Therapeutic LEDS for US Army & civilians

shiftd

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Efficient, long running, not brittle and fragile, immune to shock and now, as healer? wow, Leds are pretty neat huh.
Btw, why they said only select wavelength? That device must be pretty expensive heh, considering they have to select their leds for appropriate wavelength and we all know that leds color was an infinite variable.
 

ElektroLumens

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I have made a number of flashlights and little boxes, using infrared LEDs, for the purpose of relieving joint pain of arthritus. It really works! Even 660nm red penetrates deep enough to do some good. Using about 700nm to 900nm, the light can penetrate 30mm or more, increasing blood circulation. It also does something to relieve pain, at the molecular level. Quite amazing!

Wayne j
 

ufokillerz

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[ QUOTE ]
ElektroLumens said:
I have made a number of flashlights and little boxes, using infrared LEDs, for the purpose of relieving joint pain of arthritus. It really works! Even 660nm red penetrates deep enough to do some good. Using about 700nm to 900nm, the light can penetrate 30mm or more, increasing blood circulation. It also does something to relieve pain, at the molecular level. Quite amazing!

Wayne j


[/ QUOTE ]

approximately how much is required to assemble such a unit and how many leds do you recommend?
 

UK Owl

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A slightly off topic response :

About 15 years ago the young son of the senior engineer in the factory I was employed in broke his wrist, and had seen on tv that there were trials with these 'magic box' type instruments that used ultrasound or Infrared (I can not remember which he said) and being a small child, he wanted one. The task given to me as one of the 'electronics specialists' was to make something to prevent the young boy from pestering his father; the end result was :

A small component box containing a PP3 battery, a switch on the side and an astable multivibrator circuit inside driving an LED mounted in the edge of the box, attached to this was an Earth bonding strap.

The boy was told to put on the wrist strap and switch on the unit (LED will the flash on and off to show it was 'working').

Result : The boy {at the time} was convinced it would work and put this units use as the reason for his rapid recovery.

So it would seem that an LED can be used successfully as a placebo as well as a genuine form of treatment !
 

flownosaj

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I've heard a few months ago that red led's have been used for some eye treatments and photo therapy.

Now if I could only get my insurance company to spring for a Arc-LS4. It would probably get rid of that burning sensation I've been feeling in my wallet ever since I first visited this forum. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

-Jason
 

brightnorm

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[ QUOTE ]
UK Owl said:
...So it would seem that an LED can be used successfully as a placebo as well as a genuine form of treatment !

[/ QUOTE ]

Cute story, which reminded me of Patrick O'brian's wonderful novels of the English Navy during the Napoleonic era, where reliance upon placebo medicine was widespread and often rewarded with positive results.

Brightnorm
 

Marty Weiner

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I started a similar thread in The Cafe tonight.

If anyone can get this week's Newsweek, they have a great story about this. I can't find their website otherwise I would have posted it.

Marty
 

woodytom

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Anyone know where I can order some Infra-red leds from. I only need a small quantity.
Thanks Ian
 

Hemingray

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I have posted related articles last year, and as I can recall, the
favored LED wavelengths are 680, 730 and 880 nM.
880 nM IR is common (see above post) 680 is deep red, 730 is near-IR. I have built up a unit with a mix of 635, 660 and 880
nM red and IR LEDs, and it does seem to help, but then it could be that "placebo effect" working. At worst, it will have no effect, at best it may really heal. If you do decide to try to home-brew something for this, play it safe with electricity, power it with batteries (preferred) or a wall-wart that is UL rated.

I was trying it to accelerate the healing of a serious knee injury, it does seem to alleviate the pain, and supposedly encourages better blood flow in the area, according to an article on this from NASA a couple years ago.

/ed B in NH
 

Hemingray

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LEDs also have another medical (dental) usage, the Luxeon "Dental" royal Blue emitters are used to cure the newer composite fillings, my dentist has one of these devices. The light exposure is fairly short, well less than a minute. I'll be going through this next Thursday, I;ll ask him about it.

/ed brown in snowy, icy, sloppy, nasty weather NH
 

Streak

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What is the wavelength of the LED's used in handheld IR remote controls for TV's, VCR's etc. etc.

I have many of these and want to build an IR "healer" to sort a problem with my heal!!
 

radellaf

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I wonder if, assuming there's any validity to this at all, a bright incandescent wouldn't work just as well. Plenty of IR of all freqs out of that. Just warming many of these injuries probably helps, no matter how it's done. My wrists favor a hot soak, but I'll try pointing my Stinger at them for a while /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 

highlandsun

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I've been thinking about putting something like this together. Too bad the red Luxeons are 625nm, I wonder how well they'll work. And also too bad there's no 1W infrared Luxeon...
 

brightnorm

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[ QUOTE ]
Marty Weiner said:
I started a similar thread in The Cafe tonight.

If anyone can get this week's Newsweek, they have a great story about this. I can't find their website otherwise I would have posted it.

Marty

[/ QUOTE ]

Marty,

I started this thread with that link, it's right up top.

Brightnorm
 

MikeF

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Here is a link to a therapeutic laser from Erchonia for Healing Lasers. My wife's parents were getting treatments at a chiropractor for quite a while with good results in the area of muscular/skeletal pain relief and increases in flexibility due to the laser treatments. They bought one for themselves from this site. It was a re-furbished unit, but still very expensive. They swear at the therapeutic value. It uses a beam spreader to make a fan shaped beam so it outputs a line that they sweep across their body. It is key interlocked and has a timer circuit. I recently jammed my little toe and broke it. I did this while walking through the living room in the dark and kicked the corner of the end table. I probably have 100 flashlights from all of my years as a flashaholic around the house! My foot was swollen, and bruised, and they had me try the laser. It seemed to help speed the healing, so I bought a laser pointer at the same wavelength (635nm red)and used it when I returned their high price therapeutic unit. I think it really helped to speed circulation and promote healing.

http://www.erchonia.com/
 
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