I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Photobiomodulation - Infrared LED Therapy
@Liz asked if I'd open a thread on Near Infrared Therapy, so we could keep the subject in one place. So here it goes.
I think I'll copy the posts I made recently and archive them here for starters. I'm still way early into this subject, so hopefully there will be much to add as time goes on and those amazing PubMed papers are brought into the light!
Happy New Year
hi puddleduck - you are amazing!
I've been meaning to post something that may be significant, so I think this is the appropriate place and time. Reading about your struggle is quite an inspiration to all of us who are trying to figure it out. I'm 4 months into a very low retinol intake. I'm not tracking it but it matches your's pretty close, with a tad of butter from Ireland, some nuts, and a few other things.
I can't recall where I stumbled across PhotoBioModulation (PBM), but that's where my reading efforts have been for a couple of months. I'm pretty sure Infrared LED therapy works against retinoid-induced damage and inflammation. It may even help alter the molecules involved. There's a Dr Wilding (see YouTube) who uses a full-body NovoThor light machine and he's reporting great results with various autoimmune conditions. It has literally taken over his practice by word of mouth. I went to Ohio recently just to experience one of these machines for a few days worth of sessions - 15 minutes each day - and have a small Joovv panel I'm experimenting with, while shopping larger LED panels built in China. I'm going to make a 3-sided booth for daily sessions of 660nm Red and 850nm Infrared. You can buy 180 LEDs in a fan-cooled assembly, a 50:50 mix of 660nm and 850nm, for $300.
PubMed searches on PBM studies yield a rich vein of material. Nerve regeneration, elimination of amyloid plaque, mitochondrial stimulation and increased ATP production, vasodilation via Nitric Oxide pathways, burn healing, macular degeneration, arthritis, and much more. PBM appears to be a powerful way to reduce inflammation and promote healing. If money is no object, Joovv makes great equipment for home use. I'm shopping direct from manufacturers in China, since prices are 5 times lower, even with shipping costs. There are wavelengths other than 660 and 850 nanometers that are known to have beneficial effects, but little is known about how they do what they do. It appears there's some involvement of a Capsaicin receptor, which is a heat-sensor. The Capsaicin molecule looks very familiar. See Wikipedia.
That's a wrap for now. Hope all goes well. I'll post more as time permits.
Can you share the Chinese manufacturers name? I have two red light devices ( smaller ones) from Redlightman
One is red light 670 and one near infra red light 830nm
January 5, 2019, 9:31 am
Hi Guest - yes, it's Shenzhen SungrowLED Technology Co., Ltd
The site is sgrowled.com
My brother has their 900 Watt unit. He likes it. I'm probably going with the 1,000 Watt since it's a tad longer, almost 3 feet total.
These don't "gang" like Joovv panels, with one power source flowing through multiple units - basically in series. And they don't have a timer. But the price for those conveniences is quite high.
I've had rapid response to questions from Abby Lu - sales5@sgrowled.com
I don't like the rigamarole of Alibaba, so I contacted her directly and verified they take PayPal payments, which I prefer.
I think my brother got his within 10 days, not bad at all.
She did mention that orders above $800 face a tariff, but I've yet to clarify what that percentage added actually is.
This following PubMed review by Michael Hamblin has some amazing stuff in it.
Shining light on the head: Photobiomodulation for brain disorders
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066074/
This paragraph grabbed my attention.
It is quite clear that there must be some other type of photoacceptor, in addition to CCO, as is clearly demonstrated by the fact that wavelengths substantially longer than the red/NIR wavelengths discussed above, can also produce beneficial effects is some biological scenarios. Wavelengths such as 980 nm [14], [15], 1064 nm laser [16], and 1072 nm LED [17], and even broad band IR light [18] have all been reported to carry out PBM type effects. Although the photoacceptor for these wavelengths has by no means been conclusively identified, the leading hypothesis is that it is primarily water (perhaps nanostructured water) located in heat or light sensitive ion channels. Clear changes in intracellular calcium can be observed, that could be explained by light-mediated opening of calcium ion channels, such as members of the transient receptor potential (TRP) super-family [19]. TRP describes a large family of ion channels typified by TRPV1, recently identified as the biological receptor for capsaicin (the active ingredient in hot chili peppers) [20]. The biological roles of TRP channels are multifarious, but many TRP channels are involved in heat sensing and thermoregulation [21].
The thing that jumped out was the references to structured water AND a capsaicin receptor. It's a long story but suffice to say, there's a "structured", Catalyst Altered Water product called Willard Water that heals 3rd degree burns without pain, blister or scar. Nobody believes it until they see it or experience it. Harry Reasoner interviewed Doc Willard for 60 Minutes back in 1980 and got live video of a welder who had accidentally melted his polyesther pants to his inner thighs. This guy treated himself with bathtubs of diluted Willard Water. Harry Reasoner came back with his film crew awhile later and video'd this guys healed skin. You can see this 60 Minutes program on YouTube. I've had similar results with an 800 degree burn on my forearm due to sizzling it on an exhaust stack of a dump truck that was running with no mufflers.
