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Autism Parenting Secrets
This Light Can Change BRAIN Function
00:45:02
Alex Zaharakis returns to explore how laser-based photobiomodulation may influence brain function at a cellular level. He breaks down the mechanisms, real-world parent feedback, and how to think clearly about whether this tool belongs in a child’s plan. The secret this week is… This Light Can Change BRAIN Function
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- [00:00]
A
I think the magic of the photobiomodulation is in a combination of both the wavelength which dictates you know, what it's interacting with, also the penetration, and then also the pulsing.
- [00:12]
B
If you're a parent of a child with autism, you are being called to rise with love, courage and clarity. This journey isn't easy and most parents aren't equipped, but you can be. This podcast is your invitation to rise higher because how you navigate matters. I'm Len, and this is Autism Parenting Secrets, where you become the parent your child needs now. Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. Returning to the show is Alex Saharikis. In our last conversation, we focused on the microbiome and how better data leads to better decisions. This time we're exploring something very different. Laser based photobiomodulation. And this is a rapidly emerging approach that uses specific wavelengths of light to influence cellular energy, inflammation, blood flow and nervous system regulation. And this conversation is really about clarity in terms of what this option looks like, how it helps. It's about understanding what it's actually doing, what parents are seeing, and how to think clearly about whether this belongs in your child's plan. So the secret this week is this light can change brain function. And I'm delighted to welcome back. Alex, good to see you again.
- [01:33]
A
Lynn, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.
- [01:35]
B
Thank you. Yeah. No, I know when we last spoke, which wasn't that long ago, talking about the importance of the microbiome, the gut rebalancing test, that I know is something that you are making available to so many families and how powerful that can be. This is also a different approach. And I know you spend a lot of time thinking about what could be helpful with respect to parents who are trying to find answers to help support their child, to help their child thrive. So the topic of photobiomodulation, we've covered it before on this show in a few different ways, and it's clearly something that's emerging, becoming more prevalent. You see kind of red light therapy and a lot of different options that are out there. So can you just give a little bit more about what led you to ultimately making these specific lasers something that are more accessible for more families?
- [02:28]
A
You know, there's a lot of different therapeutics out there. And, you know, this was something that was on the bucket list looking at photobiomodulation for my son. And I had happened to, I think, see an advertisement for a clinician that was in town, he here in Tucson, where I live, saying that they offered photobiomodulation So I said, you know, it's about time for something new. We kind of try different things and see what the response are. So we had a couple of poibus with a chiropractor using this. It was both red and violet type laser light. And after the first session, I saw some changes and some improvements in him, particularly in the area of motor coordination. It was quite significant. He went from being unable to kind of dribble a basketball to doing it himself. He had problems when he was driving his power wheels car. So my son, he'll be nine next month, and. And it would always be the case that he couldn't quite get the steering. And I remember after the first or second session, he just got in this thing, and he's driving down the, you know, the sidewalk, which is this, like, tortuitous path, and just steering it perfectly. And the other thing that was interesting, too, is that, you know, I was. For a very long time, I had, you know, had gotten in these. Was it the game boy type things where they have the Mario Kart and trying to get him to play that, not because I wanted him to play video games, because, you know, there's kind of a high hand motor coordination, and he always had difficulty kind of steering it. And all of a sudden he just picked this thing up and he's playing this game, and he's interested in playing it like never before. So there were some pretty quick changes, I'd say, in motor function and motor planning. And it intrigued me. And so I immediately wanted to get one of these devices so that I could use it on a home basis. So I had asked the chiropractor, you know, how much is it to buy or rent one of these things? It was just this egregious price. It was like it was $15,000 for this particular one device that they were using on him, which is the size of a, you know, kind of an iPhone or something like that. And it was shocking to me because, you know, my background, people know I'm as an oncology physicist. But prior to that, I used to teach physics in college and engineering. And so I have a background you kind of tangentially. And with lasers and things like that, we've used them in the lab. And there's no way in my head that I could fathom this device costing that much money. Knowing that my experience with that stuff, I kind of based it on the fact that you could buy an iPhone for about a couple hundred dollars. The amount of technology in an iPhone is light years ahead of a solid state laser. So I couldn't understand why they were so expensive. So I kind of started researching how difficult, what really are the mechanisms involved here? Is it the laser, Is it the intensity of the laser, Is it the pulsing of the light and how fast that you turn it on and off, and what frequencies do you use to pulse with? So I started to build my own one, a very crude one. And, you know, I saw some benefits with my son, But I'm always the kind of person that potentially, you know, there's a bias there, right. So I sent some devices out to some of the colleagues, people I work with. You know, they reported some favorable and positive things. So one thing left led to another. I realized that we could build these devices for much cheaper, much, much more affordable. And that was really the goal, is that, hey, this is something different than the microbiome. It's different because it seems to be accessing. You can do it spatially, whereas when you're trying to treat the microbiome, everything is something that you pretty much have to ingest. This is easy to use. You can pick a time of day that you want to do it. The child could be sleeping. You can access different areas. Maybe your child has a problem taking things, Whereas this is just more feasible. It was unique from that perspective. And then the other feasibility is that we could bring the cost down and people could see improvement. That would be another layer of healing that would be accessible. So that's kind of what drove everything. And that's where we are today.
