Radiation Is Good for You?

Dear Natural Health Solutions Reader,

Everybody knows that radiation exposure is dangerous. In college, I vividly remember getting a knee X-ray and a technician warning me that “every exposure damages you for life,” so it was vital to get “as few as absolutely possible.”

Seemed logical. After all, ionizing radiation rips electrons out of their orbits. Too much of it permanently damages tissue and raises cancer risk.

But how much is too much? And is every dose, no matter how small, really harmful over the long term?

As I’ve stated here before, quietly — and swiftly — the concept of hormesis is fundamentally changing health science. That has important implications for you and your health.

Hormesis is the idea that a just-right amount of a toxin or stressor is healthful, because it stimulates the body’s growth and repair mechanisms. Long-suffering (but remember — a little suffering is good for you!) readers know that I regard hormesis as the master key to robust health.

Hormesis applies to all kinds of stress — fasting, oxygen deprivation, consuming toxins such as arsenic, solar exposure (more on that in the April issue of NHS) and more.

Including, it seems, ionizing radiation.

In June of this year, with little fanfare, government regulators decided to re-open the whole question of radiation exposure and health.

Specifically, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission currently uses a model based on this premise:

… radiation is always considered harmful, there is no safety threshold, and biological damage caused by ionizing radiation (essentially the cancer risk) is directly proportional to the amount of radiation exposure to the human body (response linearity).

But now, three petitioners — a radiation health group, a physicist, and a professor of radiation oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles — have suggested a change.¹

They want this long-standing idea be tossed out, in favor of this (in the NRC’s own words):

The radiation hormesis model provides that exposure of the human body to low levels of ionizing radiation is beneficial and protects the human body against deleterious effects of high levels of radiation.

The NRC is currently chewing on this idea.

So what does this mean to you? The answers are both specific and general.

Specifically, many people go to great lengths to protect themselves from any and all radiation exposure.

They get expensive radon remediation done in their basements. They get their granite countertops ripped out (yes, some granite has been shown to emit low-level radiation). They refuse dental X-rays. They avoid airport scanners, opting for intimate “pat-down” encounters with agents.

But whether a given level of moderate radiation exposure (and generally, all of the examples above fall in the moderate range) is harmful, harmless, or even — dare I say it — protective is far from a settled question.

Consider this chart, taken from a provocative study in the journal Dose-Response, of cancer deaths from atomic bomb survivors in Japan²:

The vertical axis, labeled ERR, is for “excess relative risk,” a measure of the likelihood of cancer death below or above a zero-exposure baseline.

The horizontal axis shows absorbed radiation in “gray” units, abbreviated as GY.

Note that risk of cancer death drops below the baseline for low-level exposures.

And consider that radon — the invisible gas that Americans equate with raised cancer risk at any dose — is considered therapeutic in much of Europe.

People there congregate to radon-rich natural spas to breathe the air or absorb it in baths through their skin. At least some evidence suggests it offers a variety of health benefits, including relief from arthritis.³

Now… this is all pretty controversial, and depends to some extent on how you interpret the data.

Further, I am not claiming to know precisely what level of radiation exposure is right for you. It likely varies.

But I do know that the radiation hormesis model has good evidence behind it. It is just as likely that low-level exposure is healthful rather than harmful.

Bottom Line

There’s much more to be said about this complex topic, and many unknowns still exist. I don’t advise anyone to get recreational X-rays (if such a thing were even available).

I’m not even persuaded that chilling for hours or days in a radon-rich spa is a great idea, though I think it’s worthy of serious study.

However…

The general concept that a stressor like radiation may have beneficial effects at low levels can inject some much needed sanity into the sometimes terrifying business of modern life.

Just knowing that my X-ray technician’s solemn warning that “every exposure damages you for life” isn’t necessarily true is both comforting and empowering. It’s an antidote — and God knows we need one — to the neurosis that makes us fear every toxin and stressor.

We need toxins. We need stressors. We are tougher than we think we are.

Sincerely,

Brad Lemley
Editor, Natural Health Solutions

Citations

1. Marcus CS. Time to Reject the Linear-No Threshold Hypothesis and Accept Thresholds and Hormesis: A Petition to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Clin Nucl Med. 2015
2. Doss M. Evidence supporting radiation hormesis in atomic bomb survivor cancer mortality data. Dose Response. 2012
3. Erickson BE. The therapeutic use of radon: a biomedical treatment in Europe; an “alternative” remedy in the United States. Dose Response. 2007