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Hyper-Oxygenated Water Speeds Up Healing
Ninwa writes "Wired News is reporting on a new discovery by Occulus Innovative Sciences: Super-oxygenated water that significantly decreases healing time of wounds, burns, and diabetic ulcers. 'Oculus said the solution, called Microcyn, may prove effective in the fight against superbugs, crossover viruses like bird flu and Ebola, and bioterrorism threats such as anthrax.'"
People have been using H2O2 on wounds for YEARS!
The phrasing on the Oculusis website is a little suspicious, too.
It seems it's already for sale, even though it's still in testing. They're also extremely vague about how it works, and apparently it also cures cancer. Suspicious.LOAD "SIG",8,1
... making wounds in one's heart (Re: Blondes!) ;-)
Paul B.
The idea of using osmotic pressure to treat wounds is as old as time itself, with salt being rubbed into wounds, very literally, as a means of treating them. The use of osmotic pressure is also commonly used in dialysis machines.
I believe that some forms of cancer/tumor therapy involves creating a severe enough osmotic pressure that the cells involved rupture. However, I couldn't tell you exactly which therapies these were.
I don't know whether you'd be able to make a targetted therapy - that would depend on the targetted cell either having a higher concentration or a different ratio of salts, so that you could create an environment in which healthy cells were fine but hostile cells were unable to survive. There's nothing in the article to suggest that this would be the case.
It is certainly NOT the case with something like ebola, which is a virus. Viruses are not cellular, they are simple RNA strands with a protein coating. What would you create the pressure against? There's no salt water mix in there and no semi-permeable membrane to fracture.
Salt is effective against viruses only insofar as that nothing would survive in the general vicinity (therefore there's nothing the virus can use to spread from) and the blood would be soaked into the salt. Antivirals are, as a general rule, nothing quite so simple.
(Having said that, RNA is a single molecule and single molecules can act as a dipole with a unique absorbtion frequency. It may be possible to develop treatments which "shatter" viruses by transmitting at the virus' absorbtion frequency, but we're talking about a very complex molecule which may not act as a simple dipole. As far as simple treatments go, that's about as simple as you're going to get. Salt packs won't cut it.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Man, with all that anecdotal evidence I sure am convinced. Thank god we have news services like Wired to deliver these releases from companies, becaues that damned JAMA would never let this one out of the bag.
"Hyper-oxygenated water" -- what a great name for H2O2 which releases oxygen when poured on wounds. Wikipedia article
This is setting off my bullshit detector big time. There has been so much nonsense lately about "pentawater," and homeopathic solutions that contain no active agent but supposedly retain a "memory" of it, not to mention the bottled water that's supposed to be charged up with extra oxygen (Dissolved O2 in water will just lay in your stomach and do nothing). Until they can come up with some chemical details and studies, I'm not ready to buy this.
The super-cheezy presentation doesn't really help, either.
It's also a floorwax and a dessert topping!!!!
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
It's probably Quackery...
I direct you here
Where it is amply explained that ionizing salt water can only create chlorinated water, or bleach, which, of course, ARE good antibacterials, but are also *gasp* oxidants. Why the SHOCK!
Remember the first Usenet spammers, Canter and Siegel? Once they gained national notoriety and launched an Internet advertising business, their first client was a company that marketed "a health product, super-oxygenated water".
I read the Wired article and became hopeful. I wasn't as turned off by the market-ish site as other Slashdotters.
I followed up with an "oculus site:.gov" search and found that the FDA has classified Microcyn as a disinfectant.
And, the California Dept. of Pesticide Regulation lists the evaluation of Microcyn as follows,
Maybe some /. chemists can explain the good of those ingredients.
Marques Johansson
There's a fairly extensive list of water-related pseudo science listed here, as well as a specific page on ionized water.
I ran across it today when researching the product. I have a coworker whose daughter suffers from ulcerative colitis and I'm always on the lookout for odd breakthroughs. I think the emphasis for this one is on "odd".