whygetfat on Nostr: "The retina is really interesting, because it's got more mitochondria than any other ...
"The retina is really interesting, because it's got more mitochondria than any other cell in your body. […] Your retina burns energy at an enormous rate. […]
"When mitochondria really run down, they start to become associated with diseases that we know as diseases of aging, such as Parkinson's disease, macular degeneration. They've all got a relationship with mitochondria, […] the battery, the powerhouse, in the cell.
"If mitochondria are truly batteries, […] can we recharge the battery and avoid diseases of aging? Or if not avoid diseases of aging, can we slow the pace down of aging? […] What is the possibility of recharging?
"Well in the last 30 years we learned something new about mitochondria: they react to light. They are very sensitive to light. Certain ranges of red light, when given on their own, can recharge mitochondria, allowing them to provide more energy. That's great news.
[…]
We did an experiment. The experiment was, what happens if we take someone whose vision is declining, and we give them a burst of red light which recharges the mitochondria in our eye? […]
"This was a really little simple experiment. This is one of the postdocs in our lab, Pardis. The device she's holding up in front of her eye is a red-light torch, a specific wavelength. […] We found that after we did that, we reduced the threshold for color vision by 17% when those colors were bluish, and by 12% when those colors were reddish.
"So we can recharge the battery and we can improve aged vision.
[…]
"The other thing that we can do is we can reduce the rate of cell death in the retina with these red lights. That means reducing the rate of geographic atrophy. […] Here's a nice story. It's a great story.
"There are children born with mitochondrial disease. This is one of them. These children are an active part of our research program. Because their mitochondria don't work they can't control the muscles in their body. Their faces become a little distorted and they can't open their eyes properly. They have ptosis.
"So this little girl, Eva, her parents came to us and asked if they could use red light. This was an entirely a choice for them. […] After the third photograph (photographs taken each week), Eva started to improve. And you can see by the last [sixth] photograph on the right that Eva now can open her eyes, she can walk to school, and she's doing swimming lessons. […]
"But the important point that I would like to get over to you is that we can improve mitochondrial function.
"Of course, the big question for this audience is, can we use red light to improve vision in AMD? Well, we had a clinical trial and we failed. But with everything that doesn't work first time you've got to ask why. Why didn't it work?
"Well, we only had a very very short time period to do the study, about a year. As most of you will know AMD is a long disease. We need to follow you over a long period of time. The second reason why we think it didn't work was because the patient population that we had at Moorfields all had rather well-established disease. We didn't grab the patients when they first had their first symptoms of AMD, and that's where we should have got in.
"But not everything is lost. While we may have failed, others are showing some signs of improvement.
[…]
"This doesn't solve AMD. It might, some of these devices may help slow it. But we have to be very, very cautious, and we have to keep our expectations relatively low."
Glen Jeffery, PhD @ 02:18–04:28, 06:47–08:09, 10:00–12:32, 18:21–18:33 https://youtu.be/R9kF0gIyDp0&t=138
"When mitochondria really run down, they start to become associated with diseases that we know as diseases of aging, such as Parkinson's disease, macular degeneration. They've all got a relationship with mitochondria, […] the battery, the powerhouse, in the cell.
"If mitochondria are truly batteries, […] can we recharge the battery and avoid diseases of aging? Or if not avoid diseases of aging, can we slow the pace down of aging? […] What is the possibility of recharging?
"Well in the last 30 years we learned something new about mitochondria: they react to light. They are very sensitive to light. Certain ranges of red light, when given on their own, can recharge mitochondria, allowing them to provide more energy. That's great news.
[…]
We did an experiment. The experiment was, what happens if we take someone whose vision is declining, and we give them a burst of red light which recharges the mitochondria in our eye? […]
"This was a really little simple experiment. This is one of the postdocs in our lab, Pardis. The device she's holding up in front of her eye is a red-light torch, a specific wavelength. […] We found that after we did that, we reduced the threshold for color vision by 17% when those colors were bluish, and by 12% when those colors were reddish.
"So we can recharge the battery and we can improve aged vision.
[…]
"The other thing that we can do is we can reduce the rate of cell death in the retina with these red lights. That means reducing the rate of geographic atrophy. […] Here's a nice story. It's a great story.
"There are children born with mitochondrial disease. This is one of them. These children are an active part of our research program. Because their mitochondria don't work they can't control the muscles in their body. Their faces become a little distorted and they can't open their eyes properly. They have ptosis.
"So this little girl, Eva, her parents came to us and asked if they could use red light. This was an entirely a choice for them. […] After the third photograph (photographs taken each week), Eva started to improve. And you can see by the last [sixth] photograph on the right that Eva now can open her eyes, she can walk to school, and she's doing swimming lessons. […]
"But the important point that I would like to get over to you is that we can improve mitochondrial function.
"Of course, the big question for this audience is, can we use red light to improve vision in AMD? Well, we had a clinical trial and we failed. But with everything that doesn't work first time you've got to ask why. Why didn't it work?
"Well, we only had a very very short time period to do the study, about a year. As most of you will know AMD is a long disease. We need to follow you over a long period of time. The second reason why we think it didn't work was because the patient population that we had at Moorfields all had rather well-established disease. We didn't grab the patients when they first had their first symptoms of AMD, and that's where we should have got in.
"But not everything is lost. While we may have failed, others are showing some signs of improvement.
[…]
"This doesn't solve AMD. It might, some of these devices may help slow it. But we have to be very, very cautious, and we have to keep our expectations relatively low."
Glen Jeffery, PhD @ 02:18–04:28, 06:47–08:09, 10:00–12:32, 18:21–18:33 https://youtu.be/R9kF0gIyDp0&t=138