Episode 302 — This Light Can Change BRAIN Function
Guest: Alex Zaharakis • Date: April 9, 2026
Episode Overview
Alex Zaharakis returns to explore how laser-based photobiomodulation may influence brain function at a cellular level. He breaks down the mechanisms, real-world parent feedback, and how to think clearly about whether this tool belongs in a child’s plan.
About Alex Zaharakis
Alex Zaharakis is a licensed and board-certified medical physicist in radiation oncology with a multidisciplinary background in physics, biology, engineering, and bioinformatics. His work is driven by his son’s regressive autism and focuses on microbiome analysis, targeted nutraceuticals, and photobiomodulation.
Alex has developed tools for quantifying dysbiosis and guiding microbiome-based interventions, along with dynamically pulsed cold laser systems designed to support cellular function. He is co-owner of Researched Elements and provides microbiome analysis support through BiomeSight, as well as free guidance for ASD families through his nonprofit Autism Is Biomedical.
Researched Elements Tech - Dynamic Cold Lasers(use code ALLIN for discount)
You’ll Discover
How Targeted Light Can Improve Motor Function And Coordination (2:43)
Why Supporting Mitochondrial Energy Can Influence Inflammation And Brain Function (13:46)
How Improved Cellular Energy May Support Natural Detox Pathways (19:04)
Why Wavelength, Penetration And Pulsing Determine Effectiveness (26:45)
How This Approach May Support Calm, Focus And Regulation (36:05)
Referenced In This Episode
Full Transcript
Alex Zaharakis 0:00
I think the magic of the photobiomodulation is in a combination of both the wavelength, which dictates you know what it's interacting with, also the penetration, and then also the pulsing.
Len Arcuri 0:11
If you're a parent of a child with autism, you are being called to rise with love, courage and clarity. This journey isn't easy, and most parents aren't equipped, but you can be. This podcast is your invitation to rise higher, because how you navigate matters. I'm Len and this is autism parenting secrets, where you become the parent your child needs now. Hello and welcome to autism parenting secrets. Returning to the show is Alex zaharikis. In our last conversation, we focused on the microbiome and how better data leads to better decisions. This time, we're exploring something very different, laser based photobiomodulation, and this is a rapidly emerging approach that uses specific wavelengths of light to influence cellular energy, inflammation, blood flow and nervous system regulation. And this conversation is really about clarity in terms of what this option looks like, how it helps. It's about understanding you know what it's actually doing, what parents are seeing, and how to think clearly about whether this belongs in your child's plan. So the secret this week is this light can change brain function, and I'm delighted to welcome back. Alex, good to see you again. And Len,
Alex Zaharakis 1:32
thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.
Len Arcuri 1:34
Thank you. Yeah, no, I know when we last spoke, which wasn't that long ago, talking about the importance of the microbiome, the gut rebalancing test that I know is something that you are making available to so many families, and how powerful that can be. This is also a different approach, and I know you spend a lot of time thinking about what could be helpful, with respect to parents who are trying to find answers to help support their child, to help their child thrive. So the topic of photobiomodulation, we've covered it before on this show in a few different ways, and it's it's clearly something that's emerging, becoming more prevalent. You see kind of red light therapy and a lot of different options that are out there. So can you just give a little bit more about what led you to ultimately making these specific lasers something that are more accessible for more families.
