Does Red Light Therapy Work? 6,000 Studies vs. Wellness Trends

Red light therapy. Is it hype? Is it gimmicky? Or is it something we really do need to be including in our life? And can it help us look and feel young a lot longer? Can it help with skin? Can it help with fat loss? Or is this truly a gimmick? And how does this compare to sunlight? If you've been listening to my podcast, you know, I've been encouraging you to get out in nature more, be in real sun. Where does red light fit into this? And does the sun actually make red light? I mean, got one of my good friends, longtime friends on here, Ari Whitten. I've said this before. If you've heard him on my episodes years ago, he is literally my guru. And let me tell you what I mean by that. Ari and I met years ago. Gosh, Ari, almost. Probably two decades ago now, I would imagine.

Yeah. I was like, it's. Yeah, probably close to that. I think probably I was 26 or 27.

Yeah. So Ari, at the time, he was a trainer. He was a brilliant personal trainer when I first met him and I hired him to train me, and we became friends. And in my Natalie brain, I kept asking him a million questions, and he just wanted to train me, but I'd ask him so many questions, and I realized how brilliant he was. And I kept saying, ari, the world needs to know who you are because you're so, so brilliant. And it goes way beyond training. It's almost like that was a hobby for him and he happened to be brilliant at it. But his true knowledge really came in with science and how the human body works, how we can slow down the aging process, how we can heal, how we can create longevity. And I've just watched him and his knowledge help countless amounts of people. I would really him more. In the longevity and energy space, he spent many years helping people improve their mitochondria. He was one of the first people talking about mitochondria. You truly were. I remember you breaking it down to my audience what that meant. And years ago, when I first injured my back, one of the things Ari said to me was, you need red light. And no one at the time was talking about red light. Like, literally no one. I didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't fully know yet what he was talking about. And he had told me and Brooks to go get a red light. We ordered something for like $20 on Amazon, which was not the right thing. And then he quickly said, no, that's not right. There's a lot more science behind this, and he's made this a big part of his life's work. He believes in this so much that he's even relocated. He lives literally in Costa Rica to be out more in nature and really take on the importance of light therapy and how this can impact him and his family. He's got a gazillion credentials that we're going to get into, but I want to really jump. Well, Ari, if you can, from your, your standpoint, just where did the red light interest even come from? Give us a little bit background there, like why you even got into that. And then I've got a gazillion questions for you.

Yeah, first of all, thank you for all the kind words. I really appreciate it and I'm forever indebted and grateful to you for helping encourage me and helping me get started building my business online and writing books and all of that stuff. So, always a pleasure to reconnect with you. As far as my interest in this topic, basically, I've been studying natural health since I was like 12 years old, so three plus decades now. And this has been just really a lifelong passion and obsession for me. And I've always sort of fashioned myself a guinea pig of long before biohacking was a term. And I don't really like the term biohacking, but before that was a thing. The original biohackers were bodybuilders. Those were the original people who were experimenting, oftentimes with lots of illicit chemicals, injecting them into their body and doing all kinds of crazy things, sometimes dying at very young ages and having lots of problems as a result of it. But they were the original group that was basically saying, let me experiment with my biology, let me see what I can do to change how my physiology works. And that's sort of the world I grew up in, in athletic performance, bodybuilding fitness culture world, long before fitness was in, before it was trendy like it was. And in my pursuit of studying that, you know, I was interested in movement, I was interested in, you know, sleep and circadian rhythm. I was interested in nutrition, obviously stress. I got very interested in mitochondrial health. I was interested in all of the things, everything from biochemistry to exercise physiology to, you name it. And in that process, one of the things that piqued my interest back in maybe 2012 or something like that is this idea that light is interacting with our biology. And we kind of know part of this story. I mean, for most of us, we don't really consider that light is bioactive, that photons of light are interacting with our cells. We think of light as like, light allows us to see things, light is the opposite of darkness. But we generally, most of us don't. It's not in our paradigms of health to consider that photons of light are penetrating into our body and interacting with our cells, and that are important to our health. We kind of know, especially now, a couple layers to this story. First of all, some people, everybody has some sort of vague idea of there's a connection between sunlight and vitamin D, right? We know that vitamin D is important, though that story has often, the story of sunlight has often been reduced down to a story of vitamin D. Where then in our sort of reductionist, pharma driven model of health, people think, well, I can just pop a vitamin D pill and that gives me the benefits of sunlight, okay? But we have, most of us have some, some vague awareness that that sun is doing something to cause this thing called vitamin D, which is important for immune health, musculoskeletal health regulates thousands of genes in our body, et cetera, et cetera. Everybody's kind of aware at this point that vitamin D is a key player in health. Now the other layer of this story, which I started talking about, I was sort of one of the first to really start to talk about this back in the day, I think maybe we did a podcast on it a long time ago, is circadian rhythm and how blue wavelengths of light enter the eyeballs and feed back through neurons into a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. This is where our basically a 24 hour biological clock lives there and regulates all kinds of hormonal and metabolic processes that, that impact directly or indirectly basically everything in our body. And so now, now circadian rhythm science has become much more mainstream. There's lots of people talking about it. It's no longer this sort of weird free fringe thing like it was 15 years ago. And we all have kind of, you know, we're familiar with artificial light at night and from screens being problematic, blue blockers, you know, needing to switch from, you know, more fluorescence and LEDs to more amber or reddish lighting in the evenings, and how this sort of, this story of how blue wavelengths of light impact our physiology, you know, and before.

You go like further there, it's interesting how you said that, you said most of us know. I would think that too, but unfortunately, I think most people do not actually know. In fact, I did.

Maybe I'm overestimating.

Well, I did a. I know I recently on social media did a reel Just about my belief around circadian rhythm and the importance, Importance of it. And it was interesting. I had somebody chime in, throwing around his PhD and how he's. That's just not true and I'm misleading. It was a whole thing. And I was like, what?

There is no circadian rhythm, basically. What was the specifics?

Well, this was one person with one PhD that had done a paper disputing all of the studies around circadian rhythm, which was again, it's the thing that.

We threw up blue blockers or something.

