What ozone therapy is — and what it is not

This article sticks to the essentials: what the gas is, how our saunas produce it, how it reaches you, and what ozone therapy is not.

Ozone is a molecule, not a brand

Ozone is O3: three oxygen atoms bound together. The oxygen you breathe is O2, with two. A high electric charge splits a normal oxygen molecule, and each freed atom then attaches to another O2 molecule to form a trivalent O3 molecule.

The third atom is loosely held. That makes ozone a powerful oxidising agent, and it makes ozone short-lived. It reverts to ordinary oxygen over a short half-life, which is why it leaves no residual chemical behind and why it cannot be stored or shipped. It has to be made where it is used.

This is also why ozone is used far outside medicine: water treatment is its largest commercial application, and it strips odours and pollutants from the air of unoccupied rooms. Every one of those uses relies on the same oxidising property.

How our saunas make the gas

Inside a Salvagente ozone sauna the sequence is fixed:

1. Ambient room air is drawn into an external medical oxygen concentrator.
2. The concentrator’s molecular sieve beds hold back nitrogen and the other constituents of air, delivering a continuous stream of concentrated oxygen. Every concentrator we supply is a 5 litre per minute medical unit producing 93% oxygen, plus or minus 3%, unless we have specified otherwise on your order.
3. That oxygen is piped to an ozone generator built into the sauna cabinet, where a high-voltage electrical process converts part of it into ozone.
4. The ozone and oxygen mixture enters the chamber on a constant 2 litre per minute flow.

The oxygen feed is not an optional refinement. An ozone generator does not filter its input; it electrifies whatever passes through it. Feed it untreated room air and whatever else is in that air goes through with it. This is the whole content of the phrase “medical ozone”: ozone created from a medical oxygen source rather than from ambient air. Our instruction is to use only a sauna that generates ozone from a medical oxygen source — which is why every model we make ships with a concentrator rather than leaving the feed gas to you.

What the gas path is made of

Ozone attacks most ordinary materials. The same oxidising action that makes it useful destroys natural rubber, latex, nylon and unsuitable plastics, so everything in the gas path has to be chosen for it. Ours is built from 304 and 316 stainless steel and silicone. That is the useful fact about a gas path: the material it is made from.

You can see the effect for yourself. With the concentrator and ozone running, hold a latex glove in front of the ozone outlet for a few seconds and it oxidises through. That is also how we recommend confirming ozone is being produced; never test by smell.

Reading the numbers

Two figures appear on every specification sheet and they measure different things.

• Concentration, in parts per million (ppm), is how much ozone is present in a given volume of gas at any moment.
• Output, in milligrams per hour (mg/h), is how much ozone the generator produces over time.

We publish 47 ppm at a 2 litre per minute oxygen feed with a 500 mg/h generator, and those three figures describe one system rather than three separate ratings. The 500 mg/h is what the generator produces at full output. The 2 l/min is the oxygen flow, and it stays constant. The 47 ppm is the ozone concentration inside the whole air volume of the sauna — not the concentration in the delivery line — and it fluctuates from person to person, because someone’s size, build and weight change how much air is left in the sauna around them.

Output is adjustable rather than fixed. Each cabinet carries a digital display with ten ozone levels, and each level steps the generator by 10% of its output while the oxygen flow stays where it is. Our guidance is to build up gradually: settle the session frequency first, then raise output slowly rather than starting a new user near full. Where a particular person sits in that range is a decision for the practitioner supervising them, who should hold a medical history. Temperature interacts with it too, because ozone begins to disintegrate at 40 °C and faster above that. A hotter cabinet is not automatically a stronger session.

The modalities, and what each one does

Our Standard and Deluxe cabinets are three modalities in one — ozone, steam and 12 micron far infrared. The Red Light cabinet is seven, adding near infrared at 850 nm and visible red, blue and green light. We build them into one sauna because, in our experience, one session is easier to keep to than several separate appointments, and because one unit is more practical for an outlet. Each modality does something distinct.

Steam raises skin temperature and hydrates the outer skin layer. Research on our steam studies page describes moist heat disturbing the lipid structure of the stratum corneum. Transdermal ozone uptake has not been quantified.

Ozone is the active gas.

Far infrared adds radiant heat — thermal energy travelling as radiation, warming you directly rather than heating the air — at a longer wavelength, specified at 12 microns on the Standard and Deluxe, which is the same as 12 000 nm. Our studies pages collect the research on the band and link on to the sources.

How ozone reaches you — and why not through your lungs

In an ozone sauna your head stays outside the cabinet and the neck opening is covered. Ozone contacts skin; it does not reach your airway. This is a design requirement, not a comfort feature.

The everyday explanation, that ozone enters through open pores, is a simplification. The account drawn from Dr Velio Bocci’s work is that ozone dissolves into the thin water film covering the skin, reacts immediately with biomolecules there — preferentially polyunsaturated fatty acids — and generates hydrogen peroxide and lipid oxidation products. The ozone itself is consumed at the point of contact. How much is taken up through the skin has not been quantified.

Ozone must never be inhaled. It is toxic to the lungs, medical applications must use strictly controlled routes, and breathing high concentrations can cause chest tightness and coughing. To get out, open the doors and step out. To stop the ozone, switch the sauna off at its wall socket once you’re out. If you ever smell ozone or feel unwell, follow the steps on feeling unwell. On nearly twenty years of operation we consider normal room ventilation sufficient — an open door and a window — and the room needs that air anyway, so the concentrator has enough oxygen to draw on.

What ozone therapy is not

• It is not a cure. Ozone therapy does not treat, cure, prevent or reverse disease.
• It is not the ozone layer. Different context entirely.
• It is not something to breathe.
• It is not suitable for everyone. We publish a list of people who should not have ozone sauna sessions, including pregnant women, people with active bleeding or platelet disorders, people with thrombosis, active hyperthyroidism or active alcoholism, and people who have recently had a heart attack or stroke. Check who should not use an ozone sauna, and consult a doctor before starting.
• It is not regulated the same way everywhere. We sell our ozone saunas as wellness equipment rather than medical devices, but how ozone therapy may be sold, described and administered differs between countries.

If you take one thing from this article, make it the feed-gas question. Everything downstream — concentration, purity, what actually comes out of the outlet — depends on it.