Coping: “Light Crown” Project Update 3

What is the “Light Crown Project?” Yeah, let’s start there…

As I explained in the December 28 Coping section “That report outlined some curious historical evidence that I had both discovered and intuited by reading a lot of history and, because of my wife Elaine’s experience with a cutting edge photo biomodulation technique for treatment of age-related macular degeneration, I had begun to ask more penetrating questions about possible uses of light for all broad-spectrum of medical conditions. “

The first “light crown” constructed was comprised of three groups of high-output LEDs arranged around the head, much as a crown would be.

The right trigeminal nerve penetration (right temple) was pumped with blue light. The area just above the nose (about between the eyebrows) was pumped with red light in the 660-700 nm range (super-red LEDs). The left trigeminal was pumped with green LEDs.

When turned on, and used for about 10-minutes per day, sometimes 20 minutes, the lights seem to result in a major mood elevation.

However, the mood shift does not take place immediately. It begins to become noticeable (for me) at about the 24-hour mark, and then peaks (and seems to hold) starting about 72-96 hours after first use.

The first light crown, unfortunately, “blew up” while on my head. It was almost humorous.

I had the unit on and suddenly began to smell that unmistakable odor of failing electronics. There was something else, too. A strand or two of hair singed and that smelled like burned meat…

Off came the unit, power went off, and I did some investigating as to the cause.

Turns out that in my “quick and dirty Version 1.0 light crown” I’d wired the light modules (built on small pieces of Vector board) in series.

Of course, anyone with my experience in electronics should have given more thought to the design – and for version 2.0 I have.

You see, the total resistance of the modules was different.

In electronics there is this thing called Kirchhoff’s law. It says in so many words that the current going through elements in a series circuit will all dissipate the same power.

So look at the two red circles in this diagram of what I did wrong:

When I increased the power supply voltage too much (trying to drive the green array harder) it increased the power through the green array but this overpowered the blue array and the “smoke got let out.”

(I hate it when this kind of stuff happens, lol…’especially when I’m the test platform…)

So Thursday I got around to ordering another slug of array parts, only this time, I will include three variable resistors and that will allow me tow feed all three arrays with adjustable voltages – and this, in turn, will allow me to set the power (and hence light output) of each of the arrays independently.

Most important of all, however, is the arrays will be powered from the same supply source and won’t be in series. Although that worked to get the testing done.

While the light crown project sat on the shelf for several weeks (waiting for the the chief scientist of Old Man Labs to get back to it) I needed another approach.

So here is all you need to get from Amazon to make a red light (660 nm range) emitter:

The red plant growing lights used by growers are just fine and for the price you get 12-watts of red light…

ABI 12W Deep Red 660nm LED Bloom Booster Grow Light Bulb for Flowering and Spectrum Enhancement

And for a holder, something simple like:

Simple Deluxe HIWKLTCLAMPLIGHTM Clamp Lamp Light w/ 8.5-Inch Reflector, 150-Watt, 6-Foot Cord, UL Listed

As to the regimen on the lights:

I usually sit in my comfortable chair in the conversation room (between the studio and Elaine’s office) and have my second cup of coffee in the morning with my face bathed in red light from a distance of about 2 ½ feet.

I sit there EYES CLOSES and mentally imagine myself sitting around a glowing campfire – if you remember the experience. There is a warm infrared glow that comes off campfires and I feel – after two or three days of this routine – like a whole other person.

Is it psychological?

Well, if it is, bring it on.

My personal productivity – already higher than many peoples – goes through the roof. Take Wednesday, for example: Not only did I do a pretty good Peoplenomics piece on relations long-term with Mexico, but I worked on most of the chapter for the Millennial’s Missing Manual book, and then I went out and cleared 4-acres of land with the brush hog on the tractor, and then took the pole saw and trimmed a dozen trees (limbed them up) to keep them out of power lines and from shielding the garden from sunlight…

And then when Elaine came home from the store, did the grocery schlepping up the stairs, took a shower, had a couple of margaritas and stuffed out on tacos for dinner.

At the end of it, I slept like a baby….

My point is that when I was younger, this kind of energy level was not that common. Yet here it is and almost on command – with the caveat of a few days to come up to speed with light.

There was an article in Cornwall Live this morning that went to this idea: “Get naked and beat the depression of January’s Blue Monday says life coach Maria Hocking of Helston…”

Not to take anything from her book efforts, but we rather suspect that simply stripping – while fun when done with an amiable partner, ahem – might be fun, it’s not likely to be as effective in raising the spirits as a bit of consciously done “light pumping.”

Works for plants and in all kinds of medical settings, so why not home?

Closer to our research is an article in Vogue (which we don’t regularly read) but it headlines that “Seasonal Depression, No More! Happy Lamps to Cure Your Winter Blues.”

To be sure, you can find “Happy Lamps” on Amazon, but I’m not terribly keen on most.

But you can find them on Amazon ofor about $35 bucks likek the Verilux HappyLight Liberty Personal, Portable Light Therapy Energy Lamp.