Alex Zaharakis 2:28
You know, there's a lot of different therapeutics out there and and, you know, this was something that was on the bucket list, looking at photobiomodulation for my son and I had happened to I think see an advertisement for a clinician that was in town here in Tucson, where I live, saying that they offered photobiomodulation. So I said, you know, it's about time for something new. You know, we kind of try different things and see what the response are. So we had a couple of appointments with a chiropractor using this was both red and violet type laser light. And after the first session, I saw some some some changes and some improvements in him, particularly in the area of motor coordination. It was quite significant. He was, you know, went from being unable to kind of dribble a basketball to, you know, doing it himself. He had problems when he was driving his power wheels, you know, car. So my son is, he'll be nine next month, and it would always be the case that he couldn't quite get the steering. And I remember after the first or second session, he just got in this thing, and he's driving down the, you know, the sidewalk, which is this, like tortuous path, and just steering it perfectly. And the other thing that was interesting too, is that, you know, I was, for a very long time, I had, you know, had gotten in these, was it the Game Boy type things with they have the Mario Kart and trying to get him to play that, not because I wanted to play video games, because, you know, there's kind of a high, high hand motor coordination, and he always had difficulty, kind of steering it. And all of a sudden, he just picked this thing up, and he's playing this game. He's interested in playing it like never before. So there were some pretty, pretty quick changes, I'd say, in motor motor function and motor planning, and it intrigued me. And so I immediately wanted to, you know, get one of these devices so that they could use it on a home basis. So I had asked the chiropractor, you know, how much is it to buy or rent one of these things? It was just this egregious price. It was, like it was $15,000 for this particular one device that they were using on him, which is the size of a, you know, kind of an iPhone or something like that. And. And it was shocking to me, because, you know my background, people know him as an oncology physicist, but prior to that, I used to teach physics in college and engineering, and so I have a background, you know, kind of tangentially, and with lasers and things like that. We've used them in the lab. And there's, there's no way in my head that I could, you know, fathom this device costing that much money, knowing that in my experience with that stuff, you know, I kind of based it on the fact that you could buy an iPhone for about a couple $100 the amount of technology in an iPhone is, you know, light years ahead of, you know, a solid state laser. So I couldn't understand why they were so expensive. So I kind of started researching, you know, how, how difficult, you know, what really are the mechanisms involved here? Is it the laser? Is it the intensity of the laser? Is it the pulsing of the light, and how fast that you turn it on and off, and what frequencies do you use to pulse with? So I started to build my own one, a very crude one. And, you know, I saw some benefits with my son, but I'm always the kind of person that potentially, you know, there's a bias there, right? So I sent some devices out to some of the colleagues, people I work with, you know, they reported some favorable and positive things. So one thing left led to another. I realized that we could build these devices for much cheaper, much much more affordable. And that was really the goal is, is that, hey, this is something different than the microbiome. It's different because it seems to be accessing, you know, you can, you can do it spatially, right? You know, whereas, like, when you're trying to treat the microbiome, everything is something that you pretty much have to ingest. This is easy to to use. Is like, you can pick a time of day that you want to do it. The child could be sleeping. You can access different areas. Maybe your child is has a problem taking things, whereas this is just more feasible. So it was unique from that perspective. And then, you know, the other feasibility is, is that we could break the cost down, and people could see improvement. You know, that would be another layer, layer of healing that would be accessible. So that's kind of what drove everything, and that's where we are today.
Len Arcuri 7:29
Now you mentioned about, you know, in terms of chiropractors, I think that if anyone has experienced or seen a cold laser type device, chiropractic practices are very big on that now. And you're right, you kind of schedule a session time with the laser and and it could be pretty expensive if, especially if you're doing it recurringly. And yeah, the general retail price of these devices is pretty, pretty high. And over time, perhaps they're coming down. But you basically looked at it and you're like, why so high, right? And so what is there some magic element that you're missing? And I think with what you discovered is that, nope, the basic, the basics there and to be to provide the functionality, there's no real mystery to it. And you just found a way to put these together and provide that same functionality in a much more affordable way. You know, now
Alex Zaharakis 8:21
that I've had more time to kind of sit on it, I There, there. There are reasons why I think that. There are that the other models are that expensive. I mean, obviously there, there's a there's, there are certain legalities involved in getting something to be, you know, approved, and trying to do studies and, you know, having a company that may have lawyers and marketers and all these things. So, you know, the cost have to, has to go up to for that. There's also the manufacturing. So I kind of likened it to, you know, I think when the you know, now, now you can walk into Walmart and get a flat screen TV for like $130 it's just insane. I mean, the other day, I was looking, there's like a 30, there's like a 60 inch TV for like $170 I remember when I was a kid, you know, TVs were, they were relatively expensive. I mean, you know, there were these big, boxy things. And you know, when the first flat screens came out, they were pretty they were pretty expensive. And so over time, you know, these companies have found a way to make things more affordable, but also the demand and the Mass Productions and things like that. So there's, there's always this, this balance of these things that control the costs, the raw materials, like, you know, if someone just said, okay, here, this is what's needed to build it. And you go through some design, and it's really not that expensive. I think the research to get there may, you know, there may be things involved. I'm really more concerned with, Hey, listen, if this is something that we could make, that is not going to break the bank, that that somebody can use, and see some, you know, see some benefits that. That's, to me, the most important thing is that you're potentially changing someone's life in a positive way. And so that's what we're what's that's what we're trying to do, is just make these more feasible and affordable. And things are expensive. You know, this is having a having a child that has a, you know, special needs. You don't mean, you know, it, there's all of these costs that hidden costs that nobody realizes. And, you know, we're just looking at to kind of improve quality of life there. I understand that.
