I Have Been Using Red Light Therapy Incorrectly!

I have to make an apology. I've been wrong with my red light therapy recommendations. Not with my product recommendations. I still like my Rouge G4s, my Biomaxes, Chromas, current bodies, and not with wavelength recommendations either. Red in the 630 to 660 range and near infrared and 830 range is still what you want for optimal red light therapy benefits, but I've been wrong with my protocol recommendations. Yep, I kind of stuffed up. So, um, as a result of my new understanding, discovery, whatever you may want to call it, I've actually changed how I do red light therapy on a daily basis. So, I do need to explain everything first, but at the end of this video, I'll share my new and improved, scientifically backed daily red light therapy protocol with you all. So, hang around for that. Now, let's rewind it a bit. Last year, as I tried to find the best LED mask on the market, I realized first I needed to determine what the best dose of red light was for anti-aging benefits on the skin, in particular the facial skin. And what and what I found is that the perfect dose of red light for anti-aging and skin rejuvenation benefits is around a dose of 5 to 9 jewels over centime squared. Now, if you don't understand the technical terms or the numbers, just bear with me. Everything will make sense by the end of this video. Also, if you don't care about LED masks or your skin or appearance and you just want red light therapy to help with cognitive function or recovery in the gym, you still need to listen to this entire video. It is important and it will impact how you use your devices and even what devices you buy. So, yeah, hang around. This is an important video. I'm affiliated with some of the companies mentioned in this video and I will earn a commission if you buy through my links or discount codes. Products were provided to me free of charge and all opinions are my own. This is not medical advice. Okay, so to explain all of this, let's go back to the optimal dose of red light therapy for the face. I'm saying between 5 and 9 jewels over centime squared. This has come after a deep dive into the research looking at the science around mechanisms of action and also what experiments have proven to be effective for treating fine lines, wrinkles, skin texture, skin tone and all those things you want when it comes to appearance. Now the 5 to 9 jewels over centime squared, this is the total amount of light delivered to an area on the skin. And one way to deliver that particular dose is to have LEDs emitting 15 matt over a centimeter squared of energy and run that LED for 10 minutes. 10 minutes is a standard treatment time for a decent LED mask. Think your current body series 2 or your maid red light mlow mask here. If you use it for 20 minutes then the dose doubles. If you use it for 5 minutes the dose halves. Now, if we use a mask that is quite powerful, say it is three times more powerful and emits 45 m over centime squared. When we run that for 10 minutes, we're going to get a dose of 27 jewels, which is well beyond the 5 to9 jewels that the research has shown to be optimal for skin and anti-aging benefits. Now, look, we have lots of articles on this topic over at light theapyinssiders.com. So, check them out for a background. The science and the numbers on skin rejuvenation and beauty are not the topic of this particular video. Now, what if this mask was emitting 80 m over centimeters squared and we use that for 10 minutes? We'd end up with a dose of 48 jewels, which is nearly 10 times the ideal amount for skin and beauty benefits. And that 80 m figure I used before isn't just a random number I pulled. It's actually quite an important number. And I'll explain why soon. So, what is the issue with treating the face with 10 times more energy that's needed? Well, you push past the productive dose range of red light therapy very quickly. And not only will you see no improvements, you could actually see issues such as skin dryness, irritation, rashes, or even hyperpigmentation flare-ups. This is when you start seeing spots on the skin. Uh, by the way, yes, I have freckles, or as my uncle used to call them, fly boobs. I have had them since I was about 3 or four and my children who are also that age have freckles now as well. So, it's purely genetic. Okay. So, you might be thinking, well, Alex, I've watched a lot of your mask reviews. I've even checked out the data in your excellent mask shopping tool, but none of the masks are putting out 80 m over centime squared. So, what's the problem? The problem is a lot of red light therapy panels put out 80 m over centime squared. Think Rouge, Block Light, Huga, Maidlight, Cara, Platinum LED. If you look at my panel shopping tool, all of these panels are emitting around 80 or 90 m at 6 in. And most people run them for 10 minutes or even longer. Even if you were to run one of these panels for 5 minutes and stand double the distance, say 12 in away from it, you're still well over the ideal dosing range, at least for skin and beauty benefits. You see, for facial beauty benefits, the case against using an 80 m over centime squared panel at 6 in for 10 minutes is not that red or near infrared light is bad. Not at all. It's that this particular protocol is overdoing it. It's the wrong tool. It's not the right device and it's not the right protocol to treat the face. Panels aren't designed to treat fine lines and wrinkles and boost collagen and blood flow around the eyes, an area that has very thin skin by the way. Nor are they designed to treat only the top 1 or 2 millimeters of the skin. Panels are designed to treat muscles, joints, cartilage, ligaments, organs, bone marrow, deep tissue, and over a large surface area. We don't want to treat our face like a knee joint or a quad muscle. And this is a very important