14. The True Benefits of Red Light Therapy

TL;DR: Get sunlight or light from a device to optimize hormone levels like vitamin D and melatonin, enzymes for generating more ATP, wound healing, and fending off infections including COVID.

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You step out of your front door and notice just how gorgeous it is out. The warm rays of sunshine kiss your skin and brighten your mood when you look around at everything it illuminates. People are outside pushing strollers and jogging, girls are in their bikinis getting a nice tan on, and people seem carefree. There’s something about a nice sunny day that we intrinsically enjoy. And it’s not just us. Lizards bask in it, plants live off of it, and many living things including us rely on direct sunlight in some form or another.

But why do we like the sun and what are the benefits, if any? And in classic biohacker thinking, is there a way to get these benefits if you don’t have access to direct sunlight? In this article we will first go through a background on light, then the benefits of sunlight and light therapy, and finally how to get the optimal benefits from light.

Background

With few exceptions, the sun provides the energy for all life on Earth. Without the sun, we’d all die! It sends us energy from 150 million miles away in the form of something called electromagnetic waves, or light. The light that reaches us is composed of many different wavelengths, some much more prevalent than others, mostly in the visible spectrum. Wavelengths are measured in nanometers, which is one-billionth of a meter.

Here is a diagram of the different wavelengths of light:

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Notice the area called visible light, which is what humans can see. We can’t see longer wavelengths like radio waves, or very short ones like x-rays. The shorter the wavelength, the more powerful the light is. This is why UV light from the sun is more dangerous than visible light.

In this article, we will focus mostly on the wavelengths that the sun gives off, which you can see in the image below as the yellow combined red and yellow area:

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The part that really matters here is the red area of the chart, which is the light that makes it to sea level (and hits our skin) through the atmosphere. This is the light we have evolved with over billions of years, and our bodies use it for several purposes we will cover in the next section.

As you can see, most of the light from the sun is in the visible spectrum. However, many researchers and companies looking into the benefits of light focus on light between 650nm and 850nm, called the “therapeutic window”. This range as you can see from that first diagram is in the red and infrared spectrum. These wavelengths cause the functioning of our cells to change substantially, the fancy term for this effect is photobiomodulation (PBM) [4]. PBM has been used for decades, and even millenia, but more recently it has become mainstream and many companies are cropping up to fulfill the demand.

There are benefits outside of this range as well though, for instance, we need UVB rays (290nm – 320nm) to make vitamin D in our skin. Older medical practices like those of ancient Egypt also use blue light and other light colours for healing, and modern practices use blue light for example in curing Jaundice in babies. There appears to be many mysteries still surrounding the medical uses of light, and it seems likely that other colours will enter the scene.

Light affects our biology likely through several extremely powerful ways including optimizing our hormone levels, improving the functioning of our enzymes which helps us make more energy, healing wounds, and preventing and even helping to cure infectious diseases.

The Benefits of Light

Light has a very powerful biological effect on us.

Studying light for its therapeutic and medical properties is nothing new. In fact, it dates back at least to Ancient Egypt in 2000 BC where lights and colours were used to heal a variety of diseases. They believed different colours of light had different effects on us. A thousand years later, Avicenna, a polymath of the Islamic Golden Age around 1000 AD advanced the use of chromotherapy and observed that certain colours like red stimulated blood flow more, whereas blue calmed and soothed. Many other ancient societies doted on the importance of the sun and often worshipped it as a god.

More recently in the late 1800s, blue light has been used to speed up the maturation of animals, cure certain diseases, and increase fertility in plants and animals [5]. Even as modern science enters the scene, it is only reaching the tip of the iceberg with the effects of light on our biology, and it will take much longer for these findings to reach the mainstream. About 20 years ago in Russia, research was started that found that humans and other animals actually conduct photons of light in our bodies through channels called meridians. The researchers postulated that our meridians act like fiber optic cables. This opens up very interesting understandings for how light affects our bodies and how our bodies use that light. Read more on meridians in our article How Energy Moves In The Body.

We have just begun to understand how light affects us, and there is a lot more research needed. While there is a lot we don’t understand about light, take a look below to see some of the benefits we have already uncovered.

Boosting Hormone Levels

In our article on How to Be More Manly, we touched on the effect light has on testosterone levels:

“On the fourth day, the rats who were treated with 670nm light [for 30 minutes per day on their testicles] had T levels roughly 6.7 times higher than the test case of rats who were not treated with light.”

