This is Michel2020's project and he posted links to this and a few other videos a while back. This transcript takes up a lot of room so I am posting it separately from jimcaster's post down thread.
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Red light therapy
Sep 8, 2021
Nosilverbullet4pd
youtube.com/watch?v=RscgHLu...
We were delighted to host Catherine Hamilton, a retired medical practitioner and author of the Red Lights on the Brain blog. Together with Ron Brown, an electronics engineer, Catherine established Well Red Pty a company that produces and distributes the Well Red Coronet.
The topic of Catherine's talk was, "Red and near-infrared lights – can they help degenerative neurological diseases?"
The potential health value of red light was recognised over a century ago. It took another 90 years for medical researchers to rediscover the potential, and restart research into the health effects of red and near-infrared light on conditions such as Parkinson’s disease.
More information can be found on Catherine's website wellred.com.au
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NB: Please note that we have no commercial relationship with our speakers. We simply organise topics that our members have shown an interest in and are welcome to receive other suggestions
Transcript
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Thank you for helping me make my own red hat very good.
Well it started back in 2015 with an arthritic knee that and and I was threatened with knee replacement by a surgeon and I'm a retired medical practitioner. I don't do surgeons. I hate surgeons. I won't let them near me unless I absolutely have to. I know it's terrible isn't it. So I started looking around for things that might help and my husband bought the book you know the Norman Doige book the brain that heals itself. There was a chapter in there about lights which I thought was absolutely fascinating. It mentioned park concerns but it also mentioned arthritis. It said that the brain you know if you put red near infrared light on the brain you can regenerate brain cells and also if you stick them on arthritic joints you can regenerate cartilage cells. Now when I went to medical school a hundred years ago that would have been total heresy and I remember sitting there you know thinking what a lot of rubbish. But because I was desperate yeah you start looking and at that stage through our community orchestra I was I was able to access the university of Tasmania's digital library and started downloading articles about red and near infrared lights found to my embarrassment that in fact there was a lot of good research out there about it. As I kept reading I found the work of a guy called John Mitrofanis who was then a professor of anatomy at Sydney Uni and he's a neuroanatomist and his area of it research was Parkinson's he was doing the most extraordinary work. He started putting lights on mice the reason he started it was one of these conversations in the in the common room he was talking to his mate who's a professor of physiology and he said I've worked out that the mitochondria are the problem in Parkinson's disease but I don't know how to simulate them this guy said I should put some 670 nanometer light on them and that'll make the mitochondria sit up and take notice. and John Mitrofanus kind of reacted like I'd even said really this is rubbish but he said why not. So he with his Parkinson's mice he did just that and he found in fact that after you know shining light on their heads the mice which before had been very parkinsonian really difficult moving were starting to dance the watusi you know literally and he was he was a bit surprised so that was about 2010. I think so that set him off doing a series of you know really beautiful research
He then collaborated with a lim benefit he's the guy who devised the deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's and they so he's John Mitrofanis has spent you know a few months each year at Grenoble where elin bennebet is based and they did some amazing work in 2016 they developed a probe to go into Parkinson's into the brain like a dbs except with the light at the end of it and then it kind of got all political so they haven't been able to test it out very well except in monkeys. So I'm sorry guys if any of you are not into animal testing this is kind of part of medical research. Anyway back I had a friend whose husband had Parkinson's and I said to him you want to do something completely daft and he was he was up for it so I bought you know went online bought some 670 nanometer red LED strip and then try to work out a way in which to make a light a light hat I do have funny photos. But you probably didn't don't need to see them but I ended up with this thing. Here. Can you see it's a bucket it's a cut-down bucket and inside it it's got it's got a sort of foil lining and then I put in LED strips in there and if I it's absolutely revolting but it works. Hang on I'll just fire it up and show you how it works. It's best to do that at home than in the street I guess [Laughter].
