Hydrogen Peroxide - Medical Miracle (eBook)

Chapter 3

The Research Proves It

In the 1960's, a team of doctors from the Baylor University Medical Center began serious study of H2O2 in animals, as well as humans. One of their earlier studies1 concerned cancer therapy. Tissues are more sensitive to X-ray treatment if the oxygen supply to those tissues is maximal. Hydrogen peroxide, they reasoned, if given into a blood vessel going to the cancerous area, should make the cancer more sensitive to X-ray. Cancer cells don't like oxygen anyway, so there would be two forces working against the cancer: oxygenation and radiation. The authors reported that there appeared to be a positive effect from this combination, thus allowing effective X-ray therapy at a lower dose.

In 1964, the Baylor group did a sensational study that, again, didn't faze the medical community. Dr. Finney and his colleagues pointed out that hyperbaric oxygen therapy (getting oxygen to the tissues through increased pressure inside a chamber) was being intensely researched. But, they emphasized, the method is costly, cumbersome, and not without some danger. If oxygen could be delivered to the tissue by injecting H2O2 directly into blood vessels, the cost would be inconsequential compared to hyperbaric oxygen therapy. H2O2 therapy had long since been proven safe.

Hydrogen peroxide breaks down very rapidly on entering the bloodstream. Oxygen is released in less than a second. (It takes one-tenth of a second, to be exact.) The blood becomes supersaturated with oxygen. It's called hyperoxia. The magnitude of saturation is far greater than can be obtained with the expensive and cumbersome hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO). With HBO, two atmospheres of oxygen are about as far as they dare to go. Any pressure above that can lead to serious consequences. But with H2O2 therapy into a blood vessel, the oxygen delivery can be four times2 that of HBO, with no side effects whatsoever.

The Baylor researchers investigated the potential of H2O2 to remove the plaque of hardened arteries. Wouldn't it be sensational if they could prove that H2O2 would clear up the arteries like chelation therapy, but do it quicker? Chelation therapy, the dripping of agents into the veins to unplug the blood vessels, works slowly and mostly on the tiny vessels. It is an excellent therapy and will obviate the need for bypass surgery in most cases. But chelation therapy doesn't seem to affect the large vessels very much, like the big heart arteries and the aorta. It works by opening the tiny vessels at the end of the line. Wouldn't it be better if a therapy treated all the vessels from the biggest to the smallest?

Finney and his colleagues have gone a long way toward proving that H2O2, dripped into the leg arteries of patients known to have severe arteriosclerosis, will clear those arteries of disease. When these patients died, autopsies were done to compare arteries that had been treated with H2O2 with those not treated. They reported: "The elution of lipids from the arterial wall by dilute hydrogen peroxide has been accomplished…" In simple English that means the plaque buildup was removed by injecting H2O2 into the blood vessels. Sensational! (No one paid any attention. That was over 20 years ago.)

The investigators also reported that the improvement was not temporary. Autopsies done a year after the H2O2 treatments showed as much cleaning out of the arteries as in those patients who died just weeks following the procedure. Would you be willing to go in for treatment once a year or so for a simple procedure that is safe, painless, inexpensive, and effective rather than face by-pass surgery that is painful, dangerous, expensive, and at best temporarily effective? (Let me guess.)

I guess if I were a cardiac surgeon I wouldn't be very excited about this mode of therapy either. It would be like telling Chevron and Exxon we've invented a car that will run on saltwater.

In 1966, the same Baylor University group did some more interesting research with H2O2 and cardiac resuscitation. In fact, it was downright mind-boggling:

Victims of heart attacks often die within hours of the onset of the infarction. This is due to ventricular fibrillation, a deadly event in which the heart muscle goes crazy and beats rapidly and chaotically. This is the heart's response to oxygen-lack called hypoxia. If this dangerous "runaway heart" condition can be controlled, then the patient has an excellent opportunity to survive.

Some emergency measures have proven to be partially successful in calming the heart down, and defibrillation, an electrical shocking of the heart, has often been lifesaving. Also lidocaine, a cardiac drug given in the vein, is dramatically effective in some patients.

