So, I was walking through the streets of Tokyo, and I saw this ad for this thing called a Collagen

Capsule that looks like a red light emitting tanning machine that is supposed to reduce your
fatigue, improve your skin and anti-age you. This wasn’t too surprising as I’ve seen many other
random beauty products and machines over here. What was surprising was when my friend
said he broke a bone in his hand, and to improve the healing, the doctor had him come in
several times over the course of a couple months to put his hand under a red light device. So
this got me curious: what’s going on with red light?

To understand light, we need to take a look at American football. The idea of the game is to get
the ball on this side more than the other guy gets the ball on that side. For many players, a
consequence of doing this is repeated head trauma and concussions.

When Dr. Bennet Omalu performed the autopsy of former​ ​Pittsburgh Steelers​ player​ ​Mike
Webster​ in 2002, he found distinct changes in the brain that had to have been the result of
repeated blows to the head. He thought this might have some relation to the mood disorders,
depression, intellectual impairment and multiple suicide attempts Webster suffered through after
his football career.

In 2005, football player ​Terry Long​ committed suicide. Dr. Omalu examined his brain and found
so much buildup of a specific damaging protein that the 45 year old’s brain looked more like "a
90-year-old brain with advanced Alzheimer's."

Larry Carr is yet another football player whose brain suffered from the repeated trauma caused
by his football career. ​Decades​ Years after his 10 year football career in the seventies ended,
He was diagnosed​ ​In 2008​ with concussive brain damage.​ ​Larry said the​ His symptoms​ showed
up 20 years before that, beginning​ ​his symptoms​ began with language problems which
progressed into severe emotional dysregulation, depression, agitation and paranoia.[​S​]

Fortunately, he finally found a way to improve his brain health after coming in contact with
Professor of Neurology ​Dr. Margaret Naeser​ who included Larry in a trial of shining red light on
the head to restore brain function. After 18 weeks of this ...unusual treatment, his brain health
actually improved significantly. His emotional outbursts and depression scores had gone way
down, which drastically improved his quality of life.[​S​]
But that’s just the begininng - as we’ll see later on, red and near infrared light has been claimed
to benefit things like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and even Diabetes...

Now hold up, I can already hear y’alls skepticism gears turning away. Come on, how could light
reverse brain damage? There’s a surprising amount of science and history behind “light
therapy” - ​And don’t worry this has nothing to do with things like so called “breatharianism” or
people attempting to eat nothing and “live off sunlight”

So, Light and different wavelengths of light affect us in all kinds of ways.
-As you know, sunlight simply hitting the skin allows the body to create vitamin D.
-Blue light, in particular wavelengths around 460-480nm[​R​], affects the body’s circadian rhythm
- keeping you awake at night. Hence there are blue light blocking glasses, and blue light filtering
softwares that are supposed to help you sleep.
-Maybe you’ve heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD - where people​ in regions of the
world​ where there is too little sunlight during the winter get symptoms of depression. One simple
yet effective treatment for this disorder is just exposing​ ​the person to a bright light during the
day.

Nowadays, Red / near infrared light devices are becoming popular. This “red light therapy” is
thought to have beneficial effects for everything from reducing inflammation and reducing
recovery time after exercise, to increasing collagen production which gives you better looking
skin and there’s even claims that red light raises testosterone. Ben Greenfield wrote ​a popular
article​ for Men’s Health back in 2017 titled “I Put a Giant Red Light on my Balls to Triple my
Testosterone Levels”

Personally, I picked up a red light device that emits ​660 and 850nm light​ (at 68.6 Watts) and I’ve
noticed a couple things: If I leave it on my stomach for more than 10 minutes, I feel relaxed -
kinda like the feeling you get sunbathing at the beach. Since I’m new to crossfit and have pretty
bad form ...my wrists are usually in pain for about two days after certain workouts, but if I apply
the light to my wrists, they’re back to normal about a day faster than usual. Then, if I put it on my
face, my skin looks a little better - about the difference in skin quality from a bad versus a good
night’s sleep.

So what exactly is going on with red light? How is it any different from y’know - normal light?

Let’s rewind a bit back to 10th century Japan - people at the time believed in a smallpox god
called ​Housougami​ who feared the color red. This superstition led them to decorating patients’
rooms with red objects, red strips of paper, having people wear red clothes and so on. In fact,
many different cultures ended up adopting this practice. This “Red Treatment” was
recommended in medical writings of medieval Arabic scholars and was practiced in England,
France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and other areas. King Charles the fifth of France, Elizabeth the
first of England and Joseph the first of Austria were all subjected to this bizarre practice of
surrounding smallpox patients with red stuff.[​S​]

Fast forward to 1903 - ​Niels Finsen​ won the Nobel Prize for discovering that specific
wavelengths of light could heal a terrible skin condition called lupus vulgaris caused by the
tuberculosis bacteria. The ultraviolet light he used seemed to destroy the harmful bacteria.

