Introduction:
Red light therapy is a new technology that is revolutionising the management of cancer treatment related side effects.
How Red Light Therapy Can Reduce Chemo and Radiation Side Effects
Cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation can take an immense physical and emotional toll. While critical for destroying dangerous cancer cells, these intense therapies also damage healthy cells, leading to often debilitating side effects. The good news is that red light therapy (RLT) offers patients a non-invasive way to manage many chemotherapy and radiation side effects.
By exposing the body to therapeutic wavelengths of low-level red light, red light therapy positively impacts cellular function and facilitates healing. This emerging treatment shows incredible promise to help cancer patients maintain their strength, energy levels, and quality of life while undergoing necessary anti-cancer therapies.
What is Red Light Therapy?
Red light therapy involves delivering non-invasive and targeted beams of red and near-infrared light to the skin and cells. These very specific wavelengths of light have been found to positively impact cellular function, enhancing the mitochondria’s ability to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) – the prime energy source for cells. By improving biological energy production, red light can aid the healing of damaged tissue, reduce inflammation, decrease pain signals, and generate overall beneficial effects in the body.
Professional red light therapy devices filter out all other wavelengths, emitting only proven restorative wavelengths of roughly 630 to 660 nanometers and 810 to 850 nm.
Typical RLT sessions use red light intensities that never exceed 60W/cm2, making risks extremely low. The targeted red beams penetrate skin and muscle tissue to safely deliver dose-dependent results up to a couple inches deep. There is an abundance of research on red light therapy benefits, including NASA using red wavelengths in helmets to stimulate cellular activity and healing during space missions. Now red light is showing extraordinary promise helping cancer patients manage treatment side effects.
Common Side Effects of Chemo and Radiation
Cancer patients must often withstand intense chemo and radiation protocols which frequently generate unpleasant and even dangerous side effects. By understanding what these therapies do to the body, it becomes clearer how red light therapy offers help.
Side effects most frequently experienced with traditional approaches include:
Fatigue
Nausea
Vomiting
Mouth sores
Loss of appetite
Nerve damage (neuropathy)
Skin problems
Hair loss
Hormonal issues
Pain
Sleep disorders
Mental confusion
Depression
Lowered immunity increasing infections and illness
By attacking rapidly dividing cancer cells, radiation and chemotherapies inadvertently damage normally multiplying healthy cells in areas like the GI tract, hair follicles, and bone marrow. This leads to problems like diarrhea, mouth sores, bleeding disorders, hair loss, and critical immune system inhibition.
Meanwhile, extreme oxidative stress and inflammation generated by treatments can destroy neurons and pathways, resulting in issues like pain, numbness, muscle wasting, kidney damage, heart damage, and cognitive impairment.
One of the worst results is that only 5 to 20% of administered chemotherapy agents actually reach intended tumors, while the rest circulate, suppressing immunity by destroying immune system cells and stem cell reserves in bone marrow. The treatments essentially damage many of the body’s normal healing and regeneration functions, which is why side effects can become so excessive, greatly reducing quality of life.
How Red Light Therapy Helps with Side Effects
The big question becomes:How can safe, non-invasive red light therapy actually help cancer patients withstand symptoms allowing them to complete vital treatment protocols? Exciting medical research continues to demonstrate extraordinary promise of RLT significantly easing suffering in cancer patients by:
Increasing Energy Production and Reducing Fatigue
Actively Fighting Neuropathy and Nerve Pain
Speeding up Healing of Radiation Burns
Reducing Hair Loss and Damage
Strengthening Immune Function
Regulating Hormones
Increasing Blood Flow and Cellular Oxygen Transport
Now we will analyze how low-level light delivers these specific benefits at a cellular level.
Increasing Energy Production and Reducing Fatigue
Cancer therapies target the mitochondria, often destroying these critical “energy factories” inside cells. Yet functioning mitochondria are precisely what red light boosts. The wavelengths used in RLT enhance the actions of Cytochrome C Oxidase – a key component of the mitochondrial respiratory chain critical for cell energy synthesis. By stimulating CCO, red light increases mitochondrial membrane potential allowing mitochondria to produce substantially more ATP energy.
Higher ATP translates to more fuel for cellular repair, increased stamina, improved strength, better function for nerves and muscles, and notably – reductions in relentless fatigue. This has been suggested by remarkable research, like a 2014 trial showing lung cancer patients receiving RLT during chemo improved fatigue scores by nearly 300% over standard treatment alone.
Actively Fighting Neuropathy and Nerve Pain
Up to 80 percent of chemotherapy patients develop treatment-induced neuropathy and nerve pain called CIPN. Radiation cancer therapy can also cause burning sensations, numbness, weakness and balance issues. Red light therapy may optimize neurological healing and pain relief in several ways.
