Below you will find a transcript of the new Razorcast podcast interview with Dr. Warren Bleiweiss. You can listen to the podcast or simply read the easy to follow transcript below. Enjoy!
Podcast Interview:
RC: Hello, everyone. This is Liz Harvey, coming to you from our studios in New York City, where we are dedicated to bringing you top quality advice from many of the leading expert professionals across the U.S.
In today’s episode, we are speaking with Dr. Warren J. Bleiweiss, a leader in the United States in the emerging medical field of oxygen ozone injection therapy, for the treatment of herniated discs, joint and muscle pain, and injuries. Dr. Bleiweiss pioneered oxygen ozone disc injection therapy in the U.S. He is a graduate of New York University School of Medicine and is board certified in both Anesthesiology and Pain Management. His long list of accomplishments includes leadership experience as a hospital anesthesiology department director, the inventor of a patented medical device, and the founder of one of the first multi-disciplinary pain management centers in New Jersey. He has been successfully treating patients for over 30 years.
Dr. Bleiweiss specializes in minimally invasive alternative treatments that heal patients without surgery or potentially harmful medications. His treatment protocols are specifically designed to activate the body’s innate ability to recover and to regenerate. His practice has been producing excellent results by utilizing these alternative methods.
Today we’re focusing on one of these alternative nonsurgical treatments, medical oxygen ozone injection therapy for pain conditions, and how a patient automatically benefits from a multitude of other healthy effects from injected ozone.
Hello Dr. Bleiweiss, how are you today?
Dr. Warren Bleiweiss: I’m very good. Thank you.
RC: Well, thank you for joining me again.
We have discussed oxygen ozone injection therapy in other podcasts, but for those listeners that are not familiar with it, could you please start by explaining what oxygen ozone injection therapy is?
Dr. Warren Bleiweiss: Sure. I’d be happy to. It’s one of my favorite subjects. Ozone is a supercharged form of oxygen. It’s three oxygen molecules joined together. It exists naturally in the environment. However, medical oxygen ozone injection therapy is different because it’s combining the ozone in a very, very specific concentration with pure oxygen, so it’s not existing in the atmosphere with other compounds such as nitrogen, which is most of what air is and pollutants and other molecules that are floating around the air.
It’s 100% oxygen. And the ozone is injected into various structures of the body, such as muscles, joints, and disks, and it has very powerful healing effects. It’s been used in Europe for over 70 years. It’s been proven to be safe and effective in thousands of published research studies.
RC: What are some types of pain conditions that you have successfully treated with oxygen ozone injection therapy?
Dr. Warren Bleiweiss: Well, there’s so many that I’ve successfully treated and have had great results with, so it’s hard to pick out a few, but I’ll just mention some. I’ve treated disc herniations in the neck and back. I’ve treated degenerative disc disease, arthritis of the joints such as shoulders, hips, knees and ankles, torn rotator cuffs, torn meniscus of the knee, such as medial and lateral meniscus, muscle pain and spasm and fibromyalgia. I’ve treated this safely and effectively for many years and many patients with ozone.
RC: What can someone new expect during an oxygen ozone injection therapy session, ad how quickly can someone feel the results?
Dr. Warren Bleiweiss: Okay, so there are two categories of injections that have different, treatment protocols. Let’s talk about disc procedures first. So, a disc procedure would be a treatment for a disc herniation of the neck or back or a degenerative disc of the neck or back, and that is done in an outpatient surgical center because I need a sophisticated fluoroscopy machine to guide the injection to the exact spot. I perform a full surgical prep and drape to make sure that we’re under sterile conditions. It’s performed either with local anesthesia plus sedation or just local anesthesia with no sedation. That’s a patient preference. When I say sedation, I’m not talking about general anesthesia, I’m talking about a light sedation with a Valium type substance called Midazolam or Versed. There’s no incision, there’s no suturing, and there’s no downtime the day after the procedure. Patients can go about their normal activities or daily living or work activities. I just ask them not to exercise until I either see them a week after the procedure or if they’re out of town, I speak to them on the phone a week after the procedure. Typically, patients will be able to go back to their usual exercises within two weeks after the procedure and that’s based on my discussions with the patients, see and to see how they’re doing after the procedure. But that’s the typical response.
Now for joint or muscle injections. That’s a simple office procedure. There’s no sedation. There’s no incision, there’s no fluoroscopy. It takes less than 15 minutes. And there’s no downtime. Patients can drive home afterwards. They could go to work afterwards.
And it works in typically one day to two weeks. Most patients experience relief within two days to one week, but I do have patients that experience almost immediate relief and I do have patients that it takes up to two weeks for them to experience relief.
RC: While treating the pain condition, what other parts of the body or body functions are also benefiting from the oxygen ozone injections?
