oxygen safely and conveniently in the form of drops. You can put a few drops under your tongue, or drink them in a glass of water, and you will feel better. Of course, the amount of oxygen in a few drops of water is many orders of magnitude less than that contained in every breath. Of course, little or no oxygen is absorbed from the stomach. But fish get their oxygen from water, and if fish can do it, we ought to be able to do it too, gills or not! OXYGEN IS GOOD. They recommend that you drink it, spray it in your nose, gargle with it, spray it on cuts, spray some on your houseplants, and spray it on vegetables, chicken, seafood, and pork to decontaminate them. You can even use it as a natural alternative to antibiotics or give it to your pets to prevent doggy breath. OXYGEN IS GOOD--for just about everything.
Selling Oxygen--Even Without Oxygen
Several brands of activated oxygen appeared on the market, each better than all the rest. Finally, one company came up with the best idea yet. They would sell plain water with a bit of salt and a trace of minerals, charge $10 an ounce for it, and pretend it contained activated oxygen.
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