Len Arcuri 10:31
I advise a number of parents who are looking at this and want because they feel like it's a really good fit for their child, they want to make the investment, but it's just so prohibitively high that for some it just might be too much. So the idea that there's a more affordable option is powerful and going to the efficacy. The reason why these lasers are popping up on all these chiropractic organizations is because people are seeing real relief and benefits from it. So it's not they're just kind of a concept, and maybe this might help, or maybe it doesn't. It seems like there's really good evidence, and track record of these can be really helpful, depending on what you're dealing with. And while chiropractic organizations may be dealing with different kind of problems their clientele may have, for a child who's, let's say, on the spectrum or has developmental challenges or just complex challenges, the idea of, how can this light help them? I know we talked even beforehand about some possibilities. So if you could just from your perspective, what are you seeing? Because my understanding is that clearly, the targeted therapy with with a cold laser can absolutely improve mitochondrial function and like the energy overall, the cellular energy, which can help so many things, and it also can improve or reduce inflammation, because that's their big root cause of inflammation, systemic inflammation in the body, Perhaps neuro inflammation in the brain. So, and those are, I know, only two of the benefits. So can you talk more about what you're seeing, and even the science behind you know what's happening at the cellular level, that that results in improvement or reduction in perhaps, symptoms that we're wanting to help our kids with? Yeah. So I think,
Alex Zaharakis 12:20
I think, you know, with a lot of these therapies, they, you know, the field of sports medicine is really driving things. So I think that that's, you know, like, even H bot, like, you'll see, sometimes a picture of, like, a professional athlete in a HBot chamber, and because they're trying to recover after, you know, some rigorous workout. So they the lasers, you know, in the chiropractic world, I think that there was a lot of emphasis in sports medicine in terms of recovery and things like that. And then one thing led to the other. And you have somebody that has a pain in their hand and have inflammation, or they they're wanting to enhance circulation. And then, you know, naturally, you know people that connect the dots and say, Well, you know, here I have someone that has autism. We know that there's inflammatory issues. We know that there may be issues with ATP and generation of energy and stuff like that, and mitochondria. Does this have the potential? I think probably before autism. And there's been some studies using photobiomodulation and autism. There were some studies actually looking at, you know, traumatic brain injuries there. So it started to become more of a reality that this would be something that could be helpful in terms of the mechanisms there. So we know that, you know, there's this, you know, cytochrome c oxidase. Basically, it's this role that it plays in terms of creating energy in the mitochondria, and it can be inhibited. It can be inhibited by, you know, these kind of nitric oxide events that kind of interfere with this enzyme. So we know that some of the mechanisms are that the light have the ability to kind of help this electron transport, change and inhibit this nitric oxide from interfering with the energy production red light. There's so there's different colors of different wavelengths. Our devices have 660 nanometers red, 520 green, 405, Violet, we have a near infrared that's coming out shortly. Each wavelength has a potential different benefit in terms of how it's able to help with the ATP production, how it's inter able to interact with, you know, some of the cellular processes, and then also the penetration depth, you know, in the case of red, there seems to be more in anti inflammatory and circulatory benefits. It is very highly absorbed, kind of in the in the, you know, the in the blood. And so you get a lot of interaction. There for something like green, there's, there's different complexes in the mother country that can be emphasized. There's also a
Alex Zaharakis 15:10
kind of, what's called a stress benefit, reactive oxygen species mechanism. So, you know, something that happens when you take when you do h bot is, you know, because oxygen is even though, that it's this beneficial thing that we need for the respiration cycle. It is this, this thing that has, you know, this oxidative potential, that it's not ideal. You have too much reactive oxygen species and so on and so forth. There is a component of H bots where you're actually stressing the mitochondria and and by doing so, when your body gets stressed, it's kind of like building a muscle, right? You go, you work out, right? You're stressing the mitochondria. You actually produce more mitochondria as a result of it. So there's a benefit in this stressing component that the green light does. It's very similar to h bar, you know, too much green, you know, may, may not be ideal, but there, it's kind of like flexing the muscle, if you will. And and for colors like violet, this 405 nanometer wavelength, there is, which