X39 Patches, brought to you by LifeWave
Katrina Borthwick - 11th November 2024
I went to the Go Green Expo in Wellington on the 2nd of November, along with Mark, Bronwyn and my two tiny sidekicks. Mia had a great time having her own little disco on the power company’s display, and they both enjoyed all the free samples. However I had to steer them clear of the booze, and there was a surprising amount of that. That and mushrooms. I think I must have missed a memo somewhere – when did mushrooms become a thing?
Anyway, one of the products being promoted was the LifeWave X39 patches. LifeWave actually makes a whole bunch of different kinds of patches with various claims, but I’m going to focus on the X39.
LifeWave has a crazy high tech promotional video of lots of people doing energetic things, a bit like a tampon advert, playing with 3D rendering of flowers growing off of DNA. I mean who wouldn’t want a little flora on their genes?
The idea, as far as I can tell, is that the patch activates copper peptides and gives the same benefits (cough) as light therapy, without needing an external light source. Instead it harnesses your own internal infrared light energy. It also somehow does stem cell therapy while it’s at it. Here’s t
_Saturday, 15:30, Room 1
Reactivate your stem cells using light therapy patches
Lifewave
Struggle with pain, fatigue, or brain fog? Want to boost energy, improve sleep, and speed recovery naturally? Did you know that by age 30, only half your stem cells are active, and by 60 it’s 10%? X39 is a small, wearable patch that reactivates your stem cells using light therapy. Drug-free and non-invasive, it’s cutting-edge technology offering truly unique health benefits and a business opportunity! Make sure you join our draw to win a month’s supply of X39!_
After a bit of poking around, I have come to the conclusion that the patch actually has some copper peptides in it. Copper peptides seem to help with skin regeneration and reducing inflammation. Of course that’s presuming there is enough in the product to give clinical level effects, which is doubtful. But also they aren’t going to do anything internally if they’re applied to the skin. The company is selling this product for $US150 for 30 patches that last 12 hours each. You can get skin drops with copper peptides in them from the supermarket for $NZ30, so this is an expensive way to get your pseudoscience.
To prove all of their claims, LifeWave have some handy links to the relevant clinical studies on their website. Well….. they have linked some stuff anyway, in a topsy-turvy kind of way. And there are only two research papers for X39. Study A and Study B.
I will share my findings below, but please note - I had to switch the descriptions for study A and study B around, as they somehow reversed them on their website. This was just a taste of what was to come.
The ‘totally got lost’ paper
So the first study, Study A, is described as:
“A double-blind test published in the journal Internal Medicine Research showed a significant increase in copper-peptide concentrations in the blood of subjects who had worn patches X39 patches for 1 week.”
This is not correct. Setting aside their lack of cApiTiLsaTiOn of the ‘j’ and other typos, the journal article linked to is actually from a completely different journal, the International Journal of Healing and Caring. Go to that page and you will see the big subheading “Find the Latest in Holistic Healing”, and articles on things like energy psychology and self-healing through tapping….
The study itself goes all over the place, even implying that wearing the patches is light therapy, but ultimately the conclusion is completely unrelated to that, and just says that the patch probably contains Copper Peptides.
This isn’t really a big deal. As stated previously, I can pick these up from the supermarket.
The ‘stuff jammed together to look like a paper’ paper
The second, and final, study, Study B, is described as:
“A double-blind randomized control study published in the International Journal of Research Studies in Medical and Health Sciences revealed a significant increase in the production of 8 amino acids, which improved short-term memory, sleep, and vitality.”
This research is actually from the journal mentioned. At this point in, my expectations are now so low that I am seeing this as a positive sign. The journal name sounds alright too.
Unfortunately, no, the International Journal of Research Studies in Medical and Health Sciences is dodgy as heck. Its scope is so broad as to be worthless, covering every kind of health related science it can. And although it has been given a name that resembles some of the legit journals, it lacks rigorous peer review and seems to be a giant woo magnet.
This paper is no exception. The references are horrible – they reference themselves three times, and cite awful journals including the International Journal of Healing and Caring I mentioned above. The references also seem to be on random unrelated topics, for example – tapping healing, silver and wound healing, a blog about phototherapy…
The study itself was only on 50 people, and that includes the experimental and control groups. And they only studied them for one week. The paper states that they took a ‘sample of convenience’ and “participants were recruited through five different methods including: radio announcements, email, posting in cafe’s and at university center’s, prior study participant announcement lists and through area community groups.”
I had to look up what ‘sample of convenience’ was. It turns out it is when researchers select participants who are easy to access, rather than randomly selecting them. This method is often used in the early stages of research, such as for hypothesis generation, pilot studies, or to get a sense of opinions. Or for student projects, because it’s easy and nothing is really at stake. However, the internet tells me convenience samples are highly biased, and can’t be used to generalise results to a larger population.
Add to this that the study was done in Arizona in monsoon season. The climate was bad enough to cause two of the test subjects to get barometric headaches. The researchers said they had to offer water at the start of each appointment in order to get urine samples to test for amino acid levels.
This water is a problem. There are strict instructions on how much water people should drink before an amino acid urine test. The instructions I found elsewhere for patients getting these sorts of tests was to fast overnight and consume no more than 6 x 8-ounce glasses of fluid over the 24 hours before collection. So there is no way that extra water, and the heat, wasn’t having an impact on the test results. Add to that, the measures were taken at day 1, 2 and 7, instead of over a decent period of time.
The researchers say the urine analysis data showed an increase in amino acids: Creatinine, Normetanephrine, ethionine, homocysteine, isoleucine, glutamine, cysteine, 5-hydroxytryptophan, β-minobutyricacid. But I can’t tell. The Creatinine numbers were down in the table I saw, not up. The table’s also missing data values for most of the amino acids, and then for many they seem to have just listed the standard deviations and not the actual results. Some of the units also don’t seem to match the sorts of units normally used for urine analysis concentrations.
I also noted that the numbers look really screwy, for example Google tells me that a normal Normetanephrine level in urine is 75-375, and in this paper control averages were 66-69 – with the active group on the low end of normal. Also, should I be concerned that the day-one values were higher in the active group than the control group?
Oh yeah, and right there near the end, it says this study was funded by LifeWave Corp. Sigh.
Stem cell connection?
Ok so why are they talking about stem cells? Stem cells are a type of cell found throughout the body that can make more cells like themselves (renew), and they can become other cells that do different things. Stem cells are found in almost all tissues of the body. They maintain and repair tissue. They can be guided to become particular types of cells, through stem cell therapy, to repair or regenerate damaged tissue.
As far as I can tell, the link between the patches and stem cell therapy is made because an ingredient in the patches, copper peptides, can be used to improve stem cell therapy and help shift regeneration processes to healthy regeneration. They can also help with stem cell culture – in a petri dish. But these patches aren’t stem cell therapy. Just because copper peptides are used in stem cell therapy, doesn’t mean these patches are stem cell therapy, or that they have anything to do with it at all. Actual stem cell therapy involves taking stuff in and out of your body.
The light therapy connection
So, can you make your own infrared light internally? Well, no.
Copper peptides are linked to some of the general light therapy woo, and to LED masks which are promoted for skin care and anti-aging. It doesn’t work, but you get a cool gimp outfit out of it.
So, in summary. This is all a bit of an expensive nothingburger. But the company does at least seem to be doing a really good job of making their videos and website look fancy.