Smut Clyde follows up on his previous coverage of the anti-aging fad of mitochondria therapies. Now, various enlightening approaches will be illuminated, bright concepts elucidated and light will be shone upon dazzling business practices, and not just any light, but lasers! As lighting rods go up nostrils and other orifices, autism, old age and all diseases will be cured, brain and body performances improved, and the dead will come to life.

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No, Mr Bond, I expect you to diet (Little Creatures, Pt. II)

By Smut Clyde

Laser beams are not just for dazzling air pilots and for projecting red dots onto the floor to divert the cat. They also have serious applications. Science is only now catching up with fictional super-villains in appreciation of their healing capabilities.

• Heart attack? For fuller recovery, thread an optical-fibre catheter through the patient’s veins to the heart and apply healing photons to the ischemic tissue from inside! (Gao et al 2021)
• Need thymus-gland rejuvenation? Apply photons! To the vestigial gland, or to bone marrow, or both (Odinokov & Hamblin 2018, h/t to commenter Jones).
• Blinded in one eye? Shine a laser into it! (Rojas & Gonzalez-Lima 2011)
• Major depression? “Clinical studies also indicate a significant antidepressant effect and good tolerability” of photobiomodulation. Control groups not included. (Caldieraro & Cassano 2019)
• Adipose tissue in places where you don’t want it? Laser Body Sculpting is a thing, and no longer involves the smell of burning meat. (Nestor et al 2013)
• Autism? Dorothy Bishop recently blogged about Gerry Leisman, who treated the condition with laser beams to the back of the head, in Cuba or (as it may be) Nazareth. Enough photons penetrate scalp and skull to illuminate the visual cortex and somehow normalise brain function (Leisman et al 2018). Any source of near-infrared (NIR) would be as effective, I suppose, but you have to admit that a laser is more convincingly theatrical. The Clinical Trial protocol invokes the intriguing concept of Laser Feng-shui.

In short, though here I concentrate on cerebral applications, everything works better with photons. For hundreds of millions of years, all large multicellular lifeforms have been burdened with the handicap of avoidably inefficient metabolisms, and it’s surprising that Evolution didn’t simply make us more transparent.

Evolution seriously lacks initiative and has been coasting on its reputation for far too long. It was left to Science to come up with innovations like the transparent skull.

“As far as explaining what really happens, we are basically left to resort to saying ‘light enters, then a miracle happens, and good things come out! “

Quirk & Whelan, 2011

Dr Bishop noted that one thing missing from Leisman’s reports of the benefits of enlightenment is a mechanism. I have done my own research, and it seems that one widely-accepted mechanism-shaped hand-wave involves mitochondria again. The stubborn wee beasties simply refuse to evolve to function efficiently in the dark.

A leading light (as it were) in this photobiomodulation school of thought is Michael Hamblin – thymus-gland regenerator and dermatologist. With disarming honesty, Hamblin explained in a literature review that an awful lot of experimental results are negative, but this is only because there are so many variable parameters of wavelength, intensity, modulation, concurrent treatments, and what-have-you that we haven’t found the right combination yet.

“…and secondly, the complexity of rationally choosing amongst a large number of illumination parameters such as wavelength, fluence, power density, pulse structure and treatment timing has led to the publication of a number of negative studies as well as many positive ones. “

If the light wasn’t too dim, it was too intense. Because homeopathy. You did it wrong. Lasers cannot fail; they can only be failed.

“In particular, a biphasic dose response has been frequently observed where low levels of light have a much better effect than higher levels.”

This quasi-explanation can be traced back to an old theory that Cytochrome-C and Cytochrome-c-Oxidase (COX) were proteins for an early bacterial mode of photosynthesis, before they were repurposed for a metabolic role. Like hemoglobin, Cytochrome-C and COX are built around heme groups (as any fule kno). A heme group is a small slice of graphene – a porphyrin ring, coordinating an iron ion at its centre – all conjugated pi-bonds and delocalised electrons, which is a nice property from the metabolic perspective. It allows a spare electron to be stowed away and then claimed back later, as in (for instance) reversible oxygen bonding. The delocalised electrons also cause porphyrin rings to absorb longer-wavelength light and become, well, πορφύρα-colored, hence “cytochrome“. I read 1970s Scientific Americans so you don’t have to.

• What do you call a heme group when the iron is in the Fe²⁺ oxidation state?
• A ferrous wheel.

So, Hamblin reasons, the red-wavelength absorption of heme could not simply be an incidental property; the cytochromes (and mitochondria, by extension) are chromophores which need that light for proper operation. I personally feel that photon-harnessing molecules could also subserve the purpose of image-forming vision, and the failure of Evolution to give us infrared eyes is another unconscionable lapse. Of course the eyes would have to be larger in order to compensate for the lower optical resolution of IR wavelengths.*

If that is not enough, Hamblin wrote another Literature review (Serrage et al 2020) that offered even more mechanisms of action, in order to accommodate various therapeutic claims coming from companies whose laser wavelengths don’t fit the COX rationale.

