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Most people don't know much about this revolutionary form of skin treatment that's slowly growing in popularity worldwide. Red light therapy (RLT) is the technique of shining low-wavelength red light on human skin for multiple benefits. Whether it's to heal damaged skin or muscle tissue, improve symptoms of depression, or slow down the aging process, RLT has you covered.
But before you go a step further, you should take the time to educate yourself on just what red light therapy is all about. Remember that no matter what, it's always best to consult your doctor about anything new you're considering introducing into your life, health-wise.
As just mentioned, red light therapy is a new form of skin treatment that aims to help heal the body from the inside out. It was originally developed by top scientists as a method to grow plants in outer space.
But after realizing that the method was so successful in promoting healthy growth in the plants, they adopted it for human skin treatment, and results have been positive ever since. While many light treatments are found under various names (for example, low/soft laser therapy), they're all birthed from this original science.
Uses
What are some popular ways in which red light therapy is used, you may ask? Well, it's not just limited to skin treatment; it's used to treat a variety of conditions, including sleep conditions and depression.
On top of this, it's used to target joint pain, other muscle inflammation and heal arthritis. Aside from treating anything skin-related, such as wounds, scars, wrinkles, and cold sores, red light therapy positively treats carpal tunnel syndrome and reverses cancer treatment side effects.
Benefits
While red light therapy is not a magic wand that can cure all your problems, it definitely does have some benefits that cannot be ignored. If you look long enough on the internet, you will read dozens of unbelievable stories of the benefits of red light therapy. The industry predicts that slowly, after more science and evidence is collected, RLT will become more established and widely used.
Here's a list of some of the major benefits from red light therapy:
Risks
Because the light is at a low intensity, the risks are incredibly minimal, but burns can occur if exposed to the light for a long time. So, it's important to test red light therapy on your skin beforehand. The other potential risk may be eye damage, yet, many studies have shown the positive effects red light therapy has on the eyes.
Luckily, Kaiyan Medical produces MDSAP-certified and FDA-approved light therapy products and devices for your own at-home treatment or even for your patients. We've worked hard to provide solutions for both patients and healthcare practitioners, catering to various needs. Whether you're looking to private label your own light therapy devices or for home use, contact our team, as we would love to help you through your light therapy journey.
Some people like the sauna, others can't stand it. But we feel the anti-sauna people haven't tried an infrared sauna yet. Those who have an infrared sauna in their homes swear by them. But what? What's so special about an infrared sauna?
An infrared sauna is a special type of sauna that uses light to create heat. In a traditional sauna, heat is used to warm the air, which then heats the body. This is the main reason why many people can't handle a traditional sauna - it's too much to handle. However, in an infrared sauna, light heat the body directly without warming the air.
Infrared saunas use infrared lamps to warm the body, penetrating deeply. In return, the body detoxifies gently. Since the body is directly heated, you can stay longer in an infrared sauna to reap the benefits.
Our skin is the largest organ and is the main way we eliminate toxins from our system. Aka, we sweat it out. By sweating via an infrared sauna session, the body can activate its sweat glands and eliminate toxins. However, infrared offers more than just detoxification. So what are the benefits of infrared saunas?
It's important you know the benefits of infrared saunas and get the most out of them. Whether you have a health condition or not, infrared saunas help rejuvenate the body, giving it the support it needs to function optimally.
Relaxation: infrared saunas can help relax the body and works even better when you meditate during your session.
Weight loss: infrared penetrates deeply into the body, helping stimulate weight loss via burning fat and detoxification.
Stimulates collagen: infrared light helps rejuvenate and stimulate the body's energy source, helping the creation of new cells and healing damaged ones. Through this stimulation, the body's collagen production is activated.
Releases toxins: since your skin sweats out toxins, an infrared sauna helps the sweat glands activate, and the body eliminates the toxins within.
Relieves pain: whether you're an athlete or someone who suffers from muscle soreness and joint pain, infrared saunas help. One study found that infrared saunas decrease muscle soreness and increase recovery from strength training.
Improves sleep: infrared light helps sync the sleep/wake cycle, helping people recover from sleep disorders such as insomnia.
Aids fatigue: people have been struggling with chronic fatigue and even more so since the pandemic. One study found that people with chronic fatigue benefited significantly from infrared sauna sessions.
Improves overall health: One review and several studies found that infrared light saunas help reduce blood pressure. Thus, infrared saunas help support a healthy system overall.