point and it starts explaining why my personal protocol is changing. So bear with me for a little bit longer because I will map this out and explain my new protocol. So when buying a red light therapy device, it is very easy to get caught up in the power output numbers. You'll see millows or watts and more is better, right? But that's not true. And not only is more not better, often the numbers you see on a product's website are very flawed. Listen to my interview with Mike from Light Lab International for more on this or just read any of our articles on dosing to see how flawed a lot of these numbers are. So when you think of red light therapy or photobi modulation as it's properly known, think of it as a signal to the cells of the body. You're just trying to trigger a mechanism. A little signal can be useful. Too much can be stressful, saturating the cells leading to oxidative stress, heat production, or simply no change whatsoever. The red light therapy literature repeatedly describes a bifphasic dose response. Low to moderate doses may stimulate repair pathways while higher doses may lose benefit or become inhibitory. Huang Shen, James Carol, Professor Hamlin, their dose response review states that lower levels often stimulate and repair tissues much better than higher levels. That does not prove that 48 jewels over centime squared is harmful to your face, but it strongly challenges the assumption that a powerful panel for 10 minutes must be better than a weaker panel. The key message is that dose precision matters more than device power. You need the right tool for the job. A jackhammer may be great for breaking up an old tiled pathway, but is overkill for making a hole in your wall to hang a picture. Now, as I alluded to earlier, a body panel makes sense for broad areas, back, thighs, joints, muscle groups. But the face is very different. The face has much thinner skin, a lot more pigmentation risk. It's got delicate tissue around the eyes. It's also got awkward geometry. Think your nose, cheekbones, lips, chin. There's a lot of curvature. So straight away a flat panel 6 in away is not going to deliver a uniform dose on the face. Some areas may actually get more light exposure than others. Now a mask is not automatically superior, but a well-designed mask is solving a different problem. It's controlled facial coverage and more importantly at a much lower radiance delivering a doial range that aligns with facial rejuvenation studies. Now what about keeping a highowered device but shortening the treatment time? so that you still fall in the optimal dose window. For example, a great mask may emit 15 ms over 7 m squared. Using it for 10 minutes, this leads to a 9 jewles dosing figure. Great. But then a highowered panel such as the new Biomax panels, putting out 100 m over centime squared for 90 seconds also leads to a 9 gh over centime square figure. These two protocols deliver the same dose, but they provide very different effects on the body. The same total energy can mean different cellular and thermal contextes. Researchers emphasize that energy density alone, the dose, can be misleading because a radiance and time are not always interchangeable. The panel does not just give out more power. It gives a different dose rate. How fast that energy is being delivered. It's like cooking a chicken in the oven. We could ramp up the heat tfold to shorten the cooking time, delivering the same amount of net energy delivered from the oven. But anyone that has cooked knows that the result of that chicken is going to be very different. For the face, that matters because higher radiance can increase the chance of heat buildup, flushing, eye discomfort, pigmentation aggravation, and of course overshooting the red light therapy bifphasic dosing window. Even if the skin does not feel hot, the biological signal may no longer be in the gentle modulation zone, the nudging signal that we're after. They're mostly fibroblast activity, collagen and elastin remoduline. Uh there's local inflammatory modulation, microirculation in the tissue, oxidative stress signaling, and more. Lee, it all found post red light therapy treatment lead to all of these things happening in the body. But fibroblast responses are sensitive to the dose. So the facial goal is not to drive photons deeper into the tissue. It is to create this controlled nudge, this little signal to trigger the skin biology and thus in turn create change. A high output panel can turn that little nudge into a shelf. And then of course these are the eyes. Panels expose the face from a distance with broad photon scatter. If the device includes near infrared, which it probably will, the concern is that near infrared light is less visible and can reach the eye tissue without the same blink aversion that happens when we're exposed to bright visible light. This does not mean that facial red light therapy is inherently dangerous. In fact, there is evidence showing how it is beneficial for eye health. We have a deep dive article over at light therapyinsiders.com that covers this topic in much more detail. By the way, when you're over there, jump on our newsletter because we put out much better content that's on this YouTube channel. So, yeah, definitely sign up. But, of course, this does all mean that device design and eye protection matter more when treating. Now, for many years, people have treated red light therapy like this. If 10 jewels is good, 50 jewels must be better. If 20 m over centime squared works, 80 m over centime squared must work faster. That thinking is borrowed from strength training, sauna culture, supplement dosing. Hey, I mean it's probably come from human nature itself, right? More is better. But red light therapy is not that simple. More is not always better. The better facial strategy is this. Simply use enough light to