Hamblin’s ‘mitochondrial photosynthesis’ notions were gratefully co-opted by Alt-Med grifters who saw the usefulness of low-level lasers as a theatrical addition to their holistic, non-reductive, complementary Alternative-Reality scammocopoeia. Uncredited copies of Hamblin’s manifesto proliferate across the Intermesh, for there is laser-augmented osteopathy, and laser-needle acupuncture to blend traditional Qi-balancing magical superstition with the latest scientific charlatanism.

Update by LS:

As previously reported in Friday Shorts, the quacking dermatologist Michael Hamblin, former Harvard professor and now visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, is also an avid user of Iranian papermills. There he “collaborates” with the worst papermill fraudsters and publishes on all possible topics except dermatology. Some PubPeer examples:

• Hamblin cures cancer with miRNAs (Ashrafizadeh et al 2021)
• Hamblin cures cancer with lnRNAs (Shafabakhsh et al 2021)
• Hamblin cures cancer with all non-coding RNAs (Mousavi et al 2022, Rezaee et al 2023)
• Hamblin cures heart attack with non-coding RNAs and exosomes (Farokhian et al 2021)
• Hamblin uses nanomaterials for bone tissue engineering (Eivazzadeh-Keihan et al 2020)
• Hamblin and sacked US fraudster Thomas Webster solve gene therapy with carbon nanotubes (Zare et al 2021)
• Hamblin with Navid Rabiee & Rajender Varma solve gene therapy with cobalt because leaf extract detoxifies cobalt (Rabiee et al 2021, corrected by ACS).

I must thank Himanshu Bansal for introducing me to this curious scholium of thought. Bansal is an Indian quack with stem-cell scamming as his core activity. We find him teaming up with US stem-sellers (who must envy his freedom to write his own Ethical Approvals for human experiments), while his bone-marrow-extract autism cures caught Neuroskeptic’s attention. But Bansal is a broad-spectrum con-man, happy to pimp anything from Ayurvedic toxicity to chiropractic electro-acupuncture. He is perhaps most celebrated for reversing brain-death and regenerating entire brains, using a curative medley of intra-spinal injections of stem-cells and frog-squeezings, electrical stimulation of wrist nerves, and lasers to the brain. As Bansal’s company ReVita Life Sciences used to advertise, according to the Hamblin party line:

“However, the key mechanism of low-level-laser therapy is the absorption of light by mitochondria, leading to increased energy supply of cells. It is well known today that the key of life lies in mitochondria. The main energy supply (ATP) build in these (thousands) organelles is maintaining all processes within the human body. As mitochondria developed in the natural light spectrum as well, it’s no wonder that the different complexes of the mitochondrial respiratory chain can absorb and be stimulated by light of different wavelengths. The adequate wavelengths are exactly the different colours of the visible spectrum.”

This ReAnima brain-regen project was a collaboration with ‘BioQuark‘, a company led by Ira Pastor, Sergei Baylian and Joel Osorio. BioQuark provided the frog-squeezings electroporated frog-egg juice (‘Bioquantine’) as their contribution to the cross-modal therapeutic mix – designed to endow human stem-cells with the amphibian capacity to regenerate. Pastor, Baylian and Osorio are now Vice President and other faculty of the so-called “World Academy of Medical Sciences” (which looks like an online degree mill selling junk certificates).

The lovable scamps at BioQuark copied details of the project from the Indian clinical-trial registry into the US registry, creating the impression that it was happening in the US with the sanction of US authorities. It was thus taken seriously by people who had no idea of the contempt felt for Bansal within India, and attracted no end of credulous churnalism.

• Medical News Today! “Individually, each of the four techniques that Pastor and team plan to use in their trial have shown promise for improving brain functioning. Research indicates that stem cell therapy and transcranial laser therapy may help to repair brain damage“
• Kate Sheridan at STAT News! “Resurrected: A controversial trial to bring the dead back to life plans a restart“.
• The Independent! “Initial tests will use a range of techniques on 20 subjects to see whether they show any sign of regeneration, or the reversal of brain death.”
• A Science Clickbaiter Editor at the Daily Torygraft! “A 27-year-old car crash victim is the first participant of a groundbreaking trial to see if it possible to regenerate the brains of clinically dead people.“
• EU Commission! “Two biotech companies in the United States have been given the green light to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of dead people.”

“Through our study, we will gain unique insights into the state of human brain death, which will have important connections to future therapeutic development for other severe disorders of consciousness, such as coma, and the vegetative and minimally conscious states, as well as a range of degenerative CNS conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease’

Dr. Sergei Paylian, Founder, President, and Chief Science Officer of Bioquark Inc.

