By Henning Saupe, MD

In the beginning there was light. All life as we know and imagine it came into being through the influence of the sun on the planet.

Plant life, animal life, and human life would not exist without the sun, nor would any other form of life.

Light Emission on a Cellular Level

The exploration and scientific study of light in cells of all organisms began about 150 years ago with the Russian biologist and physician Alexander Gurwitsch (1874–1954).

As a histologist, he was concerned with the science of biological tissues and made an astonishing discovery in 1923: While studying cell division of onion cells, he was able to detect a faint glow in the ultraviolet wavelength at 260 nanometers—a range of light radiation that the naked human eye can no longer perceive. He suspected that this light originated from the biochemical processes of cell division, and therefore called it mitogenetic radiation (mitosis means “cell division”).

Today, his discovery is known as ultraweak photon emission, and it occurs as a result of chemical reactions. It can only be measured with a special apparatus, a photomultiplier, and is only just above the technical detection limit. The photon emission must not be confused with bioluminescence—for example, as in the case of fireflies.

The German biophysicist and professor Fritz-Albert Popp (1938–2018) confirmed Gurwitsch’s observations by measurements with light amplifiers and thereby became one of the founders of biophotonics—a distinct branch of science dealing with the phenomenon of cellular luminosity and its possible significance.

According to Popp’s experiments, sick cells (eg, cancer cells) can be differentiated from healthy cells by the pattern of light they emit. Additionally, Popp’s statement, “Cancer is a kind of communication disturbance in the subtle signals that the cells use to communicate with one another,” could be a further step toward answering the questions of how and why cancer develops and how cancer can be treated.

Biophotons are produced by electrons, which are in turn stimulated by sunlight, Popp concluded. For him, this was the proof that the electrons of a living organism or a recently picked plant inform one another, that is, they are in exchange with one another at the speed of light. The light that these cells emit is, like a laser, coherent. That is, coherent light is highly ordered and has the same wavelength or color, and the same orientation of the waves with their crests and troughs. It, therefore, appears collimated and clearly aligned.

Light Storage Capacity  

In terms of diet and nutrition, food quality can be determined by measuring light emissions. The greater the light a product can store and then release, the fresher and healthier it is, as a rule. In experiments, eggs from conventional farming stored significantly less light than those from organic farming. The same phenomenon can be seen when examining organically produced fruit, vegetables, or meat. According to Popp, the difference lies in the “order of the substances,” and the light storage capacity can be seen as a measure of the degree of organization of the cell. True to the motto “You are what you eat,” it seems to be sensible and healthy—with a coherence-based way of life—to eat those foods that are characterized by a higher degree of vitality, or a greater order of substances.

Apart from the added value that the body can obviously benefit from in this way, we also increase the coherence of other systems and areas of life by promoting and consuming organically produced products. The biophoton emission shows a connection between the vitality and well-being of an organism.

These coherently glowing cells represent an order, which—if we consume them—can in turn help to create more order in our organism. The higher degree of organization equals higher quality and higher vitality.

Biophotons in Health and Disease  

According to Popp, healthy cells emit coherent light, while cancer cells emit noncoherent, chaotic-seeming light. In relation to cancer—or other diseases—the promotion of coherence is therefore a universally therapeutic principle of stimulating the chaotically growing cells to re-differentiate, to redevelop into normal cells by increasing the coherent order in an organism.

This is the aim of many nontoxic cancer treatments—to restimulate the natural death of cancer cells that characterizes all healthy cells. Specifically, a healthy cell has a certain lifespan and dies a natural cell death when it becomes too old, which is referred to as apoptosis.

A cancer cell is no longer able to do this. It is potentially “immortal” and will only perish when the entire organism around it decays and dies. The less coherent the complex life processes of a cell are, the less differentiated the cell is and the more aggressive its cancerous nature. However, the more a cancer cell returns to the coherent rhythm of life, the more highly differentiated it is and the slower it grows into cancerous tumors in an organism. 

Since a complete elimination of cancer cells in virtually all cases of metastatic cancers does not appear to be possible, the aim should be to turn them into inactive cancer cells, so-called dormant cancer, as Japanese scientists found in 2019. 

In his book Biophotons: The Light in Our Cells, Marco Bischof describes that cancer represents the entire organism’s loss of coherence and light storage capacity. While it seems that healthy cells can store light better, the opposite is true with malignant cancer cells: the more uncontrolled and rapid their multiplication is, and the less ability to store light (more light is radiated out).

Popp was able to confirm with human tumor cells what had already been discovered experimentally by Dennis Schamhart from the University of Utrecht in 1983–1984. Schamhart and his colleagues were able to measure that cancer cells have a less coherent light pattern than healthy cells, that they behave in a more disordered manner. This means that the ability to form a meaningful collective with other cells, called syncytium, is lost.

A tumor tissue consists of unusually behaving cells that cannot contribute to a higher whole, but rather all live individually at the development level of a single-cell organism. Here, it becomes visible again that the cancer cell has taken a big step backward in the evolution of life. The ability to form syncytia is an achievement of higher life forms, where many cells come together to form a higher whole and where each cell takes into account the “common good” of the whole organism.

Popp’s statement that light is a signal carrier brings us full circle with the realization that everything is connected by a huge network of light and energy and that the light in our cells is not only to enable communication between the cells, but also to communicate with all other systems and even with a divine life force. This is the holistic principle.

Photodynamic Therapy: How Cancer Cells Can Be Killed with Light and Oxygen

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a new and interesting variant of laser therapy for cancer treatment; it is carried out using a light-sensitive substance. Studies have shown that cancer cells have a special transport mechanism for chlorophyll through which they absorb more than sixteen times as much chlorophyll per unit of time as healthy neighboring cells do.

In PDT, an infusion is used to administer what is known as a photosensitizer (a light-sensitive substance) into the bloodstream, which is then specifically concentrated in tumor cells. One of the most effective photosensitizers is semisynthetic chlorin E6—a substance made from a green dye known as chlorophyll. A pharmacological process removes part of the molecule from the chlorophyll obtained from grass, which changes the light-absorption behavior of the substance.

Three hours after the infusion is administered, a sufficient concentration level of the photosensitizer accumulates in the tumor tissue and a laser fiber optic cable is inserted into the tumor tissue. The subsequent irradiation with laser light at a very specific wavelength activates the substance absorbed by the cancer cells in such a way that oxygen radicals are briefly formed through the formation of singlet oxygen molecules, which destroy the tumor cells. 

These oxygen radicals only exist for a few seconds before they break down again into normal oxygen. Because this substance does exactly what is expected of it in just a few seconds—to kill cancer cells before it transforms into harmless oxygen again—no toxins remain in the body.

The treatment takes effect less than half an hour after inserting the laser fiber optic cable and does not cause any significant side effects.

Once the therapy session has been completed, it takes several weeks for the immune system to clear away the dead cancer cells and for the tumor to visibly shrink. It is essential for the patient to undergo a meticulous follow-up check after these weeks.

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Henning Saupe, MD, has been treating cancer since 2005 after over a decade of being a general practitioner. He founded the Arkadiakliniken in Stockholm, the first hyperthermia clinic in Sweden specializing in oncological hyperthermia. He founded the Arcadia practice where he currently serves as medical director. 

Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt with permission from Holistic Cancer Medicine: Integrative Strategies for a New Approach to Health and Healing by Henning Saupe, MD (Chelsea Green Publishing; 2022).