Okay that's pretty bright where's that thing there so that's a 670 nanometers that sits on the head and then after you know a few minutes that's the near infrared which is a bit hard to see so this wonderful man started wearing this thing once a day initially and he went to see his neurologist about three months later he actually he's a geriatrician who specializes in Parkinson's and Frank the specialist was expecting to put this guy on to medication and he was very surprised to see improvements and the improvements were in motor his tremor was less his walking was better his fine hand movements were much better. In fact he had lost the ability to bowl you know playing lawn bowls he'd lost the ability to hold the ball and or more to the point to release the ball or the bowl. I should say so he was doing it left-handed but he regained the ability to use his right.
The other thing that I noticed back then was that his facial animation really improved. Instead of being very impassive Parkinson's face he started to have a sparkle back. The other thing was his auditory processing that he it took a long had been taking him a long time to understand what was being said to him and so if people spoke quickly and the conversation kind of moved on he lost you know he lost the threat of the conversation. So he didn't hear it that much so his wife had noticed that she was telling him the same thing over and over less often that she didn't have to repeat herself as much.
So then from that Frank said can you make me some more buckets please and so I made with my husband they made a few more these buckets and we put them on different people with Parkinson's and we contacted John Metrofanis and he came down and met with all the people here we had the most marvelous sort of lunch and afternoon tea and he gave us a lecture and he was pretty pleased so and it's what it's kind of continued from there. A little while later I decided that I'd worked out the parameters for a transcranial device for research purposes so a mate of mine who's we play in the same community orchestra he's a tympanist and he's a really clever electronics engineer so he and I kind of nutted out the what's become the coronet, which is that chappy which is a hell of a lot easier to wear than the other one. So that's been used very effectively. So that's a great introduction it's fascinating story actually it is explained in such a way that we would listen to you for hours about that I don't know about that it's my accent [Laughter].
So can we zoom in a tiny bit more on the topic of the science behind the red light therapy in particular I think that it would be interesting to understand how it does penetrate the body and what does it what impact does it have. You mentioned mitochondria I'm sure that you're thinking also about neurons so basically how does this what is the science and how does it really impact the body please?
Okay so I might put a few slides up these are some powerpoints I used last month when I spoke to the local Parkinson's support group. So it's kind of very basic but I see oh no hang on I'm supposed to hang on me here we go oh where's it gone come to mama where is it there it is so can you see that? yes perfect oh got it good you can see all these batteries yes next. So this is John Mitrofanis I just want to show you him he's become a real family friend now and he's just gorgeous and he's now based he's taken over professor William Benedict's role at Grenoble so he's now in your part of the world doing and doing really amazing things. He'll be using that coronet device that like had I showed you in some research in the next few years. So that's very exciting okay so here's a summary I'll go into some more detail in a minute so red and near-infrared light in it has the ability to penetrate through the tissues so if you stick it on the head it'll penetrate through the scalp and skull and into the outer brain cell probably two to three centimeters worth of brain tissue. Now why it has that ability no one really knows the other wavelengths don't and the blue and the green and so on they don't have that it's it just seems to be something to do with the red.
It stimulates the mitochondria that the mitochondrial wall has got a bunch of different proteins in it and it seems that the red light comes through and it stimulates the proteins in fact it doesn't even need to do that if there's a little sack of water inside the wall of the mitochondria the light will change the density of the water and that in itself will then create a charge and that kick starts the mitochondria into starting to into being more active and building up. Now remember that from your days in biology classes the mitochondria are the cell batteries or the powerhouse of the cells so when I said to you that you know John Matriphanus had worked out a few decades ago that the problem in Parkinson's was that the cell batteries weren't working. He wanted to do something to stimulate them and it seems that light really does that.. So when the mitochondria gets a light pulse it you get a chemical reaction within the mitochondria you get the mitochondria sort of sizing itself up and getting all that activated and sort of saying right oh let's do stuff.
The stuff that it does it sends out a whole bunch of chemical messages it sends a message to the cell nucleus and tells it to start the process of reproduction actually making new cells it the transcription factors it's called it sort of gets them going. So it stimulates the making of new brain cells which is neurogenesis and it really does happen. It stimulates some you know whatever that cell's meant to do if it's a dopamine producing cell okay the cell starts producing dopamine so it actually gets busy doing what it should do. It changes the chemical soup outside the cell increases a thing called nitric oxide and that irritates the wall of the blood vessels and so the walls start to sprout new blood vessels. You get increased capillaries going around that area which means you get more blood flow more oxygen to the areas. That's kind of nice too.