He was saying that blue light is not really actually impacting our cortisol or sleep. It was a whole thing. But my, the reason for that is I think there's always going to be someone that wants to defend an opposite. So if you could just, just kind of briefly, for those of people that don't understand or fully get circadian rhythm, can you just explain that briefly and how that works with biology and how that works with us?

Sure, yeah. So basically, most animal species are wired to the sun, to the rise and fall of the sun. As we evolved as creatures for millions of years living on this planet, where we have these light, 24 hour, roughly light and darkness cycles due to how the Earth rotates. And now basically the sun creates these periods of light and darkness. Okay? This is a very fundamental, very basic principle of reality that we're all familiar with. Our biology has evolved to be yoked to that 24 hour light and darkness cycle. Okay? So we have many, many biological processes that are linked with it. We have what's called a central biological clock in the brain. And by the way, I want to make it clear to listeners that whatever the specifics of what this guy was arguing, what I'm explaining now is not remotely controversial.

Exactly.

Okay? So the fact that we have a circadian rhythm, that it does, all the things that I'm describing is not controversial. Someone could argue some specific point of the degree to which light at a certain time of day impacts a certain hormone or something like that. You could argue some nuance. But everything I'm explaining now is not even remotely controversial in any way. So we have this central biological clock in the brain and that is designed to link us to the rhythm of the rise and fall of the sun, to this light and darkness cycle. And the fundamental principle as diurnal animals. Some animals are nocturnal, we are diurnal animals, meaning we are designed to be awake and active during the day and asleep at night. Okay? Some animals, like an owl or a coyote or whatever are wired into A different rhythm. But we are diurnal animals, awake and active during the day, asleep at night. Now, just based on that principle, consider the fact that every night, through no volition of your own, you enter a totally different state of consciousness and you fall asleep for like eight hours or so. Okay? How is it that you are entering in this entirely different state of consciousness that we call sleep? What's going on there? Well, that's. That's the circadian rhythm in action. The fact that you go to sleep and need to sleep, the fact that you have a period where you are awake and active, and the fact that those things are tied to the rise and fall of the sun, all of this is mediated by the circadian clock, the circadian rhythm, this biological clock in your brain. Now, this biological clock impacts all kinds of things. Many, many different metabolic processes, hormonal processes are tied directly to this. So, for example, thyroid hormone, testosterone, melatonin, cortisol, these are all hormones. They have a rise and fall over the course of 24 hours that are linked to light and darkness cycles. Okay. And there's much, much more going on to this story.

No, that's great.

There's been. It's been discovered that we have circadian clocks, clock genes, and anybody can Google this if you want. You'll find thousands of studies on this. Maybe not thousands, but at least hundreds, because it's fairly new science. But we have circadian clock genes, what are called peripheral clocks. So the one in our brain is a central clock. We have many peripheral clocks, basically, in every tissue and organ system throughout the entire body. And those peripheral clocks, everything that's going on, whether it's your skin, whether it's your heart, whether it's your intestines, your liver, your muscles, your bones, they all are responsive to the circadian rhythm and to what's going on at the level of the central clock in the brain. And, you know, there's more to this story, actually. Food inputs, temperature inputs, movement inputs can all impact this circadian clock. But the primary signal is light going into the brain.

One of the things I typically pick up with, and I work with so many women, when everything is out of whack, when they. When they come in with the big list, like the hormones, the cortisol, the sleeping, like, everything's out of whack. A lot of midlife women automatically want to go to. It must be this one thing. Like, it must be the hormones, or it must be they're picking the thing. And I will tell you, most of these women are not Getting adequate light. They are fighting circadian rhythm. They are fighting, they're using a lot of artificial lights. They are not out at all in the sun. They have LEDs on them at all hours, late into the night. So just that simple change alone, I have seen it firsthand improve people's health just from that one change right there, 100%.

I mean, if you, if you just understand the, the aspect of what I just explained, that this central clock is impacting, let's say just this minimal part of the story of like we know it impacts thyroid hormone and testosterone and cortisol and growth hormone and melatonin. Okay, well that's like, what did I say, five or six hormones. Yeah, all of those are really important hormones. All of them have a massive impact on your physiology. Now, the actual impact of the circadian rhythm is way broader than just those five or six hormones I mentioned. But even just that minimal part of the story, if you only understood that, if you just understood the link between light signals entering your eyes, feeding back into your biological clock in your brain and those five or six hormones, and that there's a link between how well those hormones are working. Are they in the proper rhythm? Are they, are we getting as as much secretion or as much of a dip as we need to in those hormones? Is the timing correct? If you only understood that, you could understand that there's a huge impact of circadian rhythm on your health. Now, we know from lots of other layers of evidence there's a whole body of literature on, for example, artificial light at night. There's a whole body of literature on different chronotypes. There's a whole body of literature on night shift workers, which are prime example of what happens when circadian rhythm is disrupted when you're awake at night, when you should be asleep. And massive increases in risk of heart disease, of risk of dementia and Alzheimer's, of risk of cancer, especially many types of cancer, of type 2 diabetes, metabolic diseases, obesity, on and on and on and on. It's all circadian rhythm mediated.

Ari, you'll be happy to know it was, my gosh, probably 10 years ago or so. I remember it was right when everyone started really switching to LED lights. Like it was like no longer could get the old types of bulbs. Everything was really going into the daylight, all LED lights at all hours. And we went to your house for dinner and you had like fireplace and candles and fire lights only. And I remember, I think my husband was with me and we've come a long way and he was like, how come you don't have the white, bright light? And I remember you talking about this back then. You'll be happy to know we've changed everything. And when the sun sets, we don't have any lights on. We have red lights, we have amber lights. We have all the things. So we've come a long way.

You finally came around it only. It only took Brooks 15 years.

Yeah, yeah, no, Brooks. Brooks is a huge fan of sun and natural light and circadian rhythm. Now he's, He's a different person now. Okay, so let's talk about red light specifically. And I want to start at the beginning on this. What exactly is that? How is it different from other light? And where does this fit into the sun?

