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Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

astro.org

41–50 of 80 posts

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#41
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a theory (theory! very theoretical) that the risk from radiation does not scale linearly and that low doses of radiation might actually be protective. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

The residential radon mitigation industry does not like this.

radon radiation is primarily alpha. That is never good in any dose.

>In this multicenter trial, researchers enrolled 114 patients with moderate-to-mild knee osteoarthritis across three academic centers in Korea. Participants were randomly assigned to receive one of two radiation regimens — a very low dose (0.3 Gy) or a low dose (3 Gy)

This is gamma. Those doses are "low" because delivery here is localized. If given full-body the 3Gy has something like 25-50% mortality.

The cancer patient are delivered like 20-80Gy into the tumor and surrounding tissues which just kills cells outright.

The point is that "radiation" is multiparametric.

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#42

This should be a reminder that we have no evidence that the Linear no threshold model of radiation exposure is accurate. In fact, we have compelling evidence against it. But due to rather aggressive lobbying effort by anti-nuclear activists, we are stuck with this idea for the time being. It's simply the default that was decided on as the most conservative option possible, but that's pretty much it. Radioactive baths…

Some anti-nuclear activists are against LNT because they think it understates the effect of low dose radiation.

The conservative approach would be to assume low dose radiation has the maximum effect not ruled out by evidence. This would be higher than predicted by LNT.

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#43
post #2

For centuries, in Bulgaria, since Roman times, people have been bathing in slightly radioactive water to treat osteoarthritis. I'm not sure how this is news or an invention when it's been around for centuries and has been the standard of care in Bulgaria for decades. There are sanatoriums and spa centers in Pavel Banya, Bulgaria [0], and I know many friends who go there once or twice a year for treatments and swear t…

Just because something has been done for hundreds of years does not mean it has been scientifically shown to actually do more than placebo. A lot of people do a lot of stuff that has been proven to do nothing detectable, and they still swear by it. "It has been done for hundreds of years" isn't a good argument. There is a reason "Appeal to tradition" is one of the more famous logical fallacies. Also: The radiation do…

Modern medicine is hardly logical where therapies are concerned. There is often not any coherent theory of why a therapy works and yet it may be commonly used in treatments. If you examine the literature supplied with your drugs, it often states "exact mechanism of action is unknown but yada yada". This is why there are double blind studies in medicine. Absent a theory, this is the only way to gauge the effectiveness of a therapy. Hence, if bathing in slightly radioactive waters has provided beneficial to people over a long period of time, you can't dismiss it as "appealing to tradition". It may need validation with a study but can't be ignored as just tradition.

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#44

This might be one of those cures that works like the old T-Gel shampoo (ie: carcinogenic coal tar that turned out to be immune-suppressing enough to prevent dandruff eventually caused cancer). Though, at the ages when Osteoarthritis shows up, it might be better to take on a smaller risk of monitor-able extremity cancer than the pretty large QoL reduction of severe arthritis.

There is a theory (theory! very theoretical) that the risk from radiation does not scale linearly and that low doses of radiation might actually be protective. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

It's probably reasonable to say that radiation actually being beneficial is very theoretical, but the linear no-threshold model of harm from radiation is definitely in the theoretical category too. It's used because it's very conservative, but evidence supporting it for low radiation dosages is very weak.

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#45
post #41
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The residential radon mitigation industry does not like this.

radon radiation is primarily alpha. That is never good in any dose. >In this multicenter trial, researchers enrolled 114 patients with moderate-to-mild knee osteoarthritis across three academic centers in Korea. Participants were randomly assigned to receive one of two radiation regimens — a very low dose (0.3 Gy) or a low dose (3 Gy) This is gamma. Those doses are "low" because delivery here is localized. If given f…

It's not really the radiation from radon itself which is the problem, but rather radon's daughters. Radon is a noble gas, so it's not going to accumulate in you and doesn't get much chance to do damage to people even if they inhale it; they'll just exhale it moments later before barely any of it can decay. But radon's daughters, the chain of atoms which are produced from the decay of radon and each other, aren't gases, so if stagnant air with radon sticks around it's going to 'rain' an atomic dust of radioactive isotopes which can accumulate and, if disturbed, can be inhaled and stick with people.

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#46
A recent Peter Attia Drive podcast has an interview with Dr. Sanjay Mehta, a radiation oncologist who has recently also started using low-dose radiation to treat arthritis. Empirically the results seem quite encouraging.

https://peterattiamd.com/sanjaymehta/

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#47
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we are going full circle now?

Radiation is good for you now, a little bit, as a treat.

Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.

J. Frank Parnell (from the movie Repo Man).

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#48

This might be one of those cures that works like the old T-Gel shampoo (ie: carcinogenic coal tar that turned out to be immune-suppressing enough to prevent dandruff eventually caused cancer). Though, at the ages when Osteoarthritis shows up, it might be better to take on a smaller risk of monitor-able extremity cancer than the pretty large QoL reduction of severe arthritis.

There is a theory (theory! very theoretical) that the risk from radiation does not scale linearly and that low doses of radiation might actually be protective. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

Perhaps the word you are looking for is "conjecture that the risk from radiation ..." ??

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#49
Exposure to radiation up-regulates genes involved in DNA repair pathways, genes associated with antioxidant defense (notably those downstream of the Nrf2 transcription factor) and autophagy-related genes (which are crucial for the degradation and recycling of cellular components).

Fasting does all those things, too -- without introducing random errors into one's DNA. Basically everyone under 40 should do regular fasts of some form, and those that do will probably derive no additional benefit from exposure to ionizing radiation, i.e., the type of radiation being promoted by the OP. (People older than 40 need to worry about losing muscle mass during a fast since old people find it very hard regain muscle mass once it it lost. Actually it is likely that only people over 60 or 65 might have to worry about muscle mass: experts disagree on the best cut-off age, and 40 years old's is the lowest I have seen.)

Three days of fasting has all of the benefits I list above, but there are risks to going completely without calories for that long, and actually our ancestors probably went without any access to calories for days almost never, but often endured stretches of days in which their calorie intake was less than a sustainable level, but not zero. To reduce the risks of going completely without calories for 3 days at a time, longevity researchers have devised the "fasting-mimicking diet", which give over the course of 5 days most or all of the benefits as eating no calories at all for 3 days. It restricts calories to about 800 calories per day with only 10% of that coming from protein and is the type of fasting that most people should be doing.

FMD requires no interaction with or prescription from the health-care industry and costs nothing except the time and attention needed to learn how to count calories if one has never done that before.

Re: Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis

#50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something has been done for hundreds of years does not mean it has been scientifically shown to actually do more than placebo. A lot of people do a lot of stuff that has been proven to do nothing detectable, and they still swear by it. "It has been done for hundreds of years" isn't a good argument. There is a reason "Appeal to tradition" is one of the more famous logical fallacies. Also: The radiation do…

Modern medicine is hardly logical where therapies are concerned. There is often not any coherent theory of why a therapy works and yet it may be commonly used in treatments. If you examine the literature supplied with your drugs, it often states "exact mechanism of action is unknown but yada yada". This is why there are double blind studies in medicine. Absent a theory, this is the only way to gauge the effectiveness…

The fact that it's been done over a long period of time does not prove that it's beneficial. As you say, that's why there are double-blind studies. If the only evidence of benefit is that it's been done for a long time, that literally is just tradition. It's worth looking into it to see if it works, but there are plenty of traditional remedies with long histories that don't.
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