Infrared saunas are an amazing health and wellness tool to add to your routine. But if you cannot afford an infrared sauna in your home, you can always opt for a red light therapy device. It'll provide you with the infrared light you need to reap the benefits.
Luckily, Kaiyan Medical produces MDSAP-certified and FDA-approved light therapy products and devices for your own at-home treatment or even for your patients. We've worked hard to provide solutions for both patients and healthcare practitioners, catering to various needs. Whether you're looking to private label your own light therapy devices or for home use, contact our team, as we would love to help you through your light therapy journey.
You have probably enjoyed the soothing, therapeutic benefits of Infrared heat without even knowing it. The sun provides nature's best Infrared heat therapy, and it's the reason that you seem to relax when your skin is touched by its warmth instantly. Far Infrared Rays do not cause sunburn or damage your skin and should not be confused with Ultraviolet Lights that can cause sunburn and damage the skin.
Infrared heat warms objects directly, including you, rather than just warming just the air around you as a conventional heater does. This has many associated health benefits but also economic benefits when used to heat the home efficiently. Far Infrared heating is a very economical way to heat the house without losing heat to the air as with conventional heating systems.
Infrared heat is light that lies between the visible and microwave portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared light has a range of wavelengths, just like visible light has wavelengths that range from red light to violet.
Near-Infrared light is closest in wavelength to visible light. These shorter, near-infrared waves are warm, and you can feel a comfortable sensation with them.
Far Infrared, often referred to as FIR waves, are thermal and closer to the electromagnetic spectrum's microwave region, and we experience this as heat. Far Infrared heat provides many of the benefits of natural sunlight without the dangerous effects of U.V. radiation.
Since the primary source of Infrared radiation is thermal radiation, any object with a temperature radiates in the infrared. The warmer the thing, the more Infrared radiation it emits. Even cold objects such as an ice cube will emit some detectable infrared.
When an object is hot but not quite hot enough to radiate visible light, it will emit most of its energy in the Infrared range. For example, hot charcoal may not give off visible light, but it demits infrared radiation that we feel as heat.
Infrared waves around the home have been with us for years and are now starting to be used in a wide variety of new applications. Near-Infrared is the one we all know and is used to transmit information from place to places, such as with your T.V. remote control or data links over short distances between computers or mobile phones.
The therapeutic and practical effects of far-infrared heat are used in applications such as hospital incubators for newborn babies, modern saunas which avoid the high temperatures of the traditional humid hot air saunas, food heaters in restaurants and even modern hair dryers and straighteners, which are claimed to be a gentler on the hair and of course, light therapy for muscle recovery and general wellness.
The health benefits of Infrared heat generally fall into two categories. The first is Far Infrared used as a domestic heating system, and the second is Infrared heat therapies.
Far Infrared heat is a healthier, more comfortable, and more efficient method than any other source of domestic heating. Far Infrared heat provides many of the benefits of natural sunlight without the dangerous effects of U.V. radiation. Conventional heating systems diminish air quality by drying out the air and producing an irritating dry, static atmosphere.
The incredible benefit of using a Far Infrared heating system is that your home or office climate feels healthier and is healthier to be in. Using less energy saves you money, which has its natural feel-good factor. An economic heating system brings social benefits in that more people can afford to heat their homes to a more comfortable and healthier temperature.
Infrared heaters work by exciting the molecules in objects and our bodies, causing them to generate heat. This also stimulates the circulatory system and produces a feeling of pleasure and deep warmth, unlike convection, which warms only the skin's surface.
There is a large body of evidence, observations, and medical acceptance from around the world that Far Infrared heat therapies and heating are good for your health too. Health treatments and therapies using Far Infrared heat usually involve using a particular Infrared device, a balanced lifestyle, plenty of fresh air, and balanced exposure to natural sunlight.
One of the reported health benefits of Far Infrared heat is that it helps to relieve pain better than more traditional sources of heat to apply warmth to the body.
Because Infrared heat radiates heat evenly and does not need a secondary transference method to warm an object or person as with conventional heat sources, infrared is seen as a more efficient heat therapy method. Suppose you've ever used an infrared sauna, then you will understand why. You can stay in an Infrared sauna longer and reap more excellent benefits because the air around you does not reach blistering temperatures like in a traditional sauna. Athletes have been known to use this Infrared heat to relieve aches, pains, and strains and help speed up the healing process. Infrared heat is believed to help make circulation more efficient. Wounds heal faster with better circulation, and this is also true of muscle and tissue trauma.