Yeah, great question. So there's a lot there. I'm going to try to be as succinct as I can and you ask me to clarify anything that doesn't make sense. So, big picture context is there's, there's something called the electromagnetic spectrum, okay? And I would encourage listeners to do a Google image search, electromagnetic spectrum, or EM spectrum to just bring up an image of what I'm describing here. The electromagnetic spectrum includes everything from gamma rays and x rays to radio waves, okay? Very, very small wavelengths to very long wavelengths. Radio waves are extremely long. I forget the actual distance, but it's like meters or maybe even tens of meters maybe. I don't quote me on that, but it's something really long wavelengths. Now, within this electromagnetic spectrum is the visible light spectrum, okay? These are the colors of the rainbow that we see. This is, this is the light spectrum that the visual system, the human visual system has evolved to, to be able to detect, to see. Everything you see is dependent on this, okay? And these are the, the colors of the rainbow. Roy G. Biv. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Okay? Based on being able to see these colors, detect certain parts of light, what we call visible light, that, that is what allows our visual system to function. That's how we see the world. Now, this spectrum of light, there's also some things just outside of it that we can't detect with the human visual system, but also interact with human biology. Part of it is in the, in the ultraviolet spectrum. So UV light, which impacts on part of it we can see, part of it we can't see. But it impacts on different processes. Vitamin D is one of them. It impacts on melanin production in your skin, getting a tan. And there's a whole bunch of other cascades. Nitric oxide, melanostate, stimulating Hormone. There's all kinds of different cascades of effects that are coming from that part of the spectrum. The ultraviolet light part of the spectrum. Now, on the other side of the visible light spectrum, after the red wavelengths of light, and I'm already. That's basically the, the. Let me pause there, actually. So within this visible light spectrum, we have these colors of light. Okay? So when you look at a plant, when you're in a rainforest and you're seeing lots of green, that's green light. Green wavelengths of light entering your eyes. Okay? When you look at the sky and you see a blue sky, that's blue wavelengths of light entering your eyes. Now when you see red light, that's red light, right? This is, this is part of the spectrum of the visible light spectrum that we see from the sun. Okay, that we see from firelight. This, all of this is red light. Now, just outside of this is what's called near infrared. Okay. Near infrared is also bioactive. It does many of the same things that red wavelengths of light do. And that's why they're sort of lumped together red and near infrared light. And then after that we get into mid infrared, far infrared. Far infrared is also technically bioactive. And this is when you go in an infrared sauna, it's invisible, an invisible part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is heating you up. Okay. So I'm trying to. If you, if you brought up a Google image search, you, you sort of have this understanding now, okay? There's this light spectrum, there's this electromagnetic spectrum that it exists within. And within this electromagnetic spectrum, there are parts of it that interact with human biology.

Makes sense. So when you talk about red light therapy, could somebody just be in the sun, or is it important to be looking at red light panels and infrared? Like, is it important to be doing that in addition to help, help us understand that. And I, I can tell you that I do both. Like, I'm in. And I have red light panels every morning that I sit in front of. I have an infrared sauna at night that I do most nights, but I'm also outside. So help us understand, like, the difference in where, which is what's important, what's more important.

So there's a lot there. And I will also pause to say that as far as direct comparisons between red light therapy and sunlight, there is almost no research to speak of. So most of the questions that could be answered, like from a scientific perspective of like comparing 20 minutes in the sun versus 20 minutes with a red light device, and how do they affect you differently hasn't been done.

Interesting.

Never been studied. So now let me answer from a big picture perspective. First. So many people think of red light therapy. They hear this, they start learning about it. They see these devices, LED devices, laser, things like that. And it's sort of perceived as this weird technological thing like why should red light, or, you know, these lasers with red or near infrared light, why should they impact our, our cells? Why should they impact our biology at all like that? That is kind of a bizarre thing. It's kind of a random thing if you think about it, a seemingly random thing. But the proper context to understand this is sunlight, okay? And we evolved as, as creatures, as animals on this, this planet, or we, depending on your belief system, we were created here on this planet, a planet which is exposed to sunlight, okay? And just as many different species evolved the ability or the necessity of linking their biology up with certain parts of this spectrum of sunlight. We talked about blue wavelengths of light and how the circadian clock is linked to this, these blue wavelengths of light from the sun. We look at a blue sky that is the signal to our circadian clock. It's daytime, the time to be awake, alert, active, energetic. We know that there's this story of how our biology is linked to the uv, ultraviolet part of the spectrum, vitamin D and melanin and so on. Well, there's also other parts of this story. Our biology is also linked with other parts of this light spectrum. And it turns out from the sun, and it turns out that the red and near infrared portion of sunlight also has profound effects on our biology. And it does it through entirely different mechanisms, not related to the circadian rhythm, not related to vitamin D. It's doing it by penetrating through our skin and directly interacting with our cells. And we could talk about all the ways that it's interacting, but the, the point is, the big picture context that I'm presenting here is that it's not random that red and near infrared light have certain benefits in a clinic with technology emitting these wavelengths. This has evolved over millions of years in response to us being on a planet with sunlight. And basically our biology learned to capture, learned to absorb and utilize parts of this light spectrum to perform certain biological effects, certain benefits to our physiology, to the way our biology works. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes total sense. I know some people are thinking like, because some people tune into this thinking, well, is this a wellness trend or is this real science? But the thing that I want to share, before you even understand any of the science at all, just Knowing there's nobody that can deny that going out in the sun, you feel better. Like, take away the things we've been told, fear around skin cancer or the aging, the wrinkles, what I'm not talking. Or getting brown spots in your skin. I'm not talking about that. Take away all that. Think about when you were a kid or a teenager and you didn't know that, how good you would feel going out in the sun. Just you feel it. You literally feel it. I don't know anyone that would say they don't feel that. Now. People have been wired to not feel great about it because they think I'm damaging myself or whatever it is. But we feel good. And I'll, and I'll tell you, even now, like I'm sitting here as I'm recording this with you, I've got a bunch of LED lights blaring on me because that's what I do. When I'm done, the first thing I do is go outside because it's a, it's a big contrast. I feel totally different being in the real sun. And it's just we think about where people live. The more sunlight you get, the better you feel. I would say I get that same reaction when I'm in my infrared sauna or when I sit in front of my red light. So. So aside from the science, you actually can feel a difference. But help us understand because I know, I know you've covered a lot here, but what are some of the most wellestablished benefits that you know of?

