Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Hydrogen Peroxide

Episode Date: April 7, 2016

In what may be the most shocking episode of Sawbones to date, we reveal the dirty truth about hydrogen peroxide: It's maybe not so useful for anything. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, not a sense, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, tour of misguided medicine. I am your co-host

Justin McAulay they call me and I'm Sydney McAulay. I I mean that is I'll just say they call you that cuz that's your name. That's my name Justin Sydney Sidster I picked a bugger I picked a booger. Gross. Gross. You informed me of this.

This is not a goof. You informed me of this yesterday, and I didn't push too hard. You just looked at me and said, I picked a booger. My initial response was, I figured you meant out of Charlie's nose, which like congrats. But I did do that yesterday. Sure. I did that twice yesterday.

That wasn't what I was referencing, but I mean, probably. Yeah. If it's a day that ends in a while, we probably do that. It's like a mom, referencing, but I mean, probably. Yeah. If it's a day that ends in a while, it probably gets like a mom, dad, parents, a parent job. Yeah. Pick them bugs. No, I didn't mean an actual booger. I picked a metaphorical booger. I picked a, have you never heard that expression? Never. That's it. We use that expression a lot. Like in medicine, if we think like somebody's getting all better and they look good and like everything's heading in the right direction,

we think like in the hospital or something like, yes, okay, this person's getting better. And then somebody thinks like randomly like, why don't I order this strange test? That has nothing to do with what's going on and I'll just order it. And then it comes back and it's kind of abnormal and you have no idea why,

because it has nothing to do with anything else that's going on. We'll say, you picked a booger because now like now we're gonna we're gonna chase down this lead so to speak and it may be nothing and it has nothing to do with anything else but now we've picked a booger and we can't just ignore it like you can't just hold the booger on your finger like you have to do something with it. Yeah, and in medicine You can't just wipe that booger under the table or like under your chair and pretend like it wasn't like you have to Handle the booger handle the booger. What is the proverbial booger we're discussing the booger that I picked was hydrogen peroxide Yeah, this is a big We got a bigger response because you put you kind of put hydrogen peroxide on blast a little bit because I was surprised I mean that was not me acting. I, I mean, I

played dumb on the show a lot. But he plays dumb. Placedum on the show a lot. This is not, it's not real thing. It's all acting. Sitting in I basically both, like, if you average it out or each half a doctor. But the, the hydrogen pero, I really did think, I mean, I have many memories of my parents pouring a cup a bit of hydrogen peroxide on a cut or something or like the one that I have done,

like fairly recently even, like a gargle with it for like ulcers in my mouth and stuff like that. You gargle with it for ulcers in your mouth? Not to get them. What is that? Why would I do that? When you treat ulcers with hydrogen peroxide.

I mean, from your reaction, I'm betting I don't actually treat it. I mean, you're attempting to do that, right? Why didn't I not even know that you did this? I mean, it hasn't been a long time. Honestly, now I just kind of live with them. Like I'm 35 so my list of like things that don't feel good in my body. Mouth holes are like kind of low now, but I used to buy orange juice and that pretty much doesn't for me.

No, I mean, I think we I understand where you're coming from that that you big with us brown bottle I think we, I understand where you're coming from, that ubiquitous brown bottle was in everybody's medicine cabinet, I think growing up, you know, a lot of first aid kits. Yes, and it would get pulled out, I remember that, when I'd have a cut or something, I have vivid memories of that at like my grandparents' house, of like knowing they're gonna want to pour that on me, and I hated that fizzy bubbling, I hated that, but I thought it was necessary.

So I'm here to kind of, I guess, complete the job, the hit that I put out on my chest and prox. Last time you just broke its legs, my gonna put a bullet in the screen. I'm gonna finish it off. I do want to thank Andy for suggesting this topic as well as everybody on Twitter who totally freaked out when I mentioned that maybe hydrogen peroxide doesn't work. Yeah. Because like I said, now I've gotta tackle the subject.