Toxic accumulation in the body (or Toxic overload) can be a root cause behind many health conditions, including aging and diseases such as cancer. Symptoms of toxic overload include fatigue, headaches, joint or muscle pain, frequent colds and flu, signs of allergy and hormonal imbalance, chemical sensitivity, sinus congestion, psoriasis, other skin conditions, loss of talent, insomnia, etc. more. Psychological symptoms include poor concentration, memory loss, mood changes, mental confusion, and changes in behavior.
When toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, or potentially fatal heavy metal toxins such as mercury, lead, and chlorine, meet large water molecules, they are encapsulated by clusters of water and trapped in the body. Where these toxins are accumulated, blood circulation is blocked, and cellular energy is impaired.
Detoxification is the process of trying to remove these toxins from the body to achieve a healthier balance. Far Infrared is thought to be seven times more effective at detoxifying heavy metals such as mercury, aluminum, and even cholesterol, nicotine, alcohol, ammonia, sulphuric acid, and other environmental toxins instead of conventional heat or steam saunas.
"One of the reasons that far-infrared (FIR) has beneficial results in a variety of illnesses is the ability of FIR waves to remove toxins, which are often at the core of many health problems. Toxins that cannot be removed immediately after they enter the body are encapsulated by clusters of water. Blood circulation becomes blocked, and the cellular energy is impaired where 9 of these toxins accumulate. However, when a 7 to 11 micron FIR wave is applied to water molecules containing toxins, the water begins to vibrate. This vibration reduces the ion bonds of the atoms that are holding together the molecules of water. As the breakdown of the water molecule occurs, encapsulated gases and other toxic materials are released. One study done by American researchers showed that the sweat released by users of an FIR sauna was different from people's sweat using a conventional sauna or doing routine exercise.
Luckily, Kaiyan Medical produces FDA-cleared light therapy products with infrared light for your at-home treatment or even for your patientsWe'veve worked hard to provide solutions for both patients and healthcare practitioners, catering to various needs. Whetheyou'rere looking to private label your own light therapy devices or for home use, contact our team, as we would love to help you through your delicate therapy journey.
What is so great about Red Light Therapy, and why should I use it to help your child sleep?
Red light is the safest, 100% natural way to get your body to produce melatonin — the hormone needed for us to fall asleep and stay asleep. Do you know how adults sometimes take melatonin supplements to combat sleeplessness? Well — red light is more effective in helping your body naturally produce melatonin. Turning on the red light on Kaiyan Medical devices when it is time for your child to sleep will help them produce the melatonin they need for a quality night’s sleep while still allowing them to feel the comfort of a night light.
Our circadian rhythm is what controls our bodies and the way we naturally sleep and wake up. This rhythm guides the way we naturally feel tired, and it can sometimes be affected by seasonal time changes and jet lag. Our circadian rhythm exists from birth but doesn’t fully develop until we are 12 months old
Children may start to feel afraid of the dark as early as 18 months, which is why so many parents have incorporated nightlights into their children’s bedrooms. The problem is that some night lights actually keep your child awake and interfere with natural melatonin production. Using a red light night light not only helps your child stay asleep but also eliminates the chance for your child to wake up and become fearful of the dark. If you find your child waking up, especially from night terrors or with a fear of the dark, red light therapy may be beneficial to your child. Studies have shown that Red Light Therapy can assist our bodies in establishing a strong circadian rhythm, especially when it is out of sync — because it helps us produce melatonin.
We all know that blue light is bad for us. Some people even turn to blue-light-blocking glasses to keep the effects of blue light to a minimum. No matter what brightness, blue, white, or green light can detriment our sleep cycle because stimulants signal the body to be awake. Countless studies have shown that these color lights boost attention and reaction times, interrupting melatonin production by tricking the brain into believing it is still daylight. Our children are exposed to plenty of blue light throughout the day and evening, so having something to combat this blue light exposure is key to helping them sleep. Red light is at a higher wavelength, and since it helps our bodies produce melatonin, it can reverse the negative effects of blue light.
The Red Light Therapy devices were built to mimic the red light frequency of the sunset. The reason for this is that the sunset signals our bodies that it’s time to sleep as it eliminates the light from the world around us, and our bodies begin to produce melatonin. Not all red light therapy is created equally, and different shades can have different effects. We have engineered our Red Light hue to be the exact color needed to maximize melatonin production to ensure a good night’s sleep.
