Some specialists will leave patients in abject pain with the implication that the imaging they have ordered will in some way help their pain. It does not. However, an Alzheimer victim was subjected to 4 head CT and has made some recovery. It was suspected the excessive radiation had anti-inflammatory properties. A 5th CT temporarily set her back and was assumed to be beyond the acceptable radiation dose. There is good evidence radiation can control asthma and perhaps improve lifespan. Treatment of Alzheimer Disease With CT Scans. A Case Report Jerry M. Cuttle et al Dose Response. 2016 Apr-Jun; 14(2): 1559325816640073. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4826954/
- 81 yr old with Alzheimer’s – nearly completely unresponsive
- 5 CT scans over 3 months amounting to 5 mGy radiation
- partial recovery of “cognition, memory, speech, movement, and appetite”
- with 4 – report from family ” has been much more talkative lately. She really wasn’t talking much at all. She will read words in books, ask questions, ask who people are. She seems to be much more aware of her surroundings. At times she tries to push herself up from her wheelchair thinking that there is something she needs to be doing. She is eating by herself and eating all of her food. Her mood is very good. She is not as tired as she had been during the times I am there.”
- 5th dose was thought beyond beneficial dose range and resulted in a setback though she continues to improve.
Helping to substantiate claims was an analysis of studies using xrays for severe refractory asthma.
Calabrese EJ, Dhawan G, Kapoor R. The use of X-rays in the treatment of bronchial asthma: a historical assessment. Radiat Res. 2015;184(2):180-192. http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/abs/10.1667/RR14080.1
- “70% of patients had rapid and marked reductions in clinical symptoms with about half of these patients showing complete symptom relief.”
- Of these responders, 1/2 lasted 1-6 months, while 1/4 lasted 1-4 years
- Dosages were often over 100 rads and a chest CT will only give you 0.7 rads so will needs a lot of imaging…
The question is what are the long term side effects – one noticed is longevity:
Mitchel, R. E. J.
Low doses of radiation are protective in vitro and in vivo: evolutionary origins. Dose-response 4.2 (2006): dose-response.
http://dos.sagepub.com/content/4/2/dose-response.04-002.Mitchel.full.pdf+html
“Research reports using cells from bacteria, yeast, alga, nematodes, fish, plants, insects, amphibians, birds and mammals, including wild deer, rodents or humans show non-linear radio-adaptive processes in response to low doses of low LET radiation. Low doses increased cellular DNA double-strand break repair capacity, reduced the risk of cell death, reduced radiation or chemically-induced chromosomal aberrations and mutations, and reduced spontaneous or radiation-induced malignant transformation in vitro. In animals, a single low, whole body dose of low LET radiation, increased cancer latency and restored a portion of the life that would have been lost due to either spontaneous or radiation-induced cancer in the absence of the low dose. In genetically normal fetal mice, a prior low dose protected against radiation-induced birth defects. In genetically normal adult-male mice, a low dose prior to a high dose protected the offspring of the mice from heritable mutations produced by the large dose. The results show that low doses of low-LET radiation induce protective effects and that these induced responses have been tightly conserved throughout evolution, suggesting that they are basic responses critical to life. The results also argue strongly that the assumption of a linear increase in risk with increasing dose in humans is unlikely to be correct, and that low doses actually reduce risk.”
Does this translate into effects in humans? – The answer is yes. There was less cardiovascular, respiratory and cancer issues and people lived longer:
Sponsler, Ruth, and John R. Cameron Nuclear shipyard worker study (1980–1988): a large cohort exposed to low-dose-rate gamma radiation.
International Journal of Low Radiation 1.4 (2005): 463-478. http://www.probeinternational.org/low-dose-NSWS-shipyard.pdf ”
Abstract: This paper is a summary of the 1991 Final Report of the Nuclear Shipyard Worker Study (NSWS), a very comprehensive study of occupational radiation exposure in the US. The NSWS compared three cohorts: a high-dose cohort of 27,872 nuclear workers, a low dose cohort of 10,348 workers, and a control cohort of 32,510 unexposed shipyard workers. The cohorts were matched by ages and job categories. Although the NSWS was designed to search for adverse effects of occupational low dose-rate gamma radiation, few risks were found. The high-dose workers demonstrated significantly lower circulatory, respiratory, and all-cause mortality than did unexposed workers. Mortality from all cancers combined was also lower in the exposed cohort. The NSWS results are compared to a study of British radiologists. We recommend extension of NSWS data from 1981 to 2001 to get a more complete picture of the health effects of 60Co radiation to the high-dose cohort compared to the controls.” It is theorized it induces “cellular stress response” where “inducible DNA repair stimulation” has positive effects. Also thought to induce radical scavengers (Guo et al. 2003) and elevate immune function (Liu 2003)
Another interesting article was the finding gamma radiation reduced “fibromyalgia” induced by resperdine in mice:
Int J Radiat Biol. 2017 Jan 9:1-11. doi: 10.1080/09553002.2017.1270475. [Epub
ahead of print]
Evidences for amelioration of reserpine-induced fibromyalgia in rat by low dose
of gamma irradiation and duloxetine.
Shibrya EE et al
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28067097
“CONCLUSION: On the basis of the presented evidences, it could be concluded that LDI (low dose irradiation) alone or combined with duloxetine could be of value in the management of fibromyalgia.”
addendum:
Now looking like even in A-bomb survivors longevity could be an outcome:
Sutou, Shizuyo.
Low-dose radiation from A-bombs elongated lifespan and reduced cancer mortality relative to un-irradiated individuals.
Genes and Environment 40.1 (2018): 2
https://genesenvironment.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s41021-018-0114-3