So Sid, where do we start with hydrogen peroxide? Where does it come from? I feel like somebody just found one of those brown bottles one day, he's like, oh, what the, cool, okay. No, no, it the cool. Okay. No, it was actually isolated by chemists, by scientists. So, you know, especially like in the 1800s, there was a lot, like chemistry was a blossoming field where we were trying to figure out all these different compounds and what do they

do and different molecular structures. We're figuring out all this, like how does changing, adding a hydrogen here or whatever, what does they do and you know different molecular structures we're kind of figuring out all this like how does changing adding a hydrogen here or whatever what does that do to something and so hydrogen peroxide was first isolated by a French scientist Luis Jacques Thernard in 1818 but initially he thought it was so unstable that it couldn't be extracted from water. That hydrogen peroxide was always in a solution of water. And you couldn't separate it out into its own thing. It was hard to do. Mixed in? Yeah, mixed in with water. But then in 1894, a scientist, a chemist named Wolfenstein. What? A chemist named Wolfenstein, the doctor Wolfenstein. What? A Kimis name Wolfenstein. The doctor Wolfenstein. As in return to Castle Wolfenstein?

Well, I don't think there's any association, but the name is the same. That's true. Well, I mean, yeah, I don't think he had a secret, not to castle, also the devil, but like, I just really like Wolfenstein, that's a great name. He was in the cult, right? Deeply into the cult, minigames, stuff. No just really like Wolfenstein. Yeah. Great name. He was in the occult, right?

No. Deeply into the cult, minigames, so no, he's just into chemistry. Got it. Okay. Cool. And he was able to extract it. Yeah, he was, he was the one who he extracted it, but he also made a mech soup for Hitler. That Wolfenstein is at the one.

No, he just was, it was Kimis soup. Did some stuff of that drip peroxide. Okay. Well, video games lied to me again. Great. Thanks, guys. Sorry. There's probably a different one. A different.

It's a really common name, Wolfenstein. So I'm sure there's more than one. Sure, probably. Yeah. So the chemical structure to kind of give you a reference point for this. And Justin, this is, don't worry. I know this sounds like really boring. I'm going to take the chemical structure of hydrogen peroxide, but it's pretty easy

to understand. It's H-O-O-H, now, or you could abbreviate it, and that's kind of the way that it's laid out, the molecules laid out, with the two oxygens bonded together, and then a hydrogen kind of sticking off each end. It's H202. Now what does that sound a lot like? A lot like H20 or hydrogen dioxide.

No. Hydrogen oxide. Hydrogen- Dihydrogen- Dihydrogen oxy. Mono-oxy. Mono- Nobody calls it that. It's water.

It's H2O. Okay. Yes. But hydrogen peroxide, of course, is not water. Right. It's H2O2. There's another oxygen in there. That oxygen bond is actually kind of unstable inherently

So one major difference because this this idea that hydrogen peroxide is sort of like water But with more oxygen because when you when you sell it like that It sounds like it's this great thing right? It's just like water only even more oxygen It reminds me of that episode of parks and rec when they're putting fluoride in the water Yeah, I have to sell it is. H2 flow? Yes. It sounds like that. Like, oh, this is, it's so pure. It's water and extra oxygen. But it's not really water like. One really important difference is let's say that you heat a pot of water to boiling. What happens? It boils. Right. So you could cook an egg in it or something

like a boil so you could put your ramen in there or whatever. Cool. If you did that, if you heated pure hydrogen peroxide to boiling, it would explode. So that's a big difference. You know, right between it and water. It is in a pure solution of just hydrogen peroxide. It is a colorless, it would maybe look like water. It's a little more viscous than water. But I do not think comparing it to water is completely fair. And that's important to know when we get into someone's like, the health claims for it, that it's not just like,

fancy water. We react to the water, you couldn't drink it. No, I wouldn't advise you just drink it. I mean, you could, you could, you could not drink it. Well, I mean, you can, you can drink anything, Justin. Fair. That's true. I mean, not anything, but all right.

It's used in, we're, you know, it's used in things other than medicine, just to kind of, you know, throw that out there. It is used in bleaching. It's used as an oxidizer for different chemical reactions. It's used as a propellant for rockets, like rocket fuel. So, you know, combustible. But that's not what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about the medical uses

or not of hydrogen peroxide. Now, when you think about that brown bottle that you had in your medicine cabinet or may have or in your first aid kit, it is a solution of hydrogen peroxide. So it's not pure hydrogen peroxide. It is not just a bottle filled with H2O2. Okay. It is hydrogen, which would be, so that wouldn't be hydrogen, wouldn't that be dihydrogen dioxide? It's different because a peroxide is a certain kind of oxygen bond is what they're referencing there. It's not so much of the number of oxygen,

