Medical application for LEDs 18
Timex writes "Doctors at the Medical College of Wisconsin are finding that near-infrared light from LEDs originally designed for commercial plant growth research in space are useful in healing hard-to-heal wounds. more information is available from their press section"
Bring forth the Tricorder (Score:1)
Hu? (Score:1)
Sorry I just have a hard time buying this.
Re:Hu? (Score:1)
I do agree, however, that the article could have afforded to present at least one hypothesis about what is going on here.
counter-intuitive (Score:1)
IR effects on cells? (Score:2)
In response to the previous poster, I don't know of any evidence for IR causing mutations. In general, light must be high enough energy (i.e. short enough wavelength) to cause chemical changes in DNA to cause mutations. UV light causes mutations by photo-induced dimerization of thymine. X-rays cause mutations by producing breaks in DNA strands. I can't think of a mechanism by which IR could cause a mutagenic effect.
In fact, I'm sceptical that the reported effect is real, as it's hard to see what effect IR light would have on cells, unless there's a particular receptor for it, or it works by some non-specific mechanism, such as heating the cells. And I actually am a biophysicist :)
EM radiation and possible healing mechanism (Score:1)
Here's a link to EBI medical systems [ebimedical.com] - they're one of the makers of bone stimulators.
An interesting side note - ultrasonic sound has also been used to the same effect. It's proported mechanism is the same as above and possibly that it induces more blood flow into the area which is always beneficial to (bone) healing.
Thus it's not unreasonable that the LEDs might locally increase blood flow and aid in healing.
Photochemistry is still a rather largely unexplored area of chemistry/medicine. The ATP explanation I saw in another post whereby ATPs energy is released by IR light is highly unlikely and doesn't make sense, biochemically speaking, as to why that would help - it's energy has to be directed at a process/reaction.
Anecdotally I do remember that some summer sunlight would always clear up my zits as a teenager - your guess as to the reason is as good as mine.
Re:Not entirely unrelated (Score:2)
PLants and IR (Score:1)
If you really like LEDs (Score:1)
Hmmm... (Score:3)
Re:Bring forth the Tricorder (Score:1)
Utter coolness...
Yes, it appears that we are moving forward to accelerated healing though light-emitting devices. I doubt that we'd see immediate healing, but a 40-50% speedup in recovery would certainly reduce hospital stays, and allow people to get back to their lives faster. If it's as inobtrusive as just holding the device up to the healing area, then this would allow for home use as well...
But one thing I'd be interested in is whether the speedup has some future side-effect issue such as cells not lining up properly because they're normal process is accelerated.
Other than that, oh yeah!
Re:Not entirely unrelated (Score:2)
Did you read the article [mcw.edu] from the Medical College of Wisconsin?
IANAD, but I seem to recall something called the Scientific Method [xnet.com], which is the accepted way by which scientists, collectively and over time, construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of our existence. The researchers are in the middle of that process now, so you should probably hold off on your judgements until they're finished. Then, maybe you'll have something 'a little bit more convincing'.
Then again, maybe not.
--
Not entirely unrelated (Score:1)
--
Re:Not entirely unrelated (Score:1)
Re:Not entirely unrelated (Score:1)
I did read the article. Like I said, I don't believe what they state to be impossible. I agree that in the scientific method of yours (and mine) you observe, hypothesise and verify. However,
- I'm at liberty to rotfl when a hypothesis ("brings energy to the cell" or whatever) sounds like a sixties mantra
- I think it's pretty lame to correlate this alleged healing stuff to other forms of light therapy that don't have much common ground with the situation at hand(yes, you can "cure" cancer with light...IF you administer a really toxic drug that binds to the cancer cells and starts becoming toxic when lit. This does not prove some super mystical healing property of light beams.)
Then again, maybe so. We'll see.
Not new news... been studied for years (Score:2)
"stimulating effects (from therapeutic light) are reported following irradiation with non-laser sources ... this view is not difficult to accept when it is remembered that wave-length dependent photobiochemical reactions occur throughout nature and are involved in such things as vision, photosynthesis, tanning and Vitamin D metabolism. In this view, laser therapy is really a form of light therapy, and lasers are important in that they are convenient sources of intense light at wavelengths that stimulate specific physiological functions" (Lasers in Surgery and Medicine 9:1-5, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, 1989).
LED's and LASERS are no more than convenient devices for producing electromagnetic radiation at specific wavelengths. The reason for the stimulation of human tissue is not 100% understood yet but various hypotheses and claims have been made both by scientists and less reliable holistic-healer types.
The most reasonable seems to me to be that the release of energy from cellular storage requires the input of energy. All food turns into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) before it is utilized by the cells. ATP provides the chemical energy that drives the chemical reaction of the cell, but (if I recall my Cellular Metabolism class correctly) it requires a small energy input to release the potential energy stored in the ATP. If the addition of mild radiation to the tissue can be used to stimulate the release of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) then the increases in ATP would allow cells to accept nutrients faster and get rid of waste products faster by increasing the energy level in the cell.
An alternative hypothesis is that the mild IR radiation could be interpreted by the cell as a potential danger, triggering the cell's defense mechanisms to kick into high-gear and speeding up defense and healing processes. However, considering how many beneficial roles radiation plays in our cellular processes (like vitamin D synthesis) I prefer the first hypothesis. (And hell, when you walk around in the sunshine, don't you just feel *good*? Skin tingling, blood flowing, you just feel more alive and healthy don't you?)
Pentapod
Medical...LEDs (Score:1)
Details? All I am sure of is that they were from a university in California. I'll dig around, though.
NB- This is not THAT different from the really really common use of LEDs to measure blood oxygenation and heartrate. It's all bloodflow.
very cool (Score:2)