DRAFT page for researchers, I welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions.
Nostostasis fills a language void to enable thinking about healing from a "chronic" state.
The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees. – Erwin Schrödinger
Everyone expects to see healing during the "acute" phase but most think that healing during the "chronic" phase, especially from an accepted "new normal" state, must be special. However, healing is the same in the "acute" phase or after a delay.
by Allan Gardiner March 23, 2025
​The Need
40 million people in the U.S. who suffer from chronic pain and impairments that are unresponsive to conventional interventions and therapies.
My team and I developed therapies for types of pain and impairments that currently have no solution. The therapies appear to awaken the body’s mechanisms for recognizing and restoring basic maladapted sensorimotor functioning. The therapy fits the “wellness” model of improving quality of life.
​Collecting Data
I formed a team and founded PhotoMed Technologies in 2000 to develop a light-based therapy aimed at ending certain types of unrelenting treatment-resistant chronic pain. The therapy stimulates the skin via varying wavelengths that are detected by 3-billion-year-old light energy harvesting mechanisms.
We think that responses at the cellular level draw the body’s attention to recognize and restore maladaptive habituated sensorimotor and other basic physiological functions. The team created sophisticated real-time recording systems to document events that continue to bring value by helping answer new questions.
I funded the team, clinics, and feasibility studies to make the therapy more efficient and effective at improving quality of life after everyone else has given up. We focused on helping people who have no path forward because the outcomes fueled my passion for restoring functional lives.
This essay shares a few examples with real-time recordings of the event when the person’s body switched from impaired to normal, or nearly normal, functioning.
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The outcomes feel like they violate the never-ending logic of “chronic” because there is no medical term for an abrupt return to normal functioning. The team and I solved the missing term problem by inventing one that we call nostostasis.
A bubble diagram was missing a common factor until 2024 when we recognized that there is no medical term for the R2N events.
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Therapies like my team and I have developed for wellness lack diagnostic and billing codes for the underlying impairments that are not a disease or disorder.
Key words: treatment-resistant, unrelenting, new normal, non-healing, "get used to it", plateaued, learned non-use, re-coordination, “I feel normal again”, return to normal functioning, R2N, “chronic”, “managed”, homeostasis, allostasis, nostostasis.
Nostostasis from an engineer's perspective
This page introduces nostostasis from my engineer's perspective to account for the hundreds of crazy-fast recoveries that I have watched. Each felt unique until enough real-time recordings let my team and me find common factors.
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We tested and rejected many concepts for being too specific to a type of malady. Other mechanisms of action did not appear as a change of state.
We started by recording thermal imaging of painfully cold hands from complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS or RSD). CRPS has four diagnostic criteria in different systems that all returned to normal functioning at the time when skin temperature regulation resumed.
Many medical terms imply a maladaptive habituated state such as "new normal." unrelenting, treatment resistant, persistent, and unmanageable.
Nostostasis provides a term for a change of state event that is like an IF/THEN statement in a computer program.
Figure A Nostostasis names a fundamental biological principle of biology: the ability to return to normal functioning after an upset beyond the "normal" status quo maintained by homeostasis.
A partial list of pain and impaired functioning that have responded within 2 sessions
The list below is primarily organized by the physiological impairments that improved. High-impact chronic pain nearly always involves impairments that measurably limit the quality of life. The team collected real-time recordings that confirm responses to therapy, often first measured within seconds to minutes of starting therapy.
There are few terms about a "stuck" sensorimotor function that might account for the stability of a "new normal" state: persistent sensory adaptation, maladaptive sensory adaptation, and sensory habituation dysfunction. I did not find article abstracts that suggest the possibility of an abrupt release of the impaired state with a return to normal functioning.
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I will include information about homeostatic "set points" that establish the range of upsets that can be corrected by normal homeostasis. The term "new normal" applies to a set point driven by a (catastrophe, allostasis, or progressive) beyond recovery to normal. The "new normal" maintains the pain and impairments by resisting interventions and therapies. We think that the therapy has been most effective in prompting the body to become aware that it stopped trying to go back to the pre-injury normal set point.
I will leave it to future researchers to find the many causes for the delay, where it might be located in the body, and the mechanisms for how it might end. However, the ending of the delay, return to normal functioning, and healing are all normal; it is the delay that is special.
Allostasis accounts for a maladaptive recalibration of homeostasis to an abnormal set point aka "get used to your new normal." The abnormal set point prompts homeostasis to maintain the status quo of pain and impairments by resisting interventions and therapies.
