Innovative, effective and safe, ozone therapy is being used in veterinary medicine for everything from ear infections to cancer.

Ozone therapy might sound like something new, but it has been around for over a century, at least when it comes to human healthcare. More recently, however, it was also introduced to the veterinary world, where it’s being successfully used to help treat a range of conditions in dogs and cats. In this article, I’ll discuss what ozone therapy is, and how it works, and look at how it can be applied in companion animals.

Ozone therapy 101

This unique modality has been proven effective for treating viruses, fungi and bacteria, as well as inflammation and damaged tissues, and general health issues. Ozone therapy and hyperbaric treatments bring easily soluble oxygen to affected areas of the body – for example, you may have read about NFL players using these therapies to heal their injuries faster.

To create ozone, pure medical grade oxygen is flowed through a glass tube, where a low voltage electrical current is applied. (Ordinary air cannot be used because it’s 20% nitrogen.) This briefly splits the oxygen molecule (O2), creating O1 atoms. These atoms form triplets – O3 or ozone. Once in the body, O3 molecules break back down into O2 and O1, both of which offer a variety of healing effects. Ozone is very unstable and last about 30 minutes, so it must be made fresh every time; it cannot be stored and used later.

Ozone therapy is safe and acts in several ways:

• It decreases inflammation.

• It activates the immune system by stimulating cytokine production. Cytokines such as interleukin and interferons create positive immune stimulation.

• Ozone inactivates bacteria, fungi, viruses and yeast. Healthy cells are surrounded by an enzyme coating, which ozone does not penetrate. But bacteria and viruses have no such coating, thus the O1 molecule penetrates and kills the invaders. Consider chronic otitis (ear infections), which often have multiple bacteria, yeast and sometimes fungus — the efficacy of ozone therapy in these cases is amazing.