Healing power of LEDs

Did anyone see this months Popular science?

Nasa has come out with an infrared LED arey that can be used to speed up healing.

Skin and muscle cells can grow from %150-%200 faster when exposed to this light because the cells can actually use this energy.

they use LEDs for this because they can produce light at 880 nanometers in wavelength which can penetrate body tissues.

Hmmm... I wonder what it means by "the cells can actually use this energy." Hehe. Are they trying to say we have a little plant DNA? LOL. No, seriously, I've got to check that out. It sounds very interesting. I just wonder if in the future when we go to the hospital if they will put us under this big giant LED. "Nurse!, turn me over, I'm done on this side." hehe.

Here's another article on it from a while back.

This color is also good for growing plants in space because of size, power efficiency and accelerated growth.

Peter

I have one of these:

PHT

I use it for aches and pains and for healing bruises etc. It does seem to accelerate healing.

They use some rather weak led's so it is quite a high price for what you get but it is an interesting product.

Guys!

LEDs are a fine thing and they do good to me if I feel depressed and can build a new flashlight (so in some way they cure depression ), but what I saw here....

!!!!

2000 bucks for a few LEDs which shall (!!!) speed up healing!!! This is criminal!

I dont think there are any studies that prove one of these effects. And in medicine you are fine to believe only what you can proove (called evidence-based-medicine).

I could think that the heat from the IR LEDs which penetrates the skin could PERHAPS do a little effect, but if someone wants to make serious medicine with that, he would make some studies which proove or deny this effect.

So I would recommend: HANDS OFF THIS PRODUCT!

But if you want to play with that effect, buy some cheap IR LEDs and build one yourself, this is cheap enough to try...

Bye,

Phantomas2002: I agree. This sounds just like another gimmicky thing to separate those rich fools in the world from their money. Does anyone remember the big "magnets cure arthritis" craze a few years back? What a load of crap that turned out to be. I should know, I have arthritis in my neck and it did absolutely nothing for it. It was all because I didn't receive a placebo effect from it like everyone else did. I went into trying it with the attitude that, I would be surprised if it actually DID work, whereas everyone else was fully expecting it to work and therefore got a placebo effect from it. Who knows about this report on LEDs because we haven't actually tried this before, but I would be very skeptical about it till there is some hard core independent testing done on it. What makes me so skeptical about it is why don't all hospitals already have them if they do even 10% worth of good, much less the %150-%200 that is claimed. Probably the same reason the hospitals don't have magnets hooked up to all their chronic arthritis patients. Hehe. Now I need a glass of water after that long of a rant.

Maybe it is for the same reason that hospitals still feed their heart attack patients high fat meals and their allergic patients monosodium glutamate laced foods. Maybe it has something to do with the big bucks raked in on cutting people open and pumping them full of expensive drugs.

Ok now I am done ranting

Free: Good points. Never underestimate the stupidity of modern "Big Medicine".

"Big" medicine is not as stupid as you think. If you feed a heart attack patient low fat diet for the few days in hospital, this doesnt change anything. You have to advice the patient to cook light meals at home. The big advantage of "big" medicine is to do only what is proved to help the patient. "Primum non nocere"

Bye,

Phantomas2002: Maybe you are right. Maybe all doctors aren't stupid these days, but a lot of them are. I almost died of Mononucleosis when I was a kid all because the stupid doctors were too dumb to run a simple Mono test on me. My mother had to force them to do it (with very much protest from the doctors). My mother, who had no more than a high school education, diagnosed my condition, from my symptoms, out of a simple medical book. Now how's that for modern "Big Medicin's" stupidity.

I'm not convinced that the price is as insane as you suggest. The trek 6000 is 300 dollars for 60 leds. multiply that by three and you get a thousand dollars. This thing is possibly overpriced by a %100 assuming that the leds that are the only expense. But what other design features are involved here that could add to the price?

as for backing by hard science, I don't know that popular science and NASA back the claims of magnets but they certainly do with this technology.

the article for the NASA backing by the way is here.
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/newsroom/news/releases/2000/00-336.html

The Trek 6000 hat WHITE LEDs! In this "thing" there are red and yellow LEDs which should cost abou 5 to 10 cents each!!!

Also IR Diodes are cheap...

Bye,

It has about 51 Red, 20 green, 10 Yellow, 10 Orange, 85 IR, and if you throw a switch on the the back the "Warm" LED's switch off and 9 Blue LED's turn on. The idea is that the blue led's are cooling and you can use it like a hot and cold therapy device.

It also has a rechargeable battery pack and an ac adaptor. The build quality is somewhat rudimentary. You can tell it is definately a conversion of a spot light, and it uses headphone type plugs to plug into the battery pack and AC adaptor.

I think part of the price in these type of things is the low volume, hand made nature and specialty niche. It is intriguing though

hmm, cooling blue lights? this does sound a bit contrived but that does not that the device inefective. if your experience confirms that it is a cooling effect, it could simply be that shutting off all the other LED's simply causes a temperature drop.

of course the other 85 IR LED's may be effective.

as for ir LED's being cheap, sure if they are mass produced, but does anyone know that LEDs that produce a wavelength of 880 nms are mass produced? I wouldn't think that they are in demand as one of the articles describes them as "near ir" and I can't imagine what use such a dim LED would have as it may not be invisable for all the products that make use of that. If these are specialty LEDs and the guy at the LED factory can't simply push a button to switch LED making machines over to 880 nanometers it would seem that this specialty LED would cost a pretty penny.

See the topic titled:

"Infrared and medical use"

for current information. The medical uses are documented and some answers as to why this works are given with references to where articles were published.

Might want to continue this conversation there instead of this older thread.

880 nm LEDs are standard high power IR LEDs!
(also available in 940 nm)