This past weekend I went to a LLLT Symposium put on by the American Society for Photobiology. It was awesome, and I’ll write more about it as soon as I get the chance, but I want to post this article while it’s still on the top of my email window:
Paralyzed Healdsburg teen regains some feeling
It’s a long read, but the point is a completely paralyzed kid has regained some movement in his fingers and arm after simple light therapy.
It was for real, and now, a week later, Ripa can move all four fingers and his thumb. If someone bends his right elbow to a 90-degree angle, he can move it back and forth a bit.
Medically, it means some motor nerves have managed to reconnect across the injured part of his spinal cord.
… It came after five days of an alternative and experimental treatment called photonic light therapy, which is supposed to stimulate the repair of injured tissue.
Over the weekend I saw very graphic slides of rat nerves (I never knew actual nerves were so big) being regenerated by red/infrared light. The light was able to penetrate through fur, skin, fat, muscle and whatever else was between it and the spinal column. They both crushed and severed the spinal cords of rats, and were able to achieve total or partial nerve regeneration with the aid of the light. Even the researchers were throwing the word “miracle” around now and then.
I was thrilled to see the above article, and I can’t wait to see the outcome of his case. It is encouraging that light therapy for nerve regeneration is already being tested in major hospitals, because that means it is much closer than I thought to being “approved” for general use, and people can start to benefit from the miracle of light.
“Photonic Light Therapy” is not as super technical as it sounds. A photon is simply a particle of light, the source of the light does not matter much. The researchers I listened to were using either red and/or infrared light in either low lever lasers or LEDs.