Nostostasis accounts for the return to the original normal homeostatic set point which prompts a return to normal functioning, or R2N. The missing terms nostostasis and delayed healing kept me in a logical language prison (an Orwellian concept.)
Could nostostasis account for millions of dismissed anecdotes describing an unexpected R2N?
Examples of nostostasis and a return to normal functioning or healing
A clue to a common factor is that pain is "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience..." Could "stuck" maladaptive sensory habituation or a failure to update sensory maps or motor functions account for many of the ailments on the list? Links go to example cases on this page.
Sensory impairments
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Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN)
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Post-chemotherapy pain
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Neuropathy from other causes, such as stroke or spinal cord injury
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Sympathetically mediated (or maintained) pain
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Post-herpetic pain (shingles)
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Headaches
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Restless leg syndrome
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Motor impairments
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Loss of grip strength and movement
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Muscle knots
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Arthritis
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“Frozen” joint movements
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Lost range-of-motion
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Loss of coordination among muscle groups
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Plateau in physical therapy
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Loss of movement after stroke and spinal cord injuries (therapy helps overcome “learned” non-use)
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"Locked-in" syndrome (total body paralysis)
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Carpal tunnel syndrome
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Scoliosis
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Loss of coordination in gait & swallowing, and choreic movements from Huntington’s disease
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Headaches
Autonomic abnormalities
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Thermoregulation, gut, bowel, and bladder function after spinal cord injury
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Raynaud's syndrome
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Headaches
Wounds
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Restart non-healing wounds
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Accelerate slow-healing wounds
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Diabetic foot ulcers and loss of sensation
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Venous stasis ulcers, bed sores (pressure injuries or pressure ulcers)
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Improve scars, keloids
Experiential
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Binocular vision resumes after 8 years if being blind in one eye after a "successful" surgery
Disclaimer: The maladies listed on this website are based upon data collected during development of PhotoMed Technologies' products. The methods and the Varichrome® Pro are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
The problem: "chronic" offers no exit strategy
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My first career was in manufacturing industry-leading products. Everyone in the company understood that it was our customers who measured the quality of the manufactured products.
I founded PhotoMed Technologies with the belief that the patient should be the one to measure the quality of their outcomes. I was naïve to how "quality" in medicine is often measured by the repeatability of the "inputs," such as guidelines, are followed. I was appalled to learn that payers often allowed doctors to do "only one thing" per visit when a solution might involve two things.
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Little wonder why one in six people in the U.S. suffer chronic pain while 17 million endure high-impact chronic pain. Many have their lives focused only on their pain that is unrelenting and not responsive to interventions and therapies.
Figure 1 I commissioned a cartoon that still expresses a basic problem for people experiencing unrelenting treatment-resistant chronic pain.
Over time, I invented three different therapies to address independent problems associated with unrelenting treatment-resistant chronic pain. However, the cartoon still applies...
Many ways for "getting worse" but none for "getting better" from the "new normal"state.
The problem: expectations of improvement often drop to zero when the person accepts a "new normal" status quo of unrelenting pain and resistance to interventions and therapies.
Thinking about the problem can be simplified by recognizing two states of healing: normal-healing and not-healing.
However, the "managed" state remains in an incomplete but normal-healing state. For example, pain masking agents can mask pain signals to reduce the experience of pain but usually does not improve the impairments beyond the level of relief. The pain masking may provide relief while the body repairs itself.
Figure 2 "Chronic" has no logical endpoint because it refers to the "time after" when most healing has occurred. That implies that "managed" is the best outcome that can be expected when the injury is responsive to interventions and therapies. I founded PhotoMed Tech to relieve pain and impairments experienced by people having no path forward.
The treatment-resistant or "new normal" state maintains status quo of pain by resisting interventions and therapies or a full return to wellness. This state is effectively a self-maintaining state that usually does NOT appear to have pain signals that can be masked. For example, phantom pain and post-surgical pain.
People in the treatment-resistant group often feel abandoned when told "get used to your new normal because no one can help you" or they are excluded from pain studies.
I have not found studies or literature about an abrupt return to normal functioning prompted by an intervention or therapy. Physical rehabilitation, often a last resort for "new normal" pain and impairments, takes time to achieve improvements.
In summer 2024, my advisor Parker Lapp and I were musing about the real-time data when we recognized that there is no medical term for the responses and outcomes observed from testing the three therapies that I had invented.
Could we invent a term that solves the "missing term" mystery?
Nostostasis names a fundamental principle for "getting better"
To make a short story even shorter, Lapp and I invented the term nostostasis from the Greek root nostos that refers to a homecoming after an epic journey.
