Hypers have to hype to sell things (in this case, red LEDs), but the best photobiomodulation is available for free: go outside, close your eyes, and point your face at the sun. Your eyelids will screen out the harmful UV and blue light. Your eyes are transparent enough for the red light to reach your brain.<p>Red light boosts our metabolism by refreshing the enzyme that has the red metal (copper). Cytochrome c oxidase [0] is "the last enzyme in the respiratory electron transport chain".<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase</a><p>A submission from 1.5 years ago is about how morning exposure to deep red light improves eyesight: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609625">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609625</a><p>People who live in places where the sun goes away for the winter usually benefit from supplemental light provided by an electric sun. Incandescent heat lamp bulbs are an affordable source of red and infrared light. These bulbs have more of the red spectrum and less of the blue.<p>From the submission:<p>> PBM is thought to work through the mitochondria. Our cells—and those of animals, plants and fungi—contain tiny structures called mitochondria that generate the energy we need. Mitochondria have a chain of proteins that juggle electrons, and one of them, cytochrome c oxidase, contains heme and copper that absorb light, especially in the red and infrared part of the light spectrum. So, we shine one such light on living tissue, it gets absorbed by mitochondria’s cytochrome c oxidase, and what we get is a veritable biological domino effect that seemingly benefits every part of the organism.
It's always healthy to be skeptical, but we know that on the whole, sunlight is healthy for humans. People who get more sun exposure live longer (even though they have a higher incidence of melanoma). We know that it's more than just the Vitamin D that is produce when our skin is exposed to sun. There are numerous studies showing the benefits of sunshine, so the next question is "what is the mechanism for sunshine to improve human health?". One theory is that it stimulates the production of intra-cellular melatonin. A seminal paper on this topic is "Melatonin and the Optics of the Human Body".... <a href="http://sininenankka.dy.fi/~sami/kielletyt_uutiset/melatonin_and_the_optics_of_human_body.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://sininenankka.dy.fi/~sami/kielletyt_uutiset/melatonin_...</a>
If you can believe hot tubs and saunas are beneficial, or at the very least enjoyable, you should be able to justify red light “therapy.”<p>I have five high wattage panels I got from eBay. At around 1500w total, it’s basically an infrared sauna. I know there are theoretical health benefits, but if I’m being honest, at this point I just really like the way it feels to do my morning stretches in front of them.
Beyond the hype there are serious studies about LLLT [1][2][3][4]. The article doesn't ever mentioned the book which is popular within practitioners (source: doctor at home).<p>I am not argumenting here in favor of LLLT but saying that an article like this should do more research to create a debate within health professionals.<p>[1] <a href="https://weberlasersystems.com/products/book" rel="nofollow">https://weberlasersystems.com/products/book</a><p>[2] <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=low+laser+therapy&btnG=" rel="nofollow">https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=low+...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-level_laser_therapy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-level_laser_therapy</a><p>[4] <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=transcranial+low+level+laser+therapy&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5" rel="nofollow">https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=transcranial+low+level+...</a>
> The vast majority of research into photobiomodulation was done on animals, not humans, and most positive results in lab animals do not lead to approved interventions in humans<p>This statement is true for all medical research. It's not a critique unique to PBM.<p>> Proponents of photobiomodulation will often cite that we understand how it affects the body at a molecular level, but these kinds of mechanisms are easy to hypothesize and they do not imply that the technology is actually curing anything<p>Also true for all medical research.<p>There is no actual examination / critique of any evidence, just a meta critique about the unreliability of young science with questionable hype to evidence ratio. Which is well deserved, but very redundant.<p>This kind of article is very easy to write, and can be copy pasted for any emerging area of research: be skeptical, wait for oodles of double blind RCTs, don't give money to hype artists.
> Skepticism means steering clear of gullibility. That being said, it doesn’t mean denying good science, nor should it invite cynicism.<p>The right tool for dealing with marketing claims, as an individual, should in fact be cynicism, and not skepticism.<p>Or perhaps:<p>If you don't need it: cynicism cranked to 11, with vibrato.<p>If you need something like it: skepticism.