Dr. A, a naturopathic physician, explains how red and near-infrared light therapy combined with methylene blue amplifies mitochondrial function by stimulating the same cellular energy pathways. Both activate the electron transport chain at wavelengths around 660 nm, creating a synergistic effect useful for long COVID, traumatic brain injury, and post-COVID fatigue.
I have 2 ways where red or red near-infrared can come in and make methylene blue work harder, so to speak. One is photoactivating it before it gets to the mitochondria. The second is that they both come into the mitochondria and turn the mitochondria on faster at the same place, which is very important. Hey, I'm Dr. A. Welcome to my YouTube channel. I use this channel to answer questions that you guys have or that I've heard from patients, I've been actively teaching and researching in the integrative naturopathic medical community for 30 years, and I've been seeing patients over that time primarily in cancer and chronic illness care. So this channel is dedicated to answering questions within that sphere of understanding and knowledge. So we had a question that came in because we did some information on the YouTube about red light therapies, and we did some information about methylene blue therapies, and there were some questions about, well, I've heard that they might go together. Yeah. How does that work? Here's the big picture, and I think I can answer this question fairly succinctly. The first thing is, is that methylene blue is a treatment. It can be used in emergency medicine as kind of an antidote. The methylene blue is also used because it goes and it helps the mitochondria work better. And so it's often used nowadays not so much as an emergency antidote. Certainly, if you need that, the emergency room will have it. But it's used to help the mitochondria operate better. But methylene blue as the name implies, is a dye. If you've ever taken it, you might have had your teeth turn blue, which you can brush off. Might have seen your, you know, toilet turn blue when you urinate. It's a dye. Now, dyes and colorful substances are generally also photoactivatable, and that means that they have a wavelength that they absorb energy at. That's a light wavelength. And often when you photobiomodulate a substance by putting the light That it absorbs to, that substance becomes more active because it's now not only the chemical structure, but it's absorbed the energy from the laser, the light source, et cetera. So that's side, that's the sort of the interface. And then what about red light, near-infrared therapy? Red light, near-infrared, the bands of infrared, near is the first one next to red light. They absorb through the skin. So some light wavelengths don't get very deep. Red and near-infrared go through the skin. And so what does that mean? They're able to affect my vascular system, the blood flow. They're able to affect the fat underneath the skin. And in the case of especially near-infrared, they're able to get into the muscle, which is why it's used in physical therapy sometimes, et cetera. So the first thing is that external red light, red near-infrared, can get in and absorb into the vasculature. So if methylene blue has an absorbance that is somewhere in the red near-infrared spectrum, that would mean it absorbs the light through your skin. It makes the methylene blue photoactive. So what is the absorbance peak, the energy that methylene blue would absorb the most? It goes from 610 nanometers to 700 nanometers, which is a measure of wavelength with a peak at 660. Well, it turns out that 660 nanometers is in the red end of the spectrum. So red light, which is 650 to 780 nanometers, roughly every chart is a little bit different. Red light is gonna photoactivate The methylene blue. So that's one way that they're synergistic, just by direct photoactivation. So this is why often topical red light therapy or even endolaser red light therapy will be used while you're getting methylene blue or while you're taking methylene blue to bioactivate it. 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. But, The other thing, remember we said it hits the mitochondria pretty hard and increases mitochondrial activity. It turns out that red and near-infrared light on their own also come into the side of the electron transport chain and start to speed up the activation of the middle complexes of the electron transport chain, which makes more energy. So red light does that. Well, guess who else comes in there? Methylene blue also stimulates those same complexes to increase energy. So then I have 2 ways where red or red near-infrared can come And make methylene blue work harder, so to speak. One is photoactivating it before it gets to the mitochondria. The second is that they both come into the mitochondria and turn mitochondria on faster at the same place, which is very important. So we see a lot of synergy with people using red near-infrared therapy and methylene blue, especially in recovery, fatiguing states like long COVID, et cetera, where the methylene blue may be helpful and the red near-infrared may be helpful, but together they're more helpful when it comes to that. Now, red near-infrared light pads, are very common now. They got very popular during COVID because there was some human research with using them to help with the cardiopulmonary side effects of COVID which were positive research studies. So that was good. And we use them a lot now with folks. You can have them that are, you know, sort of the size of your chest and back, do that. They may often prescribe by medical folks. You can get a helmet-like device or a headgear-like device that helps with the head, say, after traumatic brain injury. And then there are many other ways to get red near-infrared into a person. But hopefully this answers the question with red, near-infrared, and methylene blue. How do they support each other? One is that red light photoactivates methylene blue to make it work harder. The other is that red, near-infrared, and methylene blue both turn the mitochondria on in the same location, giving us more energy output. And there's all sorts of good downstream benefits from that combination. All right, I'm Dr. A. I hope this answered those questions. Please like, share, subscribe. You can leave ideas for other videos you'd like to see in the comments below. Appreciate all of you new subscribers. Appreciate our base core subscribers, which is growing all the time. And do hit the notification bell as well. I'll see you all in the next video.
