What You Need to Know: Red Light Therapy VS. Infrared

You know, it seems like everybody either has or is talking about buying a red light therapy unit or a near-infrared unit or a red light near-infrared unit. And it gets so confusing as to number one, why would I want one? And what would be the difference between red light and near-infrared light as far as my health goes? What I want to do is break that down today and get into the specifics of number one, why would we want to use them? Number 2, what's the difference between a red and a near-infrared unit? Number 3, are they Are they all the same or are there quality differences between them? And number 4, why would I want to do this? Why do they work? And this comes from many years of using photodynamic therapy. So light therapies as part of our practice in our patients with chronic illness and cancer. And in more modern times, working with clinics that we refer to that very specifically do photodynamic therapy or light therapy, and also direct referrals for people to use at-home light therapies in a safe but also effective manner. So let's break down some of the bullet points around light therapy, red, near-infrared. Well, obviously, if you look at the spectrum and you get to the red end of the spectrum, we still see red with the human eye. You get to infrared, and infrared is divided into subparts. And usually right after red, we stop seeing the color and we call it near-infrared. And so red is shorter wavelengths somewhere in the 600-700 range. And then the longer wavelengths, you get into near infrared, you've got the 700-800 to 1,500-2,500 nanometer range. And we don't see that. And then you get to mid-infrared and far infrared, which are for another video that we'll talk about later. So when you're looking at a unit, you can get a red light therapy unit, you can get a near infrared therapy unit, or you can get one that does Both, because they can have the generators, which can be either laser or LED or other light-type generators, and those either can be set up in an array where there's red next to near-infrared, or sometimes the diode can have both heads inside of it, etc. And so to the first question of would I want red or would I want near-infrared, most of the time you can purchase a unit that does both, and you really want both. So if you're going to put money into getting a unit and you don't have a specific need where your doctor's prescribed, you know, a particular wavelength or something, then it's going to cover more to do red and near-infrared. So remember, red are shorter wavelengths up in the 600, 700, up to 800. Near-infrared, 700 to 800 through 1,500 to 2,500 nanometers. And they're going to do different things. So the first thing is red and near-infrared both penetrate the skin, but red, because it has shorter wavelengths, goes Near infrared, because it's getting up further in the wavelengths, again, 800 plus, it goes deeper. So near infrared goes deeper into your tissues. Both of them have activation on certain enzymes that are in your blood and in your muscles and your fat and everything else. But because the near infrared is going to go deeper, it's going to affect a broader spectrum of parts of you, you could say. Now, if it's for some reason a real thin area of your body, like the back of your hand, where there's literally just skin and tiny layer of subcutaneous fat and a lot of blood flow, or the front of your wrist here where your blood vessels are very superficial, you'll get a lot of red light through those into fairly deep, relatively speaking. If it's the chest wall and your thoracic area where you have your lungs and your heart, et cetera, the red light's gonna penetrate in, but it's probably gonna get down to the level of your subcutaneous fat, maybe, maybe some superficial muscle, depending on how big you are. Near-infrared's going to go further. So you might say, wouldn't I just use near-infrared then? Well, if, if you're forced to pick only one, sure, just use near-infrared. But the reason cycling between red and near-infrared can be helpful is that they have slightly different effects. And what we want to keep in mind is it's not just penetration depth. Even red light that doesn't go quite as deep is going to get to your superficial capillary network. And that capillary network carries a lot of blood continuously through, and the red light is going to affect not only the solid tissues, which might be superficial muscle, certainly joints and other stuff, but also the enzymes in your blood. The enzymes in your blood then can be activated by the red light, and they can go and help with mitochondrial function, other things downstream. Near-infrared is going to get deeper, and it's going to get into your subcutaneous fat. It's going to get to your muscles usually, etc. And that's even more blood flow and also more direct tissue response. So, if somebody doesn't have a specific need for a specific wavelength, I still generally have them do a combination of red, near-infrared, and we'll talk about how to do that. But that's why. Now, red light is often used and has been for a very long time for superficial and orthopedic type things, sore joints, sore muscles, things like that. You see nowadays these pads that are set up to, you know, go on your shoulder and it wraps around your shoulder, or they have them, you know, for your wrist, or they have them for other knee and other parts of your body. That kind of makes some sense. Uh, red's very good, you know, beyond what we've talked about before for pain management. And then near-infrared, because it goes deeper, sometimes can be used for deeper muscle injuries, other wounds, etc. But also it's going to get into areas such as the brain. Near-infrared in certain configurations can go through your skull and go 3 to 5 centimeters in and Have very good coverage in your brain. And we use near-infrared brain units for people with memory problems, recovering from surgery, all sorts of things there. So near-infrared, again, deeper. We use it more on brain and things like that. And then near-infrared has a lot of deeper accessory stimulation of