- [07:29]
B
Now, you mentioned about, in terms of chiropractors, I think if anyone has experienced or seen a cold laser type device, chiropractic practices are very big on that now. And you're right, you kind of schedule a session time with the laser and it could be pretty expensive, especially if you're doing it recurringly. And yeah, the general retail price of these devices is pretty, pretty high. And over time, perhaps they're coming down. But you basically looked at it and you were like, why so high? Right? And so is there some magic element that you're missing? And I think with what you discovered is that, nope, the basics there and to provide the functionality, there's no real mystery to it. And you just found a way to put these together and provide that same functionality in a much more affordable way.
- [08:21]
A
Now that I've had more time to kind of sit on it, there are reasons why I think that the other models are that expensive. I mean, obviously there are certain legalities involved in getting something to be approved and trying to do studies and you know, having a company that may have lawyers and marketers and all these things. So you know, the cost has to go up to, for that. There's also the manufacturing. So I kind of likened it to, you know, I think when the, you know, now, now you can walk into Walmart and get a flat screen TV for like $130. It's just insane. I mean the other day I was looking, there's like a 30, there's like a 60 inch TV for like $170. I remember when I was a kid, you know, TVs were, they were relatively expensive. I mean, you know, there were these big boxy things and you know, when the first flat screens came out, they were pretty expensive. And so over time, you know, these companies have found a way to make things more affordable, but also the demand and the mass productions and things like that. So there's always this, this balance of these things that control the costs, the raw materials. Like, you know, if someone just said, okay here, this is what's needed to build it and you go through some design and it's really not that expensive. I think the research to get there may, you know, there may be things involved. I'm really more concerned with, hey, listen, if this is something that we could make that is not going to break the bank that somebody can use and see some, you know, see some benefits that, that's to me the most important thing is that you potentially changing someone's life in a positive way. And so that's what we're, what's, that's what we're trying to do is just make these more feasible and affordable and things are expensive. You know, this is having a, having a child that has, you know, special needs. You know, you know, it, there's all of these costs that hidden costs that nobody realizes and you know, we're just looking at to kind of improve quality of life there.
- [10:30]
B
I understand that. I advise a number of parents who are looking at this and want, because they feel like it's a really good fit for their child, they want to make the investment, but it's just so prohibitively high that for some it just might be too much. So the idea that there's a more affordable option is powerful and going to the efficacy. The reason why these lasers are popping up on all these chiropractic organizations is because people are seeing real relief and benefits from it. So it's not just kind of a concept and oh, maybe this might help or maybe it doesn't. It seems like there's really good evidence and track record of these can be really helpful, depending on what you're dealing with. And while chiropractic organizations may be dealing with different kind of problems their clientele may have. For a child who's, let's say, on the spectrum or has developmental challenges or just complex challenges, the idea of, how can this light help them? I know we talked even beforehand about some possibilities. So if you could just from your perspective, what are you seeing? Because my understanding is that clearly the targeted therapy with a cold laser can absolutely improve mitochondrial function and the energy overall, the cellular energy, which can help so many things. And it also can improve or reduce inflammation, because that's their big root cause of inflammation, systemic inflammation in the body, perhaps neuroinflammation in the brain. So. And those are, I know, only two of the benefits. So can you talk more about what you're seeing and even the science behind what's happening at the cellular level that that results in improvements or a reduction in perhaps symptoms that we're wanting to help our kids with?
