Put a light in your nostril, your IQ will go up, it's all the rage in Silicon Valley, you only need 30,000

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Recently, a strange wearable product that is inserted into the nostrils has become popular on foreign Instagram .

Some people wear it to study and work.

Some football players wear it while taking a break.

Some people wear it while playing games, saying it can improve their reaction speed...

This mysterious device is called Vielight. The complete version is priced at US$5,000 on the official website, which is equivalent to about RMB 33,000 .

The cheapest model costs $1,799, which is over ten thousand yuan.

The function description is even more outrageous :

Improves brain and overall health.

This product claims to improve cognition and consolidate memory for those who do mental work.

For athletes, it can enhance body coordination and reaction speed, and improve athletic performance and recovery ability.

It can even improve Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke and other difficult and complicated diseases...

△ Product promotional video

It feels like the "cure-all" advertisement from 100 years ago .

So is this a new type of leeks cutting?

Let’s take a look.

Is this thing reliable?

When it comes to efficacy, the company doesn't just talk about it, it can also provide a lot of relevant scientific research to back it up.

A long-term trial involving 228 people has also been approved in the United States and Canada.

In principle, it does make sense.

It mainly relies on photobiomodulation .

The general principle is that when living cells are stimulated by light, a series of metabolism and reactions will occur.

By utilizing this property to apply light of a certain frequency and wavelength to living cells, their changes can be regulated.

In 1967, this mechanism was discovered by scientists, and photobiomodulation therapy was born.

In the following decades, the academic community has discovered that light stimulation helps heal wounds, relieve pain, reduce inflammation, and alleviate the side effects of cancer.

What is its specific working mechanism?

Let’s take the example of how light modulation can regulate traumatic brain injury and stroke to explain this in detail.

The paper, titled Photobiomodulation for Traumatic Brain Injury and Stroke, states:

When light shines on the head, different wavelengths of light are absorbed by two different chromophores.

Among them, red light and near-infrared light (600-940nm) are mainly absorbed by cytochrome C oxidase in cortical neurons.

Near-infrared light with longer wavelengths (980, 1064nm) is mainly absorbed by transient receptor potential ion channels.

As a result, stimulation of mitochondrial activity leads to upregulation of signaling cells and messenger molecules, including reactive oxygen species (ROS) and ATP.

Appropriate ROS can help promote DNA double-strand break repair and cell survival. ATP provides energy for cell metabolism and is also beneficial to cell regeneration.

Studies have shown that photobiomodulation therapy is more commonly used in patients with chronic brain injuries, and some patients have improved their mobility, memory and sleep.

Tests on healthy volunteers also showed that this therapy can increase blood flow to local brain areas, helping to improve memory, cognitive function, and more.

In addition, many studies are focusing on the role of photobiomodulation in improving human functions.

For example, "Scientific Reports" published an article in June last year, stating that photobiomodulation has a certain effect on the recovery of the activity of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells in the elderly.

Another paper published in Science Direct showed that photobiomodulation therapy does not improve the effects of exercise training.

And our country's scientists have also dabbled in this area.

Last year, South China Normal University published a paper in Stem Cell Reports showing that photobiomodulation can also promote hair regeneration.

Generally speaking, the research results in this field are not very abundant at present, and most of them are published in unpopular journals, and related reports in mainstream journals are relatively rare.

Its therapeutic effects have not yet been fully recognized and are only regarded as a method of alternative medicine.

The most famous scholar in this field is Michael R Hamblin, associate professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School.

He is now a principal investigator at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

There is also some cooperation with Vielight, the manufacturer of the nostril insertion device.

What kind of company is this?

Vielight is from Canada. Its founder, Lew Lim, is an engineer who graduated from UC Berkeley.

He started the commercial development of intranasal photobiomodulation devices in 2003, and the company was officially established in 2011.

The products are also aimed at athletes, mental workers and patients with various brain diseases.

This kind of "cure-all" propaganda has also aroused suspicion and ridicule from many netizens.

If someone gave me $50,000 I could come up with a better scam.

It's like putting Christmas lights up your nose, which I do all the time and am always an idiot.

The company tried to enter the Chinese market some time ago, but it doesn't seem to be very successful.

However, Silicon Valley bigwigs have already experienced it early and commented that it is "very cool."

He is Dave Asprey, the father of Silicon Valley biohacker .

The previously popular Bulletproof Coffee Weight Loss Method was created by him.

This person is also an ultimate fan of various health programs. He has tried everything from sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to taking supplements. He also claims that he wants to live to 180 years old.

By now, this is not the only company eyeing photobiomodulation devices, but Vielight has a patent on the “nostril insertion” technology.

Another company, Joovv, produces near-infrared light panels of various sizes that are used to irradiate the entire body and cost $5,000.

Joovv has reached a cooperation with the San Francisco football team in the United States to accelerate the recovery of athletes. This is what the device looks like when it is activated.

Well, I just don’t know how big the difference is between this and the infrared therapy lamp that costs 79 yuan on Taobao with free shipping.

Source: Quantum Bit

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