So recent work has shown that it's the neuron it's not just individual neurons getting kind of a lift and a feeling happy it's a whole bunch of neurons then start working together. So the pathways in the brain the neural pathways say involved in memory or aspects of cognition or whatever those neural pathways somehow get strengthened. No one's quite sure how that happens but it definitely does happen. You're getting a reduced inflammatory response and that's quite handy when you've got inflammation which is part and parcel a lot with a lot of the neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. So what I've been talking about is a direct effect but it also has a very good indirect effect I'll describe that in a sec. So if that doesn't make any sense bear with me I might be able to explain it better. Okay so Parkinson's is a disease of miserable mitochondria.
The mitochondria the green blobs with the yellow around them and they're the walls you can see that there are two layers in the wall lots of proteins lots of curious things. So here's a cell batteries and what we want is a full mitochondria full cell battery and what we tend to have is a lot of low batteries. If you have a dead battery well that's it the cell has completely died and in Parkinson's the dopamine producing cells die.
So a dying mitochondria can be revived. If you chuck red and near-infrared light on it okay .so here you have a cross-section of the of a you know sort of the drawing of the brain and you can see you've got the basal ganglia you know the area that produces a dopamine and is a problem area and Parkinson's deep in the middle there. But you know that's that all those red lights certainly not going to go anywhere near that base. Again bear with me firstly you get a very strong direct effect remember I said you get the outer two to three centimeters of the brain cells that's a lot of neurons getting a lot of light and remember it's not just a basal ganglia that that get upset in Parkinson's it's all the other cells that that work with it when the basal ganglia cells and the dopamine-producing cells don't work so well then all the other cells that connect to it and rely on it start to fade away as well.
So you're giving your cells in the outer part of the brain quite a direct boost and surprisingly we're all pretty surprised it does seem to make a difference. So the indirect effect is where the where the light pulse can be taken from one part of the body to another. This sounds bizarre but there's a technical medical term for it which is abscotal or abscopal effect. Depends how you like to pronounce it. You see that with other things as well so if I put some light on my left red light on my left big toe in theory and in practice that red light pulse can actually do something inside my brain it can travel know we didn't actually know how it traveled. John Metrofanis has thought it was something to do with the immune cells circulating in the bloodstream.
But in 2019 we discovered only then that mitochondria pop themselves into the bloodstream and whizz around so they have the ability to pop outside of a cell pop on in the bloodstream go for a kind of a jolly go up to Scotland go down to the big toes you know just wander around. And when they fancy it they think ah I just pop in and have a have a chat to the liver cells and pop into a liver cell now you think how long we've been studying the bloodstream and we didn't know that until a couple of years ago. It's pretty amazing but that's probably almost certainly how the light pulse gets carried around and the body has got the ability to you know to send ambulance workers as it were to where the areas are of need are. It seems that it's it sends light pulses to the basal ganglia so a lot of the effects that you get that we saw in that original bloke were clearly improvements in the basal in the dopamine producing cells and like that function. The only way that that could have happened is if light got to that area the only way that could have happened is this through this indirect effect.
Oh here's me trying to be creative ignore that. This is frank Nicholas I was telling you about he's a lovely geriatrician he's a really gorgeous man and he's equally mad as me. I think I'm to suggest that I make bucket light hats for his patients and then ask patients to have a good have a try it's just wonderful. So back in 2016 when we were putting buckets on people's head what this is what we were looking for we were looking for safety obviously we wanted to be safe and it's a 12-volt device as all of them are which is good we wanted to make sure that people would actually use the damn things every day because if you're trying to recharge a battery cell battery you need daily doses. We're obviously concerned about adverse side effects and what we will totally and utterly focused on was the motor signs particularly the tremor particularly walking the shuffle and the shape and next one so what did we find well we certainly found improvement in motor signs. The shuffle and the shake improved speech improved. That was really quite a big one and some people the first time they used their light their speech started to get clearer voice started to get stronger articulation became better and as well they their sentence constructions were longer and more complex rather than just kind of brief and limited. Fine finger movements really definitely improved. The freezing of the gate improved swallowing one you know one of the early blokes had troubles with a blood pressure tablet which is quite big and he was he found that he was able to swallow that very much more easily using the lights here's the same guy who had a lot of coffee and the coughing stoppec too the drooling stopped and writing improved. So we were a bit surprised and pretty pleased but what was really I guess gobsmacking in many ways was that non-motor symptoms improved these are a lot of these are ones that don't get that much mention in Parkinson's because they're almost impossible to treat.
