In this Medicine Health Podcast episode, Dr. Paul Anderson discusses the potential of photodynamic (light) therapy—specifically infrared LED arrays—to treat COVID‑19 and its chronic sequelae (long COVID). He begins with a brief overview of how light wavelengths can influence human biology, citing vitamin D synthesis and other non‑visual effects. Drawing on his own background in optics and early clinical work with phototherapies, Anderson reviews basic‑science and in‑vitro studies that showed certain infrared wavelengths mitigated spike‑protein‑induced damage in heart and lung tissue. He then details a single‑blind, randomized controlled trial in which hospitalized COVID patients wore a custom infrared LED “vest” (an array of infrared LEDs embedded in a flak‑vest‑like garment). The study reported statistically significant improvements in hospital length of stay, cardiopulmonary function (oxygen saturation, airflow dynamics, heart rate, blood pressure), and biochemical markers (reduced white‑blood‑cell counts). Anderson argues that therapies effective in the acute phase are likely to be beneficial as adjunctive, synergistic treatments for long‑COVID patients, even if the effects are less dramatic. He provides practical advice on accessing infrared light therapy—ranging from clinical LED arrays and red‑light beds to infrared saunas—and stresses the importance of working with clinicians experienced in photodynamic modalities. He acknowledges current limitations (single‑center, small sample, lack of multi‑center trials) and points listeners to further resources, including MedCram videos and study links in the show notes. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to subscribe, share, and explore the DRANOW website for additional long‑COVID content.
Chapters
So the people in the treatment group, shorter time in the hospital, always a good thing, improvement in cardiopulmonary functions, oxygen saturation, the movement of air, heart rate, blood pressure, and then they looked at blood counts as well. So biochemical markers. Light therapy, photodynamic therapy. Can this help long COVID? Let's get into it. Photodynamic therapy is a huge range of therapies. We'll talk a little bit about that. But basically, the idea is that light wavelengths can have biological effects, not just on the plants for photosynthesis, et cetera, but also on other creatures like us humans. We know, for example, that vitamin D is activated by sunlight on our skin. at least in the beginning of its biochemistry. It has some other steps it has to go through. And we know that light does other things beyond vision, obviously, in humans. So when it comes to long COVID, my story of, you know, coming to the idea of photodynamic therapy and considering, et cetera, in chronic illness and long COVID was that my past, earlier incarnations, I used to be involved in the optics and photodynamic world. more from the laboratory point of view. And I also used to teach some really— you're either into it or very boring— the mathematics of optics, et cetera. So, I was very familiar with spectrophotometry and wavelengths and all that. Well, early in my career as a physician, I looked into certain types of phototherapies and things. And phototherapies are done and there's FDA-approved photodynamic therapies. And a lot of them are in the realm of dermatology and a couple other specialties. So they're not really widely used, maybe a little more widely used in Asia and Europe, at least in my personal experience in those areas. But because of that background, when I started to see some of the more modern uses of photodynamic therapy, you know, going back 10 or 15 years, I thought, well, this makes a lot of sense. And there wasn't previously, you know, a whole lot of this available. So because of this background, kind of understanding a little bit around optics and the physics of moving light around and all that, I took that background and sort of dusted it off, and then I looked at, well, what, what do we have in modern photodynamic therapy? And I started to look into that and we started to use it clinically and, and the, the rest goes on. Now, the thing with this is, okay, so that's cool history. How's it help someone with long COVID or COVID? Well, again, much like with, we talked about, you know, IV therapy or other stuff like that. The photodynamic interventions are now starting to be studied, and mostly in COVID response to the body's response to COVID, at least as far as I can find at the moment. I don't think we have much in the long COVID realm as far as studies, but I just want to say, I'm going to share a particular study that was very, very hopeful for everyone, that if something works in the acute COVID setting, It tends to also be beneficial in the long COVID patient. But if it's one of these that helps the body recover from the insult, whether you're closer to the COVID infection or longer further away, then it's helpful. So the research study I want to talk to you about just to illustrate that people are looking into this is germane. It was actually, you know, I believe hospitalized, yes, hospitalized COVID patients. So this is about COVID and pretty sick people. If you extrapolate that over which is always dangerous to extrapolate, but in my experience with people with Long COVID and other chronic illness, if something works on a particular