Oh, there. There are so many. So at, at this point, there are well over 6,000 studies on this topic. So it is not fringe at this point. And it's actually, at this point it's been discussed in very big. By mainstream people in, in contrast to when I first wrote the book on this subject in 2018, when it was considered fringe, when it. Fairly new science, actually the science has been around on this for multiple decades, primarily in the form of laser, which is what the technology existed in for most of the last 30 years. And then more recently with the invention of LEDs. Now that opened up this whole new avenue of, of creating red light therapy, near infrared light therapy, devices that were LED based instead of only laser. But lasers have been researched for decades and there are thousands of studies on lasers. It is unquestionable that this stuff has an effect on human biology. It's been proven in dozens of, if not hundreds of different contexts. Now I'll give you an overview of some of the different effects that have been Shown. So, and this is in lots of different systems of the body. So this has been utilized in everything from like skin anti aging, promoting collagen production, combating wrinkles, to enhancing athletic performance, to combating autoimmune immune disease, to promoting, I'd imagine, healing, healing in stem cells, wound healing, injury healing, combating diabetic ulcers, combating diabetic neuropathy, combating the side effects of chemotherapy drugs. Like one of the most well researched areas is combating oral mucositis, like inflammation of your whole mouth, which is a side effect. Common side effect of certain chemotherapy drugs, recovery from exercise, enhancing adaptations to exercise, bone healing, muscle healing, tendon healing, skin healing, you know, you name it. There's, there's a very long list of, of benefits associated with use of this technology.

Wow. So help us understand. I'm going to talk specifically about the anti aging part for a minute because I know my women are interested in that and they associate sun with aging and damage. So how is red light specifically something that isn't doing that? Because even though the sun has all these benefits, you, you are, if you are, if you do lay out in the sun all day, you are going to get a little wrinkly. It's just, it's going to happen.

So.

But red light specifically isn't what does that. So help us understand that.

Yeah. So there's a really interesting interplay of again, coming back to how different wavelengths affect our physiology. Well, what we know is that at the level of the skin, as a generalization sort of painting with broad brush strokes here, ultraviolet light tends to be highly oxidative and tends to be potentially damaging to the skin. Okay. Pro aging, pro collagen breakdown type of effects. That is also true of, broadly speaking, of blue light, which also tends to be highly oxidative. Now, what's interesting is that the red and near infrared part of the spectrum have essentially opposite effects on those same mechanisms. The same mechanisms that would, in the context of ultraviolet and blue light, tend to be pro aging, pro collagen breakdown. Red and near infrared light actually do the opposite. Now, and this is where there is an argument, especially for sort of breaking things down into component parts as opposed to just getting sunlight. So the overall effect, for example, on facial skin of sunlight is probably going to be a net pro aging effect, especially for most people. And there's also other layers of this story which involve dietary components and how your skin is able to either tolerate or not tolerate sun exposure. And exposure to ultraviolet light, the way that you eat is a huge component of how your skin responds to sunlight that we, we can go into that or.

Yeah, I want to touch on that a little bit. I'm, I'm curious what you're going to say here. You're probably going to bring up the wrong types of oils or I'm curious what you're going to say here that's creating that.

Yeah, one factor, one factor is, is like omega 6 to 3 ratio. There's, there's definitely some, some evidence that high omega 6 content in your body, in your tissues, tends to not play very nice with sun exposure and makes your skin more prone to pro aging effects from ultraviolet light. The other big aspect of the story is phytochemicals. So there are many, many different phytochemicals. Everything from like lycopene found in tomatoes to astaxanthin to various carotenoids, lutein, zeaxanthin, beta carotene, linoleum, all kinds of other carotenoids. Astaxanthin probably being the most well researched one that have been shown to accumulate in our tissues, sometimes the eyes, sometimes the brain, oftentimes the skin and, or, or all of the above. And those compounds from these, these phytochemicals basically act essentially as internal sunscreens. Okay. They act to directly prevent the skin from being damaged from the DNA being damaged and from a lot of these pro collagen breakdown effects from ultraviolet light exposure. So if you eat a standard American diet compared to eat. If you eat a diet rich with tons and tons of vegetables and berries and darkly colored foods rich in all these different phytochemicals, you know, cacao and sulforaphane and you know, turmeric and lycopene and astaxanthin, pomegranate, you know, these darkly colored berries. If you have lots of these things in your diet, your skin is going to respond very, very differently and be far less prone to breakdown compared to if you eat a crappy diet because.

You'Re eating phytonutrients, you're adding antioxidants. This is my exact thing I've said around people that are like strict carnivore. They might think they're doing a healthy thing, but they, they certainly are aging rapidly. I mean, you see it.

Yeah. I mean there's so many dietary ideologues. I tend to avoid the, the dietary.

Cult discussions these days.

But I'll put it this way. I certainly don't eat carnivore. No.

Yeah. And I won't ever. And I'm not going to try to get in an argument about carnivore. But there's, I mean, to. Just, to me, knowing what vegetables and fruits and vegetables and phytonutrients have done for me, there's no way I would go a different direction.

Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, and maybe this is all I'll say on it, that there is probably the most well established finding in all of nutrition science is that richly colored vegetables and fruits are clearly beneficial to health. And this has been shown in epidemiological studies, thousands of epidemiological studies, and randomized controlled studies and mechanistic studies. It's been shown at every layer, very, very consistently at every system of the body, prevents heart disease, prevents brain disease, blah, blah, blah, fights, prevents the sunburn from, you know, at the level of the skin, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You would have to have a similar body of evidence showing harm from all of those things for me to ever consider not consuming them.

I agree.

Right. And this, this is the sort of, the key thing that I think a lot of people just don't understand. You have this massive body of evidence showing very clear benefits. There is no other alternative competing body of evidence showing harm from all of those same things.