it's the bond that we're referencing. So they have that name maybe before we started using that nomenclature, like it was hydrogen peroxide before we started calling things die and like using that nomenclature, like it was hydrogen peroxide before we started calling things die and like using that sort of formula. It's just referencing that specific, but it's more complex than that when you get into chemistry. Then it's not always just mono and die,

like they're different. Okay. There are other reasons you would call something, but it's in reference to that oxygen bond. Got it. So the stuff that's in the brown bottle is a solution. It's the H202 in H20 in water. So it's not just hydrogen peroxide, it's a lot of water with a little hydrogen peroxide. What's the blend, would you guess? Most are like 3 to 6% hydrogen peroxide. So not a lot.

Yeah. Right. And of course it's not, you know, it So not a lot. Yeah. Right. And of course, it's not, you know, it's not a, because they are similar, it's a lot of hydrogens and oxygens floating around in there and kind of bonding and unbonding too. But in general, it's 3% to 6%, depending on which bottle you have, most are like 3%. Honestly. Hydrogen peroxide solution. You can find slightly higher, sometimes you can find even up to 10%

and then slightly higher formulations in some places in Europe. But in the US, most of what you're going to buy is around 3%. But the most effective stuff is the 6%. Right? Like this is really going to help you. Well, I see it gets tricky. Most effective, but maybe not and most dangerous, maybe so. So it's not that straightforward. So when we go back to, we've isolated this compound, we're using it in rocket fuel. Well, whoever decided that we should use it for medicinal purposes.

So the story goes back to first a doctor, Rosinau. Dr. Rosinow. Okay. Dr. Rosinow was a scientist studying Mayo, a doctor in a scientist who was looking for some sort of substance that could be used to kill various microorganisms, bacteria, fungi, viruses, everything. Okay. He was kind of looking for like a silver bullet. And... Listerine. He started, not that far off with hydrogen

broggar. He started thinking about using hydrogen peroxide for this purpose and started doing some sort of small scale experiments to see if it would work that way in a laboratory setting, but unfortunately, he died before he was able to complete this work. His good buddy, though, father Richard Wilhelm continued on in his footsteps. He was a Catholic priest. He was also familiar enough with the scientific world and chemistry to be able to understand this and to kind of continue the work of his friend, you know, Dr. Rose now. So he founded the Educational Concern for Hydrogen Paroxide, which was basically like a, you know, research organization group to understand and experiment with hydrogen peroxide to see what else he could do. Okay. And it was based on his strong belief that his friend was absolutely right that hydrogen peroxide

kills all of these microorganisms. And so therefore probably is the key to treating a lot of diseases. And so as he begins to study, he writes about this. And some of these are from his own words, as his explanation why he thought this works so well. So he wrote that he had learned that bacteria cannot the joints and cause inflammatory arthritis. So what this is showing is he thinks arthritis

is caused by bacteria. It gives off calcium waste that cement's bones together. It lodges in the liver and kidneys and form stones. It leaves hard deposits on the walls of arteries, short circuit the energy in the brain, and cut off blood supply to cells and causes a loss of oxidative metabolism. And he felt like this, which was sort of a hypothesis of this doctor from Mayo, was the root. He decided this was kind of the root of all disease. And so basically any kind of illness doesn't like oxygen and so more oxygen is going to help treat it. Bacteria don't like oxygen.

He believed cancer doesn't like oxygen. More oxygen equals health. And hydrogen peroxide was a molecule that had, that was like water, but with this extra oxygen, that it donates freely when in contact with other substances, like it gives the oxygen. It oxidizes, you've heard of oxidizing. Right, yeah, resting. Gives the oxygen.

The molecule hydrogen peroxide will give the oxygen to other molecules. So if you put it on tissue, it will oxidize it. Okay. If you put it on bacteria, it'll oxidize it. Give it oxygen. Right. So he thought it would kill it.

Like happens to apples when they turn brown. When they expose oxygen. Yes. Sure. Same thing. There you go. Basically. But like when an apple turns brown, nobody thinks that it's healed of all diseases.