Thyroid issues are a commonplace problem that affects all ages and genders. It significantly contributes to changes in mental outlook, energy levels, skin, and weight. Hypothyroidism has drawn much attention due to many cases that are left undiagnosed, untreated, or inadequately treated. As a result, it led to more serious problems such as infertility, heart disease, neurological problems, and high cholesterol and blood pressure levels. Not to mention, treatment studies for hypothyroidism have experienced a significant backlog throughout the years.
In this article, we take a look at the basic precepts of hypothyroidism and how Red light therapy plays a role in treating the thyroid problem.
Hypothyroidism is a chronic abnormality of the thyroid gland, demonstrating an inadequacy of thyroid hormones such as triiodothyronine and thyroxine (T4). Normal levels of thyroid hormones stimulate a healthy amount of mitochondrial energy production. This means that in hypothyroid cases, the thyroid inhibits a state of low cellular energy.
As a result, people who suffer from this chronic problem often feel unusual fatigue, tiredness, weight changes, and skin problems. However, symptoms can vary from person to person and may even be subtle enough to be left undiagnosed and untreated. When left untreated, the disease causes more irreversible neurological, reproductive, and cardiovascular problems. It’s also found that Hypothyroidism is found to be five to eight times more prevalent in women than in men.
Hypothyroidism can be caused by a wide range of diet and lifestyle issues. Some cases can be caused by a lack of iodine intake, especially in more underdeveloped parts of the world. It can also be caused by other dietary issues such as low carb intake, excess polyunsaturated fat intake, and alcoholism. Other typical causes include stress, aging, sleep deprivation, and heredity.
When talking about light, we often think of it as the first thing we switch on in a dark room or the bright rays that set up the mood. We don’t usually think of it as having bioactive properties, penetrating beneath our skin, affecting the way our hormones, tissues, and cells function.
In reality, our cells actually capture photons of light, just like how plants do. Light therapy, also called photobiomodulation, essentially means light (photo) changing (modulation) your biology (bio).
Red and near-infrared light therapy, backed by over 5,000 studies, has grown its significance in medicinal treatments throughout the years.
Red light therapy is significantly targeted for hypothyroidism because unlike other kinds of light; they have a greater penetrability beneath our skin.
In fact, a 2010 study found that 38% of patients with Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism who were given red light therapy treatments have reduced their medication dose, while 17% have been able to stop the medication completely.
Here’s how it works:
Because hypothyroidism is reflective of low cellular energy in the thyroid, red and near-infrared light helps the cells work better by supplying more energy to your body.
They have a photoreceptor called cytochrome c oxidase that works by catching photos of light. Like how our food is being processed by our body for the mitochondria to stimulate energy, the photos of light also stimulate energy production in the mitochondria. The mitochondria are responsible for the energy production of our body’s cells.
Red light is also shown to prevent stress by averting nitrous oxide poisoning. This means that aside from helping the mitochondria supply more energy, red light helps the thyroid hormone by alleviating stress-related molecules' effects.
Hypothyroidism is a vicious cycle of having low energy availability and decreased thyroid hormone production. By stimulating energy production in the mitochondria and preventing nitrous oxide poisoning prevention, red light can potentially break the cycle responsible for hypothyroidism.
In Kaiyan Medical, we produce a medical-grade red light therapy device that is effective and non-invasive, ideal for supplementing hypothyroidism treatments. Our device has a dual optical energy technology that combines red light and infrared light therapy as an excellent spectrum for deeper penetration and absorption. You can now rise above hypothyroidism and maximize your body’s healing properties with our Red Light therapy device.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6247385/
https://drruscio.com/red-light-therapy-part-ii/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6822815/
According to a pioneering study by researchers from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), light therapy is safe and has measurable effects on the brain.
Senior investigators Rajiv Gupta, MD, Ph.D., director of the Ultra-High Resolution Volume CT Lab at MGH and Benjamin Vakoc, Ph.D., at the Wellman Center led the study, which was supported by a grant from the Department of Defense (DOD) and published in JAMA Network Open September 14th.
This study is one of the first, if not the first, prospective, randomized, interventional clinical trials of near-infrared, low-level light therapy (LLLT) in patients who recently suffered a moderate brain injury. If further trials support these findings, light therapy could become the first widely-accepted treatment for this type of injury.
