hat was the headline on this MSNBC news article.

The rest of the article seemed to try to deflate the seriousness of the title, but it does discuss the links between vitamin D deficiency, heart disease and many types of cancer.

“The study’s lead author, Dr. Harald Dobnig of the Medical University of Graz in Austria, said the results don’t prove that low levels of vitamin D are harmful “but the evidence is just becoming overwhelming at this point.”

Scientists used to think that the only role of vitamin D was to prevent rickets and strengthen bones, Dobnig said.

“Now we are beginning to realize that there is much more into it,” he said.”

There IS much more to it. Vitamin D deficiency may also be linked to autism, osteoporosis, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, depression, diabetes, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and mental illness.

Please visit the Vitamin D Council website to learn more about how vitamin D relates specifically to the above mentioned diseases/disorders, and how to get the vitamin D you and your family need for optimal health.

Sorry, but I moved this page to my other website at IntelligentAcneTreatment.com
Please click here to view it over there. Thanks!

Xtrac Ultra is a hand-held excimer laser that uses an ultraviolet B light beam directly to psoriatic lesions. This treatment is still relatively unknown, but evidence has been growing to show that the relief it brings can last quite a while, sometimes years.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/lifestyle/stories.nsf/lifestyle/healthfitness/story/94c4fa1b4bda52378625746e006117d8?OpenDocument

Dr. Frank Steele treats wounds and saves limbs using a combination of polarized light and honey. The polarized light adds energy to the affected tissues while relieving pain, and the honey kills the germs that are attacking the good tissue.

This article was written by Tracy Farnham and was originally posted in the The News Herald in Morganton, NC on 6/21/2008. The article has since fallen off the site.

Dr. Frank Steele
…
Much like recalling a distant memory, Dr. Frank Steele is reviving the use of honey, along with polarized light therapy, for wound care and, in some cases, an alternative solution to amputation.

Steele is a general surgeon who is now medical director of the Comprehensive Wound Healing Center at Valdese Hospital and at Blue Ridge HealthCare’s new Affinity Face and Body Center.

Steele said as a youngster he recalled seeing a short movie about an African Safari where a villager used honey to treat a child’s sore leg.

“I never thought that almost six decades later I would be doing the same thing,” he said.

Returning from recent trips to San Diego and Toronto, Steele has presented his latest work titled “Healing problem wounds using a combination of polarized light and honey.”

With this successful treatment, amputations of several limbs have been prevented.
…
Now using a walker, Parlier lives on her own after spending eight months in various rest homes where Steele would bring his portable polarized light and honey filled syringe.

“One therapist told me I would never walk, and I came home walking with a walker in March,” she said.
…
In 2002 Steele was treating a colleague with one amputated leg and suffering from diabetes, bad kidneys and a bad heart.

“Losing that other foot meant a lot to him.Without it he would become dependent,” Steele said.

He began polarized light treatment, which healed a spot, but after five months the extreme inflammation and MRSA created complications, and a hole emerged in one toe.”Conventional treatment was to take off his leg.”Steele said.

Antibiotics go where there’s blood supply and with dead tissue, no antibiotic could get there, he added.Since honey isn’t dependent on the blood supply to get there, it eventually produced results.

The colleague said he had nothing to lose and asked Steele to put honey in the hole.

“We applied honey every day for two and a half months.He was getting better almost immediately and kept his leg,” Steele said.

During recent wound symposiums Steele has shown documented photographs of the treatment.As a true test, a 76-year-old female diabetic presented a challenge for the honey treatment with venous stasis ulcers that remained after undergoing four years of treatment at another wound center.

“Following 10 months of treatment with honey the treated leg literally looks better than her other, non-treated leg,” Steele said.

FDA approved dressings made with manuka honey in alginate sponges are being used in some nursing homes.Manuka honey is produced from the manuka, a wild New Zealand shrub.

Steele’s results have been from locally-produced, raw, non-pasteurized honey which contains an enzyme that causes slow molecular changes.

“Antibiotics work on the developing germ – the next generation – while honey works on this generation,” Steele said.”If you put a germ in honey it will suck the water out of the germ.Essentially germs can’t live in honey.”

The light and honey are not dependent on each other.”The light puts energy in the wound and reduces pain while the honey messes with the germs,” Steele said.Currently, he credits saving seven limbs from four of his patients.

Another patient was told by three different physicians she would need amputations to treat her pressure sores.

“When I first saw her she couldn’t stand up.Now she is walking, driving and very happy,” Steele said.

In fact she called just to let him know she was shopping and said, “Thank you.”

Steele said, “A number of places are using honey as a first line of treatment not if all else fails.”

At the time of this writing, this news isn’t terribly new, but its new to us, so we thought we’d mention it.  The possibilities are actually pretty endless once you start thinking about it.

This U.S. Patent was actually issued on August 7, 2007, but it describes a device with a color calibrated monitor that can be adjusted down to the nanometer of the light spectrum.  This technology might work with any type of light emiting monitor, such as a computer or pda screen.  Using this technology, a prescribed regimen of color and/or light therapy could be administered anywhere.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7253824.html

Car manufacturers have started to explore the use of blue light in their cars to fight fatigue. Blue light most closely mimics full daylight, and is used successfully to reset body ‘clocks’.  It is hoped that this same concept can be integrated into automotive technology to stimulate tired drivers.