See, it's just a metaphor. I'm just saying. He called hydrogen peroxide, God's given immune system. And he pulled that out of his butt. I mean, face, and he based that on nothing. And there were now to be fair, you know, I'm gonna get into some of the actual reasons. God's giving me like, that's so wild to me that this dude would go like zero to 60

like, oh my god, this is thank you. Thank you for hydrogen peroxide. It's so effective I bet. To be fair, like, let me just clarify a few things. As they were studying hydrogen peroxide in labs, and I'm going to get into the actual research on all this stuff up to date, but the general findings were that if you took hydrogen peroxide at high concentrations and exposed bacteria and viruses and stuff to it, they would die. Like you can kill things with hydrogen peroxide. I'm not saying you can't. It has some bacteria-sidle activity. Now, what concentration and how long do you have to keep it on a bacteria to kill it? Probably not as long as you were pouring it on your cut, but they did find

some evidence in a lab that you could kill things with hydrogen peroxide. So these weren't like completely wacky ideas, but then taking it to that next level that maybe then it could cure cancer. Well, obviously that was a stretch. A real turning point for Father Wilhelm was when he met Walter Groats, a retired postal employee who he happened to run into on a cruise in 1982.

Groats complained that he had tear-borthritis and that nobody had ever really been able to help him with it. So Father Wilhelm suggested that why don't you try hydrogen peroxide? Because he believed that that would kill all those nasty bacteria that cause arthritis. Right, sure. So, for several weeks, he drank between one and seven glasses of water with a few drops of a stronger form of hydrogen peroxide, one that you wouldn't be able to just, you know, buy in a brown bottle. It's a 35% hydrogen peroxide food grade.

Hydrogen peroxide, because it can be used to like help disinfect food. Yeah, what and just so I'm clear one to seven glasses. Yes. Hey folks, it's your buddy Justin Macri here. If you're ever wondering if a treatment is legitimate, when you ask the doctor how many and he says, I don't know one or seven, it's probably not particularly effective. Like you can have one of them that could work or maybe seven of them. Also, okay, it's a number that could work. That's a few more than that. So I don't know, one or seven or somewhere between there would be effective. Just try it out, see what works out. How many AVIL D1 just said? I don't know, one would be helpful, but maybe seven? That would be much better, wouldn't it?

But never eight. Oh no, oh, oh, dude, on hydrogen peroxide. I like that. It gives you a little wiggle room, so if they come back in there, like it didn't work. Well, how many did you take? Six, three, two, one.

You needed seven. You needed seven. That's your problem. So for whatever reason this worked for Mr. Grotes and he became a disciple. He was instantly converted to the Church of hydrogen peroxide. He believed he wrote that it hydrogen peroxide joyfully relieves asthma arthritis, multiple sclerosis, infosemic cancer, the common cold, herpes candidiasis, anginomalaria, gingivitis, tumors, warts, lupus, psoriasis, moles, amoebaisis, and hemorrhoids.

Oh, oh no. Wow, city, that sounds suspiciously to me, like a cure all. And as we've said, many times on solvones, cure all's, cure nothing. So they both traveled the countryside, spreading the gospel of hydrogen peroxide, so to speak, and people started listening as they were writing and and they're always doctors and scientists who are going to jump on board with this stuff, no matter what it is or how strange it sounds. You're always going to find some people who will who will buy into anything. And they started advising using it for everything, not just for all of these illnesses that you could joyfully have relieved. With hydrogen peroxide you can use it to clean your plants or your aquariums or feed it to your pets or your livestock or clean your vegetables and crops with it. People started using it with very popular treatment for

typhoid fever, for cholera, for ulcers, for asthma, for whooping cough, TB, syphilis. It was like the bronidough of its day. Spread on plants, you drink it. It was everything. It had electrolytes. It's gone with plant grade. It doesn't have electrolytes. I was gonna say. It was not only advice that you drink it. You could drink it. You could drink it, that's great. You could put drops of it just like you

wanted seven glasses of water. You could also swish with it, swish around in your mouth, like Justin does. You could brush your teeth with it. You could brush your teeth with it. You could brush your teeth with it. It's like a paste that you could make out of it. You could douche with it.

