SHOCKING Mask Science & Product Innovation With Light Therapy

Hey everybody, welcome to the red light therapy news for September 2026. We've got new product updates, some new science, some very interesting Q&A. In terms of product updates, it's a new wand and a new device for a sauna. The science is about four different red light therapy masks that scientists investigated and had some very interesting conclusions about. And a very skeptical question from our Facebook group from somebody who's even asking, does red light therapy even work? First of all, new devices. There're not too many new devices this month, actually. It will come soon, in my opinion, because at the end of the year many companies will introduce new devices because of the upcoming holidays. First up, the Houga wand has been re-introduced and this is a device for mostly for the face. The Houga wand has the special feature that it has a 415 nanometer blue light or violet, which is very helpful for acne. Alex and I have done two recent videos about this topic, masks with blue light, for instance, and I also with the best devices for acne. The Houga wand can be helpful in those cases. The downside, slightly, is that it's very low powered. It only treats a very small area. So, generally, we still recommend the handheld panels or masks for the face, for instance. But, on the other hand, in terms of wands, the Houga is probably the best out there because it's like three or fourfold cheaper than some of the competition. Then, Platinum LED are apparently discontinuing their BioLights. This light was on the market already when we came into the space in 2018-19. It has It's updated since, but still, yeah, it's a little bit of an emotional topic because back in the day this was one of the devices that was out there and sold when there was very when the market was very undeveloped. But, the implications here is that Platinum LED may be coming out with a new budget panel very soon. Which is interesting because they have always ranked near the top of our comparison series in all of these years, actually. Then there's Bestqool with a new panel for saunas. It's a little bit of a controversial topic because some experts in the space believe that red light therapy doesn't work with heating. I'm not one of the these experts. I still believe that if you expose your skin to red light therapy inside a sauna, you will still get benefits. And what's cool about the Bestqool panel is that it's really built from bottoms up. It's not a copycat like many of the other products out there. It really seems to be designed from scratch, basically. So, that's good. Then there is some news from different red light therapy companies. Mito Red have a page that shows independent testing data. Which is good, in my opinion. It shows the professionalization of the space. Alex has actually recently interviewed one of the founders of a light therapy testing company who has a whole lab for that. So, check that out below if you're interested in that. But, it shows you the professionalization in the space in the sense that companies are now starting to report the third-party testing data on their devices. Some other companies have done this as well, but it's a good development because in this space, unfortunately, you cannot always blindly trust the claims that are made from companies. And also, Mito Red have a medical advisory board now. Interesting, I will say, because back in the day mostly the brain device companies such as Vielight, Neuronic, etc. They have a medical board. It's good to see this on Mito Red as well. Then, there's Roots. Apparently, they have partnered with some wellness clubs. I actually interviewed somebody very recently on this topic because that seems to be a match there. Devices such as panels and other things have huge value and Roots panels have been one of the best testers in the space. So, I pretty well can imagine that wellness clubs might want to add red light therapy to the mix. Next to, for instance, saunas or PEMF devices, simply because it works. Then, Vielight have updated their page with all of the published studies. I will say right now in the brain red light therapy space, Vielight is the number one with both the quantity and the quality of the published studies. And they have many different topics there, everything from TBI to Parkinson's and also mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Which is an interesting topic because last month, I covered a new study that came out which had really positive results with the Vielight gamma device. And mild mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's, and I also interviewed Dr. Neda Rashidi about this topic in the past. She also uses the Vielight devices in her study. And lastly, there's one more update from Vielight where they showed the function and the research of the MIP device, which is the device that goes into your nose and then irradiates your entire brain from the bottom. So, and the nose works because all of the blood flow circulates near that area here. So, that's a really very interesting way of treating the brain and very well backed by a lot of science. Now, there's a little bit more news from different companies for lasers or photomedicine, who also offer the red light therapy bed that is very popular, but also quite expensive. They have two new videos. One of the videos is about treating the lumbar spine in dogs, and another one is about treating horses. And if you would like more content on the topic of red light therapy for pets, then just leave a comment below, and I'll certainly consider making some content about that. And lastly, there's Neuronic, who have two new studies on anxiety and depression. Apparently, different things were tested, but among which is attention and memory, and both studies seem to have pretty positive outcomes. So, congratulations on that, Neuronic. And check them out below if you're curious about those three studies. Moving on to the monthly study here, the one I mentioned in the introduction with four different face masks. The researchers earlier this year they when they published this, they had four different face masks in Spain, which they got off the market. Apparently, they tested it against some of the sunlight in Madrid, the capital city of Spain, and then in the shade. So, not in the full sun, because the irradiance in the shade can be tenfold as low as it is in the full-blown light, for instance. But the most important conclusion of the research is the irradiance figures, wavelengths, treatment area, treatment protocols, etc. didn't always align with what was advertised. So, these mask companies advertised one thing in terms of wavelengths and irradiance or treatment protocols, but reality after testing was very different. And this is unfortunately maybe not always intentional, but still that we often see in the space, and that is in a way the entire reason why our light therapy insiders company exist because we really want to verify on different companies all the