How Photonic Health Is Transforming Pet Wellness through Light Therapy

[00:16] Dr. Ruth Roberts: I'm Dr. Ruth Roberts. Welcome back to another episode of Healing Tails. With me today is an amazing person that has been in holistic health for all our companion animals, horses, dogs and cats. Donna Woods, who is the co-founder and CEO of Photonic Health, hails from Ocala, Florida, aka the horse capital of the world. It's kind of like the winter training spot for all the race horses and performance horses. If you don't know Photonic Health, it is a company dedicated to improving the health and well-being of horses, dogs, and cats through light therapy.

[01:01] Dr. Ruth Roberts: What's truly inspiring about Donna is her holistic approach to animal care. Since 2004, she's been an equine body worker, blending modalities such as Chinese medicine, light therapy, equine touch, t-touch, myofascial release, Reiki, and even emotional and energetic clearing, which I think is gaining the understanding just now of how important that modality is. Additionally, she's certified in NLP hypnosis and is a trainer for infinite possibilities. And she's also a dedicated horse, dog and cat mom. So Donna, welcome. So delighted to have you here today.

[01:44] Donna Woods: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I just absolutely love your mission and it takes a village to make a thing. So I'm happy to be part of your mission.

[01:58] Dr. Ruth Roberts: I'm so delighted. So it sounds like, I mean, if you're doing NLP and other modalities, well, like hypnosis, for instance, and infinite possibilities, it's just got to be crazy in terms of the information that you're able to access. So are you able to help the parents understand what's going on with their pets and kind of reverse engineer how they're approaching it?

[02:23] Donna Woods: Absolutely. Absolutely. The beliefs are just something that we've been told over and over again, right? A belief is something that you just hear over and over again until you embrace it and embody it. And when it comes to pet health, especially, there's been a lot, I mean, we've all been really brainwashed from a very young age. You get your dog, you get your cat, you go to the feed store, you buy a kibble and you live happily ever after. And that's not the case these days. And so for us to be able to help people understand and look at things from a different perspective, you have to work with, I'm not going to say changing their belief system, but walking them to the point of going, is that really working for you and letting them come to the realization that, hey, maybe there are other alternatives out there and just sort of leading them down a different path that they haven't been led down before.

[03:37] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Right on. And that's kind of out of left field, but that's one of my favorite topics to explore, because I think that we get so conditioned in our patterns and in our beliefs that we cannot see another way.

[03:52] Dr. Ruth Roberts: So fortunately, you've got that ability and that led you into creating photonic health. So we'll kind of segue back where we were going, because I think this is light therapy, I think is fascinating. So was there a particular thing or moment or animal that really sparked that journey into this business?

[04:12] Donna Woods: Absolutely. We were at a horse conference, actually, and there was a veterinarian from Australia. This is back in 2000. And he did a presentation and he's like waving this little red light saying you could take your horse out of pain, you could take your horse on a colic. And I don't know why, but I was just magnetically drawn to it.

[05:17] Donna Woods: And we were fairly new into horses at the time as well. And so of course, panic set in and I started freaking out. And for people that don't have horses, a colic can be a death sentence, really. Yes. And so my husband, the engineer was like, honey, we just spent $750 on this thing. We are going to go see if it actually works. So what I did was I called the vet, I made a call into the vet. They told me they couldn't be out for three hours because of course the Packer game was playing.

[05:57] Donna Woods: And so we were like, all right, let's go. And at the time we literally had an outlined diagram of a horse, just like a stick figure horse with stock.

[06:08] Donna Woods: And we knew nothing. And so we're like, all right, so I'm holding the book and going reading descriptions and he's putting the lights on. And literally within 20 minutes, we hit one point and her back end opened up and we pulled her out of colic.

[06:29] Donna Woods: And we instantly became what I call red light junkies. Like if anything needed red lighting or not, it got illuminated and that really set us on our journey.

[06:42] Dr. Ruth Roberts: That's astonishing. And man, that is a horrible way to test it out, but boy, the proof was in the pudding, right?

[06:49] Donna Woods: Correct. Correct. Nothing like trial by fire.

[06:55] Dr. Ruth Roberts: So you got to call the vet back before the Packers game was over and say, we're all good.

[06:59] Donna Woods: Yes. And save myself a lot of money.