By the way, at one point, years ago, Ari was in the fat loss space and I think he. I'm going to just sum this up. I think you got so annoyed with the ridiculousness out there and you're like, I don't want to have this conversation anymore. So that's where you. It was, it was smart. You moved into more important things like energy and my mitochondria and light and things like that. I remember that I just got a.

Funny message last week or the week before from a physician who specializes in weight loss. And he read my book, which you'll remember from 2014, forever fat loss. And he was just reading it last week and. Or a couple weeks ago, and he said. He emailed me and he said, your book is way ahead of its time. And I was like, yeah, I wrote it over a decade ago. Yeah. Yep.

You were the first. I mean, you're the first. You were talking about the issue around cholesterol years ago. You're always. You're a good decade ahead of everything. You. You typically always are. That's why I call you my guru.

Yeah, well, there's pros and cons to that. I wrote a book in 2016, I think, called the Low Carb Myth, and that was like, at peak, low carb keto and and that, that the world was not ready for that one. So I had like tons of people going and writing negative reviews of that book. Not without even having reading. No, because they don' more committed to low carb keto. And we're like, how dare you question our diet? Yeah. I'm like, can you at least read it? Yeah, maybe be open to hearing what I have to say before you go and write me a one star review.

They didn't read it. That's insane. That's like anything. People read the first line on something, you know, and then they just want to, they, they want to argue that. Okay, so when.

Now. A lot of that information that I wrote about back then, totally. It always comes around mainstream and accepted and it's no longer a big deal to say those things.

It always comes around. One more question here on the, on the. What you were saying about light. And then I have some more specifics about red light. There's something I've heard many times, maybe it started with Jack Cruz about sunglasses and how when you don't wear sunglasses, you're getting the right, maybe I'm saying this wrong, but you get the right, you get the right spectrums in your eyes and that also helps protect your skin around sunburn or damage. Do you know much about that or what would you have to say about it?

Yeah, I'm aware of, of his claims on it as last I checked. You know, I, I used to pay a lot of attention to what Jack Cruz Sundays, said maybe 10 years ago. I haven't followed him much since then. I'm not a huge fan of the way he explains things with lots of quantum complexity and lots of speculation. I think there's also a lot of intentionally making things way more than they, complex than they need to be in an effort to be. I want to say, and I'm speculating here, this is my impression, but in an effort almost to confuse people or to impress people based on making them feel like they can't possibly understand what he sort of claims to understand. But apart from my sort of commentary on him and his teaching style more broadly, I think that it's possible there's something to what he's saying there. There isn't a lot of research on it and his way of explaining it, last I checked, is really quite speculative and I think would be considered pretty controversial, particularly by, let's say, ophthalmologists, optometrists, who generally want to protect the eyes from ultraviolet light. Whereas he's advocating for the importance of making sure you get ultraviolet light into the eyes.

Do you wear sunglasses or not?

I do sometimes, yes. And I did. I did go through a period many years ago where I didn't.

Yeah.

For this reason, because, you know, I. I was convinced that it was beneficial to make sure that light gets in. When you're in really bright outdoor environments, especially the ocean, especially where you have this. The glare effect or the wind or the snow is another good example where. Where you have not only the sun, but you have the reflection of the sun.

Makes sense.

It's very intense light. And I just prefer having sunglasses, not because I'm afraid of exposing my eyes to UV light. I surf also, and I surf without sunglasses. So I spend lots of time getting tons of light without sunglasses. But my preference is to wear them in those kind of environments. If for no other reason, then I don't like. I just don't like straining my whole. My face and my visual system squinting because the intensity is so bright. So that allows me to just kind of relax my face. And I prefer that feeling. But I. I do. I do also get lots of light into my eyes, including in the morning, that. That's unfiltered by sunglasses.

Okay. And that. That's where I've kind of circled back to it. First thing in the morning and at sunset, all those. Definitely not. But if I'm driving or if it's the glare, I'm back to wearing them even. I did the same thing. I didn't wear them for a good year. And I've gone back to that for that reason.

Yeah, I. I agree with that.

Okay. When it comes to red light therapy, specifically, talk to us about where people go wrong, what they need to be doing. And I know we've talked a lot about the sun and the spectrums in there. Are you, when you talk about red light, are you specifically talking about using panels, using infrared and how do you use them? I know it's a lot of questions in one, but how do we know if we're getting too much, too little, all of that?

Yeah. Okay. So the first thing to understand is there, There are many, many different contexts for why you would want to use red and near infrared light therapy?

Okay.

Okay. All kinds of different potential goals that you could have. And there are like, innumerable types of devices. And the types of devices also have a big impact of where you can use them. What's good, what's not so good for a particular goal, what's. What's going to be effective or ineffective. So the first thing to think about when you're trying to answer this question is what is your goal? What are you actually trying to achieve? And there are sort of two main categories of types of goals that people could have. One is I want to affect this specific body part. Okay. Let's say facial skin, anti aging. Let's say I want to heal this injury. Let's say I want to deal with my arthritis pain. Let's say I want to have my muscles recover from exercise faster. Okay. There are specific body part goals that someone may have. And the other context is general wellness, anti aging, longevity goals. Okay. Like, I just want to be healthier, I want to have more energy, I want to sleep better, I want to reduce inflammation in my body, make my immune system work better, things like that, okay? And these are whole body systemic goals as opposed to local body part specific goals, okay. And the types of devices that are ideal for one versus the other are very different. So if you have a goal like me, I'm prone to hair loss. I use a helmet on my head to combat hair loss, okay. And that is a very specific type of device. It's literally a helmet that sits right on my head and gets it as close to the scalp as possible and presses in there to deliver light effectively to these areas in between my, my hairs, my hair shafts. Now, the same is true with like, if you want to do it on the face. Yep. You might want to use a device like this that conforms to the curvatures of your face. Now, if you want to treat like a joint, you might need totally different technical specifications as far as like the, the power, the light intensity of the device. If you want to treat like a knee joint or your spine or something like that. And where I would more use a device like this, which is a high powered device, but a fairly small area that targets like one specific body part, leave it on there for three or five minutes. Targeting that one area and you get very deep penetration of light because it's very powerful light. In contrast to this, to the one I put on my head, which is a specialized laser diode device with quite low intensity, or this facial mask, which also has quite low light intensity. So I'm trying to quickly give you kind of a broad overview of like, where one type of treatment goal would necessitate doing one type of device versus a different one.