claims that they make. Now, let's move to the research and what they say. This is what the statement says and quoted directly from the study. Documentation like data on emitted energy across wavelength ranges, its absorption by the skin, and potential health consequences of improper use. Measurements revealed pronounced variability in irradiance, meaning that the irradiance, the amount of light you're getting, can be very different than what is claimed with considerable differences in peak positions and spectral distributions in some of the LED colors. So, one LED color may be advertised as 590 nm amber light, but in reality you may be getting 510 or 520, which is really different, such as yellow or violet. In some cases, the total irradiances were higher than than that from sunlight, and this is important why it is we're talking about the shade here, so it's not really more intense than a full broad sun, but it is more intense than this than the sunlight in the shade. Despite similar recommended session durations, the differences in the irradiances resulted in markedly different physical doses. Now, what is good about this monthly study is that the researchers supply lots of data on these specific outcomes. Figure number one will show that here, and here you can see the amount of irradiance and at very different wavelengths compared to sunlight, and as you can see, four different masks with four different distributions, and in mask number one, two, and four, the amount of light exceeded that of sunlight in the shade in Madrid. Number three not, and we'll come back to that in a second because it's a a bit of a special case. I will say here that the masks are anonymized, so from the research paper you cannot tell which mask of which specific company we're talking about. And yeah, that makes it on the one hand more politically correct because it is pure research data, but on the other hand probably the researchers didn't really want to harm different masks, but more talk about the principle of that the wavelengths or the power output or treatment parameters don't always align with what a company is claiming. The price of the mask according to the researcher, and again the paper is linked below, is between 13 euros, which is around a little bit over $50, and 200 euros, which is 220 230 dollars right now in 2025. And these masks were also selected because they were very popular online. So, despite the anonymization, we still can likely say that this is a very good sample representing reality. Now again, let's go back to the wavelengths. Here the companies claim that there would be yellow light included. So, normally you expect 590 nanometer amber light to be included in the device, but actually what was happening in reality is that its light around 550 nanometers, which is green light. Company then combined that green light with red light to make it look like yellow. But that's not really the yeah, a good solution because you're not getting that wavelength with the specific benefits associated with it. Then also one issue was the dose could be all over the place. Here's what they mentioned in the paper about this. Despite similar recommended session duration, so all masks recommended I think like 15 or 20 minutes of treatment. And then the researchers continue, the differences in irradiances result in markedly different physical doses and also great differences across mask and LED colors. We're going to explore this more because let's consider what this means. Here later in the figure that I'll just pull up on the screen, you can see that there is a 200-fold difference in blue light output for instance across different masks between the weakest mask mask number three is that's and strongest mask. Even though the treatment times are roughly the same, right? So, if you're buying a mask as a consumer and thinking like, "Oh, I only need to treat like for a five 15 or 20 minutes." There can be across different mask a 200-fold in difference in dose across different wavelengths. So, here we see figure number three of the paper. I will say the Y axis across the different masks, so it's one to four again, is a little bit misleading because the numbers are different on each Y axis. But you can see that on the bottom left for instance, which is mask number three, there's 0.2 W over cm squared. And on mask two for instance on the top right, there is 50 W over cm squared. So, that is what explains that 200-fold difference in power output here across different masks even though you again you're using them maybe 15 or 20 minutes. So, that's why it's so difficult here. There's also an issue of hot spots and of course Alex has talked about this many times but with a 10-fold difference in light output when there's an LED on a mask and the area where there's no LEDs and yeah, here is also a big issue. And if you want more data on this, I highly recommend some of the videos that Alex has created on the topic, the mask comparison for instance with 25 mask, but also the mask shopping tool. And there are few huge winners that we recommend among maybe 50 tested masks to this day. Lastly, there were some other errors as well that were mentioned by the manufacturers or the company selling these masks such as a claim that a device would put out light at 160 to 195 nanometers, which is normally UVC, even though they claimed it light blue for instance. Lots of discrepancies, but lastly, what I will mention here from the paper is the summary, and I'm going to read it to you because it really captures the sentiment pretty well. The researchers here state that the technical information provided by manufacturers is sometimes limited and inconsistent. None of the devices include spectral irradiance data and wavelength specifications are heterogeneous or in one case incorrect. In mask number three, the wavelength range labeled as light blue in the user manual corresponds to the UVC rays, so that's completely incorrect information. Regarding the spectral distributions, it is noteworthy that there are differences in color defined by manufacturers as blue and violet, which could lead to different photobiological effects. The closer the light frequency is to the UV range, the the greater the potential for generating free radicals. So, if a company claims that there is like e- 160 nanometers in there or even 280 in the UV range, of course, the potential for damage becomes much greater. Now, what is the overarching lesson here from the study? We need third-party testing on many different devices, and this has been our goal as Light Therapy Insiders from the very beginning and of course also a YouTube channel because again if there's such a big discrepancy in wavelengths or even irradiance then even this study shows that you can get a 200-fold difference in total dose on using one mask rather than a radar for 15 or 20 minutes on the skin. Then we go to the monthly Q&A. We had a very interesting question in our group recently. The group has 30,000 members right now. So thanks everybody for