Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis(astro.org)
103 points by geox 4 days ago | 59 comments
- mmastrac 18 hours agoThis 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.
[-]- el_benhameen 17 hours agoThere 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[-]
- prmph 12 hours agoThere is the alternative observation that sometimes the effect of harmful things is based on the frequency and length of exposure, not so much its magnitude.
Compare with the CTE, where a few bone-crushing traumas do not seem to cause it, but chronic long-term low grade impacts is more likely to cause it.
Another example, I probably could eat a massive amount of processed meat a few times without much ill effect, but years of eating moderate amounts might do you in.
- CGMthrowaway 12 hours agoLike sunlight on skin?
- lupusreal 15 hours agoIt'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.
- CjHuber 17 hours agoSo we are going full circle now?[-]
- nyc_data_geek 16 hours agoRadiation is good for you now, a little bit, as a treat.[-]
- SoftTalker 14 hours agoRa-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).
- toss1 14 hours agoPerhaps the word you are looking for is "conjecture that the risk from radiation ..." ??
- nsxwolf 16 hours agoThe residential radon mitigation industry does not like this.[-]
- jerlam 9 hours agoOn the other hand, the radon health cave industry is overjoyed and vindicated. And people with radon in their basement can start hosting "wellness sessions".
- trhway 15 hours agoradon 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.
[-]- lupusreal 15 hours agoIt'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.
- hangonhn 17 hours agoWow! I've actually used T-Gel because I used to get dandruff really bad as a teen and it was pretty effective. It's horrifying to know what it really was.[-]
- toast0 16 hours agoIt says coal tar right on the bottle. And it smells awful. And it can be pretty effective.
- mmastrac 16 hours agoI used it briefly and then researched it and it seemed like at the time (mid-2000s), nobody could say which of the menagerie of components of the coal tar was actually the effective one.
I stopped pretty much at that point.
- jiggawatts 10 hours agoTry using something mild like baby shampoo, use tiny amounts of it, and less frequently. Works a lot better in my experience.
- nikolay 4 days agoFor 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 they couldn't live without them!
[0]: https://pavelbanyagrand.com/en/the-healing-mineral-water-in-...
[-]- Plankaluel 18 hours agoJust 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 doses used in this trial are very likely much, much higher than what you would get from such a bath in radioactive water (otherwise the water would be so radioactive that staying in there or even drinking it would kill you very quickly), so this doesn't really tell us anything about whether the traditional modalities do anything or not. And yes, stuff like that also exists in Austria with Radon caves, and many other places.
[-]- groos 15 hours agoModern 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.[-]
- wat10000 13 hours agoThe 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.
- vixen99 18 hours agoGood point! Interestingly there is evidence that at least some life forms appear to benefit from 'highly radioactive' water.
https://hal.science/hal-03025146v1/file/Petit%20et%20al%2020...
"Direct Meta-Analyses Reveal Unexpected Microbial Life in the Highly Radioactive Water of an Operating Nuclear Reactor Core"
https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/spectrum.01995-22
"Culturomics of Bacteria from Radon-Saturated Water of the World’s Oldest Radium Mine"
- hopelite 18 hours ago[flagged][-]
- tasty_freeze 18 hours agoScience is a process, and from what you described above it is working.
Everyone in science knows that all knowledge is provisional, and that goes 100-fold for things which haven't been replicated. Science is an algorithm for ratcheting understanding despite the fact that humans are fallible and some humans are outright frauds.
[-]- mionhe 16 hours agoWhen we say "everyone in science", I think the part that people find scary is that it's hard to tell who is in science versus who is in 'science'.
Or in other words, it's hard to tell from the outside who really believes what you're stating and who believes it until it's inconvenient, or until it clashes with their personal ideology.
- pengaru 18 hours agoWhen what you're referring to is "science" in quotes, you seem to already have admitted what these people are appealing to is "science" in name only.
People acting in bad faith will appeal to whatever authority they think will achieve their goals. It says nothing of the legitimacy of Science, and if you let the actions of bad actors take actual Science off the table, you've only empowered bad actors to make things far worse for yourself.
- kakacik 18 hours agoThere are also old radon baths in Jachymov in Czech republic working on same principle. Exactly for same primary purpose - problems with joints and bones.
Then communists made local uranium mines/gulags for 'enemies of the state' which was basically a prolonged death sentence, many were just beaten to death or died from cold/starvation.