It was recommended for douchein. So we don't recommend douchein or hydrogen peroxide doucheers either. It's a lot, just not a thing. Many, many sides. I'll do any of that. Many leading scientists today aren't even 100% sure what douchein is. Do you not know what douchein is? Many leading scientists, not myself, aren't even, we can't get on the sidebar here,

said. Do you want me to tell you real quick what douchein is? We're running long. I know here said do you want me to tell you real quick what I know but do you want me to show maybe okay fill me in okay you could also use it with animals it was also recommended that you could do a hydrogen peroxide animal there is a recipe to make it into a nasal spray if you're having any kind of runny nose or nose problems again you put it in your pets. You could soak in a tub of water mixed with a pint of hydrogen peroxide. Great. Uh, spray 3% all over you, at least three times a day. Just put it in a spray bottle, spray

it all over you. Mix it with aloe for a nice moisturizer or, or if you just can't drink it, you just can't stand that, that taste of hydrogen peroxide. You could turn it into a powder, mix it with stuff, turn it into a powder, put it in capsules and take capsules of hydrogen peroxide. So, said people were actually doing this? Yes, they were. And there's more. But first, why don't you follow me to the billing department?

Let's go! The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God for the mount. So, Sid, you were going to tell me about some other devotees. So, this work that had already been the groundwork that was already laid by Father Wilhelm and Grotes was expanded upon in the 80s and 90s by a Dr. Charles FAR. He believed that because of this action of hydrogen peroxide oxidizing things, that it could be used for all kinds of stuff, but he advised infusions. How do you mean?

Like injecting it. Into your body. Like into your veins, like poking yourself up to like a hydrogen peroxide IV. Basically. Okay. Solution, not straight hydrogen peroxide, but a solution of it.

And again, he continued the same theme of that it could cure anything, adding even more things that he thought it could cure. So everything we've mentioned before plus cardiovascular disease, if you have cerebral vascular disease, meaning like your proendostrokes, if you have heart arrhythmias, he was a big fan of it for things like infosima or CFD or asthma, those kinds of lung diseases. He studied that as well as for cancer. That was one of his big themes as well that it was definitely something that could, that was like the secret treatment that nobody had figured out yet for cancer.

One of the things he would advise specifically kind of a novel use so far, you think we would have used hydrogen peroxide every way we could. Sure, yeah, it seemed very exhausting. But he also advised putting an ounce of that 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide into a gallon of water and put that in a vaporizer at night for infosima. Now, what's interesting about that is that I did as I was kind of trying to read what good studies have been done on hydrogen peroxide. I found a case study where somebody was cleaning their nebulizer, which they take out

butyl treatments with, their nebulizer, with hydrogen peroxide and they didn't rinse it all out completely and so they did basically this with a nebulizer and actually damaged their lungs from it. There's just a case report, but I don't know. The evidence would say from that one case report, maybe don't do that. He also recommended an IV treatment for infosima.

So you would hook yourself up to a hydrogen peroxide IV. And he said that what it did was what he referred to as the alkyceltzer effect in your lungs. Okay, great. So he thought patients with infosima had all this extra mucus, they do have all this extra mucus that builds up in the little air sacs in their lungs called avioli. And then if you got an IV treatment of hydrogen peroxide, that all this extra oxygen will kind of bubble up between the little air sacs lining and the mucus and like push the mucus away and up and out

and then you can cough up all the mucus. Excellent, sure that'll work. It just works that way. Sure. He also used it. Is that what oxyls are doing by the way? No. Okay, good. He also used it- Is that what alkysells are doing by the way? No. Okay, good. He also used it for trigger point injections. So if you have a place that hurts like a place that's causing you a lot

of pain, he would just like get a little syringe full of hydrogen peroxide and stick it in there, like in your back or whatever. He used it for treatment of the flu. He did a, there was a small paper that where he used it for treatment of the flu. He founded both the he, there was a small paper that where he used to treatment the flu. He founded both the International Biooxidative Medical Foundation and the International Oxidative Medical Association. Which sound pretty, pretty pretty good. Well, the first group needed another group to play in softball. So eventually, both of these groups have become part of the American College for advancementment in Medicine.

Under the Healing Oxidative Medicine, that's actually where those groups kind of ended up, which that still exists today. He did also, by the way, found a company that sells a lot of alternative medicines. He's on a side note. He also declared, I think this is interesting, because if you look at some of the studies that were done, it's funny, I was trying to find the original studies and I found like commentaries on like people who tried to repeat them and could never make them happen again. Because there are these studies that have been done that said like, we injected hydrogen

peroxide into rats with cancer and their cancer vanished and then there are people who followed up and said like, we tried to do that and we couldn't make that happen. Seems like if it worked, we would have heard something by now. Well, that's a big thing about using the scientific method. Things have to be reproducible. So you can't do it one time and then say, I don't know, it's never worked again, but I know it worked because it worked that one time. Right.

