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Guest on a wellness-focused podcast, actress Gwyneth Paltrow has admitted to using “rectal ozone therapy,” a practice that claims to relieve pain, kill bacteria, and even encourage cell regeneration. Effects that have never been scientifically proven.
After surprising her audience with vagina-scented candles, jade eggs to place in the vagina (again) or a daily regimen based on bone broth, actress Gwyneth Paltrow once again shows us her taste for controversial practices around well-being. In an American podcast entitled “The art of being well”, the actress who came to talk about her beauty and health routine admitted to having received a “ozone rectal therapy” among the strangest practices tested. “It’s quite weird. But it was very useful” she mentioned without specifying how this practice could improve her daily life. It was enough for this answer to go viral on the networks.
Rectal ozone therapy, a controversial practice
What is rectal ozone therapy? The Cleveland Clinic, which offers this treatment, among other things, explains it in the New York Post : This is a therapy that uses medical grade ozone, delivered through an ozone generator device, which can be inserted into your body in several ways. It can be blown into the buttocks via a catheter. Ozone (O3) is a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms. It is very unstable and explosive in liquid or solid form. But as a gas, this supercharged oxygen can potentially have therapeutic qualities.
Thus, the followers of ozone therapy believe in several benefits: better healing of wounds, the treatment of pain and illness, the stimulation of the immune system, the improvement of blood circulation, the elimination of bacteria, and finally the reduction of oxidative stress that causes aging. To avail these suggested effects, customers are willing to shell out $1200 in the United States. However, the scientific literature has never demonstrated any effect of ozone in the rectum.
“There is nothing in science to support this outlandish practice”
On the networks, the confession of Gwyneth Paltrow thus generated a number of reactions from amused or shocked Internet users, or from doctors themselves. “My weekly reminder, stop putting weird things up your butt, including oxidizing atmospheric gases” said Clement Lee, a pediatric emergency physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Contacted by Doctissimo, Dr. Lucas Spindler, gastroenterologist and hepatologist in Paris admits that he does not have much to say in favor of this practice, and for good reason:
“There is no proven efficacy in injecting ozone into the rectum, these are completely crazy things like colotherapy or hydrotherapy. There is simply nothing rational or scientific about these trends. At best, they are inefficient; at worst, they can cause complications such as bleeding, perforation, or the transmission of germs depending on the material used. The only thing to say here is: “Don’t do it!”.
In addition to the practice itself, the Food and Drug Administration, the control authority for medical devices in the United States, also recalls that ozone is a “poisonous gas with no known useful medical application in specific, complementary or preventive therapy”.