Similar effects are seen in humans, with multiple studies showing increases when UV light is shone on men’s backs and torsos with between a 20% increase in testosterone on average, and when UV light is shone on the testes, it increases 100%, or doubles. The benefits seem especially strong in those with low sex drive, which appears to be treated very well with light therapy, and showed increases in one study to 300% of their previous testosterone levels. [6]

There is almost nothing that impacts melatonin levels more than light. The sun has regulated our sleep-wake cycles for billions of years of evolution. Pretty much all living things use the sun to regulate their sleep, even single celled organisms. Blue light has an awakening effect on us, whereas red light does not. This is why you may have heard not to look at screens before bed, which have a lot of blue light and can reduce melatonin levels by more than 50%. On the other hand, blue light during the morning can actually cause us to secrete melatonin earlier in the night because it essentially starts the clock for the day. Light can be both good and bad for our sleep depending on when and what type of light we are exposed to. Read more about light and sleep in our article Tune Your Circadian Rhythm.

Many have found that using a light device like verlux or others help tremendously with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is basically having a depressed mood in winter. You can read Amazon reviews on these sorts of products to see what people say.

Vitamin D

Another well-known benefit of light exposure is increasing vitamin D levels, an important nutrient and hormone precursor. Those with higher vitamin D levels have higher testosterone levels [7].

Vitamin D is a very important molecule in the body, and isn’t just a nutrient, but also a precursor for a hormone called calcitriol. Every cell in our body has a receptor for calcitriol, which is how vitamin D has its effect on our bodies. Vitamin D deficiencies are common now with less time spent in the sun and more emphasis on protecting your skin from the sun. Lower vitamin D levels are associated with increased risk of infection, increased cardiovascular disease, weaker bones, and mental illness. Those in areas of the world with less sun actually have higher incidences of cancer, and vitamin D helps with Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis.

When we look at overall mortality levels in our article “Why Supplements Are Useful”, referencing a study on 3,248 people followed for 7.7 years we see that “Those in the lowest quartile of blood concentration of vitamin D had 108% higher chance of dying than the highest quartile.” This means simply getting enough vitamin D will make you half as likely to die according to that study. Vitamin D is underrated.

Taking a look at the informative image below (you may have to open the image in a new window), you can see that as vitamin D levels increase in our blood, the rates of some of the biggest killers in the world including cancers, diabetes, and heart attacks all reduce by huge amounts. The green line below is the average serum vitamin D levels of about 25 ng/ml in the blood. When this level rises to 50 ng/ml for example, the risk of breast cancer reduces by an incredible 83%!

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Clearly, vitamin D has a large range of essential functions in our bodies, and sunlight is essentially the only way to get enough of it. In particular, it is UV rays that causes the reaction in our skin cells to make vitamin D in the range of 270nm to 300nm mostly. Unfortunately, glass windows block this wavelength so we don’t make vitamin D inside. Just another reason to search for a way to get the benefits of sunlight while inside if you don’t get enough sun as is!

Enzymes & Energy

Enzymes are incredibly important. They can speed up reactions in our bodies by quadrillions of times, so without them our metabolism would come to a halt very quickly. In each cell we have about 1300 identified enzymes working away, and light has an effect on many of these. Just one example includes Cytochrome C Oxidase (CCO), but there are likely many more.

Red light helps us make more energy through making CCO more efficient. During cellular respiration, which occurs in our mitochondria – the “powerhouse of the cell” – CCO is required to catalyze the reaction. However, when under stress, our cells make a compound called Nitric Oxide (NO), which binds to CCO and stops it from working. This is where red light comes in. Certain wavelengths of red light actually hit electrons involved in the end stages of cellular respiration. When it does this, the electrons absorb the energy and the energy is enough to cause the bond between CCO and NO to be broken. This allows some of the CCO molecules that were useless before to function again and we create more ATP as a result. A nice added benefit is that we have more free NO circulating our bodies, which has an athletic performance enhancement and gives us a “pump”. [9]

Wound Healing & Skin

Light therapy is used for wound healing and cosmetic purposes like recovering from acne and other scarring as well as preventing skin conditions and improving them. Blue light seems to reduce oil production by our sebaceous glands, and also to kill bacteria. Red light seems to increase collagen production and reduce inflammation. They are both used in combination for acne and other skin conditions.

Navy seals use LED lights to help them heal wounds faster, including wounds deeper than the skin like musculoskeletal injuries. In fact, one study showed more than 40% improvement in musculoskeletal injuries as well as a faster rate of healing. [10]

Infectious Disease – Including COVID-19

The Spanish Flu of 1918 – 1919 was one of the most deadly pandemics of all time on record. It killed between 50 and 100 million Americans, a quarter of the population at the time. This makes COVID’s roughly 330,000 American deaths, or 1% of the population look like a walk in the park by comparison. At the time, doctors had little idea how to prevent the spread, or how to cure patients who were already ill. However, there was one treatment that did stand out, guess what it was? Sunlight, and fresh air.

