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Radiation Therapy: Literally hundred of thousands of medical workers exposed to frequent low-level radiation have experienced similar positive health benefits

Low-Level Radiation and Health



Low-Level Radiation and HealthRadiation is a natural process that is occurring at all times all around us. It is measured in units called millirems (mrems). The average person experiences a dose of about 620 mrems per year. International Standards consider exposure to as much as 5,000 mrems (5 rem) a year safe for those who work with and around radioactive material. There is a myth that all ionizing radiation such as X-rays, CT scans, gamma rays, nuclear radiation, etc., is harmful to our health, no matter how low the dose. This, however, is no more true than that the Earth is flat or that one can turn base metals into gold through alchemy. Like every other agent that has been in the environment of developing bacterial, plant and animal life over the last 3 billion years or so, radiation has three ranges, too little, too much and just right. 1

There is nothing intrinsically evil or unnatural about radioactivity

There is nothing intrinsically evil or unnatural about radioactivity. If you're one of those folks who eats food and drinks water, you already consume radioactivity from natural, non-fallout-related sources—at least four chest X-rays' worth each year. To be clear: it's not that your food releases X-rays per se; it's that the different types of radioactivity in food do the same amount of damage to your tissues as four X-rays would. There's radioactivity in Brazil nuts, in coffee, in red meat. Bananas contain enough radioactive potassium-40 that large shipments have even been defined as a fanciful measure of everyday radioactivity called the BED, or banana equivalent dose. 2 There are ranges of concentration for both oxygen and water that are not only healthy but absolutely necessary for health. So it is for radiation: too little and immune systems fail to develop; too much causes radiation sickness and possible death, but in the 'just right' range, radiation lowers, rather than raises the risk of cancer, and prolongs life. This has been proven in hundreds and hundreds of experiments on animals and epidemiological observations on humans. 3 Recent research has shown radiation to be potentially helpful in a number of areas: Alzheimer's disease, COVID-19, MRSA, and longer life span.

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Alzheimer's

A small new study found remarkable improvements in communication and behavior in three patients with severe Alzheimer's disease after they received a low-dose radiation treatment. More research will have to be done to confirm these results and to test whether similar benefits could be achieved in people with milder dementia.4 In this recent research, doctors in Canada decided to try the same approach that earlier had shown promising results with an 81- year-old woman with severe Alzheimer's. The four patients in this case who all had severe Alzheimers but were in stable condition, were each given three treatments of low-dose radiation via CT scan, paced two weeks apart. The patients were also given tests of their cognition before and after, while close relatives of theirs were interviewed and observed during their interactions with them. In the objective tests, none of the patients seemed to show concrete improvements in cognition or overall function. But three of the four patients' families reported seeing real positive changes in their behavior and ability to talk to them. In one case, the patient's daughter remarked, “He spoke to me right away and gave me multiple kisses-real kisses like years ago.” In another case, an 82-year-old woman reported feeling grateful for her recovery. Qualitative data (descriptions, photos, and videos) from immediate relatives and other suggested remarkable improvements in cognition and behavior.5 In these individuals, it's possible that low-dose radiation positively stimulates the body's immune response, reversing or preventing some of the damage caused by chronic neurological ailments, like Alzheimers. Radiation might also help directly break up deposits of amyloid , one of the two major proteins that builds up in the brains of Alzheimers patients.4 The authors are careful to frame their research as a pilot study—an early but promising test of an hypothesis. But these aren't the first researchers to argue that low-dose radiation could become an Alzheimer's treatment.6

