During the early sixties, scientists at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine taught my colleagues and I about the dangers of oxygen deprivation. We learned those lessons very well; harsh lessons that many years later prompted me to use oxygen in an attempt to lower my high blood pressure when all pharmaceutical remedies had failed.

            A startling side effect of that eighties oxygen therapy was its simultaneous cure of my antibiotic-resistant strain of deadly Golden Staphylococcus, the 'incurable disease' I caught in a Dutch hospital when admitted for a minor operation during 1977-1978. Amazing though it may seem, in a single month, oxygen therapy killed the Golden Staphylococcus completely, despite its having resisted every antibiotic known to medical science for more than ten years.

           Though oxygen therapy is far from new, many people have difficulty understanding how an apparent excess of such a simple element can change their entire lives. Perhaps the main reason is that most of us take oxygen for granted, assuming the atmosphere is full of it, and that any dangerous drop in atmospheric oxygen will be heralded by some sort of magical warning.  Unfortunately, for humans there is no warning at all.

            Oxygen deprivation starts in such an insidious way that it is not possible for the lay person to determine whether or not there is an adequate supply. To fully understand the benefits of receiving too much oxygen, it is first necessary to understand what happens when we get too little.  So before reading about the personal benefits I obtained from oxygen therapy in the eighties, join me first in a short trip back to the future: to the clanging steel doors and hissing air compressors at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Europe, thirty-five years ago.

            The main attraction inside the huge central domed building is a complex of three large hypobaric chambers, each capable of putting a group of men through just about every atmospheric change ever known. As we file in through the door of 'Chamber Two' and strap in for the first time, none of us is ready for the shattering sensations we all feel as the air inside the chamber is suddenly removed by explosive decompression in less than three seconds, blasting us up to an equivalent rarefied atmospheric altitude of 40, 000 feet, faster than any jet fighter could ever climb there.

            It is an unnerving introduction none of us will ever forget. We all experience the pain caused by the sudden drastic pressure change on our eardrums, and the shock of having our vision completely obscured by a thin film of hoar frost which instantly coats the tinted flash visors on our flying helmets. We are incredibly conscious of the voice in our headphones continually warning us not to remove the oxygen masks from our faces.

            "Remember you are now well above the tropopause," the voice drones on remorselessly, "if you remove your oxygen masks you will lose consciousness in seconds, and be dead in less than three minutes." It is an exhilarating exercise and we laugh about it afterwards, though our laughter sounds hollow and far too loud. For every one of us in the decompression chamber knows that life itself flows only through a fragile rubber hose plugged into each of our oxygen masks. Life itself is positive-pressure 100% oxygen, much more than most of us derive from our atmosphere, but essential at the lowered atmospheric pressure in the chamber.

 

             Next we take part in a demonstration of the dangers of slow oxygen deprivation. After entering the chamber without oxygen masks, we are given large lined note pads and told to write our Christian names neatly on each line, once every three minutes. It all sounds stupidly simple, and we sit there as the air slowly hisses out through the vent valves, and the decompression chamber gradually starts a slow climbs to an altitude of 26, 000 feet. We all think we are doing a great job, and have no idea that the decreasing oxygen level is severely impairing our intellectual capabilities and reaction times. As we find out, this is the deadly danger of slow oxygen deprivation.  So insidious is the process, that despite being briefed about the effects in advance and knowing that the procedure is taking place, not one of us believes anything is going wrong.

            Afterwards in the debriefing room, the instructors produce our lined note pads with a flourish, pointing out that as oxygen content decreased with altitude, the quality of our writing progressively deteriorated. By about 25,000 feet it had changed to a meaningless blur. Our shock is profound, because we had been staring at those pads intently, convinced we were doing just what we were told to. Instead, we were victims of a deadly illusion: our brains being starved of oxygen so slowly that our senses were rendered incapable of recognising the lethal danger.

            The Institute of Aerospace Medicine was tasked with teaching us about the dangers of oxygen deprivation at high and extreme altitudes, so its instructors did not go into the more complex question of lesser impairment at lower altitudes. It was not their job to do so, but our lined note pads reflected the obvious: Though there was a very sharp change in our writing ability above twenty thousand feet, slight but visible deterioration actually started as low as ten or twelve thousand feet.

            How much more deterioration would we detect if we looked at the writing carefully through a microscope? Would we then be able to see micro-impairment at two or three thousand feet? Cold logic based on those official Institute procedures suggests that any oxygen deprivation below the normal concentration found at sea level, is bound to have adverse physical and mental effects on the human body in the long term.

