The Healing Light (LEDs)

I found this NASA site a few months ago, it gives some interesting insight into using red and IR LEDs for accelerating healing of small wounds.

http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/newsroom/news/releases/2000/00-336.html

They used three wavelengths: 680 730 and 880 nM.

I have tried this on an experimental basis on myself (using 635 nM red and 880 nM IR LEDS, and it seems to work in speeding up healing of small cuts and sores. No ill effects were noted. Supposedly teh light stimulates capillary blood flow which in turns accelerates healing.

There are several manufacturers of LED LEPT (Low Energy Photon Therapy) devices, I'll add pointers later if it is OK to do so. I have no interest in
any of these businesses, just an experimenter looking for ever more uses for these wonderful little solid state light sources.

/ed brown in NH

Interesting, pleez add the links.

There are two other topics with earlier reports on medical uses of LEDs, you might do a search or I'll post them when I have time to do cross-references. I noticed that recent new info also and am glad you've pointed to it.

A couple of months ago, there was a TV special called "Living Longer, Looking Younger" on ABC that had a segment on LEDs.

You can try this link: http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/aging020830.html

On another note, I read something a couple weeks ago about a firm in Israel that was using an unspecified wavelength of blue light to treat acne on the face. Apparently by giving several treatments a week for 20 min a shot over three weeks it kills the bacteria without any noticeable effect on the face skin.

Lambda's post reminds me of the UV treatments I used to get when I had cystic acne in the 1950s.

I can still smell the ozone that the UV lamp put out.

I have always been fascinated with this topic and have experimented a bit on myself as well. I e-mailed the Dr in that report to see if I could get more information on his therapies but he never got back to me.

I was particularly interested in his work using led's to treat Retinal degeneration because I have a Retinal disease myself.

Any other links you can post would be appreciated.

Here is another related site - they are a vendor,
but they do have a lot of interesting and useful information. I was able to garner enough to figure out the basic design of their pulsed LED
unit.

http://www.alliedlighttherapy.com/page1.html

Also just do a web search under "LEPT", this will find more related sites.

The home made unit I used was one of the B G Micro 36 LED IR Illuminator boards, I replaced nine of the IRs with (approx) 635 nM HP "traffic signal red" LEDs I had on hand. Runs off 12 VED, either an 8 AA pack or a 12 V wall wart. This prototype is not pulsed, just straight DC powered.

/ed brown in NH

Another medical application of LEDs is using a royal blue 5 watt Luxeon Star Emitter, as a curing light for the new composite dental fillings. Look under "Luxeon Dental" on the Lumileds web site. they are basically a fine-tuned (and more expensive) version of the 1 and 5 watt RB emitters. They are listed on Future-Active under the following four part numbers:
LXHL-BRD1 and LXHL-MRD1 for the 1 watt devices, and LXHL-PRD5 and LXHL-LRD5 for the 5 watt units.
As I remember, from experience, the actual exposure time is fairly short. There is no UV, just strong blue light. I could feel some warmth while it was being used. The unit is housed in a white plastic enclosure about the size of a jumbo hen's egg, there is a stainless steel tube the light exits from, and it has a clear orange plastic "guard" on the end of the tube, that attenuates the reflected light so the dentist using it doesn't get "dazzled". I didn't originally know it was a Luxeon LED, until I started a web search. My most recent visit there last week, I had him shine it on my white shirt, it definitely throws a lot of rich blue light.

/ed brown in NH