trigger the skin response and don't go beyond. That is why LED red light therapy masks begin to make sense. It's not just because it's less powerful. It is because it's more appropriately dosed for the job, for the tissue you're trying to treat, for the results you're trying to reap. So, what is the conclusion here? Is it that panels are bad? Of course not. And the opposite is true. Panels deliver red light therapy deep into the body. There's a reason why people love their panels, continue to use them, and share their life-changing stories from using them. The conclusion is that with red light therapy, you really need to ensure that you use the right tool for the job you're doing. And the best tool to treat deep tissue is very different to the tool you need to treat fine lines and wrinkles on the face. The panel is great for the former. A dedicated mask is best for the latter. Really to boil all of this down, the issue is using highowered panels on your face could mean you're wasting your time and not getting any results or worse lead to side effects such as skin irritation, dryness, or even hyperpigmentation issues. I hope that all makes sense. I know that was a bit of a journey and we took a bit of a dive into the math and some numbers and technical terms and yeah, I spent a bit of time covering masks, but yeah, hopefully it all makes sense. Now, knowing all of this, what is my new protocol? Well, it's simple. I like to optimize my time. I'm a father. I've got two kids. I run a company. I've got a wife. I pursue my own hobbies and all those sort of things. I don't have time to stack multiple treatments back to back. It's just not going to happen. But I also want to reap the benefits of red light therapy on my face and my full body, my joints, all of those. So what I do now is simple. I still use my full body panel for 5 to 10 minutes front and back 3 to four times a week. But when I'm using the panel, I wear a mask. The mask gives me the right dose on my skin, my facial skin with the right wavelengths, but it also blocks the higher energy red light therapy being emitted from the panel. So it allows me to do two things at the same time. Get the optimal dose for my face through the mask while also getting the optimal dose on my body through the panel and not overdoing it because the mask acts as a bit of a shield. So I do 5 10 minutes on the front wearing this mask of course. Then I take the mask off. I turn around and I used the panel to treat the back of my body. It's simple really. I mean, it actually makes perfect sense and uh it means I don't have to do a panel session during the day and then a mask session at night. I can do it all at once in the morning. Of course, if you don't care about facial appearance, but you don't want to do damage to your face, you could simply lower the panel down so it sits below the neck level and just treat the body. Don't worry about the face. Later on, you may decide you want to treat the face. You get a mask or you may get a cognitive device and you can treat the head. Or if you don't want to treat deep tissue, joints, muscles, organs, or that sort of thing, and you just primarily want to treat the skin for whatever reason, then buy a panel that allows you to change the intensity, or maybe one that has one of these cool built-in smart modes. Put it into skin mode, for instance. Then what you can do is lower the intensity of that panel right down to say 20%. And then treat the full body, face and all, and not worry about overdoing it in your face. Or another approach is you stand a good 18 inches away from the panel and you get the same effect. There's lots of ways to overcome this issue and the best place to go if you're confused is to the light therapy insidider chat tool. Here you can explain your goals, your concerns, what products you have or what budget you have and it will recommend the best protocol and products for you. And this is based on all the literature in red light therapy combining it with all my product reviews and also all the best deals available for you guys. Now, if all of this makes sense, just hit the like button below. Otherwise, if you still have questions or concerns, leave them below as well. But I know there's a couple questions that will pop up, so I want to address them now. Firstly, what about my videos recommending panels over masks for facial benefits? There's a few things to mention here. Firstly, when I did the most popular video on this topic, panels weren't very powerful. Today's panels are two or three times more powerful than the ones I reviewed in 2018 for instance. So even though in hindsight these panels wouldn't be perfect for a dosing point of view, it's not as big of a problem as it is today. The other thing is panels today still offer exceptional value. You get a large treatment area at a really good price point. And most of the panels today have the intensity controller. So you can still set 6 in from the panel and just drop the intensity down. and is going to provide a great treatment on the face. Now, what if you've used panels for years and your skin's looking great? Look, of course, I'm not going to argue with that. It may just mean the protocol you've been doing is not optimal. I mean, maybe you're using a panel that isn't as powerful as as claimed. Maybe your face tolerance is not the same as optimization. And yeah, maybe you were overtreating your face, but it didn't do any damage. Meanwhile, the body was enjoying all of that extra light. So, look, I hope all of that makes sense, and I'll keep doing my best to help sort through the science, sort through the products, and deliver what I can to help you guys find and use your red light therapy devices. But what do you reckon after all of this? Are you going to change the way you use your red light therapy devices? I may get to find out.