Fatigue is the big one. Fatigue is the elephant in the room in the Parkinson's consultation room because just about everyone with Parkinson's gets fatigue. That's you know it just develops and then once it's there it doesn't tend to go away whereas people found that they had more energy that the fatigue had gone. They were starting to do things they'd like to do before and then just not getting as tired as they used to.
The sleep quality improved and particularly the disrupted the dream enactment you know where there's a disconnect you know yeah you know about so in Parkinson's instead of dreaming about running away from a herd of elephants but and being completely still as we normally are that they start physically running with the herd of elephants behind them in their dream and so that knocks their partner out of the bed and they knock themselves out of the bed it's quite pretty uncomfortable. That rem sleep and dream enactment behaviour stopped in a lot of people. And their sleep quality improved. Their partners were deeply grateful because it's pretty hard having someone thrashing around in the bed next to you.
Cognitive function improved attention and memory judgment and decision making some of them hadn't been able to make decisions found it easier to make decisions. Anxiety is another big one and that improved so mood meaning particularly meaning repression symptoms improved. Apathy was another one that it took me a while to really appreciate because that's another elephant in the room over a third of people with Parkinson's get apathy that's different to fatigue apathy is where you just completely lack motivation. One bloke called it the couldn't be bothered and he for him that was the main symptom a month into rearing his bucket he lost he got his kind of there couldn't be bothers left. Interestingly he didn't realize that it goes it's just I saw him a month after because his bucket lights went bum. I mean he came over the our place and we did a running repair and I said how's it could be bothered he said oh it's gone I've forgotten all about it. So it's really kind of subtle symptoms but apathy is a really important one. It has an effect on if people develop apathy then it means that the progression on the of the motor symptoms is going to be faster. So it's actually a signal of more rapid potential for more rapid decline. So in theory we don't know this yet but in theory if you can stop apathy happening and keep it at bay then this rapid progression may not happen. So it's pretty it's pretty exciting stuff. So that's you know part of the research that needs to be done. We haven't written that yet this is all kind of new all these things.
Some people got their sense of smell back which was kind of really bizarre you know. Frank reckons that's one of the kind of the gold standard things if you can get sense of smell back in Parkinson's because a lot of people lose it well before they get the diagnosis that's pretty amazing. So things like constipation improved and anhedonia.
I've got to tell you a story about one lady she started work she'd had Parkinson's for being diagnosed with a few years but obviously had it for about I don't know around about 10 years looking back. And she been wearing the light hat for about eight months and she went for a walk along a cliff tops overlooking one of the lovely beaches here in Tasmania and it was one of those lovely exhilarating days you know when the sun's shining the birds are whizzing around it's just you know there's wind it's just one of these gorgeous days where you just completely lift it out of yourself and she's realized that she felt exhilarated really felt wonderful that and then it occurred to her that she hadn't felt like this for at least 10 years and she and she rang me up and said you know I realized I've lost my sense of joy and I hadn't known that my sense of joy had gone. It was pretty amazing so you know people I tell the story to people now when we're playing with lights for them and I ask the question and tell me about your sense of joy they look at me like I'm a complete fruit loop, but it's a real and important thing.
Okay what we got next so going back to this we've got the direct effect we've got the indirect effect most of the non-motor symptom improvements almost certainly comes from that direct effect there because there's a lot of those cells involved in memory energy levels apathy motivational sort of stuff and cognitive function or in the outer areas there.