[07:04] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Yes. And the horse, a lot of indignity. So let's talk about the science. So light therapy, photonic therapy. So first of all, what are these devices or what are they generating?

[07:18] Donna Woods: So the devices are, I look at it as a form of energy work because light, different colors, the sun is a form of energy and it's very therapeutic. We all know that it creates infrared light, which increases vitamin D levels. And so it actually, contrary to popular belief, it can be a very therapeutic modality. So red light therapy is just taking the healing elements of the song and really condensing them down. And so we use red at a very specific wavelength. The wavelengths are what creates the colors. And we chose red at a very specific wavelength because it is the most clinically tested and proven.

[08:10] Donna Woods: And so what it does is in a really condensed version, red will stimulate the mitochondria within the cell. When we stimulate the mitochondria within the cell, we set off a whole chain reaction of events.

[08:26] Donna Woods: And basically what it's doing, it's like putting jumper cables on your dead car battery. We're just asking those cells to start functioning normally. So we're increasing endorphins, we're increasing serotonin levels, which is so necessary for proper digestion. A lot of people don't realize that, but if you don't have proper serotonin levels, you're not going to get proper digestion.

[08:53] Donna Woods: And it induces phagocytosis, which is, that's the garbage can that takes all the garbage out of the cells. And we're really just encouraging those cells to start functioning like a normal healthy cell.

[09:07] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Right on. If we can make the mitochondria happy, the rest of the cell gets super happy because those are the powerhouses of the cell for sure. Yeah. Right on. So there's cold laser, there's red light therapy. So what is the differentiation of photonic versus those modalities?

[09:31] Donna Woods: So cold laser therapy and red light therapy are generic terms, but they're identical except for the delivery method.

[09:47] Donna Woods: So cold laser therapy, they're attempting to do the exact same thing as red light therapy is that they're using a laser for it. And laser has some very specific drawbacks. First off, typically lasers are a lot more expensive.

[10:07] Donna Woods: And secondly, more importantly is that lasers cannot be used around the eyes unless there's eye protection because of the highly focused beam. You can do damage around the eyes with a cold laser. The third thing is if you have cancer or tumor, it will literally grow.

[10:31] Donna Woods: Yeah. And so there are those are some really heavy drawbacks. So we chose doing red light therapy, we use a medical grade LED and the benefits are the exact opposite.

[10:46] Donna Woods: There's lots of research out there in clinical studies coming out every day that using red light therapy is reducing tumors, shrinking tumors, shrinking cancer, putting it back into remission. It's 100% safe to use around the eyes. As a matter of fact, we've had a lot of people use it on their dogs with eye conditions and they're reversing their eye condition well.

[11:11] Donna Woods: And really what sets our devices apart is that because we've been doing energy medicine for so long and my husband's the engineer, we integrate other aspects of energy in there. So with several of our handheld devices, the housing is positively charged. And what that means is you get an enhanced grounding effect by using it. So you're adding that extra energy component into it. We are really also quite huge into using Nogier frequencies. So Nogier frequencies are a series of seven frequencies that were developed by Dr. Paul Nogier. And he discovered that hard to treat injuries responded to different types of frequencies. And if you think of frequencies as a really high pulse, so if you turn on one of our devices and you put your video camera on, you'll see the light's going like this, or maybe it's going like this. So it's just different rhythm patterns of pulsing.

[12:27] Donna Woods: And so we incorporate a lot of different aspects into our devices that aren't anywhere else.

[12:37] Dr. Ruth Roberts: That's very cool.

[12:40] Dr. Ruth Roberts: So are there specific things or ailments or conditions in pets, so dogs and cats and horses that respond particularly well to photonic therapy?

[12:56] Donna Woods: Yes, absolutely. We're going to start with anything with an itis. So any sort of inflammation, red light works incredibly well on inflammation. That is like the number one thing that the FDA has approved it for is reducing pain and inflammation. So as a particular example, dogs. Arthritis, it works amazing for dogs with arthritis. It basically gives them their life back.

[13:31] Donna Woods: But I am going to say it also goes hand in hand with what you're feeding the dog. And not because I'm chatting with you, Dr. Ruth, but it's one of the things that we're dealing with an animal or dog person. One of the things we're going to ask is, "What are you feeding your dog?" Because if you keep feeding it inflammatory foods, there's no anti-inflammatory that's going to fix the situation or really resolve that. But if you're going and doing all the right things, you're going to be better off ahead.