Dr. Warren Bleiweiss: This is a great aspect of oxygen ozone injections for pain conditions. So, I just want to say that throughout the world for many years, many people have been treating with ozone for a wide variety of medical conditions and for general health benefits. Now ozone has multiple beneficial effects. For example, it boosts the immune system, it kills pathogens in our bodies such as bacteria and fungi or parasites or spirochetes. It improves oxygen delivery to the tissues. It increases blood flow, it increases red blood cell membrane flexibility. That’s very important because red blood cells, when they go through these small capillaries, if they’re not flexible, they could get stuck or sluggish. So that’s an extremely important point. And it ramps up the oxidative enzymes in the body. So that’s an another extremely important point, which I just want to elaborate a little on.
One of the main stresses that we, or any life form is subject to is oxidative stress. It’s ubiquitous and every organism has to be able to cope with oxidative stress. So, one of the oxidative stresses that’s been discussed a lot in medicine and in the lay press are free radicals. So, we could talk about free radicals and a lot of health professionals will deal with free radicals by antioxidants such as, for example, vitamin C or Coenzyme Q, alpha lipoic acid, there are a whole bunch of antioxidants.
And the way the body copes with it is with enzymes and there are multiple enzymes for example, super oxide dismutase, catalyze, that cope with oxidative stress. The way the enzymes cope with oxidative stress, they’re like very efficient factories and they could deactivate millions of free radicals a second.
The way that antioxidants cope with oxidative stress is more of a one-on-one, or it’s not exactly a one-on-one, but let’s just call it a one-on-one reaction. It’s a much slower and limited reaction, but the really important point is that life cannot survive with just reducing oxidation. There’s another side to oxidation which is reduction and it’s so-called a redux reaction. And it’s essential for life. Without a redux reaction, there’d be no life.
So, enzymes will self-regulate as a feedback loop because it’s a biological system. There’s a feedback loop. So, an enzyme, the little factory is not going to just get rid of all of the oxidative, the compound, let’s say free radicals. I don’t want to get too much into science because it’s beyond the scope of this discussion, but it’s not just going to be an out of control process. It’s not like a factory run amok that just keeps on producing whatever it’s producing until the whole factory explodes because it’s producing paperclips. There’s a gazillion paperclips and it just never stops and the whole building just gets filled with paperclips. It’s not going to do that. When the job is done, the enzyme will stop or slow down. When an antioxidant, if you throw like a ton of antioxidants into the body, they don’t have that self-regulating mechanism, so that’s an extremely important point.
Like I said earlier, there are many health benefits to ozone and I don’t want to get too much into all the details, but I will recommend if people are interested, two authors that are experts in the field of treating conditions, medical conditions with ozone. One is Dr. Shallenberger, and he’s written extensively and teaches extensively about the health benefits of ozone. One of his books is called “The Ozone Miracle” and I found that to be very helpful. And the other one is, I believe I mentioned this doctor before in a previous discussion is Dr, Brownstein, and he’s written several books. One is “Ozone: The Miracle Therapy”, not to be confused with The Ozone Miracle by Dr. Shallenberger.
If anybody is interested in finding out more about the miraculous healing effects of ozone, I would recommend reading those books. But the important point that I want to make here is that with oxygen ozone injection therapy for pain conditions, you also get all of the other health benefits of ozone.
RC: If someone is experiencing good results with oxygen ozone injection therapy, are there any limits or recommended guidelines as to how often they receive oxygen ozone injections?
Dr. Warren Bleiweiss: There are no limits. The beneficial effects of ozone are additive, so the beneficial healing effects of ozone are additive. This is unlike a lot of other treatments that we do, or when I say we, I mean the medical community.
So, for example, steroids are not beneficial if you inject too much. In fact, they’re very harmful. Or a lot of medications, for example, antibiotics. Look at all the problems that we have with resistant organisms because of the overuse of antibiotics. Ozone is not like that. Ozone has additive beneficial effects. And in terms of treatment protocols, there are so many treatment protocols.
I mentioned earlier the books by Dr. Shallenberger and Dr. Brownstein. Those books talk about multiple treatment protocols and they could range from weekly treatments to even sometimes daily treatment depending on the conditions.
For pain conditions, which is what I do, for example, disc injections, it’s typically just one treatment. Joint injections could be multiple treatments, but that depends on how the patient does. I typically evaluate the patient a week after the injection and make a decision, and it’s the same thing for muscle injections.
But the important thing is that these treatments have stood the test of time and been proven to be safe and effective for many years and many scientific studies. I mean, just to give you an example of this, ozone was used in World War I to treat gangrene, gangrenous conditions of limbs for battle wounds. That’s before penicillin was even invented or discovered. The first ozone generator was invented in 1840 and it basically delivered the same concentrations of ozone as the generators that we use now.
This I got from Dr. Brownstein’s book, that in 2016 there were over 20,000 items in pub med that dealt with ozone. So, this is a very safe and effective treatment that’s used throughout the world. And there are multiple protocols.
RC: Okay. Well thank you so much Dr. Bleiweiss, we know you’re busy, so I just want to thank you for your time and your help today.
Dr. Warren Bleiweiss: You’re welcome.
RC: And for our listeners across the country, if you are interested in speaking with the doctor, please visit www.alternativedisctherapy.com or call (973) 403-3334 to schedule an appointment.
And on behalf of our team, we want to thank you for listening and we look forward to bringing you more top-quality content from our country’s leading experts.