Before that, Finsen wrote in an 1895 paper how the superstitious “red treatment” for smallpox
may have not been entirely baseless. At the time, it was understood that smallpox infected skin
exposed to sunlight even briefly turned into deep scars. However Finsen explained that if you
blocked the sunlight with ​heavy red curtains[​R​] and exposed the patient to only ​red​ rays of
light, this would actually promote healing of the skin and reduce scarring.[​S​][​R​] ​The red
rays were more beneficial than just complete darkness. This “red light treatment” was effective
in 69/70 patients across Copenhagen, Denmark, France and Sweden. Many of the practitioners
were actually reserved in their reports on the results probably for fear of being laughed out of
their medical practice. Finsen was careful to write that this practice had beneficial effects only
for the skin but did not affect the smallpox infection itself.

This sounds pretty far fetched, maybe as far fetched as saying “You know that terrible bone
disease children get? You can cure it with this special lamp of mine.” When Huldschinsky
claimed in 1919 that you could treat rickets with a mercury arc lamp, everyone thought he was a
nut.[​R​] But now we know that rickets is caused by vitamin D deficiency, and UV rays from the
sun hitting the skin allows the body to create vitamin D …which prevents rickets.

Not many people bought the idea that red light could benefit the skin until Endre Mester
miscalibrated a laser in 1968. In one of Mester’s experiments, he made a cut on rodents’ skin to
implant a cancerous tumor. Then he tried to destroy it with a laser. The laser didn’t kill the
tumor, but interestingly, it healed the cut he made on the skin to put the tumor in there. This
didn’t make any sense - why would the laser not destroy the tumor but instead heal the skin?
Actually, Mester’s laser was much weaker than he realized. This accident revealed the skin
healing effect of low level lasers.[​S​]

Nowadays LLLT - low level laser therapy has all kinds of applications with many research
papers written about them. One of the skin applications is healing acne scars.[​R​,​ ​R - pictures​]
Low level laser therapy mostly uses red and near infrared wavelengths of light from 660-905nm
because these penetrate into the body and have certain beneficial effects.[​R​,​ ​R2​]

We’re about to get into the science of specifically how red and infrared light affects our cells, but
you might be wondering why our bodies would be adapted to react specifically to red and near
infrared light.

The sun has been worshipped and revered as a provider of health for a while.
Hippocrates had claimed sunbathing was beneficial to health[​R​] and, ​this 1918 photograph
depicts the more recent practice of wounded American soldiers exposing their unbandaged
wounds to the sun as this was thought to speed up healing.

In 1933, the US government released a pamphlet called ​Sunlight for Babies​ saying “Every
mother who wishes her baby to have robust health should give him regular sun baths from early
infancy until he is old enough to play in the sun himself.” [​S​]

Nowadays we’re told to stay ​out​ of the sun unless we want to get skin cancer, but people are
arguing we need ​more​ sun because vitamin D is so important for health…

However, the rising and setting sun specifically, don’t get too much attention. If you compare the
range of wavelengths of light from the morning and midday sun, the morning sun has far more
wavelengths in the 630 to 940nm range.[​R​] Actually, this is nearly the exact same range used in
“red / Near infrared light therapy” or “low level laser therapy.”

So perhaps red and infrared lights aren’t randomly magical, but are simulating something we
used to get plenty of in our lives. Unless you …sleep outside, you’re probably not exposed very
often to red and infrared rays from the morning or setting sun.

Red light therapy has been claimed to have a positive effect on everything from improving skin
health to even having a positive effect on Alzheimer’s and depression. It seems way too good to
be true.

So, how exactly does red light affect the cells?

To understand, let’s take a look at cyanide poisoning.
As you know, mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell - they produce energy in the form of
ATP, the molecule we use for energy. Cyanide poisoning works by basically throwing a wrench
in the mitochondria’s ATP energy factory which starves the cell of the precious energy it needs
to operate. Cyanide inhibits an important enzyme in the mitochondria called cytochrome c
oxidase - this is a key enzyme for producing lots of energy.[​S​]

Animation: ​Eight protons per O2 are taken up from the inside, of which four are used in the
chemistry and four are pumped to the outside. O​ xygen is reduced to water ​in t​ he enzyme.​ [R
​ ]​

When cytochrome c oxidase is inhibited, ATP production slows to a halt and the power house of
the cell becomes the abandoned shack of the cell …and if this happens to enough cells, then
you die.