            Sadly it is currently impossible to accurately check the oxygen levels in our towns and cities, though I did try to do so before writing this report. A prim spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] advised me that "the Agency only tests for dangerous greenhouse gases. It would be ridiculous to suggest that a major atmospheric gas such as oxygen could be significantly depleted."

            Clearly this obnoxious official remained blissfully unaware that outside his front door, thousands of cars were busily pumping out millions of molecules of carbon monoxide through their exhaust systems, each of which then grabbed an atmospheric oxygen molecule to convert itself from a carbon monoxide molecule to a carbon dioxide molecule.

 

            This was unfortunate indeed for all the oxygen-deprived pedestrians standing nearby, who needed the same atmospheric oxygen molecules themselves in order to breathe properly. At street level in downtown Perth during the rush hour, atmospheric oxygen levels drop as low as 10%, or roughly half the 20% figure touted by officialdom as "normal".

             Suddenly during the early nineties I was afflicted with blood pressure so high that, as one cynic put it, all I had to do was lie down and let someone build a coffin around me.  Though intended as a joke the comment had substance, because massive doses of conventional pharmaceutical drugs had done nothing to reduce the pressures from their horrific levels of 200+/130+ to the normal 120/80. The pressures simply refused to budge, and for many months I was a very good prospect for the local funeral parlour. 

            Unhappy with this, I started looking for another way out of my predicament and soon found huge quantities of information extolling the virtues of drinking large quantities of hydrogen peroxide. This was a challenge for someone like me with a very conventional background. After all, isn't hydrogen peroxide the stuff that some adventurous ladies use to transform themselves overnight into blonde bombshells?  Yes it is, but hydrogen peroxide is also a natural source of free oxygen molecules, literally deserving its alternative title of "Oxygen Water". When a dilute solution is ingested into an empty stomach, the extra oxygen molecules are immediately released into the blood stream.

            Researchers have observed the benefits of enhanced oxygen levels in the body, and there is much evidence suggesting beneficial effects and possible cures of diseases as deadly as AIDS and cancer. The available evidence suggests hydrogen peroxide works by oxidising all hostile disease organisms in the body, which normally need greatly decreased oxygen levels in order to survive.  Many years ago Nobel Prize winner Dr. Otto Wartburg gave a good example of this when he proved cancer cells generate energy by breaking down glucose without oxygen, though healthy cells must first combine with oxygen to do the same thing. Wartburg's work made it clear that oxygen in any form plays an enormously important role in our personal health and well being.

            It rapidly became clear that oxygen therapy would cause me no harm, and might have a beneficial effect on my high blood pressure levels. But how to use it? Prolific though the documentation was on all forms of oxygen therapy, every author had overlaid his or her own thoughts on sources of hydrogen peroxide, dose levels, and so on.  Nowhere could I find a straightforward safe procedure for an amateur to use at point-blank notice, so I had to invent one.

            Known chemically as H202, hydrogen peroxide comes in a variety of different concentrations with the strongest (and purest) being 35% food or analytical reagent (AR) grades, both of which were available from my local chemical wholesaler in Perth.  Having already calculated that it was safe for me to drink glasses of water containing less than 0.075% of hydrogen peroxide by volume,  I had to remember to handle the 35% reagent grade H2O2 concentrate with great care, in order to avoid burning holes through my fingers when mixing the dilute drinkable potion. I also had to remember to drink the potion before meals, for if ingested immediately after a slap-up meal, the extra oxygen molecules attempt to oxidise the food in seconds flat. On a couple of occasions I forgot this cardinal rule and was rewarded with a loud burp every five seconds non-stop for more than an hour, which later caused considerable mirth in the family room.

            My first step was to buy a half litre of 35% reagent grade H202 from the wholesaler for $26.50, plus a tiny funnel and a small plastic dropper bottle with a removable top. Wearing a pair of disposable 30c surgical gloves and working at the stainless steel sink, I decanted some of the 35% H202 through the funnel into the dropper bottle and replaced the cap. The (dangerous) half litre bottle of 35% H202 was immediately locked away out of reach of the children.  Next step was to fill a large glass tumbler two-thirds full of water, and then carefully squeeze twelve drops of 35% H202 into it from the dropper bottle. The split second the H202 entered the glass of water it was diluted and safe, giving me time to put the dropper bottle in the same locked cupboard.

 

            I had already calibrated my volumes and knew that twelve drops of 35% H202 from an average dropper bottle, added to two thirds of a large tumbler of water, resulted in a safe solution containing between 0.055 and 0.070% H202 - quite safe to drink, though it should be pointed out that much of the reference data I read suggested a low starting concentration (say three drops in a glass of water), increasing one drop per day to the higher dose levels.