The reason for my caution  is they are oftentimes very much like full-spectrum light – which is what natural sunlight is all about.  Near as I can figure, great for Vitamin D but not the APT levels, which red light seems to pump.  But I’m no doc.

In my limited understanding, the full spectrum light doesn’t have as good a reputation as does plain deep-red 660 nm light which is journaled in places like the governments www.pubmed.gov website as addressing a lot of healing issues.

The difference, experientially, is that the red light “treatment” I give myself is very much like the comfort and relaxation effect that comes from sitting around the glowing embers of a camp fire.

Full spectrum has real physical effects, but the presence of UV is not something I’m interested in because that’s when (overdosing) you start getting into areas like skin cancer and such.

Which means?

Well, for one thing, don’t use a tanning bed and expect to get too much of a bump in mood. Still, we are still looking around for a used, low-power 110V tanning bed, but it’s my intention to find such a bed at some point and remove 80% of the UV source and rebuild with 660 super red LEDs.

A little UV is good,  but if it’s enough to tan, it could have other effects.

UV seems to be one of those things where a little is good, but too much can be deadly.

Blue light, like I’m pumping to the right trigeminal, may be able to clear acne, says an article this month in Shape magazine. The article has this quote in it which is very much on track with our research:

“”Red light has traditionally been used for anti-aging purposes because it helps stimulate collagen. At the same time it helps reduce inflammation, which is why it is useful alongside blue-light in treating acne,” explains New York City-based dermatologist Joshua Zeichner, M.D.”

Go read the whole thing at the link above.  Good article.

How much is enough?  State of the art discussion from James D. Carroll on the Thor Laser website here is great.

When you’re done with that, look at some of the newest papers in the PubMed database where the magic of 660 nm light is mentioned.

Here are a couple to start with:

Low-intensity laser (660 NM) has analgesic effects on sternotomy of patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafts.

Clinical effectiveness of low-level laser treatment on peripheral somatosensory neuropathy.

Transcranial Low-Level Laser (Light) Therapy for Brain Injury.

This last one I take as significant enough to share the whole government-published abstract and you’ll see why when I get to the highlight:

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) or photobiomodulation (PBM) is a possible treatment for brain injury, including traumatic brain injury (TBI).

METHODS:

We review the fundamental mechanisms at the cellular and molecular level and the effects on the brain are discussed. There are several contributing processes that have been proposed to lead to the beneficial effects of PBM in treating TBI such as stimulation of neurogenesis, a decrease in inflammation, and neuroprotection. Both animal and clinical trials for ischemic stroke are outlined. A number of articles have shown how transcranial LLLT (tLLLT) is effective at increasing memory, learning, and the overall neurological performance in rodent models with TBI.

RESULTS:

Our laboratory has conducted three different studies on the effects of tLLLT on mice with TBI. The first studied pulsed against continuous laser irradiation, finding that 10?Hz pulsed was the best. The second compared four different wavelengths, discovering only 660 and 810?nm to have any effectiveness, whereas 732 and 980?nm did not. The third looked at varying regimens of daily laser treatments (1, 3, and 14 days) and found that 14 laser applications was excessive. We also review several studies of the effects of tLLLT on neuroprogenitor cells, brain-derived neurotrophic factor and synaptogenesis, immediate early response knockout mice, and tLLLT in combination therapy with metabolic inhibitors.

CONCLUSIONS:

Finally, some clinical studies in TBI patients are covered.

I think you can see where this is going, can you not?

After I blew up light crown v.1.0 the effects lasted for almost a week.  Optimizing its use will be instructive.

I believe that to some degree, we ALL have low level brain injuries. Sure, some from those accidents of childhood, but I’m going further than that in my suppositions. I’m guessing that combinations of allergies both to food and environmental factors MAY create similar low-level psychological effects as physical trauma.

In other words, due to repetition of media (brain-washing), food allergies, and more, the entire world may be low-level crazy and this kind of treatment with light could be useful. I find it helps.

I suppose when we announced this research project on the Peoplenomics side last fall, I’m sure more than a few subscribers thought “George has lost it, for sure…”

But like so many other things we do around here, by following where the spirit pushes us, we often get to the right place long before the rest of the herd.

Maybe we are working on enlightenment at some level.

Disclaimer:  None of this is medical advice.  Before doing anything that could impact your health, talk to your doctor.  If your doctor is not conversant in new technologies like this, suggest they focus on wellness, not pill-pushing.    Talk to your own leading edge photobiomodulation doctor, lol.

Ours simply reminds us to be careful in any experiments with blue light because they can screw up your circadian rhythms.

To sleep better, lower the “color temp” of your monitors on your computer from blue white to soft yellowish.

Also, he says, ever notice that a lot of news sites and MSM sets are blue with oranges?  Apparently someone has some research (and maybe a patent) on how those colors make you more “suggestible.”

Just peachy, huh?

Peoplenomics tomorrow:  The Adam and Eve Project

Come by Monday…many more strange things to cover…Housing Data Tuesday morning… and like the old marketing fellow always said “Get some soon.”

Write when you get rich,

George@ure.net