Those who were treated in what is called open-air hospitals, seen below, were 3 times as likely to survive as those in indoor hospitals.

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There is currently quite a lot of research into using light therapy to cure or at least improve symptoms of COVID-19, and any other COVID strains that may arise. Not only this, but it reduced infection among staff. Sunlight was also used to disinfect wounds in WWI, and is known to inactivate the influenza virus as well as kill bacteria that cause infections in the lungs. A newer study showed that sunlight kills COVID just as well, with 90% of it being inactivated within 34 minutes on an average summer day. [12]

Then, there are recent studies that look into applying light therapy to COVID cases, like this study [13] on a 57 year old with a severe case that improved drastically with red light therapy. He was put under red light at 808nm and 905nm for 28 minutes each day for four days.

The results were striking. His severe case, which would usually require a ventilator and emergency treatment with a chance of death, completely resolved. Findings included an increase in blood oxygen saturation from 93-94% to 97-100%, oxygen requirements reduced from 2 – 4 L/minute to 1 L/minute, and C-Reactive protein decreased from 15.1 to 1.23. He recovered in a few days. Imagine if all COVID patients were treated with some red light therapy!

Many other studies make the hypothesis that light therapy would reduce the deadliness of COVID. Reasons include increased ATP production and increased vitamin D levels, which are both key to supporting the immune system, as well as strengthening the bond of iron to the hemoglobin molecule making it harder for the virus to detach the iron atom stopping hemoglobin from transporting oxygen. [14][15]

Jaundice in Babies

About 70% of babies when first born will have something called jaundice, which is a yellowing of the skin caused by a compound our body makes to bread down old red blood cells. For many babies, this will go away in weeks, whereas others require a dose of blue light therapy, which the babies skin and capillaries absorb and use to break down this yellow compound. Hospitals use 430 – 490nm LED lights.

Sun Gazing

One not so well known benefit of light therapy is sun gazing, an ancient spiritual practice involving looking directly into the sun when it is close to sunrise or sunset. It is recommended to only do this within 15 minutes of sunrise or sunset, when the sun is dark orange or red, NOT yellow or white-ish as this will damage your eyes. It should not hurt to look at. You should start with less than a minute per day, and work up to several minutes.

There are a multitude of benefits surrounding sun gazing, and it is suggested that photons are taken into nerves in the eye and they travel along nerves in the brain to the pineal gland, which has photoreceptors capable of receiving this light. This may be why the famous sun gazer Hira Ratan Manek who was studied at the Thomas Jefferson University for 130 days in 2002 had a pineal gland of 8mm x 11mm as opposed to the usual 6mm x 6mm. The pineal gland secretes melatonin and is well known for its spiritual importance. [17]

However sun gazing works, it appears to have quite a powerful effect, and is very similar to how our other cells absorb light and use it for a multitude of purposes. This technique, however, is not to be taken lightly and we don’t endorse it as being safe. Proceed with caution.

Summary of Benefits

Not all of the benefits are even listed here! Other benefits include improving skin complexion and reducing signs of aging, stimulation of muscle growth and strength (over 50% in one study), reduced joint pain (by 70% in those with rheumatoid arthritis in one study), and significantly improved cognitive function as well as reduced depression, anxiety, and headaches [16]. The benefits of light to our bodies seems almost endless.

Basically, our bodies can absorb light kind of like plants do for photosynthesis, and this has an extraordinary benefit to our bodies for enhancing hormone levels, enzymes, wound healing, fending off infections, and all sorts of other biological functions. Best of all, it appears to be incredibly safe, and shows no side effects. It’s hard to think of a better biohack than light therapy, or just plain sunlight.

Read on to learn some ways to bring these benefits into reality for you.

How To Maximize Light Therapy Benefits

Number #1 of course: Good old sunlight for a minimum of 10 minutes of exposed skin per day. It seems best to go off of intuition here, and not to burn yourself because that would detract from the benefits and it increases risks of skin cancer. Getting sunlight in the morning will help greatly with seasonal affective disorder and optimising your circadian rhythm.

Seasonal Affective Disorder and Circadian Rhythm

If you can’t get into the sun in the morning, using a blue light device in the morning for 10 minutes can be very helpful to get your body into day time mode, and have it be ready for night time mode. One good brand is Verilux, but whatever brand you choose, make sure it is powerful enough that it is comparable to what you would be exposed to on a sunny day. Make sure to check its specifications. It should be at least 1000 lux, a measure of brightness. Note that these types of devices typically only give off blue light, not red or UV, so they won’t have the therapeutic band, or generate vitamin D.

