Today’s claim to be filed in the ‘WHAT!’ section is that wearing a cycle helmet with some lamps in it for ten minutes a day can cure dementia.
OK it is a bit more complicated than that; but at root this is what scientists from the University of Sunderland in the UK are saying. Before we go any further we should point out that this hasn’t been tested in humans, there doesn’t seem to be any peer-reviewed research on it in humans, and there is a commercial company behind this which markets similar products to cure cold sores and wrinkles.
A press release from the university says that research has shown that regular exposure to low level infra-red light can improve learning performance and “kick-start the cognitive function of the brain”.
“Near infra-red light penetrates human tissues relatively well, even penetrating the human skull, just as sunlight passes through frosted glass. … Currently all you can do with dementia is to slow down the rate of decay – this new process will not only stop that rate of decay but partially reverse it,” says Gordon Dougal, a director of Virulite and (according to the BBC) a family doctor in the UK.
The Alzheimer’s Society has given a cautious reception of the claims. “Non-thermal near infra-red treatment for people with dementia is a potentially interesting technique. We look forward to further research to determine whether it could help improve cognition in humans. Only then can we begin to investigate whether near infra-red could benefit people with dementia,” says Susanne Sorensen, the charity’s
head of research (press release).
The Daily Mail says the previous research was conducted in mice. That probably refers to this paper from last year, which found improvements in mice memory after IR treatment. This is promising, but a long, long way from evidence it works in humans.
For such a major claim, the coverage of this story is remarkably unquestioning. I’m not saying the researchers aren’t entirely right in their assertions for their product. At this stage though you have to say ‘show me the paper’…
More: in 2006 a Nature feature (subscription required) looked at tackled this and related topics, noting, “Light’s effects are more than skin deep: at long wavelengths, in the near infrared spectrum, photons may penetrate several centimetres into the body.”
UPDATE
ABC in the US has now waded in with a very sceptical article.
“I have not heard of anything along these lines before. Who knows what it is? But it sounds more hocus-pocus than anything,” Ronald Peterson, director of the Alzheimer’s research centre at Mayo Clinic in Rochester in the United States told them.
“This sounds like a very gimmicky kind of thing to me. I would not waste time on it,” added Zaven Khachaturian, editor-in-chief of Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Image: the researchers with their helmet