[14:07] Donna Woods: The other thing that we really find really well on is ACL care and also IVD, intervitreal disc disease in dogs. So yeah.

[14:25] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Interesting. Cartilaginous diseases or conditions that are really difficult to treat because there's so little blood supply to them. So it's very hard to get them to heal. Super interesting.

[14:41] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Cool. So aside from your horse that started this whole journey, can you share a couple of success stories where photonic therapy has made a significant impact?

[14:54] Donna Woods: Absolutely.

[14:55] Donna Woods: So one of the very early... So we started our business in 2009 in Wisconsin, and we had just one device. And so we got called out by this lady.

[15:08] Donna Woods: She wanted to know more about our product and everything. So we got her the product, and she was using it really quite successfully on anxiety and her dog. Anytime the storm was coming, she would put lights on him, and eventually she never had to do that anymore because she just... She resolved that by keeping that dog in parasympathetic mode when a storm was coming. So she was able to change that pattern. But the big story came.

[15:40] Donna Woods: She referred us to... She had a friend who had a dachshund. Dachshunds are notorious for losing their hind end and not being able to walk. And so her friend had this doxy, couldn't walk. She was in her ear about red light therapy. And I mean, this is back in 2009. This lady was not having any of it. She's at the vet. She's crying.

[16:09] Donna Woods: She's going to put the dog down because that's the only option that the vet gave her. And her friend's voice popped into her head and said, "Try the red light. Try the red light." And so she changed her mind, brought the dog home, borrowed her friend's red light. Within three days, the dog was walking. And within two weeks, you would never know that it had had any problems. And that's our really first major success story that we were like, "Well, this is life-changing. This is life-changing.

[16:49] Dr. Ruth Roberts: That's so cool.

[16:53] Donna Woods: Yeah.

[16:55] Dr. Ruth Roberts: That's amazing.

[16:56] Donna Woods: Yeah. And we've had lots of other stories about our clients doing this. And this is our whole... This has always been our mission, is to be able to put the technology and the education and knowledge into pet owners' hands so they can do it at home when they need to do it, not at somebody else's company.

[17:21] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Right on. And when I had a brick and mortar practice, we did laser therapy. And it was an amazing device, but it is really expensive. And ultimately, if you've got a dog with really severe arthritis, sometimes the car ride there to the clinic and back wasn't useful and actually made things worse. They may feel better temporarily from the laser treatment, but then just the cost of the car ride and the stress of getting in and out would take away whatever benefit was there. So I really like that this is an at-home device. Is it something that's very easy for pet parents to start using? Yes. Is it a point and shoot, basically?

[18:03] Donna Woods: We have made it point and shoot. So again, my husband's an engineer, so he's used to reading diagrams and schematics. And for him, he just picked it up like that, like the whole acupuncture meridian system and all the points and things like that. For him, that was just like it clicked in his brain. And then we started teaching classes on it.

[18:27] Donna Woods: And we were like, "Oh, people aren't getting it." It came so intuitively. It came so intuitively to us. We were like, "Well, yeah, this is really simple." And it wasn't. It was a gift.

[18:42] Donna Woods: And so what we did is we've been teaching since 2009, essentially.

[18:52] Donna Woods: We have honed in and revised, really drilled down our program to make it so simple that even my grandkids actually illuminate animals.

[19:06] Donna Woods: And we've authored three books specific to using light therapy on animals and made it super user-friendly. So literally, it's you look at the condition, you take your device, you look at the little diagram, and you put the lights where the dots are. And just put it where it's at, read the instructions. Super simple. Super simple.

[19:33] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Yeah, I love that. Simple is good. Because that's the optimal rule for any sort of device. If you can keep it simple and minimize the screw-ups, you're going to win every time.

[19:49] Dr. Ruth Roberts: So are there some misconceptions about photonic therapy that you'd like to clear up? Because you're firmly in the woo-woo category, although now there really is a terrific amount of scientific basis.

[20:02] Donna Woods: Yeah, when we first started in 2009, I mean, my dad called me the voodoo witch doctor daughter. It was really out there in 2009, and it really didn't start becoming more mainstream until 2019, 2020, when the FDA lifted a lot of the regulations. And the biggest misconception is that, and there's a lot of light therapy devices out on the market today, that you can just go buy one, and it's going to work great.