[-]- mionhe 16 hours agoI'm not clear on what the second paragraph is adding to your example in the first.[-]
- clarionbell 16 hours agoIt's a related and important historical fact that is not well known outside of Czechia. Why not share it with wider audience when given a chance.[-]
- bookofjoe 13 hours agoOff topic: I just learned a couple weeks ago that Czechia and Czech Republic are both acceptable names for the country.
- justin66 18 hours agoSimilar treatments exist without the radioactive water.
- zdragnar 11 hours agoI heard some Amish talking about their parents taking a trip to Montana to visit the radon mines for arthritis.
An example here: https://www.radonmine.com/facility/
There's quite a few out that way.
- phoronixrly 18 hours ago> The mineral water in Pavel Banya is rich in the chemical element radon
> The mineral takes care of having radiant and beautiful skin, healthy bones and, of course, excellent brain functions.
Ah, yes, radiant skin.
- slipperybeluga 13 hours ago[dead]
- eig 17 hours agoGlad to see this! We need better treatments for OA short of a joint replacement.
I'm not too surprised that this treatment works. It's essentially like localized steroids to just the joint- killing off the immune cells causing inflammation.
Good features is that it's localized (so no systemic immunosuppression) and the risk of cancer is low since you rarely get radiation-induced cancer in joints because there's not enough dividing cells. Unfortunately heading to radiotherapy is a logistical challenge, but there are enough people suffering from OA that would happily do this to get relief.
[-]- munificent 12 hours ago> It's essentially like localized steroids to just the joint- killing off the immune cells causing inflammation.
Are you confusing osteoarthritis with rheumatoid arthritis? I didn't think the pain of osteoarthritis had anything to do with the immune response. You've literally got bone rubbing against bone. It's not going to feel good.
- davibu 4 days ago3 Gy is nowhere near what could be qualified as a "Low dose".
"A whole-body acute exposure to 5 grays or more of high-energy radiation usually leads to death within 14 days. LD1 is 2.5 Gy, LD50 is 5 Gy and LD99 is 8 Gy.[11] The LD50 dose represents 375 joules for a 75 kg adult. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_(unit)#Radiation_poisonin...
[-]- greenavocado 18 hours agoGray (Gy) - measures energy deposited per kilogram of tissue. Think of it like measuring how many bullets hit a target, not how much damage they do.
Sievert (Sv) - measures biological damage. This accounts for the fact that different types of radiation and different tissues react differently. Think of this as the actual damage done.
The bullet's energy is identical in all cases (same Gy), but the biological damage varies wildly (different Sv).
The same energy deposited (Gy) causes vastly different biological damage (Sv) depending on:
What tissue (bone marrow is like your heart - critical; muscle is more resilient)
What radiation type (alpha particles are like hollow-point bullets - more damaging per energy unit; gamma rays are like full metal jacket - cleaner pass-through)
For most medical purposes (X-rays, gamma rays), 1 Gy is approx 1 Sv, which is why people use them interchangeably and add to confusion.
Location and delivery matter enormously. It's like pouring water. Put 3 liters in your lungs, you drown (dead). Put 3 liters on your hand, your hand gets wet (annoying but harmless).
3 Gy to your whole body at once is potentially fatal. You'll likely die within weeks from bone marrow failure, your blood cells can't regenerate. 3 Gy to a small tumor in your knee is a typical treatment session. The rest of your body gets almost nothing, and your bone marrow keeps working fine. 3 Gy spread over 6 sessions (0.5 Gy each) to a localized area is a very low dose that gives tissue time to repair.
- khuey 18 hours agoA gray is a measure of energy deposition per unit mass. 1 Gy to the entire body is very different than 1 Gy to a particular part of the body, especially since some parts of the body are far more sensitive to radiation than others.
- f4uCL9dNSnQm 18 hours agoThe abstract indicates 6 fractions (so 0.5Gy for each). And 3 is low compared to cancer treatments, which go up to 80 Gy.
- djtango 18 hours agoGy has a mass component to it. Is 3Gy on just your joint different to 3Gy of your whole body?
- layer8 17 hours agoFor a moment I was confused that radiation doses would be measured in gigayears.
- nradov 15 hours agoA 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.