So what we found in summary was that the lights were safe. The motor signs improved. There was a high compliance. People like using the lights it feels nice and there were no adverse side effects. The only side effect we noted with a some bloke started to get a bit of hair growing back on the head. Which they were pretty keen about and the as I said the effect that we had no idea about was the improvement in non-motor symptoms and I tend to go on and on and on about non-motor symptoms. Because there's no pill there's no pharmaceutical for apathy or for fatigue as there's limited pharmaceuticals available to improve sleep quality. It doesn't stop the dream enactment stuff it might make you sleep a bit longer the standard sleeping pills but it actually doesn't fix the problem.
Antidepressants for mood and anti-anxiety tablets are problematic and people with Parkinson's so they don't work very well. I can't remember the other ones but it's when you have something as simple as sticking a bunch of lights on your head a couple of times a day to make these symptoms feel you know better it's worth doing. The other thing about these symptoms is that if you talk to people with Parkinson's and ask what are the things that really cause misery to your day make your day bleak and it's not the shake and the shuffle it's not the tremor and the problems with walking. It's sleep fatigue and depression and apathy. For and for the as a carers and it's a pretty similar list. Sleep is a big one because if the carer can't sleep they don't cope then things go downhill pretty quickly. It's the apathy is a big one for them too because if you're living with someone who can't be bothered all the time you know it's pretty it's not very good life anyway. So that's why I go bananas about non-motor symptoms they are the key to living well with Parkinson's and lights really make a difference.
So when you put all that sort of science into reality this is the kind of stuff you get I don't need to read them all out. But there's a lot of good symptoms that improve been watching people using lights now for four and a half years and they've moved from the buckets to the coronet every so often we run on a electronics engineer as we improve the design we can change the parameters increase the power change the pulse rate change the length of time and we can even change location on the head. So that say for people who've had stroke involving speech they do better if they just have lights over the left side of the head rather than whole heads. So we can kind of do that so as we've been changing them we've been observing our bunnies, you know lovely people who've been doing this for us here in tessie we've we're just keeping it does improve so all of them have really they feel in themselves and their and their specialist agrees that the progression has slowed down for some. For some of them they've not needed to have an increase in medication. One guy tried it and then went back off it because he decided he was doing that okay. Non-motor symptoms like apathy and anxiety and depression and sleep and fatigue where if they improved that improvement has stayed. So it seems that then when you get improvements in the non-motor symptoms they tend to stay. Thus far I mean we've only been observing this for four and a half years but that's four and a half years more than anyone else has. So unless you've got this information so if I answered that question
Thank you very much Catherine I will ask the last question on behalf of the group and then I will basically let everyone just come in I think that I just wanted to talk a bit more about the practicalities. If you want if following this session any one of us wanted to experiment and go further in the use of red light therapy what are the solutions available I think that some of them are diy some of them can be boought of the shelves and then the practicalities like I think you mentioned there is a high compliance of two times a day but how long do you do it for how long does it take to see some changes coming through so just basically some practical questions if you don't mind and then I will open up.
If you want to make your own don't make the bucket light hat that I showed you before on the blog red lights on the brain there's a description of this type of light device now and it's made by an engine a retired engineer called Michael Richards and there's the information is on the blog about how to make it. And the only use this stuff here is some plastic coated wire like you get from a hardware store and then you and there's a video that that Michael did that's on the blog as well and that's quite neat you know stick it on your head looks good didn't they he calls it the cossack for obvious reasons.
Do you mind sharing your screen dude do you mind stop sharing your screen so we can see
Oh yeah thank you thank you sorry and so oh that's my friend Neil wearing the he's a real rat bag as now okay so what's happening I need to get out of there don't I so the way that Michael has done it he's got the two wavelengths there you can see the two connectors and this is the 670 nanometer so if I stick it on he's actually made this quite tall he doesn't quite he's been getting yeah it doesn't need to be still anyway that's okay you still get a jolly good cove. But you can make yourself something like this at home and it does a jolly good jo. So you wear it preferably twice a day I've found that people do better twice a day. We started off with once a day and then we then we moved to twice
So with something you make yourself about 15 minutes each wavelength or if you just have a one wavelength one the red one just wear it for 20 to 25 minutes and what I say to people is to sit and use it when you're already sitting down so I use my I don't have Parkinson's but I use mine twice a day anyway because I think better and I feel better. And my family tell me I'm a nicer person. So that's a good reason to use it. So I have it you know when I sit down for breakfast with the newspaper my cup of tea and so I'm sitting anyway and in the evening it's while I'm watching the news.
