More than any other element, oxygen is vital to life and good health. We can live without food or water for days, but if we don’t have oxygen we will die within minutes. Every activity of our bodies, from breathing to brain function to healing to waste elimination, is regulated by oxygen. Oxygen therapy is a number of related therapies that seek to promote healing and better health by flooding the body with oxygen. It is a holistic treatment used for detoxification and stimulation of the immune system. For many conventional physicians, it is highly controversial. Basically, practitioners believe that by controlling diseases in the body through oxygen therapy, we also can control their effects on our body’s internal systems such as pain. Proponents of oxygen therapy for chronic pain treatment explain that pain starts when cells are exposed to decreased levels of oxygen, and chronic pain is driven by the absence of oxygen. It is a signal from the brain that the cell is not getting enough oxygen. This low level of oxygen in the blood is called hypoxia. Nerves are extremely sensitive to cellular oxygen levels. A tiny reduction can cause numbness, pain, tingling, and weakness. Therefore, the best way to optimize health is to oxygenate all your body’s cells. Naturally the best, cheapest, and most effective way to get oxygen therapy is through proper breathing. This can be cultivated and enhanced by many of the techniques mentioned throughout this blog. In general, there are three therapies involving oxygen, including ozone or activated oxygen therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and hydrogen peroxide therapy. In all cases involving oxygen therapy, interested persons should first contact their doctor. Ozone has been used in medical settings since its discovery in 1838 by Christian Friedrich Schönbein. It was used to disinfect operating rooms and surgical equipment. By the end of the nineteenth century into the first part of the twentieth century, it was used for diseases like tuberculosis and chronic middle-ear deafness. There is ongoing research on the effectiveness of ozone in other settings, but for now its use is very limited. Hydrogen peroxide therapy has been called cutting-edge treatment by many CAM practitioners who advocate its use to treat many different illnesses including cancer, MDS, and tumors. Dr. Edward Carl Rosenow (1875–1966) developed a technique using hydrogen peroxide therapy as a way to introduce oxygen into the body to eliminate or control a host of microorganisms that he believed were the cause of many human illnesses. Introducing hydrogen peroxide into the body can be done through the use of humidifiers, baths, sprays, vegetable soaks, and as a mouthwash, to name a few. In hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), people are exposed to high concentrations of oxygen at pressures higher than the atmosphere’s in specially built chambers. In the United States, approved uses of HBOT include treatment of wounds, carbon monoxide poisoning, decompression sickness frequently suffered by underwater divers, acute crush injuries, compromised skin grafts or flaps, severe infections, and severe anemia where transfusions are not available. This blog post is an excerpt from A Day Without Pain (Revised) by Mel Pohl, MD, FASAM; Published by Central Recovery Press (CRP).