- [12:20]
A
Yeah. So I think with a lot of these therapies, the field of sports medicine is really driving things. So I think that's like even hbot, like, you'll see sometimes a picture of a professional athlete in a HBOT chamber because they're trying to recover after some rigorous workout. So the lasers in the chiropractic world, I think that there was a lot of emphasis in sports medicine in terms of recovery and things like that. And then one thing led to the other. And, you know, you have somebody that has a pain in their hand and they have inflammation or they want to enhance circulation. And then, you know, naturally, you know, people that connect the dots and say, well, you know, here I have someone that has autism. We know that there's inflammatory issues. We know that there may be issues with ATP and generation of energy and stuff like that. And mitochondria. Does this have the potential? I think probably before autism, and there's been some studies using photobiomodulation and autism, there were some studies actually looking at traumatic brain injuries there. So it started to become more of a reality that this would be something that could be helpful in terms of the mechanisms there. So we know that there's this cytochrome C oxidase, basically, it's this role that it plays in terms of creating energy in the mitochondria. And it can be inhibited. It can be inhibited by, you know, these kind of nitric oxide events that kind of interfere with this enzyme. So we know that some of the mechanisms are that the light have the ability to kind of help this electron transport change and inhibit this nitric oxide from interfering with the energy production. Red light, there's. So there's different colors, there's different wavelengths. Our devices have 660nm red, 520 green, 405 violet. We have a near infrared that's coming out shortly. Each wavelength has a potential different benefit in terms of how it's able to help with the ATP production, how it's able to interact with some of the cellular processes, and then also the penetration depth. In the case of red, there seems to be more anti inflammatory and circulatory benefits. It is very highly absorbed in the blood and so you get a lot of interaction there for something like green. There's different complexes in the mitochondria that can be emphasized. There's also a kind of what's called a stress benefit, reactive oxygen species mechanism. So something that happens when you do HBOT is because oxygen is, even though that it's this beneficial thing that we need for the respiration cycle, it is this thing that has this oxidative potential that it's not ideal. You have too much reactive oxygen species and so on and so forth. There is a component of HBOTs where you're actually stressing the mitochondria. And by doing so, when your body gets stressed, it's kind of like building a muscle. You go, you work out, you're stressing that mitochondria, you actually produce more mitochondria as a result of it. So there's a benefit in this stressing component that the green light does. It's very similar to hbot. You know, too much green, you know, may, may not be ideal, but it's kind of like flexing the muscle, if you will. And, and for colors like violet, this 405 nanometer wavelength there is, which is a higher energy. As you go lower in wavelength, you go higher energy. There is a lot of research that's been shown that it can be helpful in terms of superficial skin issues and lesions and maybe eczema and stuff like that. But even though that it doesn't penetrate as deeply, the thought is that it can interact with some of the mitochondria that's in your blood, help different complexes like complex four and that gets circulated around the rest of the body. So you know, we know that this certainly has the potential to help the mitochondria. We think that that's really the main indication and then through that, you know, potentially inflammation and some other things. You know, we can't physically make any claims with our devices because, you know, they're not considered medical devices and actually none. So there are no laser devices for any therapeutic other than very few conditions right now that they're quote unquote, FDA approved. So like for I think weight loss, there's some, there's for hair loss and I think for like general inflammatory pain, you know, issues, I think those are the three main conditions right now that you can actually say, hey, this is a device safety approved and you can actually reimburse and charge for everything else is kind of research and based on. But there have been a lot of studies showing that it's been helpful for traumatic brain injury, it's been helpful for autism, it's been helpful for just general inflammation, Parkinson's, things like that. So I think there's a lot of potential there and I think the main area is really the mitochondria. So it'll be interesting to see what we see over time. We've had probably about a year's worth of people using this now, maybe 150 to 200 or so. And we've been getting, you know, very, very great positive feedback overall. And you know, we've kind of collected some of these messages that parents have, have shared either through audio or written, written messages. So those are really the best inferences that people can get a perspective on. You know, what, what these things, you know, may be able to help with. The other piece of information that, that we've been working on too is. So we had this hypothesis, it actually came from a parent who is on someone on the brain foundation that said, hey, you know, we did some red light therapy many years ago, Alex, and we, we noticed that there was this massive dumps of heavy metals that happened to be coming out of the child because they were simultaneously testing urine and things like that. So we had just done a case study ourselves on an individual where the, and we're submitting this for case study publication right now. But basically this is a child that had taken, I think about 10 urine heavy metal tests successively over 10 days. So there's a period where they were not using the laser before. I think it's like five days and then there's about five days while using the laser. And you know, for this particular situation, for this individual, what we measured is there's a significant increase in the excretion of aluminum as measured on this urine test during the period that they started to use the laser, the parent also is one of these parents that left a voice message that people can listen to and they can share their experience of what are the changes that they're seeing in their child, the positive changes. So there seems to be a connection between this improvement that they report, but also, you know what, the fact that they're excreting this aluminum. So it's something to be. We have to put more efforts into pinning down. But right now we're just working on kind of getting this single case study published. And it's not something that's outside of the box. If you think about it. I mean, if there is this burden of toxicity, we know that toxicity can inhibit the mitochondria. If we can help the mitochondria to work better, not only does it help with the immune processes, but it also helps with detoxification. So I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility. It's something that we're going to follow up with. But it's interesting to say the least. And.
