Doctor issues warning in response to Gwyneth Paltrow's rectal ozone therapy trend

A doctor has issued a warning after Gwyneth Paltrow shocked the world by admitting she’s tried rectal ozone therapy.

The founder and CEO of the wellness brand Goop has dabbled in a whole bunch of alternative therapies like vaginal steaming but even she admits that ozone therapy is ‘pretty weird’.

During an interview on the podcast The Art of Being Well hosted by Will Cole, Paltrow said she had ozone therapy ‘rectally’.

“I have used ozone therapy, rectally. Can I say that?” the 50-year-old said. “It’s pretty weird. It’s pretty weird, yeah. But it’s been very helpful.”

She didn’t exactly say what the supposed benefits are or how the exactly the ozone was administered but we can take a wild guess.

So, what is ozone therapy? It refers to a wellness process of administering ozone gas into the body to treat a disease or wound.

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Ozone is a colourless gas made up of three atoms of oxygen. The three main forms of treatment include directly to the tissue for a wound, intravenously or intramuscularly.

Despite its alleged benefits, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated in 2019 that ozone is toxic and has no proven health benefits.

Because we’re used to talking about the hole in the ozone rather than ozone in the hole, Paltrow’s confession went viral online, with many people curious about whether blowing ozone up where the sun don’t shine could help them.

When you Google ‘ozone rectal therapy’, other than all the Paltrow-related articles, you’ll see links to websites touting the alleged benefits of the procedure. Ozone therapy website drozone.com states that rectal insufflation ozone therapy is ‘the administration of medical grade ozone directly into the colon via the rectum’.

The therapy aims to boost oxygen efficiency, balance the immune system, improve blood circulation and mediate oxidative stress.

Medical doctor and senior contributor for Forbes Bruce Y. Lee is not amused and states that there ‘isn’t enough evidence supporting the many wellness claims about rectal oxygen therapy’.

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You should also avoid putting things like ozone up your butt because of the ‘real potential risks’ associated with it. For instance, ozone can be wreak havoc in your lungs and could lead to pulmonary edema – the accumulation of fluid in the lungs – if you breath it in, Lee warns.

He explains: “When a celebrity who is neither a medical professional nor a scientist makes a claim about a treatment without offering sufficient scientific evidence, be skeptical. be very skeptical. Be especially skeptical when that celebrity doesn’t even say specifically how the therapy benefited him or her.”