So like, okay, for example, I have a panel. I have a. I have actually, I have like four panels in my house. There's one in particular that I love and it has, it's. I just sit in Front of it. So like every morning what I'll do is I'll sit on my. I have a vibrating plate. I'm doing them all the things at one time. So sit on the vibrating plate. And I literally put the panel. I have one in front of me, one behind me and I'll turn that on. And to me that's. And I'm sitting pretty darn close to it. So to me, is something like that getting everything or do you still want to look at like doing individual addition to that? Like I have the mask and all the other things too. Dwight, is it. Do you do all of that on top of it?

Yeah, it's a great question. So going back to this framework of like body part specific versus whole body systemic. So what I didn't show you just now is if the goal is general wellness.

Okay.

And just sort of being healthier and, and anti aging effects and all the other whole body systemic effects that I mentioned and we could talk in detail about what those are. But if, if that is the goal, then what you want to, to optimize for in your treatment is total dose of light delivered across the whole body.

Great.

Delivered to as much of the body surface as possible. The largest dose of light and it's possible to overdo the dose. It's possible to overdo anything. But there's a huge safety range. The amount of light that we get, for example, from the sun, from sunbathing, let's say if you went on a trip to Hawaii or to Costa Rica and if you were in the sun for a few hours, like I'm in the sun for a few hours sometimes when I surf in Costa Rica, the amount of sun I'm getting, the total dose of light on my body is massive, massively greater than what most people are getting from any type of, you know, at home, red light.

So you wouldn't need a double dip. Like if you're out doing that, you don't necessarily need to go do a panel on top of it. Is that what I'm hearing or.

But potentially, yes, that gets a little nuanced because for example, in the context of skin aging versus anti aging.

Oh yeah. Because you want to also get the other anti aging effect. Sure, that makes sense.

Yeah. So you might, you might actually want to prioritize using red and your infrared light before there's a, what's called a preconditioning effect where it's been shown that red and your infrared light on the skin before exposure to sunlight reduces. Wow. The, the damage and the potential for sunburn. Basically, it conditions your skin so that the skin becomes much less prone to being damaged when you go in the sun later, or it can be used after to, to help heal from the sun. So there, there's some synergy and ways to use it synergistically there. But the, the broader point I was making is if the goal is whole body systemic effects, the goal is to maximize the total dose of light delivered. Now, in contrast, let me, let me come back to like these devices that I showed you here. Like this device. Let's say if I'm, if my goal is skin anti aging on my face, I would want to prioritize something like this more than a panel.

Makes sense.

Okay. For a few reasons that we could talk about. Number one, it has to do with the dose. Number two has to do with the irradiance or light intensity. And number three has to do with the degree of conformance to the body surface. So the fact that this curves to conform to the curves of my face. My face is not flat. So when I have a flat light panel, it's hitting certain parts of my face, like let's say my forehead.

Yeah.

Or the front, or the front of my nose really well. But the sides, to the degree that my face curves, I'm. I'm not getting light effectively delivered to many of those areas. And what you can't see, there's something called. This goes back to a scientist named Fresno. His last name was Fresnel. And these are the Fresnels equations. This is a principle going back like to the 1800s. Basically, the angle of light dictates how much will penetrate versus how much will be reflected off the surface. So the more that you have like perpendicularity of the light. So like light coming at my forehead this way. Okay. That's going to be more prone to, to penetrating and being absorbed as opposed to if I have light coming straight on and it's hitting me like in the side to the sides of my eyes or on the sides of my cheek, that light from this angle, if it's, if it's, you know, more parallel to that surface rather than perpendicular, the more likely it is to be reflected off rather than absorbed. Okay. So a light that, you know, a light device that conforms to the surfaces to the curvatures of the body part is going to maintain that perpendicularity of the light relative to the body surface. Much better. And so more of that light is going to be absorbed. Okay. Yeah.

It makes total. I'm glad I asked you that because, like, I have Those masks, I have really great masks. But I was like, oh, I'm just doing my panel. I don't need that too. But now I'm realizing I do want that, that, that makes sense. So I'm going to add that in because I wasn't doing that. Thinking I'm getting plenty from the panel and the sauna.

Yeah. There's other layers to this story too, but maybe I, I shouldn't over complicate. But you know, one of the layers to the story is like, like with facial skin anti aging, you actually want a relatively lower irradiance.

Okay.

That the actual measures for anybody interested might be more in the realm of 10 to to 50 milliwatts per square centimeter. So higher is not always better. And there is a point, particularly in the context of facial skin anti aging, where higher would actually be worse.

Interesting.

With, with very high power panels and very high light intensity, you might be more likely to not create any benefit, maybe even create harm with excessively high intensity.

So now I'm going to be like literally doing. I'll be on the vibrating plate in the panel with the face mask on now is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, exactly. Or put the panel, if you have the panel on a high intensity, let's say, yeah, it might be 80 or 90 milliwatts per square centimeter. I would just not shine it on the face. So you do it more on your body, on your back, whatever, but not on the face.

Makes total sense.

Do the facial treatment with a device that conforms, that is at the right irradiance and. And so on.

