Vision Pros Live Podcast
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What's your vision? Theodore Henderson. Podcast Session 2.
2,697 words · 3 speakers
Dr. Henderson, would love to hear some stories that pertain to your why.
Well, um, you know, I started out uh in functional neuroimaging. Um, and you know, I would uh read uh brain spec scans, which is a functional brain scan on patient after patient after patient. And I'd be telling them, well, you have a brain injury. Um, we don't have a treatment for you, uh, so have a nice life. We can't do anything for you. And that's very frustrating for a physician. I'm, I'm a healer. I believe that my job is to heal people. And so to say to someone, I've got nothing for you, um, was very frustrating.
And so when the science about infrared light began to emerge and the work out of Harvard and Uniform Services Hospital and some of these other places was coming out, showing that in a mouse model and a rabbit model, they could induce brain healing. I got very excited. Uh, and in, in fact, because one of the key factors that infrared light turns on is a, is a growth factor called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or B D N F. There's a side story in there. Talk about, you know, my why. Uh, this is literally what I did my postdoctoral research on.
So I have a PhD and my PhD was on brain development. And then I had two NIH-funded postdoctoral research grants as a medical student and a graduate student. Um, and as a resident and uh, you know, that work was focused on B D N F. So I know B D N F very, very well. It's an old friend. And so suddenly I realized I had a way to activate this key growth factor in the adult brain and induce healing. That's very exciting. So that was really the why of why I got involved in all of this.
That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Yeah.
Where would you say, Dr. Henderson, that you're going with your vision?
Yeah, well, infrared light therapy or photobiomodulation, as the entire field is called, photo being light, bio life, modulation being altering.
It's a mixed field right now. There's a lot of people working with low-power infrared light. They're putting, creating devices you can buy and stick on your head and pads that you can put on your, you know, shoulder or your back or whatever, wrap around your knee. And then there are, you know, a very small group of us that are working with the high-power or multi-watt infrared light. Now, multi-watt infrared light, particularly with what we're doing, gets through the skull and the scalp and into the brain. And we're directly treating the brain cells.
These low-power devices, they don't even penetrate the skin.
And so what they're doing is they're inducing some chemical in the skin, and I've shown that. And I could talk about that study.
And that chemical does something beneficial for the whole body. So you could put the infrared light pad on your knee and you'll help your brain as well. But it's at a very low level, it's very small benefit. And so, you know, my vision is to kind of try to consolidate the field towards an understanding that if you want to treat the brain, you've got to treat it directly. That's where you get the most robust changes and that's where you get the lasting changes. These low-power devices work as long as you keep using. You use them every day, you'll see benefit. As soon as you stop, it starts to go away.
Yes.
Wow. You know, I, uh, I think I, I shared this with you last time you came on the show. Um, I had noticed, like, and I have no way near expert in this field whatsoever. But I did notice when I was consistently doing red light therapy, uh, at the gym. Um, I, like, my muscles got less sore. Um, I would recover faster.
Mm-hmm.
But it's not, I'm guessing not, like you said, it's not as nearly as helpful as penetrating deeper within the skin where we should. Because fifteen minutes, twenty minutes at tops, um, once or twice a day is not as even beneficial as have a deeper, um, wavelength of, of light, correct?
That, yeah, and there's several parts to that. Number one, there, there are many wavelengths of infrared light. So red light therapy technically is in the red visible light range, so it's very low power. That penetrates, uh, into muscles, for example, and it's really good for reducing inflammation.
So when you do a big, heavy-duty workout, you've got a buildup of lactic acid, uh, and you've got, uh, inflammation. And red light helps to clear that out. But the higher wavelengths of infrared light, those work directly, directly on the mitochondria.
Wow.
And the little organelles that are the, that make energy in our cells. That's the difference.
What are the side effects of using red light therapy, if any?
