Research in Hungary by DrMarta FenyoPhD and Kira Samilova into alternatives to lasers for healing led to the discovery of the effectiveness of polarised light and the creation of the Bioptron®, a device used for skin disorders and wound healing.
In 1981 Hungarian biophysicist, Dr Marta FenyoPh.D discovered that polarized light stimulated natural defense mechanisms. She is a physicist, PhD in biophysics. She has several inventions, for example, the “Method and equipment for the stimulation of biological processes” by other words, biostimulation by polarised light. This invention won the main award in 1985 on the World Exhibition of Young Inventors in Pvlovdiv and a gold medal in Brussels Eureka in 1996.
Dr Marta Fenyo PhD
Incidentally, the type of polarisation in this unit is completely different to the type of polarisation used in ambient-lighting products such as those from Clearvision and the Aura Corporation, both of which are often used in hospital environments.
The various research undertaken on the effects of different wavelengths of light (i.e. different colours) have proven that, for every wavelength and frequency of light, there is a reaction. Different wavelengths penetrate the body in different ways and promote different reactions but it is documented that 60% of what happens is understood – the remaining 40% is still left to be discovered. A practical application of the effect of coloured light on the skin is the use of blue and red light in both fluorescent or LED equipment to heal recurring ulcers.
Light information is also received independently of the eyes. Research carried out over the past 15 years, primarily in Hungary, but also in Sweden and Germany, has demonstrated unequivocally that polarized light, applied through the skin or directly to the blood, is biostimulatory - in other words it has a direct influence on cellular function. Recent studies suggest that it is also immunostimulatory.
It can be seen therefore that light, which we thought was just used for vision, can directly affect just about every biological function we care to name. The necessary anatomical structures and physiological processes are all present.
Polarized light therapy
Polarized light therapy shows tremendous promise in the treatment of a wide range of conditions both in humans and animals, a substantial evidence base for its efficacy having been built up by DrMarta Fenyo PhD in Hungary over the past 8 years. Dr Marta Fenyo PhD patented a treatment lamp back in 1982 but somewhat unwittingly sold her rights to a Swiss group a few years later. Simple hand-held treatment lamps are now manufactured and sold under the name Bioptron®, but these are of fixed intensity and only small areas of the skin can be treated at any one time. Larger lamps are now available at a price but have the same technical drawbacks. There is a clear need now for quality clinical research to be undertaken into polarized light, and for optimum treatment parameters in terms of light intensity, wavelength of light and treatment duration to be established. Helionix Technologies is closely involved in this area and is also developing more versatile treatment suitable for clinical trials.
HISTORY OF LIGHT AND COLOUR THERAPY
Virtually all the major civilizations recognized the importance of light in healing. The Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians all practised therapeutic sun-bathing. The Greek city of Heliopolis (which means 'City of the Sun') was renowned for its healing temples and light rooms. The windows were covered with specially dyed cloths and the different colours were believed to have different healing powers.
In more recent times, Augustus Pleasanton used blue light in 1876 to stimulate secretory glands and the nervous system; he found it to be very effective in treating a variety of diseases, especially those accompanied by pain. A couple of years later, in 1878, Edwin Babbitt published The Principles of Light and Colour. He developed the Chromodisc for treating patients with specific colours and also Solar Elixirs, made by irradiating water with sunlight and filtering it with special filters. He found that the 'sensitized' water had special healing properties - solar tinctures are still manufactured today and used very effectively by colour therapists.
During the 1890s, ultra-violet was discovered to have a powerful anti-bacterial action. In 1903 a Dane, Neils Finsen, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in treating skin tuberculosis with ultra-violet light. In 1920 Dinshah Ghadiali, an Indian, developed the Spectro-Chrome system of healing, after 23 years of exhaustive scientific evaluation. This was based on the relationship between colours and specific areas of the body. One of his most vocal supporters was the Chief Surgeon at Philadelphia Woman's Hospital, Dr Kate Baldwin. She used Dinshah's methods for many years and is quoted as saying "...after nearly 37 years of active hospital and private practice in medicine and surgery, I can produce quicker and more accurate results with colours than with any or all other methods combined - and with less strain on the patient...".
While Dinshah was focusing on applying light directly to the body, Harry Riley Spitler was looking at treating the body by way of the eyes. During the 1920s and 1930s he developed the principles of syntonics (from the word 'syntony' - to bring into balance) in which light is used to balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. His College of Syntonic Optometry is now at the forefront of developments in ocular phototherapy. Spitler is generally considered to be the father of coloured light phototherapy.
