Learn More About the Scar and Wound Care Benefits of Red Light Therapy

Maybe you’ve heard of red light therapy — or by one of its other names:  bio-stimulation, low level light therapy (LLLT), or photobiomodulation (PBM)? Perhaps you’ve heard about an interesting new therapeutic procedure that can treat and reduce scars and promote wound healing through red light? You may have even heard about its amazing results in weight reduction?

What is Red Light Therapy?

In the 1990’s NASA Scientists discovered that Red Light Therapy, or RLT, helped plants grown on space flights. Specifically, they discovered that red LEDs produced an intense light that promoted photosynthesis leading to growth in plants.

It wasn’t long until scientists made the leap to healthcare where they wanted to know if RLT would increase the energy within human cells that could stimulate growth and regeneration. 

Explaining the Red Light Therapy Process

It’s believed that by penetrating about five millimeters below the skin’s surface, RLT stimulates and strengthens the mitochondria which powers individual cells through an energy-supporting molecule called adenosine triphosphate. 

This stimulation causes the cell to repair and rejuvenate itself leading to noticeable skin improvements. And since there is no damage to the skin like is experienced with laser therapy or pulsed light therapy, skin shows immediate progress.

Red Light Therapy Benefits and Your Skin

While studies are numerous and ongoing, there seem to be promising results evident on the benefits of red light therapy when focused on repairing skin tissue. RLT has shown benefits when treating the following skin issues:

• Diminishes scars and stretch marks
• Promotes tissue repair and wound regeneration
• Stimulates healing in diabetic wounds
• Greatly improves acne scars
• Improves psoriasis
• Alleviates some side effects from treatments for cancer
• Helps in weight loss
• Diminishes wrinkles and improves the skin’s texture
• Reduces pain and stiffness in people with rheumatoid arthritis
• Helps to repair damage from the sun

Are There Side Effects of Red Light Therapy?

No, as long as you are working with a knowledgeable, experienced healthcare provider, you shouldn’t experience any discomfort or side effects when being treated with red light therapy.

In fact, you may find that red light therapy addresses multiple issues in addition to the initial treatment sought. For example, treatment for a facial scar may also help to reduce fine lines, age spots, or signs of aging.

Red Light Therapy Near Me in Mill Creek, Washington

While there are non-traditional businesses advertising red light therapy, like day spas and tanning salons, it is best to obtain care from a licensed healthcare professional. Not only can they recommend treatment based on your overall health, but they are also trained in what works best for your specific health issue and what to watch out for overall.

Using Red Light Therapy to Targets Fat Cells

In weight loss, anything that targets fat cells is like pure gold; especially valuable to your goals to lose body weight. 

Red light therapy falls in this category. 

Specifically, at 635 nm, red light therapy activates an enzyme called cytochrome c oxidase. This enzyme has the capability to open the pores in fat cells. 

You can imagine this scenario happening with a water balloon. What would happen if little holes on the surface of a water balloon were opened? The water would start gushing out from every pore. Pretty soon, the water balloon would be limp. 

The same thing happens with fat cells via cytochrome c oxidase. Fat can’t stay inside the fat cell once cytochrome c oxidase turns on and opens the pores. The fat cells then deflate like a balloon. 

Where does the fat go? Into the bloodstream. And once you start exercising or turning off metabolic pathways that store fat – such as not eating high glycemic index foods or foods and beverages loaded with sugar – that fat that is circulating in the bloodstream is burned for energy. 

Once the fat is burned for energy, it doesn’t exist anymore. That’s exactly what you want – fat cells that are somehow incinerated and gone forever. 

This is why it would be self-sabotaging to eat that entire carton of ice cream from your freezer after having a red light therapy session during the day. You want to help your body and not work against it. 

Interestingly, in one of the interviews about  red light therapy, the inventor discussed studies where athletes were exercising with aerobic and resistance types of exercise. Some of the athletes had the red light therapy on the same day they exercised while the rest of them had no red light therapy at all.

Those who had the red light therapy AND exercised had a 15% boost of their peak performance compared to only 10% in those that did only exercise. 

Exercise stepped into the picture and burned the fat that the red light therapy had released into the bloodstream. It’s a good example of how you can work WITH your body to create higher levels of wellness. 

