Light Therapy
To the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the sun was Apollo’s fiery chariot making its way across the sky, bringing life-giving light to the planet. Apollo was the god of medicine and healing as well as of sun and light.
Ultraviolet [‘’UV’’] light kills all microbes. How do I know that? It is already used to sterilise water for drinking and swimming pools. Sunshine was the main treatment for TB in pre-antibiotic era. Please see these links for an interesting history of this treatment -
Heliotherapy and
Treatment of TB patients .
I suspect the reason we love sunbathing is because light penetrates the skin and kills these microbes, thereby reducing our infectious burden. This means we spend less energy on the immune system, leaving more energy for other things. More energy is available for a mental and physical life! In addition, sunshine is a good treatment for infectious skin conditions such as acne and eczema.
Light as a treatment for infection has been used for years for serious infections. The patient was treated by removing a pint of blood, irradiating it, then returning it to the body. The problem with this treatment is, again, that it is high tech and expensive. However, equally good results can be obtained by intranasal light.
This makes perfect sense – the nasal mucosa is thin so light can easily get to the blood stream. The nose is well perfused with blood and so it is easily radiated. But most importantly the results obtained with intranasal light are as good as with intravenous treatment. Indeed, it may be that intranasal light impacts directly on the brain and this could be helpful for any patient with brain pathology and/or fermenting brain. See
Mediclights
I am asking myself what is the mechanism of action? I do not like the reasons given in this link which are not mechanisms but rather descriptions. I suspect the mechanism is that the light kills microbes and that this both makes the blood less sticky (and so it flows better) and also reduces the work of the immune system.
Remember Dr Les Simpson from New Zealand, who described rouleaux formation [stacks of red blood cells] in the red cells of CFS patients? See
Rouleaux is a marker of infection. Simpson showed that red cells in CFS sufferers stick together in clumps.
This would have a dire effect on blood supply because blood would not flow through tiny capillaries and so fuel and oxygen delivery would be seriously impaired. Clearly, this would impact adversely on energy delivery mechanisms. (Simpson suggested treatment with essential fatty acids - these I prescribe these routinely in CFS).
As you can see from the pictures and videos, light restores normal circulation by unclogging these red cells. See
Youtube video Vielight - Blood Disaggregation These results are obtained after just 25 minutes of light therapy. My guess is that these red cells are sticky because of the presence of microbes in the blood – the idea here is that light kills these microbes.
Other observations on light therapy
TB sufferers treated with sunshine could not immediately tolerate full body exposure. Special trolleys were designed which could be pushed out onto balconies so initially just the feet were exposed, then legs, trunk and finally the whole body. Too much sun too soon made them ill – this could possibly be a Herxheimer reaction?
Dr Horowitz comments that 50% of his Lyme patients were intolerant of sunshine- again possibly a Herxheimer reaction?
Doxycycline, often used to treat Lyme disease, can cause light sensitivity – again perhaps the mechanism of this is a Herx reaction?
The Vielight device (or Bionase - much less expensive)
The device that supplies this light can be seen at
Intranasal-light-therapy-device-category Ten million have been sold, mostly in Russia and China. The conditions for which there is an excellent evidence base for positive responses include high blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol, diabetes, atherosclerosis, asthma, stroke, cancer, immune system deficiencies, infections, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and psoriasis. All these conditions can be explained by fermenting gut and allergy/infection to microbes spilling over from the gut.
This device uses near infrared light - interestingly there is some evidence that this "kick starts" mitochondria to produce more ATOP - the energy molecule. See
Infrared Light Therapy Runs Ahead of Science.
We have just found a very similar device which emits light at a very similar frequency (630 as opposed to 633 for the Red (Qi-Light) device from Vielight) which should work just as well but is much cheaper. See
Bionase Revolutionary medical device
And in addition there is another device which operates at the slightly higher frequency of 660, which again is cheaper and should work as well. See
Medisana Medinose 45020
I am excited by this idea – it makes perfect sense, is biologically plausible, free from side effects and can be done at home with no medical input.
Remember – there is no point killing the wretches in the blood if you are feeding them in the gut!! YOU MUST ALSO DO THE DIET. And remember that here, the ketogenic diet is preferred.
As ever, I look forward to feedback from my patients!
Related Articles
External Link
- Many thanks to Hannah Moss for linking me to this piece -- New Scientist Article "Burst of light speeds up healing by turbocharging our cells" This article states that "The effect on cells of near-infrared light, which has a wavelength of 670 nanometres, was first reported 40 years ago. The light causes mitochondria, the cell's powerhouses, to produce more ATP, a compound that provides the cell's energy." So, given that the devices noted above operate at similar wavelengths, this is further evidence of benefit. In addition, it explains why we all feel better for sunbathing!
of the