Then everything fell apart when Bansal’s approval was revoked. BioQuark announced that the experiment was shifting to an unspecified location in South America (retaining the benefit of Brain Lasers). Everyone else kicked soil over the whole regrettable episode and pretended that it never happened, like a cat at its dirt-box. Bansal has gone upmarket since then and the P3n1s / Breast Enlargement advertising is no longer so prominent on his website.

But we know that that photic mitochondrial stimulation isn’t just flim-flam as it inspired the invention of the Vielight Neuron-Regenerating Photonic Nose-Plug & Diadem… which targets a market of biohacker hipsters. As seen at the Coachella of Consciousness. The judges would also have accepted “the Burning Man of Brain Optimising”.

According to the website, this targets the Default Mode Network, and evidently works best after removing most of your left hemisphere to let the irradiation reach the deep-buried cingulate-cortex components of the DMN.

Treats Parkinsonism, strokes, schizophrenia, migraines and Alzheimer’s Disease. Only $1799.00! Be sure that you’re buying from a reputable dealer!

The rationale for the nose-plug is that the ethmoid bone above the nasal cavity is thin and porous (riddled with perforations for the olfactory nerves to poke through and do their chemical-sensing thing); therefore it also allows light from below – piped in through optical fibres – to bathe the ventral frontal cortex. Also, any light reflected from your brain will scatter back down the other nostril and shine on the atlas that you’re reading in the dark with your Infrared Vision, demonstrating the Sinusoidal Projection even as it provides an excuse to insert a Magazine track.

The reasoning behind the placement of the other IR emitters in the diadem is not so obvious. You might expect one above each ear, where the temporal-bone squama are alarmingly thin, allowing stimulation of the temporal lobes. In their absence, you must complement the diadem with HumanCharger® Optical Earplugs from the Finnish company Valkee.

Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

These take advantage of the thinness of the bone encasing the inner ear. They enhance sporting performance, prevent jetlag and stave off Seasonal Affective Disorder (which explains much about Finland). I am surprised that Valkee haven’t been sued yet by the ears heirs of Elias Canetti.

Valkee pursued this argument with a series of clinical trials: in World Journal of Neuroscience (a jizzmop of a journal from SCIRP where ‘peer review’ consists of waiting for the cheque to clear), then in Medical Hypotheses (Elsevier’s gift to lazy bloggers, noted for its contributions to the gaiety of nations).

“Perhaps their most infamous study, exposed on a Finnish investigative journalism programme, used a low-light group as a negative control. When the results were in and even the control group got better, the authors went back to the site where they had registered their trial and changed the control group to a therapy group.”

McGill University, Office for Science and Society

One advertisement was commissioned for €10,000, shopped around, and published in Frontiers of Physiology after receiving a favourable review from the Editor’s departmental dance instructor [I am not making this up].

We are not finished yet with Leisman’s therapeutic heterodoxy. He and colleague Robert Melillo promote a curious ‘Brain Balance Program‘ as a different way of treating autism. This is a bespoke series of ill-defined exercises designed to discourage ‘primitive reflexes‘. Along with ‘hemispheric music stimulation, dietary changes, and lifestyle management’, they rebuild the corpus callosum and enhance left/right hemispheric coordination, then a miracle occurs and the autism goes away. [H/t Dorothy Bishop]

“For instance, with a “right brain weak” child like Stephanie and Natalie’s son, Brain Balance may have him wear a vibrating armband on his left biceps or eyeglasses that allow light only onto the left visual field. Or they may simply have him stand on his left leg.”

[NPR.org, 2018]

Melillo et al. (2020) was not the only advertisement for the Brain Balance Program that Frontiers published. First came “The Integration of the Neurosciences, Child Public Health, and Education Practice: Hemisphere-Specific Remediation Strategies as a Discipline Partnered Rehabilitation Tool in ADD/ADHD” (Leisman, 2013). Neuroskeptic was, well, skeptical.

The "Brain Balance Program" is "designed to enhance cognitive performance and emotional wellbeing" in both kids and adults https://t.co/1u5fFjLglm It looks impressive, and expensive. The website is full of references to research. However… (h/t @SmutClyde) pic.twitter.com/JJLvsJwCaj

— Neuroskeptic 🇺🇦 (@Neuro_Skeptic) October 17, 2023

Melillo and Leisman are chiropractors so they can announce with confidence that paediatricians and neurologists all know nothing. And the Brain Balance Program must work, for it grew into a franchised multi-million-dollar operation that lobbies US states to adopt its expensive curriculum.