is a higher energy. As you go lower in wavelength, you go higher energy. There is a lot of research that's been shown that it can be helpful in terms of superficial skin issues and lesions and maybe eczema and stuff like that. But even though that it doesn't penetrate as deeply, you know, the thought is, is that it can interact with some of the mitochondria that's in your blood, help different complexes, like complex four, and that gets circulated around the rest of the body. So, you know, we, we, we know that this certainly has the potential to help the mitochondria. We think that that's really the main indication. And then through that, you know, potentially inflammation and some other things. You know, we can't physically make any any claims with our devices because, you know, we're, it's not, they're not considered medical devices. And actually none there are. So there are no laser devices for any therapeutic other than very few conditions right now that they're quote, unquote, FDA approved. So like, for, I think weight loss, there's some there's for hair loss, and I think for, like, general inflammatory pain, you know, issues, I think those are the three main conditions right now that you can actually say, Hey, this is a device FDA approved, and you can actually reimburse and charge for it. Everything else is kind of research and based, but there have been a lot of studies showing that it's been helpful for traumatic brain injury, it's been helpful for for autism, it's been helpful for just general inflammation, Parkinson's, you know, things like that. So I think there's a lot of potential there. And I think the main area is really the the mitochondria. So it'll be, it'll be interesting to see what we see over time, we've had probably about a year's worth of people using this now, maybe 150 to 200 or so. And we've been getting, you know, very, very great positive feedback overall. And, you know, we've kind of collected some of these messages that parents have have shared, either through audio or written, written messages. So those are really the best inferences that people can get a perspective on. You know, what? What these things you know may be able to help with. The other piece of information that that we've been working on too is so we had this hypothesis. It actually came from a parent who is on someone on the brain foundation that said, hey, you know, we did some red light therapy many years ago, Alex, and we noticed that there was this massive dumps of heavy metals that weren't happened to be coming out of the child, because they were simultaneously testing urine and things like that. So, you know, we had just done a case study ourself on an individual where the and we were submitting this for case study publication right now. But basically, the this is a child that
Alex Zaharakis 19:28
had taken, I think about 10 urine heavy metal tests successively over 10 days. So there's a period where they were not using the laser before. I think it's like five days, and then there's about five days while using the laser. And you know, for this particular situation, for this individual, what we measured is, there's the significant increase in the excretion of aluminum as measured on on this this urine test, during the period that they started to use the laser. So. The parent also is one of these parents that left a voice message that people can listen to, and they can share their experience of what are the changes that they're seeing in their child, the positive changes. So there, there seems to be a connection between you know, you know this, this improvement that they report, but also you know what, the fact that they're excreting this, you know, this aluminum. So it's something to be, you know, we have to put more efforts into pinning down, but right now, we're just working on kind of getting this, this single case study, published. And, you know, it's not something that's outside of the box, if you think about it. I mean, if there is this burden of toxicity, we know that toxicity can inhibit the mitochondria. If we can help the mitochondria work better, not only does it help with the immune processes, but it also helps with detoxification. So I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility. You know something that we're going to we're going to follow up with, but it's interesting to say the least. And, yeah, yeah, no,
Len Arcuri 21:08
it's, it's very plausible, and that's why I wanted to start with all these potential benefits, right? We know that that this type of targeted laser light absolutely can, can have an impact. And if it's if, let's just say it is mitochondrial support, as you're mentioning, if you're just enhancing cellular energy and helping the body to, let's just say, for lack of a better word, be more vibrant, then it's going to be able to do more what it's designed to do, and that might include being able to have more energy for detoxification and also, if you're improving blood flow and circulation, again, that could help the body just do what it's designed to do. So the whole idea of metals toxicity and how the laser might play a role in that, it's not so much a detox strategy, as much as it is something that just helps the body to then perform its functions better, including detoxification. Is that, is that a healthy way of looking at it?
