RED LIGHT THERAPY: A Beginner’s Guide to Healing and Energy

Hey, Dr. A, I've been hearing more and more about red light therapy, but I have no idea why someone would do it. Can you break it down? Sure, let's get into that. I'm Dr. A. Thanks for coming to the YouTube channel. I use this channel to disseminate healthcare information, answer questions, etc., and this is a really good question that we got. My background is I've been working and researching in the integrative and naturopathic medical communities for 30-plus years, and I've been seeing patients a long time. I use that background to answer these sort of questions. So let's get into the idea of red light therapy. Red light 101, we could call it. The first thing is, before we get into the mechanics of light wavelengths and penetration and things, why would I use red light? What does it do to the body? Well, when we get into the red and infrared end of the spectrum, we have a direct effect on the energy-producing portions of the cell called the mitochondria. And red, near-infrared light, et cetera, go in And they affect a number of factors in and around the mitochondria, one of which is called cytochrome c oxidase. And a portion of what cytochrome c oxidase does is to increase mitochondrial energy production. But the bottom line, sort of the punchline, is it helps with the mitochondria operating and creating more energy for the cells, which then creates more energy for the body. Now, how would this help me if I'm sick or healing or whatever? And the bottom line is, and this This has been studied a lot in like wound healing models. So you injure something, that's a wound, and you go and you need to heal something up. In a wound healing model, what they find is, is that if we increase the amount of cytochrome c oxidase and the other attendant sort of enzymatic and non-enzymatic activities that go with that, we improve mitochondrial function and that allows the cell to heal better. And if you have enough cells together in a tissue and the tissue's damaged, it will heal more quickly. So basically what we're looking at is improving Improving the respiratory chain and the mitochondria, improving mitochondrial function, and improving the healing trajectory or recovery trajectory. So let's say you don't have a full-on wound, but you're trying to recover from an excessive workout, or you just finished a marathon or some other thing. Recovery is another great use of red, near-infrared, et cetera. And then another place that we see this healing sort of mechanism work is in people with inflammatory conditions that are either due to infection. Infection or post-infection or some other related problem like a low energy state, such as in chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia or something like that. So we see this a lot in long COVID, et cetera, to try and help get the mitochondria back online to improve the energy state of the person. So now that we kind of have seen, okay, it's going to improve energy, improve healing, what's the difference between the red light end of the spectrum? So if we get to the end of the spectrum that is red, and then we go beyond the visible spectrum, we get into infrared. So red than infrared. So in the red end of the spectrum, we're in the, you know, 600s to 700, 800 end of the spectrum to get red light that absorbs pretty well. It gets down usually to the subcutaneous fat, the fat that's below your skin, right? So that's good because it can get into the circulation, affect cytochrome C in the circulation and those tissues. Near infrared is going to be 700 to 800 range up through 2,500 nanometer range. And that's called near infrared. And that's going to get down about twice as deep, usually into the muscle layers of the person. Now, if there's a near-infrared, there's also a mid-infrared that's about 2,500 to 25,000. And then far-infrared is 25,000 up to quite a large amount of nanometers. And each one just goes deeper. Okay. Far-infrared is often used as the heat source in a sauna. Quick interruption from the regular video. If you are a healthcare practitioner and you have an interest in this topic, we're going to put a link in the description below to my CE website and specifically the webinar that is about this topic. So we'll see you over there. Thanks. So most of the red near-infrared devices that you see are for topical use on the body. And their wavelengths, like I say, are going to penetrate either to the subcutaneous layers or the muscle layers. And they're going to help with this cytochrome c oxidase. And there's other things around cytochrome c oxidase that just basically help the mitochondria to work. So when you're using these things, The first thing that you want to think about is if I'm going to increase my mitochondrial activity, that will often result in me having more energy. But some people actually, if they're especially using big body pads, you know, red near-infrared, they'll actually get really calm. And some people nap when they're doing red near-infrared, which is great. But some people are stimulated by it because the mitochondria feel that right away. So if that's the case, always test out red light near-infrared therapies earlier in the day, because if you do get stimulated by You don't want to do it at night and then not be able to sleep or something. The next thing is, is that we generally have people work their time up. And if somebody's— and it's not, you know, right before bedtime, you can easily do 15 to 30 minutes as your first dose and just see how it goes for you. But people certainly can do longer doses. Now, there's often this sort of divide where people will see research that was done with just a few minutes of red or near-infrared therapy, and they'll think, oh, well, why am I going to red light bed, you know, for 15 minutes or 30 minutes when they did this research, you know, at 2 minutes or 5 minutes or something like that. There's a couple reasons. One is most of that type of research is done with extremely powerful red or near-infrared generators. They might be laser, they might be high-powered LED, but the power may be different between the research device that was used and the red pad that you're on or near-infrared pad or the bed that you're going in. So a lot of times you need a little bit more time than what was shown in the research to get the same effect because the power levels are different. The next thing after you make sure that, you know, you tolerate it and it doesn't, you know, make you too overstimulated to sleep or something is, you know, where you might do it and what you might do it for. Well, globally speaking, people who are recovering from body-wide issue like a chronic fatiguing state, fibromyalgia, long COVID, all of these sort of things, they're going to probably, if you have a body-size mat or at least a, you A torso size, you can move around, that's going to be better because you're going to affect more mitochondria at one time. This is why the big light beds can be very, very useful if they go red near infrared because you're going to get deep and across all of the body cells or most of the body cells at the same time. If you're using it to heal up a specific injury, which like is done in physical medicine a lot, there may be either an external source that looks like a lamp or a pad that wraps around the joint. So they make them for shoulders and Elbows and knees and all sorts of stuff. That's also not uncommon. If you, you're pretty good everywhere else, but you've injured your shoulder, for example, you might just do localized therapy there. So to summarize, red and near-infrared, and then the other infrareds get in through the skin. They absorb— red gets in a decent amount, near-infrared is deeper, et cetera. And they affect mitochondrial energy systems and enzymes that improve the energy production of the cells in the area that you are putting in the And so they can be very, very useful and helpful in healing both with pure wounds, with traumas that are recovering, and then body-wide systemic things such as a chronically fatiguing illness, long COVID, fibromyalgia, et cetera. All right. I hope this answers that question about the basics of red near-infrared light therapy. I'm Dr. A. Thanks so much for you subscribers. 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