OT Light Fuels Mitochondria Speeds Healing -CR Light Anyone? :-)

[Guest guest]

Light at the End of the Tunnel By Noah Shachtman

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,60786,00.html

02:00 AM Oct. 29, 2003 PT

On this much, scientists and doctors agree: Tiny flashes of infrared light

can play a role in healing wounds, building muscle, turning back the worst

effects of diabetes and repairing blinded eyes. But what they can't decide

on is why all these seemingly miraculous effects happen in the first place.

For more than a decade, researchers have been studying how light-emitting

diodes, or LEDs -- miniscule, ultra-efficient bulbs like the ones found in

digital clocks and television remotes -- might aid in the recuperative

process. NASA, the Pentagon and dozens of hospitals have participated in

clinical trials. Businesses have sold commercial LED zappers to nursing

homes and doctors' offices. Magazines and television crews have drooled on

cue. Medicare has even approved some LED therapy.

Despite all that effort, " there's not a clear idea of how this works. There

are just working hypotheses, " said Marti Jett, chief of the molecular

pathology department at the Walter Army Institute of Research.

One possibility comes from Dr. Harry Whelan, a colleague of Jett's and a

neurology professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. In a 2002 study

backed by the National Institutes of Health and the Persistence in Combat

program from the Pentagon's research arm, Whelan used LEDs to restore the

vision of blinded rats. Toxic doses of methanol damaged the rats' retinas.

But after exposure to the flashes of infrared light, up to 95 percent of the

injuries were repaired.

Human trials have been less dramatic, but still shockingly effective. Using

a Food and Drug Administration-approved, handheld LED -- playfully called

Warp 10 for its Star Trek style -- wound-healing time was cut in half on

board the USS Salt Lake City, a nuclear sub. Diode flashes improved healing

of Navy SEALs' training injuries by more than 40 percent. And a Warp 10

prototype was used by U.S. Special Forces units in Iraq, Whelan asserts.

These LEDs originally were developed by NASA to stimulate plant growth. Now,

the agency wants to use the gadgets to build astronauts' muscles during

weightlessness. DNA synthesis in muscle cells quintupled after a single

application of LEDs flashing at the 680-, 730- and 880-nanometer

wavelengths, according to Whelan.

How exactly all this happened remains a mystery, Jett said. She's identified

more than 20 genes that typically are associated with retinal damage, for

example, and " the LED alters all of them. "

" Some increased, some decreased, " she added. " But they were all brought back

to normal. "

Why? Whelan thinks that the LED pulses give the retinal cells extra energy,

allowing them to heal more quickly. Ordinarily, mitochondria -- the engines

of the cell -- turn sugars into energy. They do so with the help of an

enzyme, cytochrome oxidase, which carries electrons during the

energy-transfer process. Whelan's theory is that light particles from the

LED give the cytochrome electrons it ordinarily would get from sugar. Light

becomes a substitute for food, basically.

Dale Bertwell, the founder of Tampa, Florida-based Anodyne Therapy, a maker

of LED medical devices, doesn't buy the explanation.

" Mitochondria in no way explains the effects " of the LEDs, he said. If

Whelan is right, wounds could be healed just by " eating another candy bar. "

What's more, Bertwell added, the $1.2 million the Pentagon's Defense

Advanced Research Projects Agency just invested in Whelan's work is a waste.

" They're funding Harry's work to build something that's already in

widespread use, " Bertwell said.

That something, Bertwell said, is Anodyne's purse-sized, monochromatic, LED

zapper. Life Care Centers of America, a nursing home chain, has bought

nearly 200 of the devices, approved by Medicare last year. Gentiva Health

Services, a home health-care provider, ordered another 25.

The devices are being marketed as an antidote -- maybe the first antidote --

to diabetic neuropathy, a deadening in the small nerve endings at the body's

extremities. The syndrome is blamed for the vast majority of diabetic

amputations.

Because of all the sugar in a diabetic's blood, the nerve endings can become

brittle.

The diodes' flashes combat this by momentarily breaking nitric oxide away

from hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen,

Bertwell asserts. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator -- a substance that causes

blood vessels to expand. That, in turn, stimulates blood flow, which can

cause nerves to break their brittle nature, and grow again.

Dr. ph Prendergast, a Redwood City, California, endocrinologist, says

he's used LED therapy on more than 200 patients with diabetic neuropathy.

After about 10 treatments of 40 minutes each, 95 percent of those people

reported having some feeling restored to their feet. Nearly two-thirds are

completely back to normal, Prendergast said.

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