part of the problem in the acute phase, probably going to be helpful in the chronic phase if used appropriately. So let's look at this study, and I will link the study in the show notes. You'll have that in the description either below the YouTube or in the show notes on the Pod Burners, and we'll get those out there for you. And I'm also going to link some YouTubes from some Really, really wonderful, smart, brilliant communicators in the medical world who have looked into this with a much finer comb detail than I have. They're great. So I'll put links to those guys too. But here's the thing, they did a study. Now, you always think, well, where do these ideas come from? Like light therapy and COVID, like who's going to do that? And I remember because we were using early in COVID, you know, a few years ago, we were using photodynamic therapy with acute COVID, uh, there were a lot of people that really didn't understand it. And, you know, it was, I saw people, you know, posting about it and being called quacks and all sorts of other stuff, uh, largely just because it, like, it just doesn't make any sense. Right. So here's the story of, of this light therapy and COVID. There was a really wonderful publication and we'll, we'll link this too, uh, where they looked at what could we do with, uh, with COVID damage, spike protein damage, et cetera. Especially in heart and lungs, right? Because if you lose your heart and lungs, you lose you. And a lot of people, especially with, you know, some of the earlier variants, a lot of cardiopulmonary problems. So they started to look from a basic science and an in vitro point of view, so that's not humans, at what if we did these wavelengths that we already use for other things, like we said, dermatology, neurology, a little bit other stuff. So we already know to use these, but we've never used them with COVID spike protein damage, all that stuff. So they said, well, what would happen? So this is basic science and then this in vitro research. And they said, well, at these wavelengths, we saw this happen and it was all very positive with the effect of the infection on the tissue. So then this group that I'm going to report on here basically took it and said, well, that probably wouldn't hurt anybody if we did it. We've got patients in the hospital. Why don't we do an actual— Study. randomized controlled trial with humans. So this again gets you closer to the quote-unquote ultimate gold standard for therapies, which is, you know, a double-blinded placebo-controlled randomized controlled trial. Now, this was single-blinded, kind of like the hyperbaric one, because the operators did need to know who was getting just the vest with, you know, no power going to it and who was getting the powered-up vest. So it's single-blinded, but It was randomized. So, and I just glanced down here so I don't misquote anything. So in their results section, they said in the LED group— so what they did is they gave, they actually homemade or hospital-made this special vest. And it looks a lot like, almost like a flak vest you see in combat and stuff like that. So it's a vest, but it's a little Bulky, because on the inside they have a particular light array of particular infrared-generating lights. So if you've ever seen an infrared pad where, you know, you get a pad that's like, you know, 1 foot by 2 foot and it's got all these little lights on it, and so these, you know, hundreds of little lights, that's a light array. And depending on what those lights are tuned to, the LEDs, you get a different wavelength coming out. So they had a particular wavelength and it was The same, or let's say similar to the earlier studies, and it was real similar to what we use in other settings, like I said, dermatology and other stuff. So basically, okay, the LED group, so they put this vest on both and you can't tell. So if you have infrared light, you can't see it. You can't tell in any way whether they have turned it on or not, and that's part of why it's such a bulky suit because you can't see into it. Okay, so they put it on the people and they did a particular number of treatments and They looked at the group that got the placebo, so they wore the vest with no power, and then the people got the treatment, and they said, was there a difference? So, the people in the treatment group, shorter time in the hospital, always a good thing, and then statistically, all is important, especially when you have a smaller treatment group, that's statistically significant improvement in cardiopulmonary functions, oxygen saturation, the movement of air, and there's a bunch of parameters on movement of air. Heart rate, blood pressure, and then they looked at blood counts as well, so biochemical markers. And after treatment in the treatment group, there were decreases in the white blood cell families. You can take a look at it if you want that level of granularity. And so their conclusion was, well, this was fairly cheap to set this up, pretty easy to do, and it's probably gonna be a good adjunct therapy. Now, just like when we talked about hyperbaric medicine or all the other stuff we we talked about, any interventional therapy is generally speaking going to be an add-on, it's gonna be a synergist. But when we're talking about long COVID, and so we can take, remember what I tend to see anyway in the chronically ill long COVID