            However, I assumed the authors of those articles were not sitting at their typewriters with their hearts trying to jump out of their chests. Unfortunately my heart was, and there seemed little point  in going through such a cautious start-up process.  The moment of truth had arrived, and after stirring my concoction with a spoon I swigged it back in seconds. The solution had a tinny taste but was not too bad, and I swiftly learned that a mouthful of fruit juice taken immediately afterwards removed the aftertaste completely. Any juice except pineapple that is, because pineapple juice alone sets up a biochemical reaction which prevents the positive effect of oxygen on the human body. 

            Then I settled into a routine, taking one glass of 0.070% H202 three times a day before meals, which amounts to about half a litre of dilute potion every 24 hours. Three weeks later I strolled into my doctor's surgery and had my blood pressure checked, though by then the poor fellow's eyes rolled every time I walked through the door. The good doctor had little prior experience of the walking dead, and over the past few months had taken to fumbling nervously every time he was obliged to wrap the cuff around my arm.

            But this time he was in for a surprise. The whites of my doctor's eyes glowed like luminous marbles and his hands were still shaking, but he managed to suppress his astonishment. Here was a long-dead patient who for six agonising months had been doubling the drug company's profit margins by swallowing staggering numbers of incredibly expensive but useless pills,   now sitting nonchalantly in front of him with a rock-steady blood pressure of exactly120/80. Trying not to be too obvious about it but clearly unable to believe his own trusty equipment, the doc casually checked my blood pressure again, before coughing apologetically and sneakily checking it for a third time.

             He asked me if anything in my life had changed, and I responded that the only difference was my vast ingestion of hydrogen peroxide, which may have been  a rather cruel thing to say to a fully paid-up member of the A.M.A.  By this time the doc was in a state of shock and probably wondering how he could lure me into the nearest psychiatric hospital, but his equipment kept showing him I'd stepped out of my waiting coffin and was apparently in tremendously good health. In the end he was forced to agree that my rather unconventional treatment had worked, and eagerly rushed me out of his surgery. He probably needed time to collect his thoughts. After all, it must come as an awesome shock to have years of expensive pharmaceutical indoctrination at medical school utterly destroyed in less than ten minutes.

            But it was to be two more weeks before I realised the hydrogen peroxide had cured another problem, which by direct comparison placed the mere reduction of my critically high blood pressure completely in the shade. Back in 1976 I was rushed into a Dutch hospital for an emergency operation. The Dutch surgeons were very efficient and I was released a few days later with a free but unwanted gift from the operating theatre: Golden Staphylococcus. Luckily I did not know about the deadly implications of "Golden Staph" at the time, but was very upset that this uncomfortable and embarrassing disease was causing problems in my life.

            Time and again I underwent savage courses of antibiotics but they had absolutely no beneficial effect whatever.  The Golden Staph was with me for life, as proved by pathology checks after each course of antibiotics, which showed the tenacious bug still very much alive and kicking. In fact, the last course of antibiotics was completed only twelve months before I started my oxygen therapy, and a pathology check run two months after that proved the disease as virulent as it had been in Holland during the seventies. This is a matter of documented medical fact on my personal records.  Then within a month or so of commencing oxygen therapy, my nasty case of Golden Staph vanished completely.

            After more than fifteen years, one of the most dangerous diseases known to hospitals world-wide was killed stone dead by hydrogen peroxide. How? For that I am still looking for answers, but two friendly doctors suggested that by taking Hydrogen Peroxide orally, I had accidentally pumped a very real antiseptic through my blood stream, making it impossible for the Golden Staph to survive. They pointed out that only thirty years ago, 3% hydrogen peroxide was widely used in hospitals as a tremendously effective antiseptic; so effective in fact that festering wounds bathed with it started to bubble and froth as the bacteria were destroyed. Unfortunately, with the introduction of more expensive and thus profitable antiseptics from the pharmaceutical companies, hydrogen peroxide was quietly pushed to the back of the closet, being largely forgotten as the years rolled by.

 

            The time is fast approaching when we may have to re-invent the wheel. On 26 February 1996, the ABC's Four Corners ran a British documentary called "Super Bugs". Huge numbers of British hospitals are contaminated with MRSA, which appears to be an antibiotic resistant strain of guess what? Golden Staphylococcus. But now the bug is killing people in large numbers, even those admitted to hospital with relatively minor complaints. Four Corners cited one  particular case of a healthy young man admitted after a motorcycle crash in which he broke his leg, only to die 48 hours later from MRSA contracted within the hospital itself. It was a terrible waste of life, but that young man is far from alone.  Incidents of infection in South Wales increased by 700% in a single year, and the local health official there was obliged to admit that MRSA has now reached 'epidemic' proportions. Four Corners also revealed MRSA is now well established in most of the large hospitals on Australia's eastern seaboard, placing every one of us, and our children, at deadly risk.