- [21:07]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, it's very plausible. And that's why I wanted to start with all these potential benefits. Right. We know that this type of targeted laser light absolutely can have an impact. And if, let's just say it is mitochondrial support, as you're mentioning, if you're just enhancing cellular energy and helping the body to, let's just say, for lack of a better word, be more vibrant, then it's going to be able to do more what it's designed to do. And that might include being able to have more energy for detoxification. And also if you're improving blood flow and circulation, again, that could help the body just do what it's designed to do. So the whole idea of metals toxicity and how the laser might play a role in that, it's not so much a detox strategy as much as it is something that just helps the body to then perform its functions better, including detoxification. Is that a healthy way of looking at it?
- [22:06]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I kind of think of it as kind of like a light massage. Like literally a light massage, you know, as just the same way that you might have a sore muscle. You go and you kind of massage that muscle. You're getting into the deeper tissues. You know, this has the ability to go, go in there and, you know, do something on the cellular level, move things around, you know, increase that mitochondrial potential. And so, so parents, you know, we, we first suggested for them to just use it on the head, use it on the brain five to 15 minutes a day, just evenly moving it over the head and really get great feedback from that. Other people have moved on to the vagus nerve to adding that into an area. Other people use it on the oral cavity there. Because the tongue is a huge muscle. Right. The fact that I'm talking right now, the ability for me to do that is a complex relationship between how I'm controlling my lips, my cheeks, the volume of air coming out of my mouth, my tongue. All of this plays a role into how, you know, I enunciate certain words that may be impaired and stimulating that may, you know, improve some of the connections. You know, we. I would say for the parents out there that want to learn more, listen to some of the messages that everyone else is saying there to get some feedback of what are the things that they've seen. But, you know, you can't. You don't have to stop there. You can move on to the kidneys if you have issues with kidneys. Right. You're kind of giving bandwidth to each one of these organs by stimulating the mitochondria in that local area. So I think there's a lot of potential. Certainly we've had parents use it on themselves and feel like that it's been helpful for maybe they have some soreness in some part of their body. I've had a co worker where I used to work formally that had a child with ADHD and, you know, she started using the laser, was the only thing that she was using, and, you know, just really great feedback in terms of the changes that they were seeing. So, you know, I think it's. There's no silver bullet. Right. The way that we should all be looking at this is that if parents are going to look into some kind of therapeutic. Right. From my perspective, the two main things are what are the feasibility? Feasibility includes the affordability. But how difficult is it to implement? Does it mean that you have to hike up a mountain to do it? It's maybe not feasible. So there's affordability, there's feasibility. How easy it is to implement these? Check the boxes there and then in terms of, is it just helping one person? Is it helping 100 people? What's the fraction? We're getting really great feedback there and we haven't gotten any negative feedback as well. So I think that this is something that's interesting and attractive. And because it checks these boxes, they don't have to look at our lasers. They can just look at photobiomodulation in general. Right. If you want to take that Extra step of working with a chiropractor, you know, just do your research and investigate it. But I think that this is going to be something that in the future it's going to be helpful for a lot of conditions.
- [25:32]
B
I think when you're talking about the ease of, you know, how implementable it is. Let's, let's talk about that a little bit. Because with what you were describing with the different color lights and you're describing the different areas of the body where you could use it. And so how do you help guide parents with how to use the laser in terms of like the programs and the way to do it, the duration? Because the art is having an idea of like how to specifically do it in a way that increases the odds that you're going to actually get some benefit from it. So how do you help parents with that and what went into how you even created those programs?