But remember, the heart is responding to hypoxia, lack of oxygen, so these methods are only of temporary benefit in most cases. If the blood could be supersaturated with oxygen, the problem would be met directly, and the patient should survive.

Hydrogen peroxide has been found to have an energizing effect on the heart muscle, causing it to beat with more vigor and efficiency (called the inotropic effect).3 The heart exhibiting "pump failure," the inability to pump blood efficiently through the circulation, is often helped dramatically with peroxide therapy.4 This "high output heart failure" leads to death due to backing up of fluid in the lungs, with consequent drowning. The heart is often slowed from an unhealthy, rapid rate with H2O2 and the blood pressure will often be appreciably reduced. "Myocardial asemia," lack of oxygen to the heart muscle, is often dramatically improved with peroxide. "Ventricular fibrillation," a totally chaotic rhythm of the heart which rapidly leads to death, has been reported to have been completely relieved with the emergency use of hydrogen peroxide.5

Doctor George Hart, an expert on hyperbaric oxygen at the Memorial Medical Center, Long Beach, California, tells the story of how "an elephant suddenly landed on my chest" while he was driving to the hospital one morning. He knew without a doubt that he was having a heart attack.

Doctor Hart knows what hyperbaric oxygen can do. Upon arriving at the hospital, he immediately had himself checked into a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. His chest pain was immediately relieved, and he went on to recover from his heart attack.

Unfortunately, most of us don't have access to one of these chambers. Even if they were readily available, the method would not be practical. The doctor loses access to the patient during a critical period. The treatments are expensive and the patient cannot take more than an hour to an hour and a half of treatment without getting toxic symptoms which would further complicate his condition. But oxygen delivered directly into the circulation would be another matter. This would get to the heart of the problem, pardon the expression, and immediately reoxygenate the starving heart muscle.

In their first experiment, the Baylor doctors cross-clamped the trachea of some New Zealand rabbits. In other words, they strangled them. If you can't breathe, you can't get oxygen into your blood and, thus, to the heart muscle. Within 12 minutes the rabbit will develop cardiac arrest or ventricular fibrillation and die.

Then they took another group of New Zealand rabbits (these devils are big—they weigh seven pounds) and gave them the same treatment. But this group was given H,O, directly into the arteries of the heart. The animals were observed for two hours without cardiac arrest developing.

Incredible, unbelievable. Someone must repeat this experiment. If the results are the same (and I am confident they will be), then this technique, or a modification of it, should be instituted all over the nation for heart attacks.

That won't be easy. There will be three very powerful forces fighting the general acceptance of this simple therapy. First, the drug industry. H2O2 is not patentable. The drug industry would lose billions in lost drug sales.

Second, the FDA works in collusion with the drug industry. They can be counted on to pull every dirty trick imaginable to stop this therapy, including declaring H2O2 an "investigational new drug." But right now, they seem to be going in both directions.

The third force is organized medicine. In the face of these momentous experimental results, you would think that doctors would be clamoring for more information and a quick resolution as to whether the Baylor doctors know what they are talking about. You might think that would happen, but it doesn't work that way. With most doctors, it's not greed, but pride, ignorance, and bigotry that account for their resistance to new and unusual treatments.

How would you like it if you were a doctor and a little old lady in Adidas running shoes asked you, "Hey, Doc, what about hydrogen peroxide in the treatment of myocardial infarction, cerebro-vascular accidents, and Clostridium Welchi septicemia?" (You'd probably punch her out.)

Back to the experiment. Remember that first batch of giant rabbits? The ones strangled and not getting the H2O2? Remember that within 12 minutes they died of heart stoppage, or ventricular fibrillation. The investigators discovered, even though the animals were "in extremis" (meaning about to croak and go to that great rabbit hutch in the sky), if they were given H2O2 , most of them would survive! Amazing—snatched back from death's door by peroxide.

Next, the researchers simulated heart attacks in the rabbits by tying off their heart blood vessels, the arteries leading to the heart...