- shirro 8 hours agoUV doses sufficient to cause erythema, mild sunburn, will trigger programmed apoptosis(programmed cell death) and if you don't have some other sensitivity to UV and do have psoriasis (another chronic autoimmune disease) after the sunburn has subsided you can get substantial reduction in the size and severity of skin lesions in many cases. The reset can sometimes last for awhile. This is well known and is the basis for natural (sun) and medically administered (uvb light) treatments.
In no way is UV caused DNA damage good for a person in any dose. The effectiveness of this treatment has nothing to do with vitamin D generation or hormonal changes as far as I know. You have to damage your skin to somehow reset the immune system and get the result. It is a bargain with the devil as I think are many radiation based therapies. That doesn't mean they aren't useful.
- firejake308 9 hours agoTwo key caveats: 40% of people said their arthritis got better with the placebo treatment, while 70% got better with the radiation. Yes, that's clearly a difference, but it also means that 40% of people don't need to expose themselves to the side effects of radiation in order to get relief from their arthritis. Second, the realy number of people who don't need radiation is actually higher, because this study limited the use of NSAIDs like ibuprofen (Advil) or naproxen, which would probably have helped a lot of the other people. Granted, for people who can't take NSAIDs because of kidney disease or something, maybe this will be an option in the future, but I really want to see the long-term safety data before I go irradiating everyone's knees.
- dmwood 4 days agoDepending on the field, 3 Gy IS 'small' (with respect to doses to tissue during cancer treatment, which can be 60 Gy). Whole body doses of 1 milliGy in the environmental biz are considered worth examination. Even investigations of biomarkers for radiation exposure typically use doses in the range of 3 Gy.
- Havoc 16 hours agoTom Scott made a video about a related treatment - radon caves a couple years ago[-]
- sparky_z 11 hours agoInteresting. Now I have a question about that video, and I think I'm more likely to get a good answer from someone here than in the comments there, so here goes:
Tom says that because that's the only radon cave that can turn the flow of radon on and off at will, it's the only place where you could (in theory) run a double-blind experiment on radon exposure therapy.
My question is: would it not be just as possible to do that in a laboratory setting? Surely there are already lab facilities in the world that are set up for double blind "exposure" experiments of that sort, with easy control of dosages, flow rates, etc. Is the problem that radon gas too expensive to harvest or store safely? Why is that cave the only feasible option?
EDIT: It now occurs to me that the answer could be "because the half life of radon is to short to transport it, so you would basically have to generate it in the lab by getting an enormous amount of uranium in one place and letting it decay and find some way of filtering the byproducts to isolate the radon in a way that putting it under a huge layer of bedrock does naturally." Sounds plausible to me, but does anyone know if that's the case?
- NoiseBert69 18 hours agoI am offering my basement as a Radon spa. Anyone interested?
Dose can be controlled by switching off the forced ventilation and sealing the gas trap.
- clarionbell 16 hours agoThis 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 have a rather long pedigree. In Jachymov, Czech Republic, they are used for over century. Sometimes they are even covered by health insurance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9%C4%8Debn%C3%A9_l%C3%A1...
[-]- lostlogin 11 hours agoI think the point of the article is that there hasn’t been a lot of evidence for low dose radiation as a treatment.
- pfdietz 15 hours agoSome 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.
[-]- prmph 11 hours agoExactly, it could be that a few pretty high exposures are actually less damaging than frequent low but clinically significant exposures.
- dinkblam 17 hours agostuck in cloudflare for 3 seconds so i cancelled loading the website
why to web admins think this is acceptable for visitors?
- hollerith 14 hours agoExposure 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.
- p1dda 17 hours agoI'd much more prefer allogeneic stem cell treatment for osteoarthitis. It's a shame it's not available in all those countries where millions of dollars are made by companies making knee joint replacement prosthesis. What a coincidence.[-]
- olejorgenb 16 hours agohttps://physicians.dukehealth.org/articles/stem-cell-therapy...
Which countries is it a available/approved in?
[-]- p1dda 4 hours agoThe Cayman Islands is one I can think of and I wouldn't trust any of those American studies where most doctors usually have several conflicts of interest in this case with manufacturers of prosthetics.
- 6d6b73 16 hours agoHow soon will some entrepreneur open a spa in Chernobyl?[-]
- bobsmooth 16 hours agoWay ahead of you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZkusjDFlS0
- hulitu 4 days ago> Low-dose radiation offers relief to people with knee osteoarthritis
Radon girls anyone ? /s