“Melillo disagreed with the experts’ opinions. “I think they’re completely wrong,” he says. “

[NPR.org, 2018]

Leisman’s contributions did not go unrecognised: in a MDPI apotheosis he was elevated to the giddy empyrean of ‘Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Educational Neuroscience” Section in Brain Sciences‘. But for now I want to stick to his laser-related activities. For these link to a second strand of refreshingly novel Science, untrammeled by conventions, leading into a different branch of the labyrinth… namely biophotons, ultra-weak bioluminescence.

After the initial discovery of Biophotons in 1922 by Rupert Sheldrake precursor Alexander Gurwitsch (who received the Stalin Prize for finding the Test for Cancer), they fell into abeyance** until Fritz-Albert Popp rediscovered and popularised them in the mid-1970s. But I must credit István Bókkon for incorporating them in an exciting though challenging new theory of brain function. That is, neurons do not communicate amongst themselves through electrochemical pulses propagating down their axons and then through chemical signals across the synapses, but rather by emitting and receiving photons, with the axons (axa?) as waveguides. Then the late lamented Michael Persinger picked up this brainburp and cranked the ‘Omicron Calenture Fishstick’ knob up to 11.

Evidently even dead pickled brain tissue emits biophotons when steeped in neurotransmitters, except “necrophotons” would be a better name for them, if you don’t mind sounding like a speech bubble in a Jodorowsky graphic novel. It displays detectable gamma- and theta-wave activity, retaining a dim flickering level of consciousness, memory and awareness of its status as a slice of brain in a jar of formalin.*** I watched that movie and it did not end well.

I for one am withholding judgement on Persinger’s necroneurology until someone manages to access the memories locked within a 130-million-year-old dinosaur brain.

Biophotons emitted from pickled brain slices are also red-shifted, by an amount that differs across species, as if they crossed vast expanses of intergalactic space or climbed out of a gravity well caused by the intelligence of the brain-slice donor. The discoverers of this phenomenon did not understand how diffraction gratings work. Bókkon and his Bókkolytes wrote a critique but tragically, they did not understand either.

None of this is specifically relevant to mitochondria but it leads up to an excuse to insert a Peter Hammill track.

So perhaps external transcranial photons will stimulate brain activity! Or perhaps the randomness of that simulation will overload cortical coherence, and bring the merciful easeful release of oblivion. Either is an improvement. I only know that I am writing this on a sunny day, sitting outside in the courtyard, relying on my bald spot to optimise the functioning of my parietal lobes.

CODA: Merchonia Erchandise

Erchonia is the company who sponsored and provided the phasers for Leisman’s 2018 autism trial. They have a number of FDA clearances already for several of their products, certifying that these are harmless and suitable as theatrical placebos – mainly for weight-loss and minor pain uses – but what they really really want is a license to apply them to autism, not just acne. Thus:

1. An n=11 proof-of-concept trial in September 2012, no control group, no registration, recorded only in protocol documents.
2. This trial on children (NCT03379662). Run 2017-2018 – though confusingly, the Protocol document was written five years earlier and is dated 1 January 2013.
3. A second trial on children (NCT04895605), run by Leon Morales-Quezada at Boston’s Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in 2020-2022, registered slightly retrospectively in May 2021. No difference between treatment and placebo group. Mind you, it is not clear how a placebo phaser device (emitting red light from diodes) differs from the active device (emitting red light from laser diodes), as neither matches an absorption peak for COX. Maybe both stimulated mitochondrial function!

Come to think of it, laser light is absorbed by flesh and bone better than incoherent light, so less of it will penetrate that extra centimeter into the brain.

Dorothy Bishop blogged about Erchonia’s 47 Clinical Trial registrations. Scrolling through them, I see that

• One Tinnitus trial (NCT05374421) – laser light to regenerate cochlear hair-cells and restore proper hearing – was terminated without results because only n=23 participants could be recruited.
• Another tinnitus trial (NCT05091060) with n=4 found improvement.
• A third tinnitus trial (NCT00845975) terminated early, after recruiting n=18 participants, because “New information suggested a more effective treatment protocol”. Nine were treated, nine received the placebo. Both improved.
• The Alzheimer’s trial (NCT02537626) was completed three years ago but no results are available.
• The Erectile Dysfunction trial (NCT05371951) was abandoned. Much to the relief of Mr Bond.

* Space does not permit a description of a plan among biohackers to shift their vision into the infrared band by replacing all the vitamin-A1 in their diets with synthetic vitamin-A2. A1 is the precursor for retinal and thence to rhodopsin synthesis. Eventually all the rhodopsin in their cone and rod cells will be replaced with the porphyropsin analogs, built around dehydroretinal, which have absorption spectra that are shifted by about 30 nm.

** ‘Abeyance’, I believe, is the space between the sofa and the wall where the laser pointer ends up along with all the other cat toys.

*** Mind you, Rouleau and Persinger had previously found EEG activity in blue PlayDo, so the bar is not high.

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