Our March 2014 Potluck Dinner Meeting - Nutrition from a Doctor's Perspective with Dr. Yoshi Rahm, D. O.

by Karen S. Voelkening-Behegan, MA, NTP, CGP

On the last Thursday in March, the Pasadena California Chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation welcomed osteopath Dr. Yoshi Rahm to our monthly potluck dinner meeting.   After an extra-nourishing feast in the dining area of Nature Friends Lodge, we headed upstairs to soak in the offerings of our special guest.

In his cheerful, mild-mannered, and straight-forward fashion, Dr. Rahm highlighted the benefits of glutathione and ozone, two of the most powerful and protective healing substances known to man.   Careful to note that neither compound is a cure-all, Dr. Rahm spoke about the therapeutic uses of both glutathione and ozone in assisting the body to heal all kinds of conditions. 


Glutathione

First Dr. Rahm gave a short talk about glutathione, the most powerful antioxidant in the human body.  The "Mother of all Antioxidants," glutathione has many responsibilities:  It facilitates the regeneration of vitamins C and E, it neutralizes free radicals, it enables the transport of mercury out of our cells, and it aids mitochondrial and DNA functioning. It also moderates the risk of radiation exposure, and is highly recommended as a therapy if you ever receive a CAT scan, which exposes you to the radiation equivalent of up to 1100 x-rays.

Glutathione is so important that it can even slow aging.  Among longevity scientists, it has been shown that telomere length decreases with age, and that glutathione helps slow down the wear and tear of our telomeres.  Telomeres are nucleotide sequences found at the ends of our chromosomes, which protect our genetic material from deterioration.  As Dr. Rahm put it, “Your telomeres shorten as you age.  Once they’re gone, you die!”  So we’re only as old as our telomeres are long.  Lucky for us, even though glutathione cannot reverse aging, it definitely can slow down the shortening of our telomeres.  Increased glutathione levels are associated with longer lasting telomeres and longer life.  That makes perfect sense if you consider that the primary role of glutathione is to aid the detoxification process and prevent cell damage.  As you would imagine, glutathione not only keeps us younger longer, but also helps in the fight against many acute and chronic illnesses due to its great protective and detoxifying effects.

Though our bodies make our own glutathione, our internal supply of this very important antioxidant can be severely depleted by a number of factors including poor diet, pollution, toxins, medications, stress, trauma, aging, infections, and radiation.  In fact low glutathione levels are found in nearly all chronically ill patients, many of whom lack the ability to effectively build, use, and recycle glutathione.  Healthy glutathione levels are essential for maintaining a well-functioning immune system, and preventing both cancer and a wide variety of chronic diseases.

If you aren't feeling well and suspect that you have low glutathione levels, you may want to consider glutathione therapy.  As a therapy, glutathione can be administered in a number of ways. Homeopathically, it absorbs right under the tongue and into the bloodstream.  Orally, in the form of a pill, it is not recommended because most of the glutathione gets digested before it can do any good.  Topically, glutathione works by slowly absorbing through the skin into your cells and circulation.  But by far the most effective way to immediately increase your glutathione levels is via injection.  This is method Dr. Rahm uses in his practice for anyone needing extra glutathione support.

If you’d like to increase your glutathione levels naturally, it helps to be on a traditional diet that supplies plenty of high quality proteins and the important cofactors that help break them down and recombine them.  Glutathione is synthesized in the body from 3 amino acids, cysteine, glutamine, and glycine, which are specifically found in meats, organs, bones, skin, and of course bone broth!  In addition, once you include the appropriate co-factors in your diet such as those found in folate-rich legumes, leafy greens, and sulfur-rich foods like fermented vegetables, garlic, onions, and cruciferous vegetables, you’ve got yourself a formula for the great anti-oxidant protection that only glutathione can provide. 

Besides maintaining a glutathione-friendly diet, you can enhance your supply of glutathione with a number of healthy lifestyle factors:  Good stress management for lower stress levels, regular moderate aerobic and anaerobic exercise, meditation, deep breathing, plenty of sleep, and a good support network.   In combination with diet, each of these lifestyle factors plays an important role in your glutathione synthesis, and ultimately your health and longevity.  For more information about glutathione and glutathione therapy, refer to Dr. Rahm’s glutathione handout, or contact Dr. Rahm.

Ozone Therapy

In keeping with the theme of protective nutrients, Dr. Rahm also showed us the important film, “Ozone, a Medical Breakthrough?” an updated version of the award winning 1994 documentary, “Ozone and the Politics of Medicine “ by Producer/Director Geoffrey Rogers of Threshold Film, Inc.  A powerful investigative documentary filmed in 11 countries over 16 years, the movie explains the benefits of ozone therapy and the politics of fear and controversy surrounding its use in the USA and Canada in spite of thousands if not millions of successes worldwide.

When I first talked to Dr. Rahm about ozone, I asked whether it could be considered a nutrient like the others we talk about at the Weston A. Price Foundation.  Ozone is a form of oxygen, not something we would normally think of as consumable.  But for the cells in our body, oxygen is the most important nutrient there is.  There’s a reason why we breathe it, and why, though we can go for weeks without food and days without water, we can barely survive a few minutes without oxygen.

