Pangaea Clinic of Naturopathic Medicine

What is Photox Therapy and How Does It Work?

Photox is the application of both ozone and ultraviolet therapy to a single patient during a single treatment appointment.

Although photox could be done combining hydrogen peroxide and photolume, it is usually, more effectively, and more conveniently administered as ozone and photolume.

The blood is withdrawn, being exposed to UV light on the way into the bottle. Ozone gas is mixed into the blood in the bottle, and then when the flow is reversed, the tubing is set so that the blood is exposed to UV light again on its way back into the patient’s bloodstream.

(See Figure 1.)

The treatment takes no longer than an ozone treatment alone, one half hour. This combination treatment is a powerful weapon to help combat the fight against many chronic diseases. Why? Because together these two treatments address all of the most common denominators of the disease process. Specifically oxidative therapy and photolume have the following effects on the body:

Increases the oxygen content of the blood

Increases energy production within cells

Increases the elimination or inactivation of toxins of any source

Activates immune system cells and cytokine production (interferon and IL-2) to aid in destruction of all types of micro-organisms: bacteria, viruses, and fungi

Increases intracellular antioxidants which buffer and neutralize free radicals

Helps destroy cancer cells Top

Are These Therapies Safe?

Although ozone is often portrayed in an unfavorable light because of its association with the measurement of air pollutants, ozone is completely safe when used properly. A study in Germany of millions of treatment events revealed a complication rate about as close to zero as you can get. As with all intravenous therapies, there is a small amount of pain from the needle stick as well as the possibility of bruising.

Another known risk is the possibility of a blood clot forming within the tubing. This risk is minimized by adding blood thinners, like Heparin, and using filters when infusing the blood back into the body.

Ozone is used to purify the public water supply in cities such as Los Angeles, Moscow, Singapore, and Helsinki.

It can be irritating and cause breathing difficulty if breathed in directly in excess concentration, but it is never used this way in medicine. Hydrogen peroxide intravenously has a long history of safe use. One might ask: How can an oxidant like ozone or peroxide possibly be good for us? Most people who are ill are not suffering because of an excess of free radical exposure or oxidant stress, but because their ability to buffer free radicals with the appropriate intracellular antioxidants (glutathione, superoxide dismutase) is diminished. The measured application of oxidative therapies induces the restoration of free radical buffering capacity, corrects cellular oxygen metabolism, and activates the immune system.

Photoluminescence therapy when used in the 1930s and early 1940s accumulated a track record of 6520 patients successfully treated in the complete absence of any unwanted effects. Top

How Many Treatments Are Needed and How Often Are They Given?

This depends on the patient and the condition being treated. In general the sicker the patient, the more frequently treatments need to be given. In severe cases daily treatments might be used for a while until the patient has stabilized.

In chronic conditions one to three treatments per week are common until response is obtained. Somewhere between five and 20 treatments is common, although for acute conditions only one or two may be required (for example, in treating the flu). In recurrent genital herpes a special unique protocol is utilized. We administer daily treatments at the time of a

Drug Error, Not Chelation Therapy, Killed Boy, Expert Says

Father is a medical doctor.

By Karen Kane for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06018/639721.stm

One of the nation's foremost experts in chelation therapy said she has

determined "without a doubt" that it was medical error, and not the therapy itself, that led to the death of a 5-year-old boy who was receiving it as a treatment for autism.

Dr. Mary Jean Brown, chief of the Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch of

the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said yesterday that Abubakar Tariq Nadama died Aug. 23 in his Butler County doctor's office because he was given the wrong chelation agent.

"It's a case of look-alike/sound-alike medications," she said yesterday. "The child was given Disodium EDTA instead of Calcium Disodium EDTA. The generic names are Versinate and Endrate. They sound alike. They're clear and colorless and odorless. They were mixed up."

Both types of EDTA are synthetic amino acids that latch onto heavy metals in the bloodstream. Dr. Brown said she obtained the child's autopsy report on behalf of the CDC after reading an article about the death in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She said it didn't take long to figure out what had happened.

Essentially, Tariq died from low blood calcium. Without enough calcium-- a metal -- in the blood, the heart stops beating. Dr. Brown said the Disodium EDTA the child was given as a chelation agent "acted as a claw that pulled too much calcium" from his blood.

"The blood calcium level was below 5 [milligrams]. That's an emergency event," she said. Officials from the state police, the district attorney's office and the coroner's office will meet soon to decide whether to hold an inquest into the child's death and whether it should remain listed as accidental.

Dr. Brown said the same mix-up happened in two other recent cases: a

2-year-old girl in Texas who died in May during chelation for lead poisoning and a woman from Oregon who died three years ago while receiving chelation for clogged arteries.