your mitochondria. So in other content, we talked about how methylene blue goes in through the side and kind of stimulates the mitochondrial energy production system. Turns out near-infrared hits that same place and stimulates energy production as well. So when I'm having people at home get a unit to try out, let's say, and you know, it's not always that you can go to a photodynamic therapy center or have the time or whatever. And sometimes we want you to get therapy going, so we'll have you try a home unit out. How do we set that up so that it's safe and effective and usable? So the way that we do with home use, I will generally, And now it's— there's so many units that you can order everywhere online. You can get red near-infrared combos. That's really not a problem. Just look for that. You also want to look for one that has a variable cycle or hertz, H-E-R-T-Z, hertz setting, which is either going to be continuous or pulsed. Now, why would I do different ones? Well, if I have, for example, a sore shoulder, I might want to just do continuous red near-infrared and kind of literally, you know, kind of marinate or so-called bake in the red near-infrared effect. If I am trying to get into deeper tissues, I might still use red near-infrared together, but I may cycle it. And the, the hertz cycling is essentially how many pulses per second are we going to get out of it. And so if your controller has ability to choose red or near-infrared or both, that's good. That's what you're looking for. And if it has a setting for— and sometimes they just say continuous Low pulse, medium pulse, high pulse, that's fine. Or it could say continuous, you know, 1 Hz, 20 Hz, 40 Hz, or it could be a whole bunch of other things. Any of that, that's going to be the pulsing. Now you can get home use pads that are fairly inexpensive that do all of that. The other thing that you want to look at is what is the power output? Because you could have all that stuff and then if the generator, the power generator is really weak and low, it might not be getting enough power to go anywhere. Now, Now, this is not so much in the orthopedic or medical units like I'm talking about, although it does happen, but in the cosmetic units. So there's a lot of cosmetic phototherapy. It is really common to have 2 cosmetic units used for skin and they look exactly the same and one costs 10 times as much as the other does. And people think, well, this one company must just be ripping everyone off. But if you look at it, often what's happening is the one that costs more has the appropriate amount of power and the one that costs 10 times less has the same bells, whistles, everything, but it's got 10% of the power of the other one. And so it's not going to do anything even though they look the same. So with the medical pads, whether it's for orthopedic uses or want to do it around your chest or your head or pelvic organs or whatever, what do we look for? So we got ability to red, near-infrared, or both. We got the ability to have a hertz cycling, so pulsation of some type. And then on the power side, usually they list the power by milliwatts per square centimeter. And the bottom line is you want milliwatts per square centimeter to at least be in the triple digits. So 100+ milliwatt per square centimeter. You don't want something that's coming out in single or double digits, which sometimes you don't see that that much anymore, but sometimes you will. So look at the milliwatts per square centimeter output, and you don't want it below a 3-digit number. So 100+, and then you're going to be getting enough power. Now, although I've used for orthopedic things red near-infrared forever, a long time, it's an old, old therapy, and I've used it for other things to help with mitochondrial recovery and stuff. One of the things that sped up our home use with patients was actually during COVID when we had people on lockdown or people couldn't get to the clinic or whatever was the interference. And there started to come out some studies and some papers about red near-infrared therapy for the lung and heart inflammation of acute COVID and then post-COVID. And if we couldn't get to the patient, I would give them the specifications and say, get a pad that's big enough, you know, for your chest size. And if it's long enough to wrap around, that's great. Or you can just lay on it on one side, then lay and put on top on the other side. Obviously you would want to have either no clothes or a very, very light something because the light has to get through it. Right. But it does work. And what they showed in the hospital experiments where they had people put a vest on so they couldn't tell if it was turned on or not, and they took people in the hospital with very bad COVID symptoms and half got the treatment with it turned on, half put the vest on and it wasn't turned on. The group who got the treatment had lower amounts of inflammatory cytokine markers and had better outcomes and had more propensity for getting out of the hospital with bad COVID, especially with the earlier variants. So we started doing this with people at home when they would complain of not healing as quick as they were, or they would say, well, I'm sort of better, but I've still got a cough or I've still got You know, chest symptoms, et cetera, or pelvic symptoms. We'd have them do that. We'd have 'em start with 5 or 10 minutes, 2, 3 times a day, work up to maybe 15 or 20 minutes, 2, 3 times a day. It was very, very helpful and it basically matched what they were doing in the hospital studies. So I hope this answers the questions that we've gotten. Red near-infrared home units, all that stuff. Obviously, before you do any new medical type of therapy, please check with a healthcare provider, make sure it's okay for you. But this should answer those questions. I'm Dr. A. I use the channel to answer questions mostly. Thank you, subscribers. If you haven't subscribed, please consider subscribing. Share, comment, all the good things. And we got a ton of photo therapy on the main YouTube channel, so go check that out. Check our playlists out, and I'll see you all on the next video.