Click on image for link to trailer

Oxygen is vital to every cell in the body.  Ozone, or O3, as explained by Dr. Rahm, is simply a high-powered, supercharged, reactive form of oxygen comprised of 3 oxygen atoms instead of two, in other words “super oxygen.”  For those who fear any toxic effects from its reactivity, it’s helpful to remember a couple important points:  First, ozone tends to form around other reactive molecules, so as Dr. Rahm explained, though we associate it with air pollution, its occurrence is simply an indicator of the presence of toxins.  Ozone also forms when the sun's rays hit our upper atmosphere, creating the earth's ozone shield and protecting us from harm.

Second, anything can be toxic in excessive amounts.  That's why we have the field of pharmacotoxicology.  We mustn’t forget that it’s the dose that makes the poison. Ozone therapy, delivered at the right dose and at the right time and place can do a lot of good with little to no side effects.  The benefits of ozone are due in part to its ability to stimulate the formation of destructive free radicals that attack only unhealthy cells without their own built-in antioxidant defenses.  For more about the biochemical mechanisms of ozone, I recommend reading: Ozone - History, Biochemistry, and Therapeutic Effects.

Ozone has been clinically shown to heal the effects of many diseases including aids, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and tumors. It has helped heal injuries, clear dental infections, prevent amputations, and decrease damage from heart attacks and strokes.  It has been widely accepted and used for decades in Germany, and is gaining popularity throughout Europe, India, and Latin America.  The USA is one of the only countries in the world where it is not considered an important therapeutic tool.   Luckily, ozone therapy has been legalized in California, so Dr. Rahm is now able to offer it to his patients.  Ozone is administered as an intravenous injection, in a quantity, concentration, and frequency corresponding to the specific needs of each individual patient.

Besides the evidence provided by the documentary for the healing effects of ozone in patients around the world, we also learned about the healing effects of ozone therapy right here in our own back yard.  One of Dr. Rahm’s MS patients, a young woman in her 20s, had debilitating symptoms of paralysis on one entire side of her body.  After several weeks of ozone therapy, the paralysis was 90-95% gone.

Reinforcing Dr. Rahm’s tremendous success with ozone therapy, a member of the audience stood up to tell her own story:  Years ago, before ozone therapy was legalized in California, she developed 3 abdominal tumors which were so large that that she needed regular hydrotherapy sessions to clear her GI tract.   Finally, the tumors grew so large that surgery became her only legal option, so instead of choosing surgery, she sought out some good “underground” ozone therapy.  Within 2 weeks, all the tumors were gone.  When she returned to her original doctor, he was reluctant to give any credit to the ozone therapy.  But she knew in her heart that when nothing else worked, it was the ozone that resolved the problem.

Dr. Rahm’s most passionate message of the evening was that if you or anyone you know ever has a heart attack or stroke, the sooner you get ozone therapy, the quicker you’ll recover, and the less long-term damage and scarring you will have.   Brain scans featured in the documentary from a patient with 3 strokes showed that the stroke with the most healing and the least scar tissue was the one treated with ozone.

Likewise, the sooner you get some ozone after a heart attack, the quicker you’ll heal, the less scar tissue you’ll develop, and the better long-term prognosis you’ll have.  For internal injuries like heart attacks and strokes, ozone is most effectively delivered in the form of an injection. For external injuries, it can also be applied as a topical agent such as ozone-infused olive oil.


There are so many uses for ozone that it seems criminal to actively withhold it from patients in the United States.  Here at the Weston A. Price Foundation, we know all too well about how politics can influence our ability to access the healing nutrients we need.   You’ll have to watch the film to learn more about the politics of ozone therapy, but suffice it to say that the conventional establishment considers the thousands of successful cases over decades of clinical work across the globe as merely “anecdotal,” and that funding to validate these worldwide successes in the United States of America is lacking.  We can only guess how much money the pharmaceutical industry would lose if this successful alternative therapy were to take hold here in the US.

A huge Grass Roots effort is needed to alter opinions and get ozone therapy more accepted and available throughout the country.  Changing the attitude of most conventional physicians regarding ozone will take some serious work.  But with any hope, someday our health care system will see how much we stand to gain by incorporating this therapy into the halls of modern American medicine.  We just need to keep demanding it, and keep showing how it can aid in the healing process and ultimately reduce health care costs nationwide.

Our heartfelt gratitude goes out to Dr. Rahm for daring to defy convention by legally offering his patients access to this wonderful healing therapy.  Oxygen is, after all our Number 1 nutrient!  For more information about ozone and ozone therapy, please refer to Dr. Rahm’s Ozone Therapy handout, or contact Dr. Rahm.

Thanks to all who attended and contributed to our March potluck dinner meeting. 

I hope to see you at our next meeting in April!

~ Your Chapter Leader, Karen

Link to Trailer for "Ozone, a Medical Breakthrough?