[20:46] Donna Woods: So we've encountered it numerous times where somebody goes to buy a cheap device on Amazon, and then they're using it, and we'll run into them. And they'll be like, "Did you try light therapy?" "Oh, yeah, we tried it, and it didn't work." And my husband, again, the engineer goes, "Well, what's your device?" He'll look up the specs, and he'll go, "Oh, that's because it's not within the therapeutic range." So as Americans, we think more is better, right? Stronger is better, right? And with light therapy, there's a very specific range that puts it in that therapeutic zone. So literally, we traded this person--they're super high-powered device with one of our--actually our lowest-powered device--and said, "Here, you just try it overnight. Just try it overnight."

[21:44] Donna Woods: They came back the next day, and they were blown away. They were like, "I can't believe this. This, my--it worked like the results were immediate."

[21:56] Donna Woods: So the biggest challenge for us is, if you're going to make an investment, make an investment where you're going--where you know that you're going to get what you're paying for, and you're also going to get the support that you need. Because a lot of companies are out there just selling devices, and then once they sell you the device, they're gone. And we're about education, we're about customer support. I've got a full team that, you know, if you want to pick up the phone and talk to them, they're based in the United States. How about it? They love taking care of our customers, and we love taking care of our customers as well.

[22:40] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Beautiful. And that's something that's so important because, you know, you try something and it's like,

[22:47] Dr. Ruth Roberts: But if you don't have--as you said, if you don't have that support to help you really hone in on what you're doing, then you've got a useless device sitting there instead, and that's not cool." So, yeah, now it gets really frustrating. So what do you think--how is the best way to really put this device into a more holistic approach to pet wellness? And can it complement other modalities like acupuncture, acupressure, chiropractic care?

[23:19] Donna Woods: Yes.

[23:22] Donna Woods: The best way is, you know, we've been doing it for so long that it's our first line of defense. So it doesn't matter if my horse comes in with a gash or my, you know, my dog, you know, my one friend, she came in with a thorn in her paw the other day and she's a little drama queen.

[23:41] Donna Woods: Yeah, our first line is always to grab one of our--one of our lights. So it's always our first line of defense.

[23:50] Donna Woods: And that's the thing that we love about red light therapy is it can stimulate acupuncture points and acupressure points without needles.

[24:03] Donna Woods: And it can do myofascial release work without having to go to a specialist that does myofascial release. But there are going to be instances where you're not going to feel confident, and you're going to go, "Hey, maybe I need to have my dog go see a chiropractor."

[24:22] Donna Woods: And so what we recommend, we actually have a chart for the dog--for dogs and horses. Like, if you're going to have any body work done, you illuminate them beforehand. And we actually have a lot of equine body workers and canine body workers, including chiropractors, that use our devices in their practice. And what they have found is if they illuminate the animal first before they do the adjustment, they have to adjust less points, less areas, and the adjustment holds a lot longer.

[25:01] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Interesting.

[25:02] Dr. Ruth Roberts: And that makes some sense, right? If you're able to release the myofascial tissue around, then that sort of lets go of that tightness so that things can settle in easier. That makes total sense.

[25:14] Donna Woods: Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

[25:17] Donna Woods: So yeah, that's the great thing about red light. It doesn't--if you're doing essential oils, if you're doing e-stim, if you're doing pens, it works hand in hand. If you're doing traditional modalities, it works hand in hand. There's no wrong way to use it. The only way that it really doesn't work is if you don't use the device.

[25:41] Dr. Ruth Roberts: You mean it sits in the box in the closet and collects dust?

[25:45] Donna Woods: Correct. That's not going to work just because you own it.

[25:50] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Yeah, exactly. Hayao needed to come up and say hello.

[25:57] Dr. Ruth Roberts: She is. She's our old lady. She is 14 and has had some interesting issues the last couple of years, but definitely on the mend.

[26:08] Dr. Ruth Roberts: So what does the future look like for photonic therapy? Are there some developments or research projects that you've got going on?

[26:17] Donna Woods: We have, like I said, we've been teaching since 2009. And so we will be coming out with a dog certification program and we'll be putting our equine certification program online. And we do have a couple new devices in development.