Nostostasis names a fundamental principle of biology that is the change-of-state from not-healing to normal-healing and functionality that distinguishes life from not-life. That is the ability to return to normal functioning after an upset is at the essence of life.
Nostostasis provides a concept for thinking differently about healing processes and their relationships to interventions and therapies.
For example, a change-of-state feels familiar to me, an engineer, as being like an "If/Then" statement in a computer program.
Figure 3 Nostostasis refers to a change in state from a not-healing state back to a normal-healing state. This is a fundamental principle that distinguishes life from not-life on scales from sub-cellular to whole humans. The not-healing state is often called a "new normal" that has no exit by maintaining the status quo of pain and impaired functioning by resisting interventions and therapies.
The language that we use makes a difference in how we think. Replacing "chronic" with "delayed healing" removes the feeling of never healing. That makes nostostasis a logical endpoint.
Contact me if you would like to discuss details of changes of state, set points, homeostasis, allostasis, or nostostasis.
Set points and change-of-state
You may be wondering, how might a few photons prompt a change-of-state?
Homeostasis works like how an air conditioning system tries to maintain the status quo (state) established by its set point.
The principle named by nostostasis "works" like adjusting the set point of a thermostat that instantly calls for a new status quo.
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A therapy that "works" is like the finger that adjusts the set point.
Figure 4 Thermostat having a change in the temperature set point. The air conditioning system automatically tried to maintain the temperature even if it is uncomfortable. Nostostasis works like resetting the temperature back to your normal comfortable level.
Seeking a common factor
Because I was funding PhotoMed Technologies, my team and I could investigate the variable-wavelength therapy (VWT) for relieving impairments after all previous attempts had failed.
Initially, we expected the therapy to fail to prompt any response in many cases but achieved a response and beneficial outcome during the first or second session. Today, one of the three therapies that I invented is likely to release a "new normal" state because the therapies were developed to help people who did not respond to the VWT.
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I have not found investigations about a non-invasive therapy that includes real-time recordings and data for a return to normal functioning from a variety of different problems.
The feasibility studies
More than 500 people having no path forward volunteered in PhotoMed Technologies feasibility clinics and 7 IRB (Institutional Review Board) reviewed studies across 5 states.
I personally worked with more than 400 volunteers in a study at William Conard's, MD pain management clinic in Sacramento California. Jake Gardiner and I delivered more than 32,000 applications of Variable-Wavelength Therapy (VWT) with no adverse events in the five-years of the study. A few volunteers attended more than 100 sessions with the therapy still "working" for their ordinary temporary aches and pains. Nostostasis and the return to normal functioning (R2N) typically occur as an event that clearly divides the not-healing and normal-healing states.
Figure 5 shows a few maladies having real-time recordings that provided insights leading to the term nostostasis.
Figure 5 Nostostasis names a principle in biology that accounts for the return to normal functioning from a not-healing state irrespective of the medical diagnosis or therapy. The real-time recordings show a nostostatic event in fine temporal and spatial details that support the asking of new questions. (The different size bubbles in the figure do not have any special meaning other than letting me put in more words.)
The central concept in Figure 5 evolved over the years but each term was limited to only a few problems. Nostostasis names a principle that applies to all of the cases tested so far starting from an unrelenting treatment resistant not-healing state.
Real-time recordings document events that would likely not be noticed except for the delay
Constance Haber, co-inventor of the variable-wavelength therapy, had been using thermal imaging for several years to monitor her patients for the beginning of a warming trend. She had also used infrared wavelengths to ease chronic pain and impaired functioning such as cold hands or feet. The abnormal temperatures were associated with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) or diabetic neuropathy. However, the therapy was not efficient for the required practitioner knowledge, treating skills, and clinic time.
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A fundamental limitation was the wavelength of the device she used. The therapy works great if the wavelength available is the one needed by the body. However, the wavelength remains unknown until it "works."
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A second fundamental problem occurs when two or more different wavelengths are needed to prompt the body to heal itself. This problem is not addressed by studies that seek "A does B."
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Haber and my invention of varying visible wavelengths during therapy overcomes the uncertainties of which wavelength or multiple wavelengths the body might "need" to return to its normal functioning. The varying wavelengths draws the body's attention to end the delay in healing.
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The real-time recording systems automatically electronically recorded the steps to achieve a return to normal functioning, or not, to help the team make the therapy more efficient and effective.​
Example 1: Skin temperature response
Figure 6 Charting from real-time recordings of thermal imaging of hand warming that marks the return to normal skin temperature regulation in a person having painfully cold hands. The stable offset temperatures during the first 10 minutes shows that both hands are in good regulation. The settings for treatment #3 appear to have prompted nostostasis to occur with "healing" to be the warming and return to normal responsive skin temperature regulation.
