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Trials begin for a new weapon against Parkinson’s: light
- themodelplumber 6y ago> The team will also look for clinical benefits. But because researchers grade Parkinson’s symptoms by observing patients performing specific tasks, assessments are largely subjective, and symptoms vary over time; everyone has good days and bad days, Sulzer says. Because the control group will not undergo surgery, it will be especially hard to rule out placebo effects. > Yet Sulzer is giving studies like Benabid’s the benefit of the doubt. The absence of a clear mechanism isn’t a reason to dismiss the therapy, he says. “There are many things we don’t understand,” Sulzer says. “I am skeptical and also think it is an intriguing area of pursuit.” That's a really difficult testing setup for sure, but Sulzer also demonstrates a really reasonable and commendable stance toward the results and interpretations--hope it works out.
- rogerkirkness 6y agoN=1 but I got full body red light therapy (NIR and red light) and lingering vision issues from a concussion went away. I didn't notice huge benefits otherwise, just clearer skin, needed a bit less sleep, and much clearer vision.
- panabee 6y agothanks for sharing. a few questions if you don't mind: 1. how long did you have the concussion for? 2. how many red light treatments did you do? 3. any hypotheses on the connection between red light therapy and clearer skin and clearer vision, assuming red light therapy is what cured these issues? this thread and the one yesterday about drumming patterns that can trigger different mental states suggest intriguing areas of research for cognitive issues.
- vernon99 6y agoCan you please share the link to this drumming thread? As a drummer carefully monitoring my mental states, I’m intrigued!
- rogerkirkness 6y agoI had the concussion about 8 months ago, and the vision issues were stable since then until a month ago when I started doing it. I use it daily because I have it at home, it cost about $2k for the unit. Clearer skin is apparently attributable to reduced inflammation acting at the cellular level.
- voisin 6y agoWhere does one find this kind of therapy offered?
- greenbush 6y agoSome spas or medical clinics offer red light therapy as a treatment. Or, you can buy one for your home or DIY build your own, which are discussed at https://www.reddit.com/r/redlighttherapy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redlighttherapy/ .
- rogerkirkness 6y agoI have a home one, it cost about $2k to buy, but the LEDs are dropping in price so fast it will be cheaper in future.
- jokowueu 6y agoYou can do it yet self . Lost falcos guide is a popular one https://www.lostfalco.com/transcranial-low-level-laser-therapy-dosing/ https://www.lostfalco.com/transcranial-low-level-laser-thera...
- greenbush 6y agoWhich red light therapy product did you use? Did you buy a full body product or build it from panels yourself?
- rogerkirkness 6y agoCompany was called RedAlternative, but there's also Joov and Biomax
- filoeleven 6y agoThose names are hilariously close to the satirical corporation names in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake: OrganInc, HelthWyzer, and RejoovenEsense. Thanks for sharing them, this is interesting stuff to look into. $2k is cheap enough that if it shows promising results for a serious condition, a family or friend network could chip in and help set one up for someone. Then use it themselves for clearer skin too!
- throwaway316943 6y agoInteresting to note that NIR light can penetrate deep into the body. There is research into using this as a medical imaging technique [0] and also research on improving age related vision loss [1] [0] https://youtu.be/awADEuv5vWY https://youtu.be/awADEuv5vWY [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768515/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768515/
- peter_d_sherman 6y agoSeems interesting enough...
- nojs 6y ago> if only people stepped out of their darkened homes and artificially lit offices for a few moments every day, and embraced all of that free, natural, nature-given sunlight... The article is about implanting a device deep deep in the brain and delivering light pulses, not people “stepping out of their darkened homes”. My uncle has young onset PD and worked outside his entire life.
- kwhitefoot 6y agoThe article is also about trans-cranial stimulation with near infra red. Sunlight is rich in near infra red so it sounds quite plausible that it might have some effect if the article is correct about the LED helmet being effective. People interested in red light therapy have already discussed this, see https://redlightman.com/blog/red-light-therapy-vs-sunlight/ https://redlightman.com/blog/red-light-therapy-vs-sunlight/ for instance.
