Francesca L.
Photobiomodulation Therapy Works
My husband, John Lawson, was working as a Professor of Statistics at Brigham Young University when he experienced a heart attack in April of 2018. Without noticing any symptoms of impending heart disease, John had been playing tennis for three days a week before he had the heart attack. After initially having a stent put in, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery in May of that year. Even several months after the surgery, however, his ejection fraction was low, and he struggled to regain his energy. Nevertheless, he eventually got back to playing tennis and retired in December of 2019 in relatively good health. He spent his initial post retirement life writing his latest book, An Introduction to Acceptance Sampling and SPC with R, which was published in 2021 by CRC Press. In addition to working on his book, John also volunteered to analyze COVID 19 data from the State of Utah in April of 2020, and continued this work until May of 2021. My reason for providing this initial timeline for his activities is to note what he was doing up through May of 2021 and when we started to notice evidence of cognitive decline. In October of 2021, he suffered a TIA and his heart medications were altered to prevent future strokes. Additionally, he also developed AFIB shortly after the TIA and was put on additional medications to avert the possibility of a stroke. The last major health emergency was in April of 2022, when he suffered a tonic-clonic seizure. The side effects of the medications to prevent seizures have been the most difficult for him to handle, and he has gone through four different anti-seizure medications to try and find one that he can tolerate. In addition to struggling with the side effects of the anti-seizure medications, John also began to suffer memory loss. To be sure, we noted some memory loss as early as 2019, and attributed it to one of the heart medications he was taking. Since he was otherwise functioning well, we did not worry too much about it. However, by the summer of 2022, the memory loss seemed to be getting worse. Additionally, he was unable to play tennis because of balance issues and a general loss of motor control. We attributed his struggles playing tennis to the anti-seizure medications, and wondered if the coordination problems were related to or even compounding the growing memory problems. The lowest point for John was in late October-early November of 2022, when two things happened: he fell off his bicycle because of balance problems and he told me he could no longer understand what he had written in his latest book. His memory was getting worse by the day. After listening to one of Dr. Dale Bredesen’s interviews with Dr. Marvin Berman, we learned about photobiomodulation and neurofeedback, and decided to contact Dr. Berman about the treatment in late January of 2023. At Dr. Berman’s suggestion, we began the neurofeedback part of the treatment with Dr. Cory Hammond, a local practitioner in Utah, on January 31, as a complementary therapy to the photobiomodulation, which we began two weeks after starting neurofeedback. To date, John has had five treatments of neurofeedback and has had about three weeks of the photobiomodulation therapy, so we have only just started Dr. Berman’s protocol. However, I can see several major improvements for John: (1) he can read and understand his own books AND is regularly doing exercises in other statistics books—something he was unable to do three months ago; (2) he is remembering details that he was unable to do only a few short months ago; (3) he is conversing with people and engaging in topics now in a way that he was not doing in November and December of 2022; and (4) he has started to run a half lap on an indoor track every other day. While John still has some problems with memory, he is now back to reading statistics, responding to emails, and engaging with others. We truly believe that the photobiomodulation therapy, coupled with the neurofeedback, has been efficacious, and we look forward to posting an update in a few months as we report on his improvements, including the effects of the additional HBOT treatments.
Response from NeuronicFeb 19, 2026
Hi Francesca, Thank you for sharing John’s journey in such thoughtful detail. We deeply respect the care and diligence you’ve brought to navigating an incredibly complex medical path. It’s especially meaningful to hear that John is once again reading and engaging with his work. Regaining intellectual engagement and physical confidence after such setbacks is no small achievement. We also appreciate your transparency in describing the integrative approach, combining photobiomodulation with neurofeedback. We’re honored that the Neuradiant 1070 protocol, alongside neurofeedback and other therapies, has played a role in this encouraging phase of improvement. We look forward to hearing future updates and wish John continued strength, clarity, and steady progress.