So I have more questions for you, but Kind of a Funny Story is years ago, seven years ago actually, Ari had written a number one bestseller. He didn't know it was going to be a number one bestseller, but it was all about red light again before his time. So recently now that red lights all the discussion everywhere and it's become this big. Well, more. Well, it's more than a wellness trend, but it's a lot talked about. The publisher had reached back out to him and said, hey, this book is a hot topic. Are you open to redoing it? Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, well, I think I didn't. You're making me realize I didn't complete something. You asked me earlier in the discussion. You asked me how I got into red light in the first place. I was, I was telling you how I was kind of a biohacker before biohacking existed. And I think starting around 2012. Ish. I got really enamored with the idea that light is interacting with our biology. And I started learning about red and urine for red light. And I was studying it for years and experimenting with it. Before there was any red light therapy industry, anybody selling these devices, I was creating the first LED panels. And the way that as far as I know, maybe somebody beat me to it, I don't know, know. But before any company existed selling them, I was reaching out to a marijuana growing light company that made these LED lights and having them make custom lights at red and near infrared wavelengths. And I was doing like tens of thousands of dollars of business with them for a couple years and they didn't even know why they were making lights. And the business I was doing with them was having clients of mine go buy devices from them. And then at a certain point the owner of the company like reached out to me. He's like, why are, why are we building these devices for your people? Why are you having people buy these weird devices from us? And then I explained it to him. He's gone on to make a hugely successful red and red light company at this point. But that was sort of my background. And then I was so interested in this that in 2017 I started, I basically just said like, like, I feel like this is going to be an important topic. It's not now. It's kind of fringe. But nobody's written a book on it. I feel like I've been studying it for like five years. Maybe I'll write a book on it. And so a few months I kind of threw together this book and it became the number one most popular book in the world on the subject and has remained so for the last seven years. So last year, and that was self published, okay. So last year Penguin Random House reached out to me and said, hey, you've got this pop, super popular book. This whole red light therapy thing has now gone mainstream. Everybody's talking about. It's in all the biggest magazines and newspapers and you know, in department stores you can find facial masks. Now it's everywhere. It's like, it's totally mainstream now. And you've got the most popular book on the subject. What do you think about updating your 2018 version, creating version 2.0 with us instead of self publishing? I said, you know, hell yeah, I'm, I would love to, to do a book. So that's, that's how this whole, whole thing came together. And then in the process of writing it, I was working with, doing consults with some of the top photobiomodulation red and near infrared light sort of light therapy. Scientists in the world, including this guy. This is the handbook of photo medicine. This is a major textbook.

I was gonna say it's not very light reading, but okay.

No, this is like proper textbook on the subject, I want to say from maybe 2015 some somewhere around there. And this guy, Michael Hamblin was at that time a Harvard professor. He's now retired and is the most prolific scientist in the world on the subject. He's published like over 1400 papers on the subject. So for decades he's been the guy, the most respected expert in this field. And I was doing consultations with him basically to make sure I didn't get things wrong, make sure my understanding of things was not inaccurate, and have him oversee my work to make sure that, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying anything that's inaccurate. And in the process we developed a very fruitful relationship and he actually suggested that he could be my co author on this book.

So good.

Now my, my little 2018 book that I threw together very quickly and self published is now published with one of the most prestigious publishers in the world. And with my co author being the top scientist in the world on the subject.

I have more questions for you. But, but you all, if you're looking on YouTube, I'm holding it up, but I'm gonna link the book below. I've actually read the book. What I want to share is it is kind of like a textbook. I want to just be really real. But it is so good. There's so much knowledge. So the way that I read it is obviously I read the intro and then I've read through. But what Ari suggests is it you use it as sort of a guide for your questions. So it's like you can go deep on any specific topic. So if you're like, I want to specifically understand how to use it for this, or it's, this is basically the bible for red light. It's, it's so good. I'll link it all below.

It's not a, it's not a novel. It's not meant to be read from COVID to cover. It's really, it's, it's kind of halfway to a textbook. As you said. It's like, like you can skip around to whatever section you want to learn about and if you want to just skip all the massive amounts of, you know, technical information and the mechanisms of how it all works and how photons of light get, get transformed into biological effects, you could skip all of that and just go to the practical guidance. Okay. I want to know what device to get for this benefit and how do I use it.

Now, you can totally, obviously, just go onto Amazon or into a bookstore, but I'm gonna link below an exact link that takes you into Ari's world, which I would suggest, because then you actually have more access to things from Ari. And as you can tell, listening to him, his brain is just spectacular. And I've learned. I mean, I'll give you so much credit, Ari, for so much that I've learned just from. You've stopped me from going down the wrong rabbit holes many times on things. You're. He's. You're like fortune teller for health. You really are. You know what's coming. You know, what we need to pay attention to. You mentioned that you actually consulted with experts that disagree with you too. What was that? What did you mean by that?

Yeah, I published lots of it on my podcast. Yeah, so. So part of the spirit of science is really like, I have this hypothesis. Here's how I think things work. I want to know whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong. And it's kind of. It's a thing you have to get used to, because the way we're culturally programmed is like, we. We don't like being wrong. We like to be right. And being wrong is like a very big deal. But in science, in the spirit of science, it's like, it's fine to be wrong. To. To learn that you're wrong about something means that you're coming closer to the truth. So I want to know all the ways I'm wrong, wrong, everything. I think I would love for to have conversations with people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than I am on certain topics, who can tell me all the ways I'm wrong about things, and that the more that I can do that, the faster I'm gonna grow and arrive closer to the truth. So, yeah, I. I love that about you. There's a thing that you have to egoically be. Be okay with being humbled. Like, yeah, I like. And certain people, you know, I've done hundreds, over 500 interviews on my podcast. And so you can. You have a sense of, like, who is playing kind of on this level and who isn't, and you have conversations with people, and sometimes when I ask questions and I kind of play devil's advocate and I'll say, well, you know, well, what about this? And, you know, have you thought about this evidence? How do you reconcile that with your claims here, here, and here. And some people really don't like that. Some people are rubbed the wrong way when I do that. But for me, that. That's fun. And that's how I want somebody to engage with me too, is tell me, you know, challenge me. Like, make me, argue with me, debate me. Tell me why you think I'm wrong about something. Because if I am, I want to know about it.

I have a cousin who's a literal rocket science. People joke, someone says, a rocket science. He's a literal rocket scientist. He's genius PhD, and I don't understand half things he says, but he's my cousin, my first cousin, and I've hung out with him.

He's a great guy.

So. And what my. What I remember about that is when I first introduced you to him, he was a vegan, and you were definitely not. And you got. You literally took that on. And it wasn't to convince him he was wrong. It wasn't for him to convince. And that's the conversation you guys initially had, and then you became friends.