So as long as people can use it in not have it imposed on their day you know having in addition to is just use it when you when it's suitable so that doesn't take so much time. It's comfortable to wear some people find it it's quite soothing. I find that if I'm kind of really feeling pretty cranky and if anyone walks in the room I'm going to throttle them I find I'll go and stick the helmet on and you know within about 15 minutes I start to feel a bit more human. So it seems to it is calming some people go to sleep some people do meditation you know or you just watch television or read a book or whatever you do and it does itself. You don't need to do anything other than that it's just wearing it twice a day or at least at least once a day. That seems to make the difference to the way the brain functions.
The coronet off the shelf that is available from your company:
Yeah this is this is the coronet let's put my hair down. This is pretty beautiful okay can you see that yes it's got two it's an aluminium frame it comes in a flat pack and you bend it in to fit your head shape and because I can't tell you how weird people's heads are. I've just been amazed at the different shades each arm has got two wavelengths in it red and near-infrared and it's set so that you just plug it in and stick it on and well just turn it on for a sec it just does it all by itself. There we go. Yes it's working now this is one of the it's look it's just gorgeous it's so elegant but it's about 130 grams it's really easy to wear. So it does this for 12 minutes and then they power down and the other wavelengths power up. I didn't talk about wavelengths I'm going to turn this off now it's driving me mad. Okay John Mitrofanis found that the two wavelengths that work the best at 670 which is that deep red of that color I had on them at the cell that has the best effect on the mitochondria so that seems to be really much and I've found that's almost kind of like chocolate for all cells all cells love it all cells whether it's a skin or cartilage cells or whatever. They seem to respond well to that the other wavelength is 810 nanometers which is near infrared you can just only just see it and the benefit of that one is it has the best ability to penetrate into the tissue. So it'll penetrate. If you put the coronet on your hand so it'll you can see it there's light underneath it really does penetrate quite a long way. So and John Mitrofanis's team found that if you use one wavelength immediately followed by the other that was more effective than either on their own or the two of them together. Which kind of makes biological sense.
Yeah thank you very much thank you so much one more question you asked ho. Long does it take before you see a change and again everyone's different. And everyone's Parkinson's.
Hello my name is Sagit and thank you for your talk I'm a doctor myself but I didn't have the opportunity like you to bring to people such a nice solution and I have Parkinson's I really look forward to try to your treatment because I've read a lot of testimonials of patients online. I interrupted because I wanted to ask you how did you so you said that the wavelength you refer you are using were believed to be good for this kind of cells and for the mitochondria. Could you just say experimentally what kind of methods how do how do one know? Because I know that today biophotomodulation is really researched in many by many researchers so I understand it's not just your opinion. Yes so what how do we know that these are the wavelengths just a cultural education you know a question?
Good question so I've used John work because his has been the most advanced work done on Parkinson's and it's not only mice his work done he's also worked on the monkeys. So that's you know the non-human primates so that's the kind of closest you can get. I saw no reason to change the wavelengths he used because he's done the cellular work on that so it's not just animal stuff but he's looked at kind of what happens in inside the cell and inside the mitochondria. And that is slightly out of my league to put it mildly because I'm a clinician not a not a molecular researcher. So I I've accepted that. But it seems to be pretty universal. The next lot the stuff that's happened is that sometimes I haven't been able to get 670 nanometer LED strip this is when I was making buckets for people and I could get 630 nanometers which was helpful but it was not as good. So just watching people and observing people using different buckets and different light devices you know I'm pretty happy that these two are the best. I mean if there is a way a wavelength that are better I'm sure someone
Trying to stand up straight
Photobiomodulation aka light therapy article in The Weekend Australian 
PD, ill health retirement and consultants input.
Supplement recommendations
Reducing oxidative stress and inflammation to slow Parkinson's disease 
