🔗 Share this article

Light-based treatment is clearly enjoying a moment. You can now buy illuminated devices for everything from skin conditions and wrinkles to muscle pain and gum disease, the newest innovation is an oral care tool enhanced with miniature red light sources, described by its makers as “a breakthrough in at-home oral care.” Worldwide, the industry reached $1 billion in 2024 and is forecast to expand to $1.8 billion by 2035. Options include full-body infrared sauna sessions, which use infrared light to warm the body directly, your body is warmed directly by infrared light. Based on supporter testimonials, it’s like bathing in one of those LED-lit beauty masks, boosting skin collagen, relaxing muscles, relieving inflammation and long-term ailments while protecting against dementia.

The Science and Skepticism

“It feels almost magical,” says a neuroscience expert, who has researched light therapy for two decades. Certainly, we know light influences biological functions. Sunlight enables vitamin D production, essential for skeletal strength, immune function, and muscular health. Light exposure controls our sleep-wake cycles, too, activating brain chemicals and hormonal responses in daylight, and signaling the body to slow down for nighttime. Sunlight-imitating lamps are standard treatment for winter mood disorders to boost low mood in winter. Undoubtedly, light plays a vital role in human health.

Different Light Modalities

Whereas seasonal affective disorder devices typically employ blue-range light, most other light therapy devices deploy red or infrared light. In serious clinical research, like examinations of infrared influence on cerebral tissue, identifying the optimal wavelength is crucial. Photons represent electromagnetic waves, spanning from low-energy radio waves to the highest-energy (gamma waves). Light-based treatment employs mid-spectrum wavelengths, with ultraviolet representing the higher energy invisible light, then visible light (all the colours we see in a rainbow) and finally infrared detectable with special equipment.

Dermatologists have utilized UV therapy for extensive periods to manage persistent skin disorders including eczema and psoriasis. It modulates intracellular immune mechanisms, “and reduces inflammatory processes,” explains a dermatology expert. “Considerable data validates phototherapy.” UVA reaches deeper skin layers compared to UVB, in contrast to LEDs in commercial products (typically emitting red, infrared or blue wavelengths) “generally affect surface layers.”

Risk Assessment and Professional Supervision

Potential UVB consequences, including sunburn or skin darkening, are well known but in medical devices the light is delivered in a “narrow-band” form – indicating limited wavelength spectrum – which decreases danger. “Therapy is overseen by qualified practitioners, so the dosage is monitored,” notes the specialist. Most importantly, the lightbulbs are calibrated by medical technicians, “to guarantee appropriate wavelength emission – as opposed to commercial tanning facilities, where oversight might be limited, and emission spectra aren’t confirmed.”

Home Devices and Scientific Uncertainty

Colored light diodes, he says, “don’t have strong medical applications, but they may help with certain conditions.” Red light devices, some suggest, help boost blood circulation, oxygen absorption and cell renewal in the skin, and promote collagen synthesis – a key aspiration in anti-ageing effects. “Research exists,” states the dermatologist. “However, it’s limited.” In any case, with numerous products on the market, “we’re uncertain whether commercial devices replicate research conditions. We don’t know the duration, how close the lights should be to the skin, whether or not that will increase the risk versus the benefit. Many uncertainties remain.”

Treatment Areas and Specialist Views

One of the earliest blue-light products targeted Cutibacterium acnes, microorganisms connected to breakouts. Scientific backing remains inadequate for regular prescription – even though, notes the dermatologist, “it’s frequently employed in beauty centers.” Some of his patients use it as part of their routine, he says, but if they’re buying a device for home use, “we recommend careful testing and security confirmation. Unless it’s a medical device, standards are somewhat unclear.”

Cutting-Edge Studies and Biological Processes

Meanwhile, in a far-flung field of pioneering medical science, researchers have been testing neural cells, identifying a number of ways in which infrared can boost cellular health. “Pretty much everything I did with the light at that particular wavelength was positive and protective,” he states. It is partly these many and varied positive effects on cellular health that have driven skepticism about light therapy – that claims seem exaggerated. Yet, experimental evidence has transformed his viewpoint.

The researcher primarily focuses on pharmaceutical solutions for brain disorders, but over 20 years ago, a physician creating light-based cold sore therapy requested his biological knowledge. “He developed equipment for cellular and insect experiments,” he says. “I was pretty sceptical. The specific wavelength measured approximately 1070nm, that nobody believed did anything biological.”

Its beneficial characteristic, however, was its ability to transmit through aqueous environments, enabling deeper tissue penetration.

Mitochondrial Impact and Cognitive Support

Growing data suggested infrared influenced energy-producing organelles. These organelles generate cellular energy, generating energy for them to function. “Mitochondria exist throughout the body, particularly in neural cells,” says Chazot, who prioritized neurological investigations. “It has been shown that in humans this light therapy increases blood flow into the brain, which is always very good.”

With 1070 treatment, cellular power plants create limited oxidative molecules. In low doses this substance, says Chazot, “triggers guardian proteins that maintain organelle health, protect cellular integrity and manage defective proteins.”

Such mechanisms indicate hope for cognitive disorders: free radical neutralization, swelling control, and waste removal – autophagy representing cellular waste disposal.

Current Research Status and Professional Opinions

When recently reviewing 1070nm research for cognitive decline, he says, several hundred individuals participated in various investigations, incorporating his preliminary American studies