- [26:13]
A
Yeah, those are all great questions. Yeah. So this is an example of kind of the size of the device. I have it kind of on right now. And you might be able to see the kind of flashing pattern and you might notice that it seems to be doing different things at different times. So I think the magic of the photobiomodulation is in a combination of both the wavelength which dictates what it's interacting with, also the penetration and then also the pulsing. And the question about the pulsing and what's the best there and how to use it. I think that that is a very open ended question. The way that I designed this device was to be very flexible. So you can input your own custom frequencies, you can change the duty cycle, you can change the duration of the pulse and things like that. All of these things that may be super, super complex. I don't know where I'm starting, but it's very flexible that if in the future you decide that you come across a particular protocol or practitioner that says, hey, listen, you got to do 79 hertz, it's got to be for three second duration. And this can do that. There are some preset programs in there that we have put, and there's about 16 of them and we kind of ordered them in the way that we thought that they might be most important or feasible. Program number one is extremely flexible. It can be used on any part of the body. And it's a collection of three different pulsing frequencies. And between those three frequencies, it sits on them for about two to three seconds and it moves to the next one. So it's never doing the same thing. And this is Part of the process of how you're stimulating the mitochondria, what is the most effective is not well understood. The way that this kind of field has evolved is basically by chiropractic trying different things. And they have kind of these communities that say, hey, listen, I got these 10 patients over here. We used 86 hertz and it was very, very effective. So this device has been a culmination of kind of scouring that information of chiropractors that have experience in putting them together. We have some general broad guides, and it's just simple as turning on program number one, using this like you would be giving a haircut. So imagine if this was a pair of buzzers, kind of moving it around the head about that speed, about five to ten minutes a day. Hit all the lobes about an inch
- [28:42]
B
wave in the body.
- [28:44]
A
About an inch, about 1 to 2 centimeters. The way that these devices are designed. So these are diode lasers, and they use what's called a diverging lens, a lenticular. So it emanates in a pattern that looks kind of like a line. And so the intensity actually gets, falls off as you get farther away, but the line actually gets bigger. So if, if I treat from here, right, I'll be getting more surface area, but if I treat for a longer period of time, it ends up being a wash. So if I treat closer, I get a smaller surface area, but I don't have to treat as long, but I have to hit more, you know, area to treat the same amount of place. So it doesn't, it really, there's no right or wrong distance. But we say, you know, keep it about 1, 1 to 2 centimeters, about an inch. This way you don't have stray light beams kind of going across the room and five to ten minutes a day and, you know, start with the head. But parents have moved on to other, other areas and found that to be, to be helpful. You can do it while they're sleeping, you know, you can do it while they're eating. There's no pain. These are Class 2 lasers. They're certified safety with the FDA. What that means is that they technically don't even need to have a pair of goggles because the intensity of the beam is low enough that it won't damage the retina with the blink reflex. But we provide you a pair of glasses regardless. And, you know, I was a little skeptical myself at the beginning because I was on the fence of how is this laser really doing anything? Is it getting through the head? You know, I went out and I Bought a coyote. My wife thought I was crazy. I went on ebay, you can find a coyote skull. Because I just wanted the bone. And I shine the laser through the bone. It goes through the bone. And I was kind of surprised. But then, you know, I started to kind of wrap my physics understanding around kind of what's going on is that light attenuates exponentially, so it doesn't ever stop. So even though that some of these lasers, these wavelengths have certain, what they call penetration depths, that only gives you the intensity of the beam up to that depth. There's still intensity after that. So, for instance, if we looked at something like red, the penetration depth is about a centimeter. But what that means is that at a centimeter there's about 37% of the light is still remaining. You go another centimeter, then it's 13%. So it never gets to zero. So you have kind of an. It'll infinitely go on. And you have an interaction, obviously with decreased intensity. But with a laser, you have a huge amount of photons. So you can be assured that you have this light incident on there. It's getting somewhere into the brain and it's penetrating. And, you know, at first I was kind of skeptical, but then, you know, after seeing it go through the boat and then kind of, you know, reasoning how the light interacts and everything and it scatters. You know, it makes perfect, perfect sense. So I think overall, it's an easy tool to use. You can make it as complicated as you want to. I mean, there's some people out there that have these very fancy protocols. I don't think it needs to be that complicated to see the benefits. And I think it's. The kind of thing is that people will start to learn how to use it best for themselves over time. And that's really what we're hoping for, is that they'll come back and maybe with some requests and say, hey, I'd really like this. And we'll program it in with the flexibility. If we find out tomorrow that, you know, let's say, you know, 111 hertz is the magic frequency people can send their laser back. We'll reprogram, we'll put that in there. But it's flexible enough that you can actually dial that in yourself. So I'm happy where it is. I think it's convenient, flexible, it's very affordable. The devices, they're as cheap as about $800. They're as expensive as $1,500 of the models that we have. And that is probably a factor of five cheaper than the next lowest model. These are more comparable to much more expensive models that we'd say probably priced more than 10,000 to $15,000 range. But we don't want people to buy it unless it works for them. So we have a money back guarantee. You can buy the laser, you could use it for a month, and we'll just charge you $100 for the shipping and the restocking. If you wanted to return it, we'll happily take it back if you don't think it's beneficial. So I think with that model, that people could try it out and see if they see benefits. That really is what a lot of practitioners have been doing that have been using our devices. They have one or two, and they kind of just loan them out to their patients for two weeks at a time. And they say, hey, if you think it's been helping. Because I'd say most people see something within the first couple of days, if not the first week. That's enough time to make a decision whether or not they think that it's something they want to move on.