For more on optimising your circadian rhythm, see our articles on sleep.

Tanning Beds

While almost all red light therapy devices include the therapeutic window of 650nm to 850nm, and blue light devices can help you set your rhythm for optimal melatonin secretion, there are few devices for the UV spectrum, likely because it can cause skin damage being a shorter wavelength. One good option for generating vitamin D is a tanning bed, which can be found as a service you pay for each time you go, or even at your local gym.

A snippet taken from the Sunlight Institute referenced “an excellent study that compared 50 people, who used tanning beds regularly, with 106 who did not. The tanning-bed group had 90% higher vitamin D levels and significantly higher bone density.^[3]” These tanners averaged 34 minutes in the tanning bed per week. Interestingly, many “authorities” like the Skin Cancer Foundation make unsupported claims that using tanning beds to boost vitamin D levels is a myth. The top few results on Google also make this claim with weak evidence. As long as the tanning bed has appropriate UVB wavelengths, it will cause you to make vitamin D.

The Therapeutic Window

If you can’t get into the sun enough each day, then there is really only one other option, which are light therapy devices. Most commercially available light devices focus on red light and infrared light in the therapeutic zone of about 650nm to 850nm, though going above this range is good too. Below this range, the benefits are less researched. Some common brand names include Platinum LED, JOOVV (some say their integrity is questionable), MitoRed, MitoHQ, Red Therapy Co, and Red Light Rising. See a review on all of these brands here [18]. Hint: Platinum LED comes out on top. These devices are in the range of several hundred dollars.

You’ll want to stand between 6″ and a couple feet back from these devices, and start with a few minutes working up to 10 minutes of standing in front of them, or more if you are using it for deeper therapy. They cannot give you a sun burn.

DIY Alternative

One option for a cheap DIY alternative is to use halogen bulbs. Here is the wavelength distribution of halogen bulbs at different temperature ratings:

As you can see, a halogen bulb with a filament temperature of 4100 K is closest to the sun’s wavelengths and has a lot of light in the therapeutic window. You should be able to find the temperature rating when you purchase the bulb.

It’s pretty easy to setup:

Find some halogen bulbs with 4100K, higher or lower by a thousand K or so will be fine as well. Check the label or description to see the temperature rating
Buy some clamp lamps to screw the bulbs into (see below)
Screw the bulb in to the clamp lamp, and make a few of these if you want more exposure
Clamp these lamps onto a desk, or bed frame etc, plug them all into a powerbar with a switch, and when you turn the powerbar on and off you’ll have all the lamps turn on and off simultaneously
Stand a few feet back from your setup for 10 minutes or so each day

You can buy all of these products on Amazon pretty cheaply.

Beyond The Therapeutic Window: Mimicking the Sun

These wavelengths in the therapeutic zone are great, but it seems beneficial to look beyond the research and current devices and find a way to get the full spectrum of sunlight if possible. The halogen bulb strategy mentioned above comes pretty close, and even generates some UVB for vitamin D production, just not as much as the sun does.

To set a gold standard, let’s benchmark sunlight and see the wavelengths are covered as well as the power of each wavelength from the diagram in the background section above. What we want to target are wavelengths from 300nm to 1300nm mostly, but covering the longer wavelengths wouldn’t hurt. The amount of power the sun delivers on a clear day at a maximum is around 1000 W/m², so it would be ideal to look for a light device that comes close to this power level as a total, and have it be distributed similarly to the sun:

So far, there are no devices that have these specs for human use that are easy to come by in terms of wavelength, but in terms of power, most of the brands mentioned above actually do hit this target. For instance, Platinum LEDs light comes in at 660 W/m², which would be equivalent to a relatively sunny day. In terms of a broader range of wavelengths, including UVB to generate vitamin D, you will have to search deeper. This is where we get into fringe territory, like plant grow light devices. Take a look at the light generated by one of these bad boys:

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This particular company would have to be contacted for a quote, and appears to be geared more towards commercial use, but there are other companies out there who will sell individual lights. This example shows a proof of concept. At this point, there are good jumping off points to do your own research into a brand that works for you, and how far you would like to go to optimize the benefits of light therapy.

Conclusion

Light therapy has immense benefits for enhancing hormone levels, enzymes, wound healing, fending off infections, and all sorts of other biological functions with an extremely good safety record and use in a wide variety of applications across thousands of years. It especially seems that wavelengths between 650nm and 850nm have great benefits. The best and simplest way to gain the benefits is likely through sunlight. To get even more benefits, or to get them when the sun isn’t out, choose from one of the several red light therapy devices available, or get your own DIY setup with a halogen or other type of light bulb, and even find a light that closely mimics sunlight like a plant grow light.