Dr. Brown said that in each case, the blood calcium level was below 5

milligrams. Normal is between 7 and 9. The correct chelation agent -- Calcium Disodium EDTA -- would not have pulled the calcium from the bloodstream, she said.

The Butler County coroner's office confirmed last week that Tariq had died as a result of his chelation treatment, but the findings that were released didn't indicate whether the treatment had been improperly administered.

[From the Schafer Autism Report http://www.sarnet.org]

Dr. Brown said chelation was once a common and necessary therapy that was used on children and adults alike for lead poisoning. Chelation means administering an agent into the bloodstream that causes heavy metals in the body to cling to it and then be excreted in urine.

Though its only approved use, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is for lead poisoning, Dr. Brown said she is aware that it is used by some people for other medical problems, ranging from clogged arteries to autism.

She said there have been no reputable medical trials demonstrating the

effectiveness of chelation as a therapy for anything but lead poisoning. But if it were administered accurately, the procedure would be harmless.

She said it is well known within the medical community that Disodium

EDTA should never be used as a chelation agent. She quoted from a 1985 CDC statement: "Only Calcium Disodium EDTA should be used. Disodium EDTA should never be used ... because it may induce fatal hypocalcemia, low calcium and tetany."

"There is no doubt that this was an unintended use of Disodium EDTA.

No medical professional would ever have intended to give the child Disodium EDTA," Dr. Brown said. Tariq was brought to the United States from England last spring by his mother, Marwa, for the chelation therapy. He was in the Portersville, Butler County, office of Dr. Roy Eugene Kerry when he went into cardiac arrest.

In recent months, chelation treatments of a wide variety ranging from IV to oral to topical have been gaining popularity for autistic children due to anecdotal information from parents indicating a reduction in symptoms.

The underlying belief is that autism is caused by a sensitivity to heavy metals in the bloodstream.

Howard Carpenter, executive director of the Advisory Board on Autism and Related Disorders -- the largest autism advocacy group in the region --said the determination by Dr. Brown clears up the mystery surrounding Tariq's death but not the uncertainty over chelation itself.

"Since this child died, there have been parents who are pro-chelation who have been very angry that there's talk against it. On the other side, they say the death was a natural consequence of a dangerous activity. Maybe what happened to [Tariq] is explained, but we still don't have a conclusion about whether chelation is an effective treatment for autism," he said. Tariq's father is a medical doctor who practices in England. Dr. Kerry could not be reached for comment. A board-certified

physician and surgeon, he advertises himself as an ear, nose and throat doctor who also specializes in allergies and environmental medicine.

To the parents of my autistic patients and their friends,

Recently the use of intravenous (IV) chelation in children with autism has come under fire with the sad death of a 5-year old boy in the US. Although I do not use IV chelation in my autistic patients who are that young, I do use it in older children quite effectively. I will always use some milder, slower form of chelation in my autistic patients, and this usually entails the use of a DMPS or DMSA cream and/or oral chelation with calcium EDTA or DMSA. Sometimes a muscle injection of calcium EDTA, and DMPS is used, and for older children an IV is used. As many of you know, this approach brings good success.

I am writing this note so that you can forward information to other parents of autistic children who may now be unwilling to start biomedical therapy because of the 5-year old's death. When this news first came out, I told you that the most likely cause that I suspected was that the WRONG form of EDTA was used in the IV, and that it was given too fast. My suspicion of this came about because I know that chelation used intravenously, is an extraordinarly safe therapy if given properly. The only reason I don't give it to young children is for logistical reasons.

Other than very rare allergy, the only way that any form of EDTA, when given properly, has the potential to harm is through a slowing of the kidney function. This is monitored with all chelation patients, and is extremely rare. However, there are TWO forms of EDTA in common use. One is sodium EDTA, and the other is calcium EDTA. Sodium EDTA can lower blood calcium if given too rapidly in IV form, and calcium EDTA does not have this side effect. Thus, sodium EDTA is given traditionally over 1.5-3 hours, and never as a rapid push. If sodium EDTA is given as a rapid push, the blood calcium would drop rapidly and cause cardiac arrest (the young boy died of cardiac arrest immediately after the chelation treatment). Calcium EDTA can be given quickly with no harm.

I have no doubts that the unfortunate death was from a drug error, in that the wrong form of EDTA was administered in the wrong fashion. I waited until now to give information that it was likely a drug error, and not some other cause, as I wanted to have confirmation from another official source.

This death should not push away parents who had been considering chelation and biomedical treatments for their autistic children, as these therapies are safe and effective.