The time in Figure 6 has been accelerated. The warming on the chart lags the beginning of nostostasis because the temperatures of the fingers is averaged, and warming is delayed while the increased circulation of warm blood warms the fingers.
Figure 7 Thermal imaging of cold hands responding to the third two-minute exposure to the varying wavelengths. The colorized images simplify the detection of a warming trend. Nostostasis occured before the warming trend became visible in the monitor or recording.
Another case of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS or RSD) involved both hands with a feeling like holding ice. Her initial thermal imaging showed her hands at a similarly cold temperature. Upon application of several settings of VWT, her thermal imaging showed that only one hand was warming. Advisor Robert E. Florin MD (neurosurgeon) and I recognized that the hand that remained cold had its temperature regulation surgically abolished years before and could not respond to the body resetting the set point. A key finding was that her pain and sensations of coldness resolved in BOTH hands. That is, the sensations of coldness were "stuck" rather than fading in the normal way irrespective of the actual temperatures. (Normal temperature sensations are transient and cannot be "willed" to turn back on, such as when you habituate to swimming pool or cold ocean temperatures.
Figure 7A Thermal imaging of cold hands responding to the third two-minute exposure to the varying wavelengths. The gray images show more details than the colorized images. This case was central to advisor Robert E. Florin and my recognition that the sensations of coldness, like holding ice, can get "stuck" and fail to fade over time irrespective of the actual skin temperature. The feeling of coldness resolved to be "warming" sensations and then became unremarkable in BOTH hands and her other signs and symptoms of CRPS disappeared for more than a year.
Figure 7B Thermal imaging of cold hands responding with the time compressed. Her left hand continues to cool over the nearly 30-minute period. She reported the coldness leaving, then warming, then bilateral comfort.
Example 2: Skin temperature response
"Raymond" had experienced discomforting coldness in his hands despite being athletic and a distance runner. His hands responded upon his first exposure to the variable-wavelength therapy. His feelings of coldness reverted to and remained normal for more than one year.
The reason for persistent sensations coldness was idiopathic. This recording shows that his 30 years in the not-healing state does not prevent nostostasis. The settings tried for first and only 2-minutes of therapy had benefited from many recordings whether they "worked" or not.
Figure 8 Thermal imaging of cold hands responding to a single two-minute exposure to the varying wavelengths. The grayscale images allowed the team to recognize that the veins across the back of the hands provide the earliest information that nostostasis has occurred.
Figure 9 Thermal imaging of cold hands responding to the variable-wavelength therapy. A single exposure prompted the body to restart ordinary skin temperature regulation. The therapy only needs to draw the body's attention. The rest is automatic.
Later observations led Robert E. Florin MD (neurosurgeon) to identify that a failure of coldness feelings suggests that the experience is "stuck" rather than the coldness prompt the feelings. That is, the trigger for nostostasis affects the experience of coldness with warming a result. The return to normal responsive regulation is entirely normal.
Example 3: Touch sensations resume to normal but are misaligned
"George" arrived at a feasibility study at William Conard's MD pain clinic in Sacramento California unable to feel his feet.
George reported that he could not feel his feet for the past 8 years. He had experienced other side effects from 40 years of diabetes. I had waited for someone missing sensations in their feet to test a theory that the sensations could come back "online" but be misaligned until making an observation of where the person was being touched. I asked George to NOT look at or move his feet until requested.
He complied when others had not resisted their urge to test their renewed sensations.
Figure 10 "George" shows that his touch sensations can resume in his feet after being offline for 8 years. Nostostasis occurred during his few minutes of variable-wavelength therapy (VWT) with near-normal sensitivity, but his touch-maps were misaligned with his anatomy (left image). The misalignment had persisted for more than 15 minutes while I tested his touch map alignment. George did not move or look at his feet until I asked him to observe where he was being touched. Upon observing, he gasped. (At about 2:04 minutes in the video below.) His touch-map alignment updated correctly within 2 seconds. The right image was taken (from a real-time recording) 2 seconds after the left image. Nostostasis occurred when the sensations came back "online" but the realignment, though delayed, was made by an ordinary cross-sensory observation.
Figure 11 Video clips from George's second session showing his touch-mapping errors and their corrections. Several people having initially near zero sensations experienced a return of misaligned sensations in feet and fingers. A few described their awaking sensations to suddenly have an irresistible urge to move or touch themselves. My model is like the ordinary OFF/ON cycling of sensations when you sit and then stand up. The OFF experience can become "stuck" like how the experience of coldness can get stuck in Example 1.