[26:44] Donna Woods: And the future of it is we're really delving more into a lot of different colors.

[26:53] Donna Woods: As an example, blue is antibacterial. It'll kill 98% of MRSA in one application.

[27:02] Donna Woods: And yeah, that study, the ground study came out from that at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee back in, I think, 2011 or 2012.

[27:15] Donna Woods: And so it's taken a while, but that's one of the reasons why the hand dryers that you see in the public bathrooms and a blue light comes on with it.

[27:26] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Blue light because it kills all the bugs.

[27:27] Donna Woods: Because it kills all the bugs. So we've incorporated blue into several of our devices since 2018.

[27:37] Donna Woods: And we're also, we are really leaning strongly into green as well, because green is one of those super cool colors that can take an animal from sympathetic to parasympathetic in about 30 seconds. And so it really helps to address the nervous system in addition to stimulating the pineal gland. So we've got lots of things always working.

[28:09] Dr. Ruth Roberts: That is very cool because I mean, I think, you know, there's, everybody has their own favorite thing, right, that they think causes everything.

[28:19] Dr. Ruth Roberts: But I think that that situation of constantly being in a sympathetic state contributes so much to chronic disease because they never get in a state. We never get in a state where the body can relax, can calm down and actually be in a place to heal. So that's incredibly powerful. Well, that's awesome.

[28:43] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Cool.

[28:45] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Anything else? Like if somebody was like, "Wow, this sounds really awesome." Yeah.

[28:51] Dr. Ruth Roberts: But they have no idea. What's the best way for a pet parent to really get started in photonic health?

[28:55] Donna Woods: The best way is just to reach out to us. So again, we've got a full staff, full team. You can call them up at 855-436-7082. Or if you want to head to our website, Photonic Health, that's P-H-O-T-O-N-I-C, H-E-A-L-T-H dot com. That's the easiest way to get started. And, you know, the other aspect of it is when people get started, especially into a new modality, there's a lot of uncertainty. So one of the things that we've done is we provide online classes, introductory foundation courses with every single purchase. So if somebody purchases a light therapy device, we're not going to leave you hanging just saying, "Good luck. Let us know how that works out for you." We've actually created a little online course to walk you through step by step the basics and how to get you started on it so that you're more confident in using our devices.

[30:07] Dr. Ruth Roberts: That's amazing because I think that's where education is sorely lacking for so many of these devices. And that just improves the pet parent's knowledge of how to use it properly, where to use it, all of that good stuff.

[30:23] Dr. Ruth Roberts: So have you, in all of your years in holistic health, is there one piece of wisdom you'd like to pass on to our audience if they're just getting started into holistic aspects of health?

[30:40] Donna Woods: Be open.

[30:43] Donna Woods: There's so many things out there these days and do what resonates for you. But at the end of the day, it's going to all come back down to what you're feeding. It doesn't matter if it's a horse, if it's a dog, if it's a cat, it's a person.

[31:01] Donna Woods: Proper mineralization and proper food is absolutely critical.

[31:09] Donna Woods: And if you've got that right, then owning pets. I mean, I've got seven horses, three dogs, two of which are Frenchies, and two cats. And most people go, "God, your vet bill must be really high."

[31:24] Donna Woods: Not at all. Because we've got their food going the right direction, and then we support them energetically. So just get your foundation good, and then it really is a lot. Just be open. Whatever resonates with you. Follow your gut.

[31:46] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Right on. Thank you. Donna, this has been so much fun and such a huge amount of knowledge. I think that photonic therapy, light therapy, is confusing for a lot of people, especially when we start talking about different colors. But I think you did an outstanding job of explaining what it is, why it is, all those good things. And thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your knowledge and your wisdom. And for those of you that are listening to Healing Tails, go back, check out our previous episodes. So much amazing knowledge people are willing to share with you so you can have an easier journey down the holistic path and find options that your local veterinarian may not have. So until next time, take good care. Give your pups and your kitties a big hug and kiss for us. And we'll see you in the next episode.

[32:46] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Thanks for listening to Healing Tails where pet parents become healers, one tail wag at a time. Want more tools and support? Head to DrRuthRoberts.com. Until next time, trust your gut, question the noise, and keep showing up for your pet.