Hi, it’s Dr. Jeffrey mark. Today I’d like to talk to you about infrared therapies that can reduce inflammation in viral infections. There is a study out on infrared light, reducing inflammation as represented by Toll-like receptor number four in patients with COVID-19. As you know, some people with COVID-19 have a cytokine storm which leads to a much more severe disease and outcome than the majority of people experiencing COVID-19. And as you know, COVID-19 affects the lungs and especially the heart with the spike protein directly being toxic to the heart. So before we look at the study, I’m going to give you some background as to why this is important. We’ve talked about using light in the treatment of acute, intermediate, and long COVID. It induces the mitochondria to produce mitochondrial melatonin. And this mitochondrial Melatonin is a very powerful antioxidant to help squelch a significant inflammatory response like saving us from a cytokine storm. So infrared light as you can see here on the spectrum, visible light is in this area here; the near-infrared lights that were studied were approximately 700 nanometers to 1000. Specifically, in this study, 720 nm was used. So in this area right here, now, why are we talking about additional therapies to reduce inflammation? The heart can be a critical target for SARS Cov2 as we know about the oxygenation issues with the lungs. But also clot formation is a problem and acute myocardial injury and also injury that leads to problems in the conduction system or dysrhythmias. So these are some of the things that we’ve seen so far with SARS COV2 in some people, Unfortunately, the acute injuries and then the chronic injuries often involve ongoing inflammation and myocarditis. So direct damage to the heart can occur because of the spike protein itself. Causing a cytokine storm as we mentioned, can be damaging the heart muscles long term. So that’s why it’s important to look at other possible therapies that can minimize this damage. And toll-like receptor four is part of the key to the cytokine storm. And that if you can modulate or decrease the response of this toll-like receptor, you can also modulate and decrease the risk of the cytokine storm. So, further background before we get into the exact details of the study, we know that SARS COV2 binds to the ACE, two receptors here, and then once it does, it gets into the cell with, the cell allowing the virus through and allows enzymes being produced and transcribing the actual viral particles and more particles are made including spike protein and then gets released into the rest of the body. What we recently found is that the spike protein directly interacts with this toll-like receptor four which causes inflammation in the heart. It causes mild carditis in the brain with neuroinflammation. This is a similar type of toll-like receptor system that we’ve seen and know about for three decades of research from Escherichia coli or bacteria. So they have this lipopolysaccharide or LPs, and that also induces this toll-like receptor four to kick in this inflammatory response. The environmental inflammatory response is mainly carried out by the innate immune system. You have an innate and adaptive immune system. The Innate system involves macrophages or the traditional white blood cells and natural killer cells. And adaptive immunity uses antibody formation so that it gets exposed to a pathogen or infection or virus or fungus. And they react by identifying and making neutralizing antibodies. So there are future infections and ongoing infections are prevented by these neutralizing antibodies. The Innate system looks at pattern recognition so that certain patterns from bacteria and other types of infections are just characteristic of those types of pathogens.. They’re non-human, and therefore innate macrophages know to target those cells that express these patterns of proteins that are not human. So there’s no need for prior exposure in order for this innate system to kick in. . And in fact, this system gets weaker as we age, and young people respond more vigorously with interferon production and using their innate system, the white blood cells in the macrophages and natural killer cells to kill off the infected cells, early and fast so that there is not an ongoing production of the spike protein or other types of infectious agents to spread to other cells in the body. So this is the response from macrophages destroying these cells that have been infected. So this study was designed to see if infrared light, specifically near-infrared light, could decrease the risk of kicking into this cytokine storm and therefore reduce the risk of long-term damage in the heart and the brain, and other areas. Through this toll receptor for what was done with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was added to these cultured cells. So this would induce the toll-like receptor to activate the inflammatory and cytokine response. Then infrared light was shined on day two and day four to a certain number of cells, but not the control cells, obviously, are those that were in the study. And they would shine the light at 720 nanometers for 10 minutes, intermittently. And what was found is that you can see this nice pink color without the LPS added. would be changed to blue when you added the LPS because there will be this inflammatory response. But if you added the infrared light, you can see that the amount of inflammation was reduced by just looking at the color. 10-minute exposures seem to drop the inflammation by quite a significant amount, compared to just five minutes or 15 minutes or the control. This is looking at the percentage of interleukin six (IL6) which is another surrogate marker for inflammation and that if we did not add the LPS then there was no inflammation. If you add the LPS to initiate significant inflammation and then we add infrared light there was a decrease in inflammation significantly by almost seventy-five percent. You can also get infrared light obviously through sunlight exposure. You don’t even need to have direct exposure to the sun. You can actually have indirect exposure because there’s a lot of bounce back and reflectivity occurring with infrared radiation. And you can see here that even without the leaves that normally are reflective, you can still see infrared white available not very high in concentrations. So therefore panels or mats for red with near-infrared, radiation, and heat would be a benefit. These are various things that we’ve used that have been helpful. We use these in our long COVID, Intermediate COVID, And obviously can be used in acute COVID as well. This is in addition to peptides that can modulate the immune system, and also supplements and other nutrients used to maximize mitochondrial function which is to make energy and to make the shift from a defensive type of immune response to more of an energy production; which is part of the reason why people are so fatigued with COVID and chronic infections. These are the benefits that have been studied for near-infrared light as well as red light as you can see here a lot of benefits from energy mitochondria which are key to any chronic infection, including SARS, CO2, and other inflammation works for our benefit as well. So for more information on long COVID treatments or intermediate COVID treatments, including using peptides, increasing mitochondrial function, infrared, PEMF oxygen, and other energy-increasing on modalities, you can contact us by emailing staff@jeffreymarkmd.com, you can find us on the web at www.allfunctionalthealth.com, or call us at 925-726-9028. We’ve helped thousands of people in their journey of health and we look forward to helping you as well. So take care and stay healthy.
Jeffrey Mark, M.D.
