Dr. A explains the difference between red light and near-infrared therapy. Red light penetrates a few millimeters and works best on skin and joints, while near-infrared reaches about 1 centimeter deep and targets muscles, lungs, and organs. Both activate mitochondrial activity, but choosing between them depends on what you're treating.
Hey, Dr. A, I've got this home unit that does red light therapy and it has an option to turn on near-infrared therapy. Do they do the same thing? Why would I use one versus the other? Great question. Let's break this down. Hey, I'm Dr. A. I've been researching and teaching in the integrative and naturopathic community for over 30 years now. And I've been seeing patients a very long time and we use this YouTube channel to answer questions just like this one. So let's break down this red light, near-infrared spectrum and medical use question. So the first thing that we want to think about is why would we use therapies that are in the red end of the spectrum anyway? And the important part about that is, is that we use them because they absorb through the skin. Now, different wavelengths create the different light names and colors. And so we have red at the red end of the spectrum, and then we have near infrared, and then other infrareds that we have after that. The entire spectrum from red into the infrared spectrum absorb very well through the skin. When you get to the other end of the spectrum towards blues, you don't absorb very deep with those. Now there are exceptions. So sometimes you'll see these wrist laser devices and you think, well, they have, you know, yellow or blue or some other thing. It's because the lasers are put right here over this really thin skin where your blood supply is right next to the surface. So let's say you only absorb 1 to 2 millimeters, maybe up to 3 millimeters depending on the color, it's still going to absorb there. So that's one exception. Sort of, but the big like pads you might use over your whole body or on your head or over a joint that's injured, those are going to tend to be red or near infrared as far as spectrum that comes up. The next thing is how deep do they absorb? So this is a difference between red and near infrared. So if we look at red light, and every chart has slight differences, but red light is considered 620 nanometers to between 700 and 800 nanometers, and that's going to absorb. about 5 millimeters down to the subcutaneous area, most parts of your body anyway. Near-infrared. So if there's a near-infrared, that means there's other infrareds, which we'll talk about in a separate video. But near-infrared goes from 700 to 800 nanometers up to about 2,500 nanometers. And that absorbs down to about a centimeter, which depending on, again, where it is, it's gonna get into the deep subcutaneous or into the muscle. And this is often why near-infrared is used in orthopedic applications to get into deeper areas, maybe wrapped around a joint that's sore, something like that. Now, what do they do once they get there? Well, red light and near-infrared light activate different types of enzymatic systems, and a lot of the enzymatic activation is aimed at turning on mitochondrial activity so that the mitochondria, which create energy for the cell, speed up essentially. Now, what would that do for me? So, why did they have me put red light or near-infrared on my joint that was recovering from an injury? Well, when you're recovering from an injury, when you've had surgery, when you've had maybe a global metabolic issue like a long COVID or infection or inflammation or whatever, your mitochondria get a little bit behind and they need to recover. Red light therapy and near-infrared therapy can assist the mitochondria in this recovery process. That's very important to keep in mind. Quick plug here, if you're a healthcare practitioner, Working with patients with these issues, I have a CE website and I do webinars on this topic and others. So we're going to put a link in the description below to the CE website link and the particular webinar of interest. Thank you. So if you had, as the questioner was asking, a home unit or even you go into a clinic and they have a unit, what would I do with those? Well, often in the clinical setting, you'll have a mat, let's say, or some other device that is either going to modulate between. Those 2. So it's going to have red on and then near-infrared, or it might do both at the same time depending on how the light diodes are set up or the lasers are set up. If you have something at home like the person in question and it has a red near-infrared cycle, then that's probably the easiest thing to do is just cycle it. But let's say you're using it and you are trying to get to a deeper organ right now. During COVID there was some research around this with the pneumonitis that people would get with the earlier versions of COVID People still get it. And they did research where they made like a vest that had red light near-infrared therapy, and it actually improved the outcomes, getting people out of the hospital and stuff. So during COVID we were having people, especially when people are locked down, get these red light pads that had red near-infrared. And then we would normally have them, if it didn't cycle, we'd just have them do it on near-infrared because that's going to go deeper. Remember the big difference in red near-infrared, not so much the enzymes it turns on, but how deep it goes. So red goes in, it's great for like a joint or some other thing. But if you're trying to get to your lungs or your abdomen or your reproductive organs, or maybe you hurt a thigh muscle, you know, big heavy-duty muscle, near-infrared's gonna get deeper. So that's the big thing is how deep do we want to go? Now, I've also had a different version of this question, which is I have a home unit, but it only is in the red spectrum. Okay. And so it's only in that lower nanometer red spectrum. Well, it's still gonna get in even if you're using it over A bigger body area. But the way that it's going to work is through getting down to the subcutaneous circulation. And so if you think about it, you have, you know, your outer layer of skin there in the epidermis, which is largely— they call it keratinized. And then you get down to the dermis, and then you get down to the area below the dermis and the subcutaneous, where you've got blood flow up through and including the lower dermal layers, not into the keratinized outer layer. So that means that even if you have a red light, no near-infrared, you're going to absorb through those upper layers into the blood flow area. And then the blood flow in that area is— you're going to affect the plasma and the formed blood components and the tissues locally around there. So you're still going to get some benefit. But if you try to get to deeper tissues, the biggest difference, if you do have one that picks between red and near-infrared, deeper tissues are going to be more affected by our friend near-infrared if you have it. Well, I hope this answered that question about the differences between red and near-infrared. It's better to do red than nothing at all, especially if you're for pain, mitochondrial recovery, energy, all that stuff. But if you have the option of red, near-infrared, and you can cycle between the two, that's really great. And then if you're going for a deep area like your lungs, abdominal, pelvic organs, or big muscles, and you can do near-infrared, that's really preferable to get to the mitochondrial beds in those cells. All right, I'm Dr. A. Thank you for subscribing. If you haven't, please do subscribe, like, share, do notifications, all that. We're gonna put some other videos up here at the end, and I'll see you guys on the next video.