How Many Inches Could You Lose with Red Light Therapy?

Other researchers revealed startling evidence from their study that red light therapy sessions at 635 nm with the light six inches away from the body three times a week for six weeks caused a 5 inch reduction in hips, abdominals, waistlines, and thighs. 

Another study, this time for only 2 weeks with 67 volunteers and 3 sessions of red light therapy per week led to a 1-inch loss in the waistline, 1-inch loss in the hips, and 0.65 inches from the thighs. You might be thinking that’s not much, but actually it’s not too bad for those who aren’t dieting, aren’t altering their diet in any way, and aren’t exercising. 

Red Light Therapy Targets the Reasons Why You Gained Weight 

The most common reasons why people gain weight include:

• They are under too much stress.
• They don’t sleep well at night or long enough.
• They aren’t particularly happy and run to comfort foods.
• Their body is inflamed.
• They continue eating during the day beyond regular meals due to appetite. 
• Their metabolism has slowed down. 

Red light therapy works on every one of these reasons. 

When you’re under stress, your body releases cortisol and adrenaline. These two hormones cause the production of belly fat. Red light therapy decreases levels of these two hormones.

Red light therapy stimulates the production of melatonin. This is the hormone that is released while you sleep. It causes regeneration to occur in your body.

Red light is part of the full spectrum light therapy that is used to treat patients with seasonal affective disorder. However, recently red light therapy has been used with excellent success. The treatment helps bring the patients out of their acute depressive state faster than any other treatment plan, one psychologist from the UCLA Medical School stated. 

Red light therapy is well known in the studies to decrease inflammation. When you have inflammation, you have blockages in the energy circuits of the body. Red light therapy clears out the inflammation.

Red light therapy also increases leptin levels while lowering ghrelin levels. This ends up causing a reduction in hunger. And with less hunger, there’s no reason to eat. 

And if you want to know how red light therapy affects metabolism, it does so by increasing circulation to the cells of the body. Greater circulation means more cells are working at high capacity. 

 

The Benefits of Red Light Therapy at 635 Nanometers

Are you curious about how red light therapy actually breaks down the fat cells? Are you wondering how something like light can possibly make a difference in the fat cells and whether or not there are other effects that contribute to fat loss?

This whole field of health is called photobiomodulation, which means the use of light to affect the body’s cells. Light vibrates at a certain frequency and when it activates the cells, it’s called photobiomodulation. 

 

What is Light Therapy?

Light therapy consists of using different colored light for different health and wellness conditions and desired effects. Each color of the rainbow has its own wavelength, and the wavelength is even different for each band of color. Red light therapy could be various shades of red, and thus different wavelengths. 

Here’s a chart of the colors of the rainbow and their different frequencies:

Color	Wavelength
Red (end of the rainbow)	700
Red	650
Orange	600
Yellow	580
Green	550
Cyan	500
Blue	450
Violet (end of the rainbow)	400

Once you know that red light is right around 650 nanometers, you can find out what happened in the research studies when different wavelengths were studied.

There have been two different red wavelengths that have been studied:

1. 660 nm – This wavelength has been found to be effective for healing of burns, cosmetic issues, scars, and dermatological conditions.
2. 635 nm – This wavelength doesn’t penetrate the skin too deep and is excellent for the breakdown of scar tissue and deep fat at the level of 6 cm. 

The key fact to remember here if you are trying to lose weight is that the 635 nm wavelength goes right after fat cells and breaks them down. 

Specifically, red light therapy at 635 nm activates an enzyme called cytochrome c oxidase, which opens the pores in fat cells. The fat cells then deflate like a balloon. Now that the fat is circulating around in the bloodstream, your goal is to burn the fat. It’s at this point that exercise or a keto diet will burn the fat and it will be gone permanently.   

Cytochrome c oxidase is an enzyme that is used in the breakdown of carbohydrates for energy from the foods that you eat. It’s not used until the end of the Krebs cycle pathway when the end products arrive at the mitochondria of the cell. In this final stretch of energy production, there’s a chain of events that occur, highly dependent on cytochrome c oxidase. 

Other Effects of Red Light Therapy on the Body

Red light therapy has several other positive benefits on the body. It modulates inflammation, increases nitric oxide production which increases circulation, enhances relaxation and improves sleep. It lowers stress as well, and when stress hormones are low, that’s when you can get the best results with weight loss.  Red light therapy also helps reset the circadian rhythms in the body so you can feel more in charge of your life.