Sun therapy (heliotherapy) was very popular in Europe from around the turn of the century until the late 1930s. One of its foremost practitioners was Dr Auguste Rollier who established a sun-therapy clinic in Leysin in the Swiss Alps. He treated all sorts of patients, very effectively, particularly those with TB - his patients would be wheeled out onto a large sundeck for specific periods each day.
In the 1930s, Charing Cross Hospital in London used 'sun-lamps' to treat circulatory diseases, anaemia, varicose veins, heart disease and degenerative disorders. Then in the early 1940s in the USA, Emmitt Knott developed a very interesting device - a haemoirradiation machine. He went a stage further than Dinshah and Spitler and administered light to the whole body by irradiating just a small volume of blood. Knott found that irradiation of just 50±100cc of blood with ultra-violet light and retransfusion back into the patient had a dramatic impact in the treatment of puerperal sepsis, peritonitis, encephalitis, polio and herpes simplex. By 1947, somewhere in the region of 80 000 patients had been treated with reported success rates of 50-80%.
But then the trail runs cold. ...the era of antibiotics was ushered in after World War2 and the iron grip of the pharmaceutical industry took hold. In the USA, non-drug treatment strategies were increasingly outlawed - by the sponsors of the American Medical Association! The age of the clinical trial had arrived. Treatments that could not be supported by 'scientific' fact were immediately suspect and out went homoeopathy, naturopathy and light therapy.
We pick the trail up again, outside the reach of the tentacles of the FDA (the US Food & Drug Administration, responsible for the approval of medicines) with John Ott, who was a banker with a passion for time-lapse photography. He turned his hobby into a full time investigation of the ecology of light and demonstrated, unequivocally, that different wavelengths of light have specific influences on cellular function in both plants and animals. He coined the term 'mal-illumination' and suggested that we may be subjecting ourselves to this by spending so much of our time under artificial lights - rather like a poor diet leads to malnutrition. Ott helped develop the first 'full-spectrum' fluorescent tube and in the early 1970s undertook a study on the effects of 'full-spectrum' light on school children. Behaviour and academic performance improved markedly. This work was further developed by Fritz Hollwich in Germany, who discovered significantly increased levels of stress hormones (ACTH & cortisol) in people working under artificial 'cool-white' tubes. Further to his findings, 'cool-white' fluorescent tubes are now banned in German medical establishments. In Canada, in the early 1980s, Harry Wohlfarth took things a step further by validating Hollwich's findings and examining the effects of different colours on classroom performance.
With light therapy driven underground in the USA, the time was ripe for some KGB skulduggery! Emmitt Knott's haemo-irradiation machine re-surfaced in St Petersburg (Leningrad). For the past 20 years Professor Kira Samoilova, a cell biologist has been developing the concept of haemo-irradiation with her colleagues at the Russian National Academy of Sciences. They have been using a little machine known as the Isolda for years and literally hundreds of thousands of patients have been treated with it in Russia. The technique is to extract a small quantity of blood, treat it with either ultra-violet or laser light for about 10-15 minutes and retransfuse it into the patient.
The reported results are astonishing. It is used primarily in support of standard therapies for a wide range of conditions including 'suppurative-inflammatory conditions, infections, cardiovascular, auto-immune, dermatologic and oncologic diseases, as well as ulcers, burns, traumas, intoxications, etc.'. It is also used as a sole therapy for ulcers, the detoxification of addicts and such things as viral pneumonia. The treatment is still virtually unheard of in this country but there is a strong tradition of haemo-irradiation in Germany and a number of different devices are on the market there.
Where funds for health care are minimal and creative minds abound, the lateral step to light-based therapies is perhaps a lot easier. Budapest in Hungary has also been the site of significant work in this area. For the past 16 years or so a Hungarian biophysicist, Dr Marta Fenyo PhD, has been researching Light and colour therapy and researching the effects of polarized light on the body. The results of her work are very impressive and underline the potential for light therapy as a mainstream therapeutic application. Dr Fenyo has treated thousands of patients with leg ulcers, a variety of skin disorders, soft-tissue disorders and many other diverse conditions, using highly polarized light. She has demonstrated unequivocally that polarized light is both bio-stimulatory and immuno-stimulatory. It has a direct and measurable effect at the cellular level.
