Over the past decade, more than 100 pills and injections have all failed to stop the brain-destroying effects of Alzheimer’s disease. So why not try a light show?
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have crafted a system of flickering LED lights that has shown promising signs of treating Alzheimer’s in mice engineered to develop the disease. And their findings, published Wednesday in Nature, have set sail a biotech company trying to turn the technology into something that can be tested on humans.
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The key here is that certain forms of light inhibits the formation of peroxynitrite and limits the damage that peroxynitrite does to the mitochondria which if unchecked leads to the death of neurons.
“Nitric oxide (NO) and its derivatives peroxynitrite and S-nitrosothiols inhibit mitochondrial respiration by various means, but the mechanisms and/or the reversibility of such inhibitions are not clear. We find that the NO-induced inhibition of respiration in isolated mitochondria due to inhibition of cytochrome oxidase is acutely reversible by light. Light also acutely
reversed the inhibition of respiration within iNOS-expressing macrophages, and this reversal was partly due to light-induced breakdown of NO, and partly due to reversal of the NO-induced inhibition of cytochrome oxidase.”
The use of peroxynitrite scavengers such as THC, cannabidiol, and terpenes such as eugenol in CBD oil, eugenol in various essential oils via aromatherapy (clove, bay laurel, lemon balm, rosemary, etc.), and ferulic acid, syringic acid, p-coumaric acid, vanillin, and maltol in panax ginseng should work even better than flickering lights.