Alex Zaharakis 22:06
Yeah? Yeah. I mean, I kind of think of it as kind of like a light massage, like literally, a light massage, you know, as just the same way that you might have a sore muscle, you go and you kind of massage that muscle you're getting into the deeper tissues. You know, this has the ability to go, go in there, and, you know, do something on the cellular level, move things around, you know, increase that mitochondrial potential. And so, so parents, you know, we first suggested for them to just use it on the head, use on the brain, five to 15 minutes a day, just evenly, moving it over the head, and really, you know, get great feedback from that. Other people have moved on to the vagus nerve to adding that into an area. Other people use it on the oral cavity there, you know, because the tongue is a huge muscle, right? The fact that I'm talking right now, the ability for me to do that is a complex you know, relationship between how I'm controlling my lips, my cheeks, the volume of air coming out of my mouth, my tongue, all of this plays a role into how, you know, I enunciate certain words that may be impaired and stimulating, that may may, you know, improve some of the connections you know we I would say, for The parents out there that want to learn more, listen to some of the messages that that everyone else is saying there to get some feedback of what are the things that they've seen. But you know, you can't, you don't have to stop there. You can move on to the kidneys. If you have issues with kidneys, right? You're kind of giving bandwidth to each one of these organs by stimulating the mitochondria in that local area. So I think there's a lot of potential. Certainly, we've had parents use it on themselves and feel like that. It's been helpful for, you know, some maybe they have some soreness and some part of the body. I've had some I've had a co worker that, you know, where I used to work formally, that had a child with ADHD, and, you know, she, she started using the laser, was the only thing that she was using. And, you know, just really great feedback in terms of the changes that they were seeing. So, you know, I think it's, there's no silver bullet, right? The way that we should all be looking at this is that, if parents are going to look into some kind of therapeutic right, from my perspective, the two main things are, you know, what are the feasibility right? Feasibility includes, you know, the affordability. But how difficult is it? Is it to implement? I mean, does it mean that you have to hike up a mountain to do it right? It's going to be not feasible. So if there's affordability, there's feasibility, how easy it is it to implement these check the boxes there and then, in terms of, you know, is it just helping one person? Is it helping 100 people? What's the fraction? We're getting really great feedback there. There so, and we haven't gotten any negative feedback as well. So I think that this is something that's interesting and attractive, and because it checks these boxes, you know, people, they don't have to look at our lasers, they could just look at photobiomodulation in general, right? You know, if you if you want to take that extra step of working with a chiropractor, you know, just do your research and investigate it. But I think that this is going to be something that in the future, it's going to be helpful for a lot of conditions.
Len Arcuri 25:31
I think when you're talking about the ease of how implementable it is, let's talk about that a little bit, because with what you were describing with the different color lights, and you're describing the different areas of the body where you could use it. And so how do you help guide parents with how to use the laser in terms of, like, the programs and the way to do it the duration? Because the art is having an idea of, like, how to specifically do it in a way that increases the odds that you're going to actually, you know, get some benefit from it. So how do you, how do you help parents with that? And what went into how you even created those programs?
Alex Zaharakis 26:12
Yeah, that's those are all great questions, yeah. So this is an example of kind of the size of the device I have it kind of on right now, and you might be able to see the kind of flashing pattern, and, you know, you might notice that it it seems to be doing different things at different times. So I think the magic of the photobiomodulation is in a combination of both the wavelength, which dictates, you know, what it's interacting with, also the penetration, and then also the pulsing. And you know, the question about the pulsing and what's the best there, and how to use it? I think that that is a very open ended question. The way that I designed this device was to be very flexible. So you can input your own custom frequencies. You can change the duty cycle. You can change the, you know, the duration of the pulse and things like that, all of these things that you know may be super, super complex. I don't know where I'm starting, but it's, it's very flexible that if in the future, you decide that you come across a particular protocol or practitioner that says, hey, listen, you got to do 79 Hertz. It's got to be for a three second duration. And we this, this can do that. There are some preset programs in there that we have put and there's about 16 of them, and we kind of ordered them in the in the way that we thought that they might be, you know, most important or