Red light therapy works on its own, but combining it with near-infrared light reaches deeper tissues and boosts results. NIR penetrates further, so clinicians often recommend alternating between the two or using them together.
Most of the time, while you can get benefits from red visible light all on its own, especially applied topically, what we recommend to people and what we use clinically in a medical setting would be a combination of red and near-infrared, either working continuously together or maybe cycled so that you had some time with red, some with near-infrared, and they would cycle back and forth because the penetration depth is different. Okay, so red will still help you, but red near-infrared going to be even more— the deep penetration, it's going to help