Interestingly, red and near infrared light works kind of opposite to cyanide. It actually ​stimulates
this enzyme cytochrome c oxidase in a way that leads ​more​ ATP energy production.[​R​] Since
nearly every single type of cell in the body relies on mitochondria to power them with energy
from ATP, maybe it’s not so far-fetched that light therapy would have such wide ranging
beneficial effects. By the way, red and near infrared light has actually been found to reverse
some of the damage cyanide does to cells.[​R​] This of course just a fun fact, red light isn’t an
antidote to cyanide poisoning.

So, cells need energy, you shine red light on them and they are then able to produce more
energy and then they work better. It’s an interesting concept and helps things make a bit more
sense - if something can make a wide variety of cells essentially ​work better,​ we should expect
that something to have beneficial effects on a wide variety of diseases. This seems to be what’s
going on with red light therapy.

Let’s take a look at three debilitating diseases red light is supposed to help - Diabetes,
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s - you might still be thinking “come on, really? ​Light​ improves
these?”

What’s going on with type 2 Diabetes? One feature of diabetes is a pancreas that doesn’t work
properly. …and in Diabetes you see decreased energy production in the mitochondria of the
pancreas - the organ that produces insulin.[​R​] Another feature of diabetes is insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance essentially means your cells can’t use insulin properly. One effect of insulin
resistance on the cells is …decreased energy production in the mitochondria.[​R​]

Next, what’s going on with Parkinson’s disease? This 2017 paper goes as far as to suggest that
Parkinson’s disease is caused by mitochondrial dysfunction in specific cells in the brain.[​R​, ​R2​]
That is, they’re saying decrease of ATP energy production in the mitochondria leads to
Parkinson’s.

What about Alzheimer’s? Again, a feature of this disease is also decreased energy production in
the mitochondria of brain cells.[​R​]
One other thing about the red light hitting this enzyme cytochrome c oxidase is that it releases
nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a very important molecule - it acts as a neurotransmitter, helps heal
damaged tissues and relaxes blood vessels, increasing blood flow. Three men were awarded
the Nobel prize in 1998 for discovering nitric oxide’s significant role in the cardiovascular
system. ​That same year - sildenafil, a drug that was originally intended to improve heart disease
symptoms, was approved for erectile dysfunction. Sildenafil, better known by its brand name
Viagra, works together with nitric oxide to relax the smooth muscles of, and increase blood flow
to, the Johnson.[​S​]

Similar to how exposing a UVB light deficient child to the sun can have magical benefits on their
bone health by curing their rickets, red and infrared light may have such wide ranging benefits
simply because modern people happen to be “deficient” in red and infrared light - something
prehistoric humans would have gotten from the morning and evening sun every day.

Let’s get back to TBI, traumatic brain injury - surprisingly 1.7 million Americans receive
treatment for TBI each year. And, again, Mitochondria come into play.​ ​As this paper explains​,
widespread damage to the mitochondria of the brain is a significant part of the symptoms seen
from TBI.

So, there is very solid science and logic for why Dr. Margaret Naeser had Larry Carr strap this
red light emitting device to his head, and there’s even solid science that explains why it had
such significant benefits for him.

Furthermore, a small 2009 study took 10 patients with a history of major depression and anxiety
and applied red/NIR light to their forehead for 4 weeks. Amazingly, at the end of the four weeks,
6 out of the 10 patients’ depression was in remission and 7 out of 10 patients’ anxiety was in
remission.[​R​]

Studies like this are very exciting, but I’ve been careful not to use words like “cure” in this video -
while there are many exciting studies on red light therapy, the only application it has been
approved for by the FDA is treating minor pains and arthritis.[​S​]

But should we all rush out and drop a couple hundred dollars on a red light device? Well, it’s
hard to say - obviously you won’t get results as ridiculous as this, but there are actually many
papers showing red light increases collagen synthesis,
[​1​,​2​,​3​,​4​,​5​,​6​,​7​] To what degree it actually beautifies your skin is hard to say, but if you’re
interested in it for the skin or other benefits it’s worth looking into. If anything, hopefully this
video encouraged you to try and get some early morning sun which would be good for
establishing a healthy circadian rhythm anyhow.