feasible, like program number one is extremely flexible. It can be used on any part of the body. And it's a collection of three different pulsing frequencies. And between those three frequencies, it sits on them for about two to three seconds, and it moves to the next one. So it's not it's never doing the same thing. And this is part of the process of how you're stimulating the mitochondria that that what is the most effective is is not well understood. The way that this kind of field has evolved is basically by chiropractic. Is trying different things like and they have kind of these communities that say, Hey, listen, I got these, you know, 10 patients over here, and we used 86 hertz, and it was very, very effective. So this device has been a culmination of kind of scouring that information of chiropractors that have experience in putting them together. We have some some general, broad guides, and it's just simple, as you know, turning on program number one, using this like you'd be giving a haircut. So imagine if this was a pair of buzzers, kind of moving it around the head about that speed, about five to 10 minutes a day, hit all the lobes
Len Arcuri 28:41
about it, and then the body
Alex Zaharakis 28:43
about about an inch, you know, about once, you know, one to two cm, the way that these devices are designed. So these are diode lasers, and they use a, what's called a diverging lens, a lenticular so it emanates in a pattern that looks kind of like a line. And so the intensity actually gets falls off as you get farther away, but the line actually gets bigger. So if, if I treat from here, right, I'll be getting more surface area, but if I treat for a longer period of time, it ends up being a wash. So if I treat closer, I get a smaller surface area, but I don't have to treat as long, but I have to hit more, you know, area to treat the same amount of place. So it doesn't it really, there's no right or wrong distance, but we say, you know, keep it about one, one to two centimeters, about an inch. This way you don't have stray light beams kind of going across the room, and five to 10 minutes a day. And, you know, start with the head, but parents have moved on to other other areas and found that to be to be helpful. You can do it while they're sleeping. You know, you can do it while they're eating. There's no pain. These are class two lasers are certified. In safety with the FDA. What that means is that they technically don't even need to have a pair of goggles, because the intensity of the beam is low enough that it won't damage the retina with the with the blink reflex, but we provide you a pair of glasses regardless. And you know, I was a little skeptical myself at the beginning, because I was on the fence of, how is this laser really doing anything this isn't getting through the head? You know, I went out and I bought a coyote. My wife felt I was crazy. I went on eBay. You could find a coyote skull, and because I just wanted the bone, and I shine the laser through the bone, it goes through the bone, and I was kind of surprised. But then, you know, I started to kind of wrap my, my physics understanding, around kind of what's going on is that, you know, the light, light attenuates exponentially, so it doesn't ever stop. So even, even, even though that some of these lasers, these wavelengths, have certain, what they call penetration depths, that that only gives you the intensity of the beam, you know, up to that depth, there's still intensity after that. So for instance, you know, if we if we looked at something like red, the penetration depth is about a centimeter. But that, what that means is that at a centimeter, there's about 37% of the light is still remaining. You go another centimeter, then it's 13% so it's never, it never gets to zero. So you have kind of an in, you know, it'll infinitely go on that you have an interaction, obviously, with increasing with decreased intensity. But with a laser, you have a huge amount of photons. So you can be assured that you have this light incident on there. It's getting somewhere into the brain, and it's penetrating. And, you know, at first, I was kind of skeptical, but then, you know, after seeing it go through the boat, and then kind of, you know, reasoning how the light interacts and everything and it scatters, you know, it makes perfect, perfect sense. So I think overall, it's an easy tool to use. You can make it as complicated as you want to. I mean, there's some people out there that have these very fancy protocols. I don't think it needs to be that complicated to see the benefits. And I think it's the kind of thing is, is that people will start to learn how to use it best for themselves over time. And that's really what we're that we're hoping for, is, is that, you know, they'll come back and maybe with some requests and say, Hey, I'd really like this, and we'll program it in with the flexibility if we find out tomorrow that, you know, let's say, you know, 111 Hertz is the magic frequency. People can send their laser back. We'll reprogram, we'll put that in there, but it's flexible enough that you can actually dial that in yourself. So I, I'm happy where it is. I think it's convenient, flexible, it's, it's, it's very affordable. You know, are the devices. They're as cheap as about $800
Alex Zaharakis 33:04