            The medical explanations presented for this spreading scurge were far from convincing. Generally speaking, overall opinion seems to be that 'super' bugs such as MRSA are mutating in such a way that they are defeating virtually all of the powerful antibiotics manufactured by the pharmaceutical companies. The problem here is knowing whether the medical fraternity is putting the horse before the cart or the cart before the horse. Are we to seriously believe that "bug headquarters" is frantically mutating new super bugs in a deadly quest to kill tens of thousands of human beings, and thus destroy the credibility of the pharmaceutical companies?

            Of course not, the real reason must be far simpler. It has been known for decades that all powerful antibiotics have serious side effects, not the least of which is destroying the friendly bacteria in our bodies designed from the outset to help combat disease. Indeed, so many enlightened people are familiar with this downside of pharmaceutical medicine that they keep lactobacillus acidophilus in the fridge in one form or another, to undo the damage wrought by the destructive antibiotics, or simply to maintain their good health on a daily basis. Logic dictates that antibiotics powerful enough to create havoc in the digestive tract will certainly cause other less obvious damage as well.

            Increasingly, lay opinion is encompassing the notion that over the last thirty years, some doctors have  administered antibiotics so frequently to so many patients with so little cause, that the human body is fast becoming immune to the drugs. If true, this is the ugly flip side of the medical opinions provided on the Four Corners programme. Under these circumstances the body might have been weakened by drugs to the point where an ordinary bug such as Golden Staphylococcus could overwhelm it. Put simply, it could be that over-zealous prescription of antibiotics in the past has lowered the body's natural defences to the point where a hitherto harmless bug has become a deadly danger to us all.  So is it time to revert to tried and proven remedies of the past?

            From personal experience the answer is an unequivocal "Yes". All of our family's pharmaceutically-produced antiseptics and disinfectants have been thrown away and replaced with old-fashioned 3%?and 5% solutions of hydrogen peroxide, which are cheap and work much more efficiently. Drinking oxygen water has become a daily habit in our house, though I toyed with the idea of obtaining a cylinder of 100% medical-grade oxygen gas instead.

            The rationale for such a move was that grabbing an oxygen mask and breathing in two deep breaths of 100% oxygen three times a day before meals, was less fiddly that mixing concentrated hydrogen peroxide and water. It would also be safer, because concentrated H202 would not have to be stored in the house at all. Unfortunately the gas manufacturer advised it could only sell me a cylinder of medical-grade oxygen if I had a prescription from a medical doctor!

            Stunned by this I asked for an explanation, and was advised the manufacturer's insurance would not cover it if anything "went wrong" while I was inhaling its oxygen. This was making no sense, so I asked if I would need a medical doctor's prescription to acquire a cylinder of carbon dioxide, which will kill a healthy human in seconds if administered in heavy concentrations. No problem. I could buy as much carbon dioxide as I wanted, or even ethylene oxide, which forms the major component of the American FAE (Fuel Air Weapon), designed to kill everyone in a 10,000 square foot area surrounding ground-zero. What I had been told in effect, was that there was no restriction on those gases capable of killing humans by the thousand, but a complete medical block on the one gas needed to improve the quality of human life.

 

            There is no way I could or would blame the gas manufacturer or its personnel for this anomaly, because the incredible order had filtered down from medical bureaucrats in Canberra.  Eventually I managed to contact a medical doctor at the Drug Evaluation Branch of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, a division of the Commonwealth Department of Health, and was assured the gas manufacturer had given me correct information.

             Oxygen, the doc told me, is now classified as a drug. He politely sent me his visiting card and a copy of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, both of which are lying on the table next to me as I write these last few words. Oxygen is now a dangerous drug as determined by Canberra, and that's official.

            Medical records prove that oxygen alone was responsible for dramatically lowering my blood pressure, and for completely eradicating the Golden Staphylococcus which plagued me for more than fifteen long years. I would like to believe there is no great pharmaceutical conspiracy behind Canberra's ridiculous decision to restrict the supply of 100% oxygen, preferring to put such apparent lunacy down to a combination of incompetence and stupidity on the part of a handful of bureaucrats.

            But is it really that simple? It would be far more comforting for all Australians if we could establish once and for all time that the multinational pharmaceutical corporations are not in de-facto control of our Department of Health.