TBI is the leading cause of traumatic injury worldwide, and an estimated 69 million people experience such an injury every year. However, there are no treatments for this condition yet, largely because the underlying biological mechanisms are not well understood. It is so challenging to do studies with actual patients in the acute stage of trauma.
"The Gulf War put TBI in the headlines because body armor had been greatly improved by then. But there were still brain injuries caused by the shock waves from high powered explosives.”
Rajiv Gupta, MD, PhD, Director, Ultra-High Resolution Volume CT Lab
For various reasons, the number of TBIs has increased around the globe since then, but effective treatments are still sorely needed. For this study, a special helmet had to be designed specifically to deliver the therapy, an undertaking that required a mix of medical, engineering, and physics expertise.
This multidisciplinary team included Gupta, a neuroradiologist, Vakoc, an applied physicist, and others specializing in developing and translating optical instrumentation to the clinic and biologic laboratories. Both Gupta and Vakoc are also associate professors at Harvard Medical School.
“For this study, we designed a practical, near-infrared treatment based on Wellman Center research and working directly with DOD on the vexing problem of TBI, a condition faced by so many,” says Rox Anderson, MD, the center’s director.
Another challenge was optimizing the wavelength of the near-infrared LLLT.
“Nobody knows how much light you need to get the optimal effect,”
explains Lynn Drake, MD, one of the study co-authors and director of business development at the Wellman Center.
“We tried to optimize the wavelength, dosing, timing of delivery, and length of exposure.”
This was done through a series of pre-clinical experiments led by Anderson. These included multiple preclinical studies led by Michael Hamblin, Ph.D. Anderson and Hamblin are both co-authors of this paper.
Near-infrared LLLT has already been considered for multiple uses, but to date, few if any studies of this technology have been tested and none in patients with TBI.
It has been studied in stroke patients, and Wellman's basic laboratory research suggests it is neuroprotective through a mechanism mediated by specialized intracellular organs called mitochondria. It took several years of research at Wellman to understand the basic mechanism before the clinical trial.
The randomized clinical trial included 68 patients with moderate traumatic brain injury who were divided into two groups. One group received LLLT via the special helmet, which delivered the light. Patients in the control group wore the helmet for the same amount of time but did not receive the treatment.
Vakoc’s team at Wellman designed the helmet. During the study, the subjects’ brains were tested for neuron activity using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) metrics, and the subjects also underwent neurocognitive function assessment.
MRI was performed in the acute (within 72 hours of the injury), early subacute (2–3 weeks), and late subacute (approximately three months) stages of recovery. During each visit and at six months, clinical assessments were performed using the Rivermead Post-Concussion Questionnaire, with each item assessed on a five-point scale.
Twenty-eight patients completed at least one LLLT session, and none reported any adverse reactions. Also, the researchers found that they could measure the effects of transcranial LLLT on the brain.
The MRI studies showed statistically significant differences in myelin's integrity surrounding the neurons of treated patients versus the control group. Both these findings support follow-up trials, especially since there are no other treatments for these patients.
The study also showed that light does impact the cells. While it is well established that cells have light receptors, “going into this trial, we had several unanswered questions such as whether the light would go through the scalp and skull, whether the dose was sufficient, and whether it would be enough to engage the neural substrates responsible for repair after TBI,” says Gupta.
It’s important to note, and he adds that for this initial study, the researchers focused on patients with moderate traumatic brain injury. That helped ensure their study could have statistically significant findings because patients in this category are more likely to demonstrate a measurable effect.
“It would be much more difficult to see such changes in patients with mild injuries, and it is quite likely that in patients with severe brain injuries, the effect of light therapy would be confounded by other comorbidities of severe trauma,”
says Gupta.
He adds that researchers are still very early in the development of this therapy. It is unknown if it could be applied to other types of brain injury, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has received a lot of public attention over the last few years.
CTE is a progressive degenerative disease associated with a history of repetitive brain trauma such as that experienced by certain athletes, most notably football players.
This study opens up many possibilities for the broader use of photomedicine. “Transcranial LED therapy is a promising area of research, with potential to help various brain disorders where therapies are limited,” says Margaret Naeser, Ph.D., a prominent researcher in photomedicine and research professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. She was not affiliated with this particular study.
Source:
Massachusetts General Hospital
Journal reference:
Longo, M, G. F., et al. (2020) Effect of Transcranial Low-Level Light Therapy vs. Sham Therapy Among Patients With Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury. doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.17337.