Anyway, there was an interview that Mercola did with the guy involved in NovoThor and LumiThera - one James Carroll. He said in passing that NIR therapy was healing burns with no pain. So, I'm thinking the Willard Water effect is in play somehow. The main pathway identified for 850nm wavelength LED light is the Cytochrome C Oxidase releasing Nitric Oxide as I understand it so far. So that can explain many effects of NIR therapy. But it sounds like one of these other wavelengths is doing something different. Just knowing that the process of ATP production, resulting from mitochondrial stimulation due to NIR light, produces water as a byproduct, makes ya think that water might be "structured" and doing the same thing from the inside that old Doc Willard speculated his discovery was doing to nerve tissue from the outside - which was turning off the pain receptor (maybe the heat receptor?) so the body wouldn't respond with a massive inflammatory reaction, and thus allow the burned tissue to heal, one cell layer at a time. Doc called it "healing by first intention".
Who knows, the Capsaicin receptor part of it may fit with Grant's discoveries somehow too. Remember him talking about Hillary Clinton eating really hot peppers every day? And I've been lately wondering about the "burn" of Retinoic Acid and how is that any different than other kinds of burns from various heat sources. I have a friend in her 70's who just went to Florida for the winter and had shingles break out around her midriff - big blisters and all. Hit her threshold of Retinol? Triggered repositories in the skin tissues by exposure to sunlight? Sent her to Grant's site to get up to speed on the subject.
Anyway, hope you have great results if you pursue the NIR therapy. I'll check in occasionally with updates once I'm doing daily sessions. From what I've seen and heard, it takes awhile but the effects are cumulative, as long as you get rid of the source of the inflammation, which we're well aware of due to Grant's ground-breaking work. Thanks again, buddy!!
Quote from John Fry on January 6, 2019, 4:56 pmHey Pano200, - I'll let you know how the shipping and PayPal goes. I'll be ordering in the next few days. I wouldn't mind building a few of these 3-sided booths for family members. Rack up some data and anecdotes and maybe offer an order-the-panels and do-the-set-up service as a part-time business thing. I had a small Garden Tower organic gardening business in Austin a few years ago, that's the one with a worm-composting tube down the middle, and even though it was break-even, it was such a blast meeting all the organic folks from Boerne to Georgetown and San Marcos to Lakeway. I think this service-idea would be like that was.
Awesome! That sounds like a fun business plan. I ended up ordering one 1000W panel from sgrow. i'll see how it goes! i'll be using it in conjunction with short applications of sperti fiji sun lamp and an infrared sauna.
Posting over here so i don't hijack puddleduck's post with red/NIR comments 😀
@pano2000 - I got 2 of them a couple days ago. Nice product, well-packed, only took a week and the tracking was visible, all the way from the China end to my door. I did a 15-minute session with just one of them fired up and felt quite jazzed for a few hours afterwards yesterday. I'm letting it ride today and then I'll see if the same vibe happens tomorrow. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a go-slow kind of thing due to the mitochondrial stimulation. Are you doing daily sessions? Any good reactions so far?
Time to do the C Reactive Protein test before I get too far into it. I doubt there's any way to isolate Infrared effects from ZeroA diet ones, probably not, but it's worth doing more than one thing at a time, just like taking the Taurine to help it along.
@hillcountry - nice! i got mine in too. i've been using it 5-15 minutes a day, no noticeable changes, i'll continue to do it though.
Low level laser therapy (Photobiomodulation therapy) for breast cancer-related lymphedema: a systematic review. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29216916
CONCLUSIONS: Based upon the current systematic review, LLLT (PBM) may be considered an effective treatment approach for women with BCRL. Due to the limited numbers of published trials available, there is a clear need for well-designed high-quality trials in this area. The optimal treatment parameters for clinical application have yet to be elucidated.
Photobiomodulation Inhibits Long-term Structural and Functional Lesions of Diabetic Retinopathy
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5780063/
Long-term daily administration of PBM significantly inhibited the diabetes-induced leakage and degeneration of retinal capillaries and also significantly inhibited the diabetes-induced reduction in visual function. PBM also inhibited diabetes-induced reductions in retinal Cyp24a1 mRNA levels and numbers of circulating stem cells (CD45−/c-Kit+), but these effects may not account for the beneficial effects of PBM on the retinopathy. PBM significantly inhibits the functional and histopathologic features of early DR, and these effects likely are mediated via multiple mechanisms.
Therapeutic use of light (photobiomodulation [PBM]) in the visible far-red to near-infrared region of the spectrum (590–850 nm) (9,10) is being found to have beneficial effects in a variety of diseases, including wound healing, hypoxic injury, cerebral degeneration, Alzheimer disease, postoperative cognitive dysfunction, and retinal degeneration (10–20). Recent evidence from our group (21,22) also indicates that PBM inhibits the development of molecular abnormalities that contribute to the development of early lesions of DR in animals and resolve early (noncenter-involved) macular edema in two case series of patients with diabetes (23,24).
In this study, our goal is to assess the long-term effects of PBM therapy on 1) the morphologic vascular lesions that characterize early DR, 2) the function of the neural retina via testing of visual psychophysics, and 3) two possible systemic mechanisms by which PBM might mediate its beneficial effects on the retina (release of stem cells and activation of signaling from the vitamin D receptor [VDR]). Vitamin D and signaling via the VDR have strong anti-inflammatory and antioxidant actions (37,38).