- [34:16]
B
Sometimes you just need to test something, give it a test drive to really see. Which is why, going back to what you said about the programs, if you have 16 programs that make it easy for somebody to start depending on what they're looking to accomplish, that's great, because otherwise I know if it's just, hey, use it and figure it out, that could be a little bit overwhelming. So the fact that you have some standard programs, some best practices, and even have the ability to customize it as you've experienced and see what's helpful, what's not. Yeah, the usability piece is important. And just having established programs, I think are helpful. You use the example from a metals perspective. And for my son, we did a round of IV chelation. We did about eight weeks because we knew through the urine testing that metals were pretty sky high for him. And for him it was more lead than aluminum. And so, again, that's a very established way of helping the body to detoxify, doing the IV chelation. And if there is now a possibility of helping with that detoxification using the laser, fantastic. That's much easier to do. You're not physically having to go somewhere. And again, the only way you'll really know whether it's helping is if you have some labs. Right. Do a urine test before or after. But I think what you've shared is that you've seen or heard of examples where people are Having success from a detoxification standpoint. And the laser seems to be a key part of that.
- [35:46]
A
We get a lot of parents, what I would say, and just to say we're not allowed to make any claims, but they would say that it overall makes their child more focused and calm and seems to take them out of episodes. And I don't think that this will rival something like chelation in terms of the metal. But not everybody is in a place where they may be able to take a chelator because doing so stirs the pot. And just like, maybe there's a gentler way that needs to be done first to make things more feasible. Healing always has all of these layers there. So I think that in terms of my experience in trying to help people with all of these biomedical things, what I would say is that always try to go the path of, I would say, least resistance. I mean, there's times when you have to kind of stir the pot a little bit, but if the body's not primed for doing things and it's not supported enough or it's not appropriate enough, you know, you can. You can sometimes going down that direction, it takes you a while to get back from doing that. Therapeutics, so feasible, practical, and, you know, safe and putting you in a better light, a better situation. I think that those are all really attractive. So, you know, this is another tool linearly independent, I think, from the other things that I've used and experienced. And it's also somewhat of a bonding time, I think, between parent and child too. You have this, hey, I'm doing this thing with you. You can make a session out of it and you feel like that you're kind of accomplishing something almost like woodwork or something, and you have your hands on. So, yeah, it's a bonding experience.
- [37:44]
B
And like most interventions I know that moved the needle for my son were things that not only helped him, but helped me as well. So this is another example of that. And if a parent, if you're trying to figure out, is this going to be helpful for my child, if you experience it first and if you feel it's beneficial, then good chance it's probably going to benefit your child too. I guess that leads me to the one thing in terms of, yes, this could be beneficial. You won't know maybe until you experience it.
- [38:10]
A
But.
- [38:10]
B
But is there any indication of where a child is, where you would say, hey, it's too early to do this? Like, in other words, this type of targeted with laser approach, like, if a child really is Significantly dysregulated. Would it make sense for the child to be in a better place to be able to benefit from the laser? In other words, can the laser wind up making perhaps a child even more dysregulated if they're not ready for it? What are your thoughts on that?
