The Hype Around Photobiomodulation | Hacker News Reader

The Hype Around Photobiomodulation

mcgill.ca

40 pointsluu19 comments

Hypers have to hype to sell things (in this case, red LEDs), but the best photobiomodulation is available for free: go outside, close your eyes, and point your face at the sun. Your eyelids will screen out the harmful UV and blue light. Your eyes are transparent enough for the red light to reach your brain.

Red light boosts our metabolism by refreshing the enzyme that has the red metal (copper). Cytochrome c oxidase [0] is "the last enzyme in the respiratory electron transport chain".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase

A submission from 1.5 years ago is about how morning exposure to deep red light improves eyesight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609625

People who live in places where the sun goes away for the winter usually benefit from supplemental light provided by an electric sun. Incandescent heat lamp bulbs are an affordable source of red and infrared light. These bulbs have more of the red spectrum and less of the blue.

From the submission:

> PBM is thought to work through the mitochondria. Our cells—and those of animals, plants and fungi—contain tiny structures called mitochondria that generate the energy we need. Mitochondria have a chain of proteins that juggle electrons, and one of them, cytochrome c oxidase, contains heme and copper that absorb light, especially in the red and infrared part of the light spectrum. So, we shine one such light on living tissue, it gets absorbed by mitochondria’s cytochrome c oxidase, and what we get is a veritable biological domino effect that seemingly benefits every part of the organism.

We've gotten really into plants in my house, and as a side effect the whole place is lit up like a christmas tree with full-spectrum light. I've never noticeably suffered from SAD, but I do wonder what the benefits of such a change would be to the typical terminally-inside HackerNews denizen. Anecdotally, it seems to help! The rooms do feel somehow more "energetic", which only feels like 75% placebo effect

It's always healthy to be skeptical, but we know that on the whole, sunlight is healthy for humans. People who get more sun exposure live longer (even though they have a higher incidence of melanoma). We know that it's more than just the Vitamin D that is produce when our skin is exposed to sun. There are numerous studies showing the benefits of sunshine, so the next question is "what is the mechanism for sunshine to improve human health?". One theory is that it stimulates the production of intra-cellular melatonin. A seminal paper on this topic is "Melatonin and the Optics of the Human Body".... http://sininenankka.dy.fi/~sami/kielletyt_uutiset/melatonin_...

Heliotherapy is an ancient practice!

I don't think it's so easy

> People who get more sun exposure live longer

Yes, but that's not a causation yet, that's a correlation. Most likely healthy people go outside more than sick people and thus get more sun exposure.

> Most likely healthy people go outside more than sick people and thus get more sun exposure

Such a lazy critique.

Here's the actual study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12251

Number of subjects: 39,973

Follow up period: 20 years

Some factors controlled for: smoking, history of antidiabetic meds, history of CVD meds, weight/height/BMI, level of exercise, income, alcohol consumption, N pregnancies.

I think these factors pretty well correlate with "health" (however you'd measure actually that).

That's what the authors say:

> Despite having adjusted for several potential confounders, the major shortcoming of this study is the inability to distinguish between the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle and of avoidance of sun exposure.

Take depression for example. None of the factors you mentioned would control for it and depression is often not diagnosed, especially early on.

And I'd guess smokers go outside more than non-smokers.

Surprise, the study designers did happen to also think to control for smoking.

Agreed, and you already addressed this with your sibling comment. I just thought it was an amusing counterpoint to "healthy people go outside more than sick people".

If you can believe hot tubs and saunas are beneficial, or at the very least enjoyable, you should be able to justify red light “therapy.”

I have five high wattage panels I got from eBay. At around 1500w total, it’s basically an infrared sauna. I know there are theoretical health benefits, but if I’m being honest, at this point I just really like the way it feels to do my morning stretches in front of them.

Could you link to the panels you bought or similar ones?

It was several years ago, and the manufacturer no longer sells on eBay under the same account. It looks like they’re still in business though: https://www.sgrowled.com/product-category/led-red-therapy-li...

These were like half the price of western branded drop shipped versions, and a tenth the price of the ones they peddle to rich people. They are nothing like the few watt toys health and beauty companies sell. These put out some serious power.

Beyond the hype there are serious studies about LLLT [1][2][3][4]. The article doesn't ever mentioned the book which is popular within practitioners (source: doctor at home).

I am not argumenting here in favor of LLLT but saying that an article like this should do more research to create a debate within health professionals.

[1] https://weberlasersystems.com/products/book

[2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=low+...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-level_laser_therapy

[4] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=transcranial+low+level+...

  The book explores a plethora of laser therapy applications and techniques, covering areas such as external laser therapy, laser needle acupuncture, transcranial laser therapy, interstitial and intraarticular laser therapy, intravenous laser therapy, photodynamic therapy, dermatology and skin rejuvenation, weight loss, lasers and stem cell therapy, and provides comprehensive treatment protocols.

Yikes. Thanks for sharing! I only know about the neuro part personally, but seeing it put up next to "acupuncture" (without puncturing, I guess?) and "weight loss" (??) reinforces my initial negative reaction.

It's so fascinating to see modern western psuedoscience, like this and the neurofeedback people. They cite sources, they use the right words, they're often very serious people with real degrees... A testament to how complex the truth can be when we know so much as a civilization, I guess.

You don't need oldschool techniques like Chiropracty's/Acupuncture's "the body has an invisible energy field that only we can manipulate" rhetoric, you just need to cherry pick stuff from real science and ratchet up the confidence levels in your marketing materials, then fall back to normal skeptical scientific language when challenged.

Probably worth it though, to find the applications of this tech that really do work! Hopefully the $4,000 laser headsets are at least funding productive researchers & engineers

The book gives you a solid base for argumenting in favor or against it. That is better than disparate articles about the topic.

> The vast majority of research into photobiomodulation was done on animals, not humans, and most positive results in lab animals do not lead to approved interventions in humans

This statement is true for all medical research. It's not a critique unique to PBM.

> Proponents of photobiomodulation will often cite that we understand how it affects the body at a molecular level, but these kinds of mechanisms are easy to hypothesize and they do not imply that the technology is actually curing anything

Also true for all medical research.

There is no actual examination / critique of any evidence, just a meta critique about the unreliability of young science with questionable hype to evidence ratio. Which is well deserved, but very redundant.

This kind of article is very easy to write, and can be copy pasted for any emerging area of research: be skeptical, wait for oodles of double blind RCTs, don't give money to hype artists.

> Skepticism means steering clear of gullibility. That being said, it doesn’t mean denying good science, nor should it invite cynicism.

The right tool for dealing with marketing claims, as an individual, should in fact be cynicism, and not skepticism.

Or perhaps:

If you don't need it: cynicism cranked to 11, with vibrato.

If you need something like it: skepticism.

[OT] That's how you do a cookie acceptance dialog, if there must be one. Good job, McGill.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com