I don't even remember that.

Yeah, it was because that's. That was the initial conversation because he was a vegan and I introduced you guys. You literally look alike and everything. But I just. So you practiced that even then because you didn't say, he's wrong, isn't it? It was just you had a full conversation with him about. And you'll be happy to know he's not a vegan anymore.

Oh, cool.

He's actually not a vegan. Not. Not necessarily because of the conversation, but he's. He's moved on. He's. He's seen the. Why he cannot be a vegan anymore.

Right. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I had a guy on who I did a lot of consultations with in developing this book. His name's Dr. Mark Cronshaw. And I did, like, hours of podcasts with him that I published on my podcast. And if you listen to those, you'll hear where he and I go at it and we. We debate things and where, in some cases where he is. States very plainly that he thinks that I'm wrong about certain of my positions, and I'm cool with that. Like, you know, for me, that's. That's a fun conversation, is like, hey, yeah, like, let's sort it out, you know, and tell me why I'm wrong. And. And then I'll go, oh, now I see what you're saying. Okay, this makes sense. Now. It's coming together for me. Right.

I wish there was more of that in life because it's. It's. It's really not like that in life anymore. It's. It's. I wish people would have more open discussions. Instead, people really go into these camps of black and white, right or wrong, and people that literally have no idea what they're talking about will take a stance on one side because it's either political or just something they've always believed or whatever it is, is. And it's crazy. That's why I can't even. I can't. I just can't even scroll online anymore because I see too much of that. It's crazy.

I agree completely with you. Yeah. I don't engage in it anymore as well.

Yeah, they don't. They don't. And I, you know, the thing that always sticks out in my head and I. For years, it was like, I want to be right, you know, and what I realize is that me being right doesn't help anyone or anything. So I don't even. So I. My question, maybe this came from Wayne Dyer, you know, is, do I want to be right or do I want to piece peace? So I just stay out of the conversations now because I just want to have. I feel like people want to learn. They'll ask the right questions, but if they just want to argue, I don't really want to participate.

That's. That's how I. Yeah, I. I think to a large extent, the attitude I'm describing, this kind of more scientific attitude that is prioritizing, not ego and not being right, but is prioritizing truth.

Yeah.

And where everything that you see, everyone that you interact with is a. A is a potential for a dialectic, for. For a dialogue to emerge that can help you bring you both closer to the truth.

Yeah.

And when you have two people who are willing to engage at that level, who don't have an ego about needing to be right, but want to just engage in a productive discussion so they both can see things more clearly. Like, to me, that's the antidote for a lot of the cultural stuff that you're describing in the.

That's true science. That should be. That should be what science is.

Is Agree.

I mean, that's what we learned.

But also that attitude, I think, would be useful in political discussions.

Big time. Yeah, big time. Like, I hate that nutrition and biohacks have become political. I just, I can't stand it right now. That's a whole other topic.

But.

But true science, to me, is that discussion and hypothesis it's, it's being open minded and learning and being willing to have your belief set change with something new. As we have more information, what do you hope for people to get out of this book? Mostly women listeners. What you want them to know, know most importantly about red light and your book in this discussion?

Yeah, a few things. So number one, it's awesome. This is a very, very useful tool and an important aspect of human health is understanding the role of red and near infrared light in human health. And the right way to conceptualize it is not as this random technology that has random benefits for random reasons, but as essentially a kind of like the way that you'd conceptualize a nutrient, the way you'd conceptualize B vitamins or, or magnesium or something like that. That it is a nutrient that your biology has evolved to require in order to perform certain functions. And when you understand it from that frame, it's like, well, I need to make sure I get, I get my nutrients in and I need to get sure, make sure I get my light nutrients in. I need to make sure that my circadian rhythm is getting the right inputs that I'm getting sunlight for vitamin D and for many of the other benefits of, of, of sunlight exposure. And I need to make sure that I get my red near infrared light exposure. And I also can leverage this technology for specific purposes using technology that I might not get as effectively from the sun. Let's say I want to use it on my brain or for facial skin anti aging, or use a device on my joints or something like that. I can, or use it for wound healing. I can use this technology to get all of these specific benefits as well. So that's, number one, is to explain in great depth the science, the mechanisms to present the research to show that this works and to show how it works. Because understanding the mechanism of how something works is critical to actually making the behavioral change of doing the thing right. Once you understand like how it works and what, why it's so beneficial. Now you go, oh, okay, now I need to do that thing and I need to prioritize it. So that's number one. Number two is how to use it and how to navigate this, this whole space which has kind of become like the wild West. There's just so much bad information out there. There's so much lying and misrepresentation and marketing gimmicks from the device manufacturers, so many junk devices that are a waste of time and money. So number one is to educate people on why they should do it. Number two, is to help them navigate this territory. To understand how not to waste your time and money and how to effectively use your time and money to get the benefits you want to get. Exactly how to break it down, you know, the how to. Of what is the objective you're trying to achieve. Okay, now here's the types of devices that you would want to use for that goal and how to use them. Okay. And exactly how to dose them and what, what devices to get and so on. And the last thing that is part of my goal is also cleaning up the industry. So there are certain unethical practices that I'm trying to expose and marketing gimmicks and just bad information that I'm trying to expose. And I'm trying to encourage people to only do business with manufacturers that are, number one, obviously making quality devices, but are also transparent about, you know, providing third party lab data to show the real technical specifications of their devices instead of lying about it. So I'm trying to, to also have an impact on the whole, the whole industry. Just cleaning up the, the level of ethics and integrity of what's going on in the space right now.

Incredible. I love the work that you're doing. I'm gonna link the book below everyone and if you found this interesting, as always, I don't just grab one book, grab two, grab three. So you can give them to other people too, so you can have discussions with them. I find when I like something, I, I get them from my friends as well because I want to talk about, talk about topics with them. So I'm going to encourage you to do that. I will link all of that below. Thank you so much, Ari, for being here today. Thank you for this conversation.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Natalie. It was an absolute pleasure and thanks so much for the excellent questions.