COVID-19

Human medical trials have been tried on severely ill Covid-19 patients using low doses of radiation. Although a very small sample size, the results were quite extraordinary. Researchers at Emory University Hospital, led by Dr. Mohammad Khan, treated five Covid-19 patients with severe pneumonia who were requiring supplemental oxygen and whose health was visibly deteriorating. Their median age was 90 with a range from 64 to 94, four were female, four were African-American, and one was Caucasian.7 These patients were given a single dose of radiation (1.5 Gy, or 150 Rad) to both lungs, delivered front and back beam configuration. Patients were in and out of the Radiotherapy Department in 10 to 15 minutes. This was not a low dose of radiation, but it's only equivalent to 15 years of living in Ramsar, Iran, and 8 years on a Brazilian Monazite beach. Despite high natural background radiation fields the frequency of cancer and the lifespan of people living in the Ramsar area is not noticeably different when compared to other general populations around the world. 8 Within 24 hours, four of the patients showed rapid improvement in oxygenation and mental status (more awake, alert and talkative) and were being discharged from the hospital 12 days later. Blood tests and repeated imaging of the lungs confirmed that the radiation was safe and effective, and did not cause adverse effects—no acute skin, pulmonary, gastrointestinal or genitourinary toxicities. In theory, the shot of radiation is not 'killing the virus' but is changing the immune response and may be able to stop the deadly cascade of the cytokine storm. 9 This is not something new to treat pneumonia. Research from the early 1900s demonstrated improved survival rate as high as 90 percent using low dose radiation to treat patients with pneumonia in the pre-antibiotic era.10


MRSA

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a cause of high staph infection that is difficult to treat because of resistance to some antibiotics. MRSA most often causes skin infections. In some cases, it causes pneumonia and other infections. If left untreated, MRSA infections can become severe and cause sepsis, the body's extreme response to an infection. Bacterial cultures were incubated at 35 C for 24 hours. Kill rates of ultraviolet radiation were 99.9 percent for MRSA at 5, 8, 15, 30, 45, 60 seconds and 100 percent at 90 and 120 seconds.11

Longer Life

One island in the Aegean, Ikaria, has low but significant levels of radioactivity. The island is essentially divided into two geologically distinct zones: the east, formed of sedimentary metamorphic rock, and the west, which lies on a bed of granite that leaks radioactive radon into its famous springs. Amazingly, the longevity of the population appears to be highest in those slightly radioactive regions, while the people in the east have slightly lower lifespans. This is a direct tie-in with the radiation hormesis model which posits that exposure of the human body to low levels of ionizing radiation is beneficial and protects the human body against deleterious effects of high levels of radiation. 12) For comparison, the Rocky Mountain States have a lower prevalence of cancer death compared to the Gulf States, yet the background radiation in Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico is around three times as high as the natural background in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In industrialized countries, we now treat more than one million patients with radiotherapy, including 50 percent of all US cancer patients, with obvious positive results. Literally hundred of thousands of medical workers exposed to frequent low-level radiation have experienced similar positive health benefits. 13

References

  1. Bill Sacks, “When epidemiology without biology is very bad for your health,” Priorities, July 2016
  2. Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath, (New York, Little, Brown and Company, 2017)
  3. Bill Sacks et al., “Epidemiology without biology: false paradigms, unfounded assumptions, and specious statistics in radiation science,” Biol. Theory, 2016; 11:69-101
  4. Ed Cara, “Three Alzheimer's patients were able to communicate again after experimental radiation treatment,”gizmodo.com, May 6, 2021
  5. Jerry M. Cuttler et al., “Low doses of ionizing radiation as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease: a pilot study,” Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 80, 1119, 2021
  6. Kelly Ceyzeriat et al., “Low-dose radiation therapy: a new treatment strategy for Alzheimer's disease?”, Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 74, 411, 2020
  7. James Conca, “Preliminary data suggests low-does radiation may be successful treatment for severe Covid-19,” forbes.com, June 12, 2020
  8. Mehdi Sohrabi, “International Conference on High Levels of Natural Radiation Held at Ramsar, Islamic Republic of Iran,” Nucl. Tracks Radiation Meas., 18, 357 (1991)
  9. Joanne Nova, “Low dose radiation may save people from coronavirus,” joannenova.com.au, June 14, 2020
  10. Edward J. Calabrese,, “How radiotherapy was historically used to treat pneumonia: could it be useful today?”, Yale Journal of Biology, 86(4), 555, December 2013
  11. T. A. Conner-Kerr et al., “The effects of ultraviolet radiation on antibiotic-resistant bacteria in vitro,” Ostomy Wound Manage, 44, 50, October 1998
  12. Janet Lathrop, “Environmental toxicologist hopes hormesis hypothesis may be acknowledged by US regulatory action,” umass.edu, July 21, 2015
  13. Jay Lehr, “Low-level radiation benefits health,” Environment & Climate News, August 2011

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Jack Dini -- Bio and Archives

Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology.  He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.


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