- [38:37]
A
You know, so far I haven't seen that. I mean, so far what the feedback that I've gotten is that it seems to be kind of putting them into a better spot to bring them out of that event. And parents can see the messages. You know, we have these messages collated, either written or in audio. And that's the inference that I've been going off of. If you were to ask me in the beginning, I would say I wouldn't know. I wouldn't have any evidence to go on there. So everything has been through those messages that we've gotten back. I don't. And I'm usually very cautious with these things. And we have some folks that have been using it that have seizures, too. And obviously you want to always talk with your practitioner and your provider before doing anything like that. But I know that, for instance, Dr. Fry, I was on a call with him probably months ago, and the conversation was talking about the potential for PBM in epileptic patients and things like that. So it's a hot area of interest. And overall, I really haven't come across anybody that says that this. Put them in. This is like, oh, you know, we did a chelative thing and put them in a worse spot, or we took this probiotic and upset them. It just seems to kind of be. To put you in a better area. The level of the magnitude of that change certainly is different. You know, some people reporting, I'd say better, more, other people's less. It's hard for me to know. And the only way that I can kind of address that as, like I said, we offer this trial essentially, that people can use it and see what they see, and hopefully they see some benefits. And like I said, try it on yourself, too. Seeing is believing. If you have something that. And all you have to do is, if you're unsure of what PBM could be helpful with, you know, use your. Your favorite AI engine, you know, ChatGPT or Google, AI Gemini, whatever, and just say, hey, what conditions has photobiomodulation, you know, been shown to be potentially helpful for? And you'll get a. You'll get a unbiased view of all of the literature and all of the information out there. And that might, you know, allow you to, to use it on yourself or some other condition, you know, so there's, there's hot interest outside of autism, I would say, and I think it's pretty exciting. But, yeah, yeah, no, that's a perfect
- [41:28]
B
use of AI, right? See what's in the literature, see what's out there in terms of how it helps and what conditions. But ultimately, what's going to be a good move for your child? Again, that's not AI's job, that's your job. And again, for you to discern where this might fit in. And it sounds like from what you're saying, Alex, from what you've been hearing, again, this is just based on your perspective, feedback and what you've seen in the literature. It seems like the laser at the very least has more of a modulating effect on the body. And so therefore something that regardless of what you're doing, you can experiment with bringing this in. And again, whatever it is you're trying to help your child with, if you can go in with some kind of measurement of where your child is, bring something like this in and then after a certain period of time, see, see if it's helped or not. Sometimes it's hard for us parents to notice shifts in our child. So again, the more you can go in kind of eyes wide open and noticing and seeing, you know, how does this help? Great that you're making it affordable, Alex. I think that's fantastic. And also making it easy for parents to experience it for themselves. I know in the show notes, I'll include links to not only where you can look into seeing these options, and Alex has given a discount in that link, but also the YouTube video you created with a lot of the testimonials from what parents are seeing. I think that would also be really helpful for people to take a look at.
- [42:52]
A
Yeah, we have some audio messages that we've compiled together in a YouTube video. We have some written messages from parents. And for the month of April, in terms of autism awareness, we're going to be discounting all of the models and there'll be a link that you have lend that also gives them an additional discount beyond the discount that we'll be having for April. So it'll be a great time to investigate it if you want to. And there's also a, you know, Obviously, you know, 7, $800, $1,000 is pricey, but there are payment plans available on the site, so I think you can break it up into four payments. But, you know, we're trying to make this as, as flexible as possible from our end. So, you know, don't all rush out and go get them at once. But you know, if it's something that you're interested in, it's intriguing you maybe, maybe give it a try.
- [43:50]
B
Yeah, no, you've made it easy. And yeah, you know, if you know some other families, you kind of go together and try a device across families. So there's great. I think this really stuck the landing in terms of at least understand helping people understand where this fits in how it might help. Like any intervention, sometimes you won't know until you, you know, really experience it and, and, and see how your child or how you may respond. But I appreciate you shining light on this and for making it easy for parents to experience this, you know. Again, the links will be in the show notes and just again I just want to say thank you for your curiosity and what you're putting out there along with Dr. Christian Bogner. And you're a not for profit. Autism is biomedical and so I'll include that link in the show notes as well for people to go there. But Alex. Yeah. Look forward to a future conversation with you. Thanks for spending time today.
- [44:39]
A
Thanks so much, Lon. I really appreciate it. Take care.
- [44:42]
B
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