Uh, uh, uh, again, you know, looking at, uh, low, uh, let's start with low-watt infrared light. Now, you spend two thousand dollars, you get a device, you stick it on your head. And let's ignore the fact that the infrared light doesn't get through, you know, your hair, my hair. It, it would block all of that infrared light. Um, so, let's ignore that part. So one side effect of that is that you spend a lot of money and you don't get a lot of benefit. So it's hard on the pocketbook. But if you're consistent and use it every day and you stick it, you know, on your back or your knee or your arm, you you will get some benefit. And that's been shown over and over again. But as soon as you stop, it starts to go away.
Correct.
It's transient benefit. In terms of the multi watt infrared light therapy, the high power treatments that we do, number one, it it has to be done by a professional. These are powerful devices. People can't just, you know, do it to themselves. So there there's the expense of you had to go to a clinic and you had, somebody has to administer that. Side effect wise, if we just think about it like a medical procedure, what's the side effects? Very, very little. Some of our patients, about 10% will experience a headache after the first treatment.
Generally not after the second, third, fourth, fifth, et cetera, but after the first treatment, about 10%. Some people will feel tired after the treatment, but you know, sometimes they feel energized. So in fact, you know, I check in with patients after each treatment and sometimes, you know, they're they feel tired, sometimes they feel really relaxed, sometimes they feel energized and ready to go out and, you know, tackle their day. So it really depends. But other than that, there aren't any side effects. There aren't any risks. All of our patients have seen benefits.
Awesome. Thank you for sharing that with us. My next question for you, you being the healer instead of a primary physician doctor. I think I've had a few people on my show now who've actually taken a step back from the medical world of primary physicians, insurances and medicine. And gone to actually finding ways to heal people, some to natural remedies, some through light, some through herbs. There's a lot of things that I've seen around. And you have done a lot for that, like you going in doing a bad work not easy. So according to your opinion, Dr.
Henderson, why do you think leaders hide from funding their vision?
And then how can those leaders then lean into funding that vision?
Hmm, that's a great question.
And, and let me just clarify a little bit. So leaders are not necessarily the, the inventor of the approach, say, you know, discovering a particular combination of herbs, but you're talking about the, the fiscal leaders of our country or, yeah, okay, just to make sure I understand. Well,
uh, uh, yeah, and, and, uh, this is Confessions of a Medical Heretic here.
And quite literally, I mean, one of the first books I read when I considered going into medicine was Confessions of a Medical Heretic.
Because I had seen how corrupted and messed up medicine was just as a patient without even really thinking about it, I could see it. And I think we all see it, you know, you know, why does an aspirin cost $10 at a hospital? Um, well, because you've got to cover the insurance.
So all of that stuff sort of feeds into a, a, a very jaundiced view at this point. And, and I've seen this over and over again.
And, and this will be a, a, a very personal example. So here I've got this amazing technique. I have patients who have Parkinson's disease that I treated. They're now 10 years out from treatment. They have not gotten worse. That's unheard of in Parkinson's disease. That would be a Michael J. Fox miracle. If you could stop the progression of Parkinson's disease, and this is what we're seeing. You know, patient after patient. So, you know, we go to a particularly big funder of, of Parkinson's research, and I'm not going to name any individual or foundation, but I've gone to both type, you know, individuals and foundations.
And they, they said, wow, this is really kind of cool. Let me run it past my neurologist,
who is my advisor, and see what they say.
And that's the end of it. The neurologist maybe gives a cursory glance as soon as he sees infrared light. He or she says, eh, nah, can't be doing anything. This is poppycock. And to be honest, that was my initial reaction when I first encountered this work. I said, that's impossible.
You can't treat the human brain through the scalp and skull with infrared light. There's no way it's going to get through.
And but I took the next step, which was let's research it. Let's find out. And the these advisors are generally very, you know, very conservative, very stuck in allopathic medicine. And they don't think out of the box.
So let me give you one other example, not mine.