That's not science. Right. But he declared that, I don't know he declared that I don't know if this, I don't know if this was in response to some of these questionable studies, but he declared that you that no longer is the double blind study, the gold standard in medicine. Just by saying it, he made it true. No longer. I would say it's because it's not working for me, but what he said actually was because alternative treatment protocols can significantly improve the health status of a group of chronicly old patients

And a time span of only six months so we don't need to do a double blind study because just do this and six months later You'll be healed so okay Or you stop studying this okay guys lay off just like they say at Nike just do it or they will say at Nike in like a hundred years I read I read some other places because this is still kind of give me okay so this is the direction we're going. This is still a big part of some people's practice of alternative medicine. And this is not everybody not everybody practices complimentary alternative medicine uses hydrogen peroxide but there are some practitioners that you will find, you will find a lot about this currently in practice using hydrogen peroxide.

I found recommendations that you should drink it in order to basically like cleanse your gut of all flora. So here we had our poop episode where we talked about how important all that good bacteria is. I read one recommendation, like just keep drinking hydrogen peroxide until all the bacteria and yeast and everything inside of you is gone and then you can replace it with yogurt. I'm gonna load a garbage. Like, you know, like cavemen did. What? There are lots of suggested protocols I found online, like if you wanna start hydrogen peroxide therapy, use three drops in a glass of water three times a day and then use four drops three times a day.

That would be so wildly diluted at that point. Are they still talking about food grade or are they? Yeah, that food grade 35% is what I found most of the time, that's what people are recommending than 35%. And then there was even like a weaning protocol, like now if you wanna stop it, you can't just stop. You have to wean yourself off the hydrogen peroxide water that you're drinking. And you'll see things like people mention, I said that about like, oh, it's just like water, but with more oxygen as if that

makes it safe. Or better. That is never how chemistry works, guys. Like if you hear like it's just like this, but with a whole other oxygen or hydrogen or something attached to it, like that changes the whole thing. The whole thing is different now. You can't just, that's not how chemistry works. But people say that, so that's obviously it's natural then, or well we found it in rainwater, so it's the way that the earth cleanses itself. We found trace amounts of it. No, I'm not messing with you. Your contempt is is showing a little bit my gear. I've found mentions that oh we we've seen it in breast milk so obviously if it's good for baby it's good for everything else. Yeah.

So the reality. No, my baby eats sometimes lucky charms. It doesn't make it good for humans. And also it doesn't cure cancer. And cure cancer. She just likes the marshmallows every once in a while. The reality is that, you know, we haven't done giant studies on if hydrogen peroxide cures cancer. There you go. They're not out there.

We really haven't even done huge studies on like pouring hydrogen peroxide on a cut to see if it works better than not. We've done some studies, I'm not saying we haven't done any, but you're not gonna find giant bodies of research on whether or not it should be in a first aid kit or not. I don't know if that's just because in truth it's probably not that harmful.

So. And it's probably not that harmful. So, right. And it's cheap. It's so cheap, it is not worth figuring it out. It's not worth figuring it out. Because it's not really hurting anybody, but it might not be helping them either. It does, like I said, it does kill some bacteria in vitro, meaning in the lab.

But in vivo, meaning in real life, in your body, in humans, it's less convincing as to whether or not it really works. A lot of the problem has to do with time and concentration. So when we kill things with hydrogen peroxide in a lab, we might be using a stronger hydrogen peroxide, and it may be like 10 minutes that we're exposing it to it, or 15 minutes or 20 minutes even. It's nobody does.

Nobody does that with hydrogen peroxide. So that could be part of the problem. And even though you even then you'd still be better with them like, I don't know, neosporaners and like that, right? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. That mean depending on the situation, but yeah, it doesn't appear to one of the

big concerns is does it slow wound healing. So if you use it once, probably not repeated uses of it they have seen some evidence that it can cause blisters to form so maybe it's not so good for new skin that's trying to grow back as I mentioned that's why I tell people when they're trying to heal a wound don't just keep dumping hydrogen peroxide on it you could be slowing down that new skin formation but overall it doesn't maybe it doesn't slow the healing of a wound, but it also doesn't make it heal any faster.

