This is an interesting story about a research program being run here on earth. Research Scientists who work on the schedule of the Phoenix Martian Lander are also involved in a program to see whether a human body can be retrained to adjust to Mars’ 24.6 hour day.

The key components to this study? Light therapy to reset circadian rhythms, and an adjusted sleep cycle.

Studies like this are vital for potential colonization of the planet.  It simply wouldn’t do to get there, and find out that everybody would fall victim to sleep deprivation and exhaustion.

More information and some interesting interviews can be found here: http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/90802.php

Understanding that the greatest “light therapy” solution we have is simply our own sun, though, I have to wonder if there wouldn’t be a vast difference in what these scientists are doing on earth by adjusting their sleep cycles while fighting ‘natural’ day and night, and living on Mars, where the sun would naturally set its own day and night.

Recently we’ve seen the CACI Ultra Non-Surgical Facelift treatment touted about the internet as a ‘Light Therapy’ alternative to facelift surgery.  Does it work? Doesn’t it? Well, we haven’t tried it, but we did want to point out a couple of things.

CACI stands for Computer Aided Cosmetology Instrument, and the principles of CACI have been around for quite a while.  Apparently CACI was originally developed by Thomas Wing, a doctor in California, USA, to help people with muscle pain, and well as the muscle-related injuries that caused the pain, such as sprains and whiplash.

First off, this treatment uses a combination of electricity, sound and light to do the full job.  The bulk of the work is handled by the electrical currents used by the wands that are said to be able to ‘retrain’ the facial muscles, lengthing or shortening them based on where the muscles are and their function.

The Ultrasound works directly on the epidermis, exfoliating the skin to give it a brighter, fresher complexion.

The Microlaser (the Light Therapy) portion of the treatment is used to stimulate the body’s own cell regeneration.

So, we see in this case, that light is actually used to facilitate healing, not the actual face lift portion itself.

It would seem to us that like a ‘real’ workout, the electrically induced ‘workouts’ of the facial muscles would have to be repeated often to keep muscle tone, and at $200-300 per treatment, that sounds expensive over time.  If anyone has had this treatment, we’d love it if you’d leave a comment giving us your experience.

There is another company with the name CACI International, which is a private military technology devloper and personnel contractor, and due to the state of the world, if you try a web search, you’re likely to find mostly links about this CACI in particular. Here is the link to theCACI International that creates the medical devices. http://www.caci-international.co.uk/

Despite earlier indications that persons with darker skin pigmentation might not respond as well to phototherapy as patients with lighter skin, new clinical research has suggests that this is simply not the case. Observation of over 100 patients undergoing the UT Southwestern Medical Center’s experimental phototherapy treatments for morphea, scleroderma, and other related skin conditions, has shown that these treatments are beneficial to the same percentage of patients regardless of skin color. The procedure currently in place uses light in the UVA1 wavelength.

More information can be found at Newswise.com.

New research conducted by Nathalie Hoang and a team of researchers has been published in the journal of the Public Library of Science.  This study has shown that photoreceptors called cryptochromes in humans respond to blue light in much the same way that cryptochromes in plants do. While many of our cryptochromes are found in the retina of the eye, they can also be found in other tissues found near the surface of our bodies. The implication is that they must have a purpose in absorbing and responding to light, but exactly what their functions are is currently unknown.  Preliminary findings suggest that these sensors may regulate our sleep cycle, also called our circadian rhythm.

The Author sums up the findings of her paper with these words:

In our household we’ve known about the economic, environmental and therapeutic benefits of LED lighting for a while. And while we’ll probably do our own write-up on the subject at some point in the future, we came across this article today and thought you might enjoy reading it for yourselves.

http://www.trendir.com/archives/000257.html

The article is written more for home decorating than for therapy of any kind, but it still outlines a lot of the basics of LED lighting and gives some links to other articles on the subject as well.

Now, please understand that our home is NOT lit up like the underside of an inner city street racing car. Its just not our decorating style, so I found amusement, and even some befuddlement at the fixtures portrayed here. However, I kind of dug the illuminated dining table, though it seems less like a formal dining experience and more like a game room table to me. SEEING the temperature of the water coming out of a faucet by its color could be very helpful, especially for families with small children or infirmed. Finally, I’m thinking that self-lit fixtures in the bathroom would certainly make 3 a.m. trips to the bathroom much more comfortable than having to either blind yourself by turning on the lights or else fumbling around in the dark. Hmm.

Honey, what do you think of this waterfall shower with mood-lighting?…

Mr. Patel, MCG School of Dentistry Junior, Dr. Jill Lewis, associate professor of oral biology, Dr. Regina Messer, associate professor of oral rehabilitation and oral biology, and Dr. John Wataha, adjunct professor of oral rehabilitation and oral biology, have recently concluded early studies pointing to the possible use of Blue Light to help treat cancer.

Apparently, the study used 10 mice with tumors. 5 of the mice went untreated while the other 5 received doses of the blue light for 90 seconds a day for 12 days. At the end of the 12 days, the tumors were removed for study. Of the 10, the 5 that had received treatments showed a 10% increase of apoptosis (cell suicide) in the tumor cells, but not in healthy cells.

Early hopes are that in time blue light therapy can lighten the amount of current treatment methods needed, such as chemotherapy, to reduce the discomfort and affect to the patient’s health.

The blue lights used are reported to be those common to dental procedures that use blue light to harden tooth fillings. While the wavelength was not disclosed in this article, standard wavelengths for this procedure run between 430 – 470 nanometers.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/mcog-blu062408.php

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