So there's a neurologist, you know, picking on neurologists. Here's the other side by the name of Bredeis, B R E D E S E N. Bredeis wrote a book, The End of Alzheimer's Disease.
And then he wrote a kind of a guidebook for, you know, a handbook for patients. And he is treating patients and by diet more than anything else. Because he discovered the link between our insulin receptors. And Alzheimer's disease. Now, our insulin receptors get, you know, if we're drinking alcohol and we're eating, you know, carbohydrates and eating canned food or prepared food, you know, that we're bombarding our insulin receptors because there's so much carbs that your insulin shoots up and your receptors either get overwhelmed or they just stop responding altogether.
And so what he showed is that all these people who are developing dementia had decreased insulin receptor responsivity.
And by changing their diet, getting their insulin receptors to respond again, they got cognitively better. And he published a book about six years ago called, get this, Survivors of Alzheimer's Disease. Yeah. Bredeis says himself, I cannot get this research NIH funded.
Because every time it goes before a committee of neurologists, they say, ah, poppycock. There's no way. You can't. Alzheimer's is, you know, inevitable. You can't stop it. You can't reverse it. There's no such thing as surviving Alzheimer's disease. And they just shoot it down. So how do, how could leaders lean into funding these innovative approaches? First off, you've got to have your eyes open. And, and second off,
you gotta listen to a chorus of advisors, not just one allopathic voice, or a group of allopathic voices, all locked in this one position. You have to listen to multiple voices.
Thank you for sharing that. I think
there's more people, I bet, that are in your same or similar shoes, but they're afraid to take a step in helping people because there's bigger organizations that are, that are going against. So I think that advice would be very, very helpful for them. And also for other leaders and entrepreneurs who just who don't know what approach to take. So thank you for sharing that with us.
One more question for you today.
Okay, this is a hard question. You can take time to think about it.
As a leader or as a, or as an entrepreneur, what has been your most significant learning experience?
I still, I think I'm still in the middle of it. And, and let me give, and let me be specific. So every entrepreneur.
Whether they've invented a widget, a thing, or they've invented a technique. And honestly widgets are easier than techniques.
Has to be able to convince other people that it's a good idea.
You know, I mean, I think of the, you know, the original Apple computer. Um, how do you convince somebody that everybody should have a personal computer? That was unimaginable. And now we've got a personal computer we carry around with us all the time. That we can't put down, we're looking at constantly. But that in, at that time, it was unconceivable. That everybody would need a computer in their home, let alone in their pocket.
So, you know, what I have struggled with is how to, how to convince investors. That, that what we're doing here is a good idea and this is, you know, not only. Is it something that will revolutionize medicine? It's something that'll make them a lot of money.
If, if we revolutionize medicine, we make people money. I mean.
Um, so I've not figured out how to do that yet. And, you know, as I've said, I've talked to investors and they go to their advisors and, and that's the end of the discussion. Or I talk to investors and they say, well, you know, i- if you can make this person better. Uh, then, then we'll invest. Um, but then that person, you know, never shows up. Uh, and, and so it just dies on the vine. Um, but I've not had the situation where someone says, wow, I totally get it. I totally see that, you know, if we open 10 clinics and we treat 260 patients, we make X dollars.
Which is pretty obvious.
Um, but they can't seem to get over the idea that light could be a treatment.
Interesting.
So for me, the model i- is, you know, stem cells. When stem cells first came along, stem cell therapy, it's like a stem, what you, you want to stick a flower stem in me? What are you talking about? So nobody knew what a stem cell is, but now everybody knows what a stem cell is.
Exactly.
And so they at least kind of get, okay, yeah, there's a cell that turns into a good things in your body. And we got to get that to that point with light, that the idea that infrared light, you know, not just, you know, going out and get on a sunny day or going to get red light therapy in the gym, but specific infrared light therapy can be brain-saving, let alone life-saving.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.
Page updated November 13, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