"The streets of Budapest still echo with the lives and legends of bygone centuries. But now this fabled city may be making a different kind of history... because Budapest is the home to what some say is a breakthrough in the use of light for healing."
(INTERVIEW JOSEPHINE FIKO) "I used it on the severe scarring I had from the Caesarian section when I delivered my baby and only after a few treatments my skin became beautiful and the scars almost invisible."
Josephine Fiko is talking about the results of her visits to this place -- the BIOPTRON® Clinic. What draws Josephine and others here is the Bioptron Laser.
(INTERVIEW MARTA FENYO, PH.D. BIOPTRON® INVENTOR) "At the beginning I dealt with laser light in my Ph.D. work and I helped Professor Meshture who treated with laser light leg ulcers."
Dr. Marta Fenyo is a biophysicist and inventor of the Bioptron® Laser. The Bioptron® delivers rays of light that carry the full spectrum of colors... without any damaging ultraviolet rays. It's called polarized light.
(INTERVIEW MARTA FENYO) "So I came to the idea that the polarization is the particular feature of the laser light which is responsible for the bio stimulation, so this was the beginning."
Dr. Fenyo says biostimulation affects the membranes that cover each cell in our body. The result is accelerated healing. Meszarosne Ebergenyi came to the clinic for treatment of a condition that virtually kept her off her feet.
(INTERVIEW PATIENT) "My legs were so painful and sensitive to the touch that I used to have to pull up the corners of my robe and tuck them in the belt to keep them from touching my legs. I could hardly bear the pain... The ointments I was taking from the dermatologist were not helping... That's when I decided to come here. After only one treatment I felt a great improvement. After my 3rd treatment, it started to look and feel much better. I have had 15 treatments now and think I will only need two or three more to be completely healed. Now it's all gone! There's no swelling anymore! "
Dr. Fenyo has microscopically studied the effect of polarized light and biostimulation. This image shows a wound before light therapy: the surface is full of bacteria outside the cell. After treatment, the bacteria outside the cell has all but disappeared so healing can begin.
(INTERVIEW JOSEPHINE FIKO) "One year ago I came to the clinic because after childbirth my hormone functions changed and my skin became very oily and I started to break out in acne... I had to go everyday for two weeks and the inflammation went away and my skin began to heal."
Dr. Fenyo opened her clinic in Budapest in 1985 and has treated over 20,000 patients. And Fenyo is also experimenting with the use of polarized light for cancer treatment. She's working with scientists at a local university. The tests here involved dogs stricken with cancer. The results showed that dogs treated with polarized light before surgery healed dramatically faster than those who did not receive the treatments.
(INTERVIEW MARTA FENYO) "The dream of my life if possible is... to improve the quality of life of those people who suffer of the cancer and this polarized light method could be in their case a harmless and painless and very pleasant treating method in the future."
The Bioptron is in use for medical purposes in some countries of Europe but in the U.S. and many other places it's approved for cosmetic purposes only. Dr. Fenyo hopes one day to be able to fund a major test of the Bioptron's medical properties. But until then, she says it's all she can do to keep up with the steady stream of patients who find their way to her clinic in Budapest in search of the healing power of pure light.
IMPORTANT MILE STONES:
Year 1876 - Augustus Pleasanton used blue light in 1876 to stimulate secretory glands and the nervous system.
Year 1878 - Edwin Babbitt published The Principles of Light and Colour. He developed the Chromodisc for treating patients with specific colours and also Solar Elixirs, made by irradiating water with sunlight and filtering it with special filters. He found that the 'sensitized' water had special healing properties - solar tinctures are still manufactured today and used very effectively by colour therapists.
Year 1903 - Neils Finsen a Dane, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in treating skin tuberculosis with ultra-violet light.
Year 1920 - Dinshah Ghadiali, an Indian, developed the Spectro-Chrome system of healing, after 23 years of exhaustive scientific evaluation. This was based on the relationship between colours and specific areas of the body.
Years 1920 to 1930 - Harry Riley Spitler developed the principles of syntonics (from the word 'syntony' - to bring into balance) in which light is used to balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, a way of treating the body by way of the eyes.
Year 1981 - Hungarian biophysicist, Marta Fenyo discovered that polarized light stimulated natural defense mechanisms.