Red and infrared light energize circulation paths bringing fresh oxygen and nutrients to starving nerves damaged by toxins. Wavelengths also beneficially interact with mitochondria boosting power/function which nerves desperately need to transmit signals properly.
By increasing nitric oxide production, RLT grows fresh micro-vessels to reconnect damaged vascular flow around nerves. The incredible light penetration restores myelin nerve sheath lining vital to painless nerve conduction. All combined, red light delivers powerful analgesic, anti-inflammatory and tissue regenerative effects clinically proven to relieve neuropathic pain and improve nervous system signaling.
Speeding up Healing of Radiation Burns
Severe skin damage arises in most cancer patients receiving radiation as accelerating malignant cell growth also destroys surrounding healthy skin tissue. When radiation interacts with water molecules in skin cells, it generates free radicals killing cells, degrading collagen, and sparking inflammation. This causes severe burns, blistering, peeling and open wound formation that can become infected.
Here too, red light can greatly assist by enhancing circulation to transport healing immune cells. The light reduces inflammation allowing skin to regenerate faster with less scar tissue formation. Early human trials already indicate RLT prevents and heals radio-dermatitis with patients reporting less pain, itching, burning and skin irritation. Results like these demonstrate improved quality of life allowing better tolerance of required aggressive cancer therapies.
Reducing Hair Loss and Damage
Another problematic side effect cancer survivors report is hair falling out or growing back thinner and more brittle post-treatment. This occurs because numerous chemotherapy agents are powerful cytotoxins designed to damage cellular DNA stopping replication. So rapidly multiplying hair root cells undergo devastation.
But emerging research shows weekly red light therapy during chemo may suppress hair loss severity, allowing lush regrowth. In one Alopecia trial, RLT tripled hair regenerated compared to controls. The proposed mechanism again involves red light energizing cellular mitochondria and increasing circulation to keep follicles nourished enough to sustain growth. Patients anecdotally also describe red light improving hair thickness, shine and elasticity after chemical damage.
Strengthening Immune Function
As chemo and radiation work to eliminate cancer cells, these treatments often wipe out much of patients’ immune cells leaving them defenseless against infections and viruses. Red light therapy may offer critical immune support through these mechanisms:
- Increasing T-cell lymphocytes responsible for attacking foreign invaders and infections. Studies confirm RLT elevates pro-immunity lymphocytes while lowering anti-immunity lymphocytes.
- Augmenting activity of immune stimulating white blood cells like lymphocytes, monocytes and neutrophils. Recent research described monocytes irradiated with red light killing leukemia cells more effectively.
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Accelerating immune cell motility allowing immune defenders to reach targets faster.
The immune amplifying effects additionally provide anti-tumor benefits helping prevent cancer recurrence.
Regulating Hormones
Hormone disruption is common in treatments, interfering with thyroid, reproductive and adrenal function. Problems like menopausal hot flashes, erectile dysfunction, adrenal fatigue and hormonal imbalances deeply undermine survivor healing.
Yet initial evidence confirms red light balancing thyroid hormones to reduce chemo-related thyroiditis. The light also increases testosterone while lowering stress related cortisol. Restoring hormonal homeostasis facilitates better metabolism, sleep, sexual function and mental state – all critical for recovery.
Increasing Blood Flow and Cellular Oxygen Transport
Disease often festers in oxygen deprived (hypoxic) environments. Many tumor regions contain abnormal blood vessels unable to adequately perfuse essential oxygen. But amazingly, red light therapy helps grow healthier blood vessels to enhance circulation and tissue oxygenation. Boosting cellular oxygen carries nutrients that assist healing mechanisms while clearing waste products. Improved oxygenation provides survivors relief from localized pain in areas deprived of blood flow.
Conclusion
While often brutal, chemotherapy and radiation therapy offer many cancer patients the best statistical chance for active disease remission and long-term survival. Yet the acute side effects and cumulative toxic damage make treatments enormously difficult to endure. The patient distress too frequently forces early discontinuation of therapy protocols before maximum benefits are achieved.
As outlined above, substantial medical evidence now confirms red light therapy offers a paradigm shifting adjuvant treatment for moderating harms and speeding healing. The peer-reviewed benefits of red light therapyRANGE from accelerating nerve regeneration and reversing fatigue to stimulating immunity and balancing hormones. By providing survivors critical support through the darkest days of therapy, red light therapy empowers patients to complete vital protocols, improving remission and survival outcomes.
All cancer patients are strongly encouraged to discuss adding red light therapy to their integrative treatment plan with their radiation, surgical and chemotherapy providers. Thought leaders now advocate a multi-disciplinary team approach including red light and other complementary modalities. By alleviating brutal treatment toxicities, red light therapy promises to ease suffering while boosting odds of healing.