And they've never really proven that it decreases infection rate or the bacterial load inside a wound. So what is it doing? Nothing really. And like I said in some studies, it caused blisters to form. It may be actually damaging some of the tissues, some of the cells. It is just on a side note. It is something that is naturally occurring in your body. So when people say that, like they're not crazy, that's true.

Inside some cells in your body, they have little compartments that house hydrogen peroxide. They're called peroxasomes, those little compartments. And they'll like take in, these cells are sneaky, they'll take in bacteria or viruses or something, and then that little peroxasome will open up and kill it with hydrogen peroxide, and kill the cell too. So yes, your body does use it,

it also uses it to send some signals inside your body to like call white blood cells to sites of infection or something. So it is useful inside the human body and trace amounts, but that doesn't necessarily mean we need to bathe in it. It has been used, as people have mentioned, in dentistry for a long time to whiten teeth, and there are even like trays that you can put to fight parodontal disease of hydrogen peroxide, where you can like put it up against your gums, but it holds it there for a while. That's one thing to think about to kill bacteria like films that can develop and stuff.

If you look at what does the CDC recommend it for? It is an effective disinfectant when used on inanimate surfaces. So if you want to wash your counter with it or whatever, that's fine. And we use it and they're not as much in the US maybe in terms of medical equipment, like an operating room or something like that. But in a lot of other countries, you still find that hydrogen peroxide is used to clean things, clean equipment.

But you gotta be really careful because if you're gonna clean something that then it's gonna be used on the human body with hydrogen peroxide, you gotta wipe it all off because they've seen cases of like cleaning an indoscope that's used for a colonoscopy, the camera that goes up inside the colon, cleaning it with hydrogen peroxide,

and then not rinsing it off well enough and it caused like a colitis and inflammation. Great. And then you should be careful using it inside your mouth because it can damage mucous membranes. That's why you shouldn't use it in your mouth. You shouldn't do it with it. You shouldn't use it as an inema.

I mean, at least at home, if your dentist is using an appropriate solution of it, that's one thing, but you shouldn't just be like non-stop using hydrogen peroxide unsupervised. So, let me know, I'm over generalizing here, but, or I am generalizing, I should say. But, I mean, it sounds like not that effective, but probably not that harmful,

but again, just to reiterate, probably not that effective. Like, if I want to dump something in a cut, there are worse things, but there are probably better things. Exactly. You're probably, I mean, the thing is, you're probably not doing much. I mean, I would say, I would say if you want to clean a cut out, you're better off. If you need to clean it out at all, just wash it with soap and water, and if you need something that's actually bacteria, a cytol that kills bacteria, you are probably better off with something that actually has like an antibiotic in it, as opposed to hydrogen peroxide for one. And two, if you want to use a mouthwash,

use a mouthwash. Yeah. You know, and leave it to your dentist to put hydrogen peroxide in your mouth because they can do it safely. And anything beyond that, the person is just a jerk wad, they're saying that'll cure cancer. It's, I said this before we started recording and I still don't understand. Please, I hope, let me just say this, if doctors had some secret cure for cancer, especially something is cheap and easy to get, it's hydrogen peroxide, please believe me, we'd tell you. I mean, I would love that. I love when there's some sort of cheap, easily available alternative that I can tell my patients to get as opposed to having to go through the prescribing and the pain for and the fighting

with insurance companies. There is no secret conspiracy. We're not hiding anything for anybody. And if a website is telling you that and that the secret has been hydrogen peroxide all along, your doctor does want you to know I'm sorry. That's crap Hey listen y'all. Thank you so much for for enjoying our show or listening to our show I hope you enjoyed it. I shouldn't make assumptions if you want to follow us on twitter. We're at solbones I'm at Justin McAroy and CELR OY and I'm at Sydney McAroy S-Y-D-N-E And uh if you could take a moment if you like the show, this seems like a general interest

one. Maybe share it on your Facebook or your Tweetos and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes, all that stuff really helps us out and helps us to get the word out. And you can save someone else from the terrible fate of paying to 27 for a bottle of hydrogen right side. Solvones has your back. Until next time that's going to do it for us. Oh, thanks to Taxpayers for this. Username's medicines is the intro-nature program.

Go buy all their records. I don't know if they have records. They probably have records. Sure. Yeah, sure they have records. All their songs, all their music. All their music. All their music.

Until next Wednesday, my name is Justin McAroy. And it's always dope to drill a hole in your head. Alright!