they're as expensive as $1,500 the models that we have, and that is probably the effector of five cheaper than the next lowest model, these are more comparable to much more expensive models that we'd say probably cut price more than 10 to $15,000 range. But we, we don't want people to buy it unless they it works for them. So we have a, we have a money back, you know, guarantee, you know, you can, you can buy the laser, you could use it, you know, for a month, and we'll just charge you $100 for the shipping and the restocking. If you wanted to return it, we'll happily take it back if you don't think it's beneficial. So I think with that model, that people could try it out and see if they see benefits. That really is what a lot of practitioners have been doing that have been using our devices. They have one or two, and they kind of just loan them out to their patients for two weeks of time, and they say, Hey, if you think it's been helping. Because I'd say most people see something within the first couple of days, if not the first week. That's enough time to make a decision whether or not they think that it's something they want to, you know,
Len Arcuri 34:15
move on. Sometimes you just need to test something, give it a test drive to really see which is why, going back to what you said about the programs, if you have 16 programs that make it easy for somebody to start depending on what you know, what they're looking to accomplish, that's great, because otherwise, I know if there's if it's just hey, use it and figure it out, that could be a little bit overwhelming. So the fact that you have some standard programs, some best practices, and even have the ability to customize it as you've experienced and see what, what's helpful, what's not. Yeah, the usability piece is important. And just having established programs, I think, are helpful, you use the example with the from a metals perspective. And you know, for my son, we did a round of IV chelation. We. At about eight weeks, because we knew through the urine testing that metals were pretty sky high for him, and for him, it was more lead than aluminum. And so again, that's a very established way of helping the body to detoxify, doing the IV chelation. And if there is now a possibility of helping with that detoxification using the laser, fantastic. That's much easier to do. You're not physically having to go somewhere. And again, the only way you'll really know whether it's helping is if you have some labs right to do, do a urine test before after. But I think you what you've shared is that you've seen or heard of examples where people are having success from a detoxification standpoint, and the laser seems to be a key part
Alex Zaharakis 35:45
of that. We get a lot of a lot of parents, what I would say, and, you know, just to say, we're not allowed to make any claims, but they would say that it overall, makes their child more focused and calm and seems to take them out of episodes and and, you know, I, I don't think that this will rival something like chelation in terms of the metal. But, you know, not everybody is is in a place where they might be able to take a key later. You know, because right stir doing so stirs the pot. And, you know, just like, you know, maybe there's a gentler way that that needs to be done first to make things more feasible. You know, healing is always has all of these layers there. So I think that in terms of my, my experience, and trying to help people, you know, with all of these biomedical things, what I would say is, is that always try to go the path of of, I would say, least resistance. I mean, there's times when you have to kind of stir the pot a little bit. Little bit, but if the body's not prime for doing things, and it's not supported enough, or it's not appropriate, you know, you can, you can sometimes going down that erection, it takes you a while to get back from from, you know, doing that therapeutic, so feasible, practical and, and, you know, safe and, and, you know, putting you in a better in a better light, a better situation. I think that those are all really attractive. So, you know, this, this, this is another tool, linearly independent, I think, from the other things that I've used and experienced. And, you know, it's also somewhat of a bonding time, I think, between parent and child too. You know, you have this, Hey, I'm doing this thing with you. You can make a session out of it. And, you know, you feel like that. You're kind of accomplishing something, almost like, you know, woodwork or something, and you have your hands on. So, you know, it's
Len Arcuri 37:43
a bonding experience. And then, like, like most interventions I know that move the needle for for my son, were things that not only helped him, but helped me as well. So this is another example of that. And if a parent, if you're trying to figure out, Is this going to be helpful for my child, if you experience it first, and if you feel it's beneficial, then good chance it's probably going to benefit your child too. I guess that leads me to the one thing in terms of, yes, this could be beneficial. You won't know maybe until you experience it. But if Is there any indication of where a child is, where you would say, hey, it's too early to do this. Like, in other words, this type of targeted with laser approach, like, if a child really is significantly dysregulated, that would it make sense for the child to be in a better place to be able to benefit from the laser? In other words, can the laser wind up making perhaps a child even more dysregulated if they're not ready for it? What are your thoughts on that?