The restoration has become common such that the "OFF loss of awareness" no longer feels special for users of the Varichrome Pro.
Notostasis from cross-person observations realign touch maps
"George" (above) shows how a brief observation of where he was being touched can realign internal touch maps. The maps are usually maintained by our normal activities. George shows that the recovery of sensations is separated from their alignment with the anatomy.
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Lois (below) shows an expanded sensorimotor mapping that required observations within her expanded map.
I invented Visual Experience Therapy (VET) to relieve pain that can be co-located with pain or impairments that respond to the Variable-Wavelength Therapy (VWT). I was inspired by reading about "mirror therapy" for phantom pain. I wondered, could I pretend to be the mirror?
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People in our feasibility study in Sacramento remarked about weird sensations associated with post-surgical pain, skin trauma, or phantom pain such as with surgically reconstructed skin. Several reported PTSD flashbacks associated with touching a scar caused during a traumatic experience.
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VET showcases nostostasis because no device is needed to conclude certain types of pain experiences while you watch. The videos teach the methods that one human can use to test and correct another human's other/self body imaging source of weirdness, pain or PTSD.
Both VET and VWT may both be required to end pain at a particular location. Users of the variable-wavelength therapy (VWT) may encounter people who feel the therapy at a different location than where they see it as in Figure 13.
VET uses the ordinary human OTHER vs. SELF experiences to help detect and correct mapping errors. Example 4 and 5.
Figure 12 The sensorimotor system can expand to include tools and other people. The VET therapy aims to prompt the body interact, via the vision systems, with an expanded sensorimotor system to detect and correct errors in the "mirror neuron" systems. The ability to "feel" what another person is feeling is normal and may be the basis for the excitement of impact sports.
VET can be achieved with another in-person human with NO device needed. The following videos show the basic methods. Nostostasis does not depend on any particular therapy. It is a change-of-state from a maladaptive habituated state back to normal functioning.
Example 4: Vision corrects body image maps
Lois came to our Sacramento California feasibility study for more than 100 sessions with several separate body image mapping problems besides aches and pain. This example shows how to find and correct certain types of pain. Variable-Wavelength Therapy (VWT) relieved some of her hand pain followed by a second therapy that I named Visual Experience Therapy (VET) that uses only vision, and another human (me) finished the realignment task.
Figure 13 In retrospect, Lois was experiencing a sensorimotor mapping error that evoked mild pain in her hand after achieving significant relief from the Variable-Wavelength Therapy. During this session, Lois reported "feeling the light" at a different location than where it was being applied. Next, we tried my Visual Experience Therapy VET) to learn if her body might recognize and correct its mapping errors. This clip shows that Lois experienced misaligned touch sensations in her hand that remained after responding to the Variable-Wavelength Therapy. Her flinch identifies Lois's nostostatic event when her touch maps are realigned. 6:15
Figure 13A Screenshots from the video. Lois detects sensory feelings in her hand that were not aligned where she was observing where I was touching my hand. I moved the touch location on my hand with Lois touching where she touched the spot that was misaligned (A). Lois flinched and gasped (B) at the instant when our maps appeared to have overlapped. Further testing found that the misalignment had been corrected (C).
Example 5: Vision releases 75-years-long PTSD
Lois deserves a lot of credit for her humor despite multiple long-term maladies. Her sensitive body awareness showed me several opportunities to develop Visual-Experience Therapy (VET) and Variable-Wavelength Therapy (VWT). About 17 million people in the U.S. endure high-impact chronic pain that might respond like Lois did.​
Figure 14 This example shows that pain and PTSD flashbacks of her traumatic event affected her for 75 years before can resolve in seconds to minutes. This example shows how the release of a specific trauma also can relieve the feelings about other traumatic events. Lois's scar had two parts separated by about two millimeters that required two rounds of the Visual Experience Therapy (VET). The two rounds suggests that each segment is resolved independently. (7:02)
Figure 14B Lois had two scars that appeared to be the reason for needing two rounds of VET to clear away her PTSD. The sensitivity to two scars across a 2mm gap suggest that she had two separate flashback triggers that were somehow maintained by the skin.
Examples 4 and 5 demonstrate the general methods I used to end Lois's pain. Both her hand and knee had partially responded to the variable-wavelength therapy. She had other body image errors that were also self-corrected when our sensorimotor maps appear to have linked sufficiently.