Women Are Pumping Themselves Full of Toxic Ozone Gas
The world of wellness gets considerably stranger with each passing day. If it’s not women shoving wasp nests into their lady parts, it’s a Goop addict taking Gwyneth Paltrow’s kooky advice to heart.
But the latest “trend” is the most dangerous by far: It turns out that women are undergoing ozone therapy in a bid to clean out their vaginas.
The gas is pumped into the vagina via a thin tube, in a procedure that takes anywhere between five and 15 minutes total. Specialists are claiming that the therapy can help with everything from yeast and bacterial infections to pain from sexual intercourse.
But what they’re failing to mention is that ozone is extremely toxic, and that too high a concentration of the gas can actually kill a person if a gas bubble were to become trapped in the bloodstream.
The FDA labels ozone as “a toxic gas with no known useful medical application.”
In fact, ozone’s history as a medical treatment is rather shoddy. During the First World War, it was used as an antiseptic, but the majority of studies proclaiming its health benefits have since turned out to be shams.
Ozone was also used as an alternative treatment for cancer. The results of that weren’t promising, either, after four terminal cancer patients in Australia died as a result of the treatment.
One Broadly journalist tried out the therapy during a trip to Bali. Although she didn’t experience any detrimental side effects, she did admit to feeling a little nervous at her decision after interviewing a medical professor.
In Bali, the writer was told that vaginal ozone treatment was “great for all kinds of problems, from endometriosis to thrush.”
But Professor Martin Dyer, a cancer specialist at the University of Leicester in the U.K., completely disagreed: “Ozone is one of the most powerful oxidizing agents known to man, and people have been looking to exploit this very powerful antioxidant action right since its discovery. But it’s never amounted to anything.”
High-profile gynecologist Dr. Jen Gunter (who recently hit headlines after shutting down Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘crackpot theories’) wrote a scathing review of the therapy on her blog. She describes the treatment as “so unethical” with a huge “potential for harm.” Gunter also lists the biggest risks of ozone therapy, which include gas embolism (the aforementioned bubble that can result in death), irritation of the vaginal mucous, and damage to good vaginal bacteria, which can lead to a higher risk of contracting certain sexually transmitted infections.
Bottom line? Just don’t do it.
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