Red light therapy has been gaining popularity in the last few years because it’s a type of therapy that doesn’t take long, doesn’t make you sweat yet offers exercise benefits, and isn’t very costly. Sessions are usually 10 to 20 minutes long. 

 

The Benefits of Red Light Therapy

Red light therapy is a type of natural healing modality that utilizes red-colored light from the light spectrum for benefits. This type of therapy is also called photobiomodulation, low-level laser therapy, and low-power laser therapy. 

During the treatment that usually lasts between 10 and 20 minutes long, your skin is exposed to a device that contains red lights. The red lights are usually very small LED types of lights that are in rows in a device such as a whole body bed, belt, headband, or lamp. 

Once your skin is exposed to the red light, the mitochondria of the cells pick it up and use it to “recharge” their batteries. The mitochondria are called the batteries of the cells, and just like regular batteries, the mitochondria can be run down as well. For example, many pharmaceutical medications deplete the mitochondria of their power source.  Red light on the other hand recharges the mitochondria.

 Red Light Therapy is safe. When your skin absorbs the red light, burning of the skin does not occur. 

3 Reactions That Occur from Light Absorption in Your Body’s Cells

1. The wavelength is absorbed by the cells in the chromophores and stimulates a chemical reaction in the cells.  Cytochrome c oxidase, important for the creation of ATP, then stimulates the mitochondria. Energy is thus produced
2. Since oxygen binds to cytochrome c oxidase, once the light energy is absorbed, increased circulation occurs in the blood vessels and the oxygen is then transferred to the cells. Not only is energy produced but oxygen is delivered to the cells.
3. Once light enters the tissue, the photons of light are transferred into the tissue. Some of them are reflected, scattered, absorbed or transmitted. If absorbed, the tissue regeneration begins.

 

12 Reasons Why Red Light Therapy Could Be Your Next Wellness Therapy

With over 300,000 studies on light therapy, the science of it has shown that:

 

1. Red light therapy reduces pain.

Studies show that different types of pain respond to red light therapy. Dental pain, neck pain, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers, neuropathy, and rheumatoid arthritis are some of the types of pain that have been studied. 

2. Red light therapy decreases inflammation.

When you have joint pain, you have inflammation. When you are overweight, you will have inflammation amongst your body tissues. When you have infections, there is always inflammation. Just about every disease has an inflammatory component to it. 

3. Red light therapy increases melatonin levels.

Melatonin not only helps you sleep but also helps keep cancer at arm’s length away from you.

4. Red light therapy decreases cortisol and adrenaline levels.

By decreasing these two hormones, your stress levels plummet.

5. Red light therapy pokes holes in fat cells.

Fat cells with holes in them are cells that have the potential to die. Their fate depends on what you do to burn them up – exercise or ketosis from a keto diet or fasting helps.

6. Red light therapy relaxes you.

Light therapy permits tense muscles to heal and regenerate making them relaxed.

7. Red light therapy improves skin.

It’s been used for wrinkles, wound healing, skin grafts, skin rejuvenation, and improves the junction between the dermis and the epidermis, improving wrinkles and stimulating tissue repair.

8. Red light therapy stimulates tissue regeneration and may be beneficial for those who have had traumatic brain injury.

In one study, photobiomodulation was cited as a therapy that could reduce swelling, increase the antioxidants, decrease inflammation, prevent cell death and modulate the activation of brain cells called microglia. 

Positive effects resulted in learning, memory, inflammation and cell death in the brain. It increases the circulation to the cerebral tissues, tissue oxygenation and cognitive function.

9. Red light therapy balances your moods.

Having stable moods during the day is what helps keep your productivity high.

10. Red light therapy improves your sleep.

In one study of Chinese female basketball players, 14 days of whole body red light therapy improved the athlete’s sleep, melatonin levels and endurance.

11. Red light therapy increases circulation.

Once the cells absorb the light, nitric oxide is released, which increases circulation in the area.

12. Red light therapy has been found helpful for various conditions that affect humans:

Including dental pain, hair loss, wrinkles, acne, warts, cold sores, TMJ, dementia, and other conditions.