patient is if something was helpful with spike protein damage or fatigue or any of these other things in the acute COVID setting, probably gonna be useful elsewhere. And that's what we've seen with photodynamic therapy across the board. Well, when we use these things in the long COVID setting, It's an, like I say, an add-on or synergistic therapy, and it can help the patient who's stuck move forward or help the patient who's been sick a really long time get their system working again so that they can start to heal better. So it may not have exactly the same quick effects it did in the acute COVID patients, but as we have seen with certain intravenous therapies, hyperbaric, et cetera, what happens in the chronic long COVID or spike protein damage patient or whatever Is that these things promote the body in its healing, which is the only way out of a long COVID. So you might say, well, okay, that's cool. Are there a lot of centers, you know, doing photodynamic therapy? And the answer would be, well, there's more and more all the time, but there aren't as many. So what I would recommend is a couple of things if you want to look into it. Number one, I'm going to put links in the description to— there's a A YouTube channel that I follow because these guys are great, MedCram. And I believe both are pulmonologists. The one who usually speaks is a pulmonologist, very, very smart dude. And they've gone into light as medicine. And you think, you know, I mean, you think pulmonologists, you know, they're dealing with lung things. Obviously, they've been very busy with COVID Light as medicine—that sounds really out there. Well, no, it's not that out there. And what they get into is talking about the mechanics of why does vitamin D help? Why does melatonin help? Now, why are these LED therapies and other stuff helping. So I'll link, I'll link their stuff. They go way more deeply into it than, than we have time to here. So I don't want to redo their work, but I just need to give them some props for the great education that they do. But the bottom line is, is that there are now places where you can get red light infrared type therapies, which will get you in the neighborhood of this. So even if, you know, the, and this Uh, vest thing, it was made by the hospital. So they're, you know, they, they're not selling them or something like that. Now there are LED, uh, infrared arrays that people get that's like, uh, you know, red light LED beds that go into infrared and there's pads and all sorts of other stuff. And now there's even, uh, you know, sauna setups where you, you can heat up and you can also get, uh, some infrared. The bottom line is you want to, just like with IV or hyperbaric or whatever, you want to work with people, uh, who've done it before, who know what they're doing. And again, you know, has this been done on thousands of people and have we randomized it over multiple centers and all that? No, no, we haven't had time to do that yet, but it's a relatively inexpensive intervention. Its biology and its physics make some sense based on the way we use photodynamic therapy for other things. And I think as a synergist and something to help the body move through long COVID, uh, it's reasonably accessible, uh, a little bit more now than it used to be. And it's something to look into. Now, we may, in other sections of this, get into other photodynamic therapies, but I didn't really want to muddy the waters because I really want to talk about the infrared-type therapy using LED arrays that this particular study had, the 2 studies I mentioned, had brought out. Photodynamic therapy can be a lot less complex, you can walk outside, or it can be a lot more complex where we actually will use Uh, endolaser, so lasers inside of the body, uh, and deliver different wavelengths of light for different medical purposes. That's a whole other thing. And obviously that you have to work with somebody who's really highly trained to do that sort of thing. Well, I'm Dr. Paul Anderson. This is Medicine Health Podcast. It's been, uh, a lot of fun talking to you guys. Again, this is, uh, started to be a 16-part series on long COVID. We're getting so much engagement and questions. I'm probably gonna kick that out to a number of other sections on long COVID, cuz it's a lot. It's a lot of fun to look at the research and bring it to you, but also to hopefully inform it in some clinical way from those of us who are treating people with chronic illness, which could include long COVID. Whatever, whether PodBurner or YouTube or whatever, please like, share, subscribe, do the notifications, because sometimes the algorithms shove us over to the side when we talk about COVID or long COVID. That's just the way the world is, so notifications. My hub website where you can learn about, like, you know, the newsletters, And all the links to all these different media and all that stuff is dranow.com. D-R-A-N-O-W dot com. Go there. Got links if you're a healthcare practitioner. There's links for you guys if you're looking for newsletters or media. It's it's all in there, so it's all in one place. But please do check out the YouTube channel if you're not watching this on YouTube. That community is growing, and we really try to do. As good a quality education as we possibly can. Thank you very much. I'm really glad that you listened. I'll see you all on the next