joining and participating. The question is how do any of us really know that what red light therapy can help us with? How do we really know if it's helping? It seems like an area that is so rife for for getting scammed. So yeah, I still wanted to highlight this even though this person is maybe not too familiar with red light therapy yet, but of course billions of people on this planet are not so. And I get this sentiment because this may have been me 15-20 years ago. I could have imagined that UV light had some effect on the body for instance, but not really red and near infrared light. So I was more much more unaware of that and I can really understand the sentiment. So let's see not only what I would answer to this question, but also people from our Facebook group. First of all, I would say that people who are not in this space are often not aware that there are over 10,000 studies right now on red light therapy. And there are many people who have good or very good or life-changing effects from red light therapy, but I do really understand the sentiment because a person just getting in the into the space may not be aware of all the benefits also that red light therapy has for the skin, right? Or joint health, or muscle health, or brain health. Which brings me to my answer. The first answer I had to this person is I just mentioned the 10,000 studies. If those studies were all reliant on frauds or deception, etc., that would be almost impossible to pull off because it really includes hundreds, if not thousands, of different researchers from many different countries. And also thousands, tens of thousands, of and even hundreds of thousands of participants in these studies from many different countries. So, in my opinion, it is almost impossible to pull that off in terms of defrauding so many people in the research. So, we're going to have to accept because there's so much research out there in so many different contexts in so many countries that the research is really legit. And of course, research is never going to be perfect, but still in this case with 10,000 studies, probably around 500 or 1,000 in human beings, you're going to have to assume that there's really something there. And if you're curious about that research, go check out our websites because we have topics on anything, almost, where I really break down the science on many different topics. Everything from like Parkinson's disease to muscle recovery to skin beauty. And all of the actual studies that are published on the topic and display them to you, including some summaries because sometimes it can get overwhelming with the amount of information there is. And if you need more help there as well, you can also check out the AI bot that helps you explore that research as well, which is in the bottom right on the light therapy inside it website. And that AI bot will help you explore any of the topics that I just mentioned and summarize the findings for you in a very easy language. But, there are also some other answers from members from our Facebook group. Uh people who were deeply affected by red light therapy, and I'm going to quote some of their statements to you. They started with eight out of 10 pain to barely noticeable and it is a pretty obvious difference to me, and the significant reduction of my abdominal abscess infections. So, this person weight went from eight out of friend 10 pain, which is really high pain, almost unbearable pain to pain that was barely absent. Then, a second person says, "Arthritis pain in my fingers is less. It grew back my hair when it thinned due to menopause, and has recently healed skin infections. So, the red light therapies on my ankles and heels helped with circulation problems in my feet and legs. Has helped me keep my neck tight as I age, and helped with muscle pain." So, this is another anecdotal report, and you will find many and many and many of these reports in our Facebook group, but also on the in the comments in our YouTube channel, for instance. And a last mention of somebody who owns a wellness studio, "I own a red light therapy studio, and over the last 18 months treated thousands of people and tracked a few of our own studies, including changes in grip strength with a digital meter. Things like that are not subjective." So, this person in our Facebook group has tested many, many different people and saw objective changes in their grip strengths over time after starting the treatment. Now, I do want to end with a somewhat special answer, maybe the best answer among everybody, which is, "The only way to know for sure is to try out and see it for yourself." And to explain that a little bit, you don't need to spend thousands of US dollars. Often, you can start either with a very small device, or you can go to a wellness clinic for some red light therapy sessions. The good thing is that some of the wellness clinics are starting to use red light therapy panels now, which are much more affordable and not always red light therapy beds. The benefit there is that because the panels are affordable, the price for you per session will also be a lot lower. So, yeah, for many people now it is it is possible to start using red light therapy at a very good cost point, which will help you explore whether it's working for you or not. Then we come to the recently published content of ours. We have a video of Alex on Chroma on the many great innovative devices that they put out in the last few years, where Alex explores the benefits and features of many of the options. We have an interview of me that was just released by the time this September video is out with Tracy Donagan on female health and red light therapy, so check that out as well. We have an interview of Alex with MyLumin which is a beauty focused brand. We have a video of Alex with new new testing methodology in the red light therapy space and also for our company. And my video on the most seven most important beginner myth for red light therapy. Then there's also a lot upcoming in this space and from us specifically. Alex has planned quite a few new reviews of panels of Sunlighten, of the Kalima Elite, the Bestqool Pro 300 and the Heliocare Care Glow. Then there's a review on Rouge stands. There is an interview of Vladimir Heiskanen, which is the person who tracks all of the 10,000 studies that I talked talked about earlier and he is a great database and I interview him for more than an hour on that topic. And there are some huge updates coming from Alex in the next few months. From what I've learned, if I look at the at the schedule here, there will be coming many new comparisons, such as and if time allows, it will be handhelds, it will be mods, it will be torches and devices. And you'll see these upcoming in the next few months and ideally before Black Friday and holiday season. So, like and subscribe if you want to stay updated for that. And if you want to see more, some of the recent videos that we just published should be visible to my sides. And see you in the October news version.