Alex Zaharakis 38:36
You know, so far, I haven't, I haven't seen that. I mean, so far my what the feedback that I've gotten is it seems to be kind of putting them into a better a better spot, to bring them out of that event. And parents can see the messages. You know, well, we have these messages collated, either written or an audio. And that's the that's the inference that I that I've been going off of if you were to ask me in the beginning, I would say, you know, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't have any evidence to go on there. But so everything has been through those messages that we've that we've gotten back. I don't you know, and I'm usually very cautious with these things. And we have some folks that have been using it, you know, with with that have seizures too, and you know, obviously you want to always talk with your, you know, with your your practitioner and your provider, before doing anything like that. But, but I know that, for instance, you know, Dr Frey. I was on a call with him five months ago, and the conversation was talking about the potential for PBM in, you know, epileptic patients and things like that. So it's a hot area of interest. And overall, I really haven't come across anybody that says that, you know, this put them in. This is like, oh. Oh, you know, we did a chelative thing and put them in a worse spot, or we took this probiotic and upset them. It just seems to kind of be to put you in a better, better area. The level of the magnitude of that change certainly is different. You know, some people reporting, I'd say better more. Other people's less. It's hard for me to to know, and as the only way that I can kind of address that is, like I said, we offer this, this trial, essentially, that people can, you know, use it and see what they see. And hopefully they see some, they see some, some benefits. And, like I said, try it on yourself too. You know, seeing is believing if you have something that, and all you have to do is if you're if you're unsure of what PBM could be helpful with. You know, use your your favorite AI engine, chat, GPT or Google, AI, Gemini, whatever. Just say, hey, what conditions has photobiomodulation, you know, been shown to be potentially helpful for and you'll get a, you'll get a unbiased view of all of the literature and all of the information out there, and that might, you know, allow you to use it on yourself or some other condition you know. So there's, there's hot interest outside of autism, I would say, and I think it's pretty exciting, but yeah, yeah,
Len Arcuri 41:27
no, that's a perfect piece of AI, right? See what, see what's in the literature, see what it's, what's what's out there in terms of how it helps and what conditions, but ultimately, what's going to be a good move for your child? Again, that's not AI's job. That's your job, and again, for you to discern where this might fit in. And it sounds like, from what you're saying, Alex, from what you've been hearing, again, it's this is just based on your perspective feedback, and what you've seen in the literature, it seems like the the laser, at the very least, has more of a modulating effect on the body. And so therefore, something that, regardless of what you're doing, you can experiment with bringing this in. And again, if you whatever it is you're trying to help your child with, if you can go in with some kind of measurement of where your child is, bring something like this in, and then after a certain period of time, see, you know, see if it's helped or not. Sometimes it's hard for us parents to notice shifts in our child. So again, the more you can go in kind of eyes wide open and noticing and seeing, how does this help? Great that you're making it affordable, Alex, I think that's fantastic, and also making it easy for parents to experience it for themselves. I know in the show notes, I'll include links to not only where you can look into seeing these options. And Alex is given a discount in that link. But also the YouTube video you created with a lot of the testimonials from what parents are seeing, I think that would also be really helpful for people to take
Alex Zaharakis 42:50
a look at. Yeah, we have some some audio messages that we've compiled together in a YouTube video. We have some written messages from parents and and for the month of April. You know, in terms of autism awareness, we're going to be discounting all of the models, and there'll be a link that that you have Len that also gives them an additional discount beyond the discount that we'll be having for April. So it'll be a great time to to investigate it, if you if you want to. And there's also a, you know, obviously, you know, seven, $800 $1,000 is pricey, but there, there are payment plans available on the site. So I think you can break it up into four payments. But, you know, we're trying to make this as as flexible as possible from our end. So, you know, don't all rush out and go get them at once, but you know, if it's something that you're interested in, it's intriguing, you maybe, maybe give it a try. Yeah, no,
Len Arcuri 43:50
you've made it easy. Yeah. You know, if you know some other families that kind of go together and and try a device across family. So there's great, I think this really stuck the landing in terms of, at least helping people understand where this fits in, how it might help, like any intervention, sometimes you won't know until you really experience it and see how your child or how you may respond, but I appreciate you shining light on this and for making it easy for parents to experience this again. The links will be in the show notes. And just again, I just want to say thank you for your curiosity and what you're putting out there, along with Dr Christian Wagner and your not for profit, autism is biomedical, and so I'll include that link in the show notes as well for people to go there. But Alex, yeah, look forward to a future conversation with you. Thanks for spending time today.
Alex Zaharakis 44:39
Thanks so much. Len. I really appreciate it.
Len Arcuri 44:40
Take care your child needs. You running on all cylinders now, and the fastest way to rise is with personalized one on one support. Get started today. Go to elevatehowyounavigate.com