More information about how blue light affects a person’s circadian rhythms and how automotive manufacturers are hoping to use it can be found here:

http://www.topnews.in/wake-me-you-go-go-new-interior-lights-could-beat-fatigue-246729

While dementia is not currently a curable disorder, there is a new weapon in holding its effects at bay for at least a while longer and extending quality of life for those suffering its effects. By installing bright lights (1000 lux) and keeping them on from 9am to 6pm and coupling it with melatonin, results achieved were a 5 percent reduction in memory loss, a 19 percent reduction in depression, and a 53 percent reduction in daily activity limits. Add to this a strenghtening of the patient’s sleep cycle, which allows for family care to function normally without sleep interruptions at all hours of the night, and we see a growing possibility for the increasing of home care by several months at the least.

For more information, see these two articles:

http://www.healthnews.com/family-health/aging-getter-older/bright-light-shown-lift-spirits-dementia-patients-1211.html

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=170693

Jamie Jenkins, a 5 year old boy in the U.K., with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, has been receiving twice daily treatments of Light and Sound therapy, recently spoke his first words. This is apparently a big deal, since his parents up until that point had every reason to believe that he’d never speak at all.

http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/misc/print.php?artid=2347901

Since a number of our initial clients have come over from Sci\ART Global, LLC, this seems like an appropriate first post.

If you’re wondering why this business exists and where it all started, you’ve got to know just a little about my wife, Louanna, the heart and soul of Light Therapy Options.  Since 2000, she has been working with her mother, Kathryn Kalisz, starting Sci\ART and helping it grow.  More than that, however, Louanna grew up Kathryn’s daughter, and from those early years, she’s learned her mother’s passions.

See, Kathryn is a world class color expert. She’s one of only a handful of people who can complete the Munsell color test by eye, with 100% accuracy. Much of the work that Kathryn and other members of the Munsell team did contributed directly to the color-matching systems and software used today.  Ever get your paint matched by computer at the local hardware store? Then you know what I’m talking about.  Anyway, Kathryn has spent the better part of her life exploring color and its physical and mental effects on the human being.  A natural outgrowth of color was light, and within the first year of Sci\ART’s infancy they began offering colored lighting for the purpose of light therapy.

During these first years of Sci\ART, they came across the news that 415 nanometer blue light kills acne.  After more research, they chose to include acne treatment as a benefit of the GE Dichromatic blue flood lamps.  Since the GE lamps were broad spectrum, they certainly included 415 nm blue light, and based on the rate of returns, it appeared that the GE bulbs experienced the same (or even a bit better) rate of success than the reported 85% that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved systems encountered.

While the BLUE LIGHT TREATMENT PROCESS is approved by the FDA, it should be noted that at the time of this writing, with the exception of the Clear Light, Blue-U and Omnilux solutions, currently sold only to medical professionals, only a select few home solutions that we are aware of are FDA approved.  For most of us, we’re simply offering an alternative that may or may not work for you, using the same types of tools that the FDA approved system uses, but in the comfort of your own home and for a fraction of the cost of paying for weekly doctor visits.  Please, DO NOT BE FOOLED by vendors who claim their system is FDA approved.  Thoroughly check it out first.

As we said, the GE lights were obviously not ideal.  At 150W, they were hot, they used a LOT of energy, and they required a light fixture rated for a 150W light bulb.  Worst of all,  many felt that a lot of the energy was wasted on producing light that wasn’t 415 nm.  While we don’t think it was wasted, that really is the subject of a future post.

Because the GE lamps just weren’t optimal, Louanna began looking for a way to get hold of 415 nm bulbs.  She specifically wanted LEDs if she should could get them, since they were cool, used far less energy, and the lights would be more durable and last a lot longer.  At first, she looked to see if there was anything they could buy off the shelf, but there just wasn’t anything.  Next, she began looking to have them manufactured specifically for us.  It was at this point that she came across enLux Lighting.  Of all the LED manufacturers she found, she felt most impressed by them and a relationship was started.  Our first 415nm enLux lamps shipped in March of 2007.

In the summer of 2007, Kathryn decided to return to Florida and the bulk of the day-to-day operations of Sci\ART went with her.  Kathryn also decided to refocus her business on color therapy and several light therapies took at back seat.  Included in these was the Acne 415 business.  However, Louanna felt that the acne light therapy business had grown to the point of needing it’s own website, sales & fulfillment, and so in the fall she struck a deal with her mom and bought the Blue Light acne business from Sci\ART. A month later, Light Therapy Options was born, and its first endeavor, IntelligentAcneTreatment.com launched.

Since then we’ve continued to move forward. We’ve talked to our customers freely and openly, and in return, they’ve talked to us.  We’re learning from each other as we move forward, listening to the successes of others, all of the various ways that they’ve used their lights, and are passing that information forward to you.  We welcome you to keep checking this site and this blog, whether you’ve purchased our lights or someone else’s, so that we can all continue learning together.

- Chris & Louanna