- krageon 6y ago> Sunlight is rich in near infra red so it sounds quite plausible [...] Yes, you are correct that it is possible to invent plausible-sounding fables. It's perfectly okay to do so, but it's not germane in a discussion about medicine.
- fmakunbound 6y agoI thought this kind of light therapy was bullshit and controversial at best
- wombatmobile 6y agoI was a high care Parkinson's nurse for 5 years. Whilst I'd love to see a viable treatment/cure for this devastating disease, I don't think brain implants are a high potential research vector for what is a cellular disease characterised by mitochondrial dysfunction. Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) requires invasive, expensive surgery and doesn't deliver consistent or lasting outcomes because candidate selection is haphazard, and the procedure doesn't alter the disease trajectory. The dopaminergic cells in the striatum continue to die. I'm surprised to see this NIR trial proceed without a clear hypothesis for how it might work. It sounds like the group is well funded, but even if NIR gets similar results to electro DBS, it would only likely be a niche symptom alleviator for those who can afford it. I found this part of the article disturbing. In 2017, together with research fellow Cécile Moro, they injected 20 macaques with a neurotoxin known to cause Parkinson’s symptoms. In nine of them, they also delivered NIR to the midbrain area through an implanted device. Mitrofanis recalls how the first NIR-treated monkey behaved after a 3-week recovery period: “He was moving around like there was nothing wrong. We looked at each other and just hugged. … It was euphoric.”
- rogerkirkness 6y agoNIR acts on the mitochondria. This is already proven along with movement therapy in small studies. The price of NIR and red light fall with LEDs. So if it works even a bit now, in 5 years when LEDs are much cheaper it will be the first line.
- wombatmobile 6y agoWhat is the cost of an LED? What is the cost of neurosurgery?
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoDeep Brain Stimulation (DBS) requires invasive, expensive surgery and doesn't deliver consistent or lasting outcomes because candidate selection is haphazard, and the procedure doesn't alter the disease trajectory. The dopaminergic cells in the striatum continue to die. That depends on the kind of Parkinson's. In some cases, the root cause is genetic, not neurodegenerative, and in those cases DBS can significantly alter the disease trajectory.
- 1024core 6y ago> In 2017, together with research fellow Cécile Moro, they injected 20 macaques with a neurotoxin known to cause Parkinson’s symptoms. This just saddens me. Yes, the end result is helping humanity and saving human lives; but we should really be spending some effort in eliminating the need to torture other animals.
- radu_floricica 6y agoWhile most people still eat meat (me included) I think this is scope insensitivity. We routinely kill several orders of magnitude more animals for food than for research, and for arguably much less marginal benefit.
- krageon 6y agoThere is a big and I hope obvious difference between the amount of suffering something has when you shoot it in the head versus when you inject it with poison and leave it crippled for weeks to see if the suffering is the way you expect.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThere is also animal testing. To test a shampoo, for example, they apply a concentrated version of it to animal eyes and see how irritated they get. And there is regular farming. To extract milk from cows, we steal their calves, making cows cry for days. Male calves are killed and disposed or turned into meat and female calves are kept to repeat the cycle. In the case of female chicken, we make them live in tiny cages their entire life where they cannot even move. The "cage-free" chicken are just chicken that spent their entire lives in crowded warehouses where they also do not have space. "free-range" chicken have a non-zero outdoor access but there is no guarantee of how much that is, they still spend most of their life in a crowded warehouse. Male chickens are killed by being ground alive right after birth. The process of killing animals during slaughter sometimes just stuns the animal, leaving the animal alive to experience being cut open and dissected. Slaughterhouse workers kill 250 cows per day each. Some foods are especially inhumane, like foie gras, which is made by force feeding ducks or geese so that their liver gets enlarged. The repeated force feeding process causes lesions that cause the animals to develop necrotic tissue in their sternum. Many animals from pet shops come from puppy mills where their mothers are repeateadly forced to give birth until they develop cancer. And there's much more. We are horrible to animals but very good at marketing. We are even horrible to other humans too: child labor, sweatshops, etc. Morally, paying for these things is equivalent as doing it yourself.