Foreword
That's going on here? Peroxides are supposed to be bad for you. Free radicals and all that. But now we hear that hydrogen peroxide is good for us.
I have been very skeptical about this one, but so many patients were asking my opinion about H2O2 that it was getting embarrassing to say, "I don't know." I didn't want to give up Monday Night Football to research H2O2 , but there was just no way out of it. (The games were lousy anyway.)
I was astounded to find that excellent clinical research had been done on the medical uses of hydrogen peroxide as far back as 1914! (There goes my Monday Night Football—maybe Sunday afternoon, too.)
Doctor J.S. Haldone reported in 1919 that oxygen dissolved in the blood would probably be a good way to combat infection. (Remember that in those days infection was it. If you didn't get stomped to death by a horse, you would most likely die of infection. Cancer was not a scourge and cardiovascular disease had not been invented yet.)
Hydrogen peroxide will put extra oxygen in your blood. There's no doubt about that. But prevailing expert opinion is that it has no value. The red cells must transport oxygen for effective oxygen delivery, they tell us. But this is manifestly untrue. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, for instance, where oxygen is forced into the blood under pressure, can be lifesaving in carbon monoxide poisoning, cyanide poisoning, and smoke inhalation. But pushing oxygen into the blood by using pressure is an expensive business. A hyperbaric oxygen unit costs about $100,000. Hydrogen peroxide costs pennies. So if you can get oxygen into the blood cheaply and safely, maybe cancer (which doesn't like oxygen), emphysema, AIDS, and many other terrible diseases can be treated effectively.
Intravenous hydrogen peroxide rapidly relieves allergic reactions, influenza symptoms, and acute viral infections. These effects are thought to be due to the oxidation of the various foreign substances in the blood.
Tumor cells, bacteria, and other unwanted foreign elements in the blood can usually be destroyed with hydrogen peroxide treatment. Peroxide has a definite destructive effect on tumors, and, in fact, cancer therapy may prove to be the most dramatic and useful place for peroxide therapy.1
No one expects to live forever. But we would all like to have a George Burns finish. The prospect of finishing life in a nursing home after abandoning your tricycle in the mobile home park is not appealing. Then comes the loss of control of vital functions—the ultimate humiliation. Is life supposed to be from tricycle to tricycle and diaper to diaper? You come into this world crying, but do you have to leave crying? I don't believe you do. And you won't either after you see the evidence.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? Read on and decide for yourself.
William Campbell Douglass, M.D.