The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy with Ari Whitten

One of the really cool studies that was done was a study in rodents where they essentially induced a heart attack and damage to the heart cells. And then they shined light on the tibias, the shin bones of these rodents. And what they found is that that released stem cells into circulation and that those stem cells went to work repairing the injured heart cells within a matter of minutes. Well, welcome back to the podcast. Great episode today on the ultimate guide to red light therapy with my friend Ari Witten. He's been on the podcast multiple times. We've talked about mitochondrial health. We've talked about hormesis. We've talked about photobiomodulation. We talked about nutrition science. Everything you can imagine. He's been on several previous episodes, so you can just look him up on this podcast. But today we're talking about red and infrared light, photobiomodulation. We're doing a deep dive on it, how it impacts mitochondrial health, how it impacts inflammation, oxidative stress, brain health, fat loss, everything you can imagine. And really, we're also going to go into how to use it properly and what to look for when it comes to specifications for a great red light device. So we're going to answer all your major questions. And guys, check out the great book, The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy that Ari just came out with. I'm actually reading through it for the second time this month. and it's phenomenal. It's the ultimate guide to red light and photobiomodulation. And so you guys will understand so much. So again, check out the ultimate guide to red light therapy. Check out Ari's website, humanoptimization.com as well. And check out previous podcasts I've done with Ari on mitochondrial health, photobiomodulation, how to eat for energy, everything else in our show notes. So be sure to check those out. Again, we're doing a deep dive on photobiomodulation, red and infrared light on this episode. And of course, if you need anything, any natural health resources, check us out, drjockers.com. We've got a phenomenal store with amazing supplement products. We've got the best articles and infographics on every major health topic. We also do long-distance health coaching where we personalize and customize health plans for you based on your unique health history, based on your lab findings. We work with people all over the world. If you're interested in health coaching, send us an email at info at drjockers.com. Type in the subject line health coaching, and we will get back to you and get you all the details with our health coaching program. So drjockers.com is one-stop shop for everything you need when it comes to natural health. And of course, leave us a five-star review on this podcast and share it with somebody that you know and that you care about, especially anybody that's interested in learning more about red and infrared light, photobiomodulation, mitochondrial health, and really how to optimize their health and energy levels. This is a great episode to share with them. And without further ado, we're going to go into the episode. But first, we've got one ad from a sponsor, and then we're going to get right into this episode. Thanks so much for being a part of our podcast community. God bless you all, and let's go into it. If you're into good nutrition, you've probably purchased a protein bar or energy bar before. And there are some really big problems with these bars. Number one, the bars that taste good are typically not good for you. In fact, many protein bars have as much sugar as a candy bar. 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Here I am with Ari Whitney. He's been on the podcast multiple times, and he's got his new book, The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy, which I was just telling him I'm on my second run through reading. And it's that number one reason why I'm reading it twice is it's that good. It's worth it. Number two is because it is very technical. There are parts of it that are very technical. And to really absorb this information, if you really want to understand photobiomodulation, you're going to enjoy this interview, of course. But if you really want to get into the specifics of it, this book is a great read, and you'll want to read it multiple times. And so, Ari, welcome to the podcast. Great work. And let's talk about it. Let's talk about red light therapy. Yeah, let's do it. So yeah, thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it. I like seeing my book there behind you on your bookshelf. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm actually reading it in the mornings when I'm in my sauna. I do sauna five days a week in the mornings for about 20 to 30 minutes. And so I'm getting my photobiomodulation, my heat stress therapy, right? All my hormetic therapies while I'm reading and enjoying this book. So it's great. And let's talk about it. I mean, you wrote a book called The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy the first time about 10 years ago. So what is red light therapy? Why did you feel like you needed to rewrite this book? Yeah. Well, there's a lot there. Let me let me answer the question of why I rewrote the book first and then we'll talk red light therapy science. The main reason was, number one, it came out 2018. So all the science is pretty outdated at this point. And all the device recommendations are also pretty outdated. Also, you know, you and me both share the habit of being of constantly learning and geeking out on on the science of health. And so a lot changes in seven years. You learn a lot more. And, you know, I'm sitting there looking at my old book that I wrote so many years ago going, man, I could write this so much better now. I could write this part so much better now. So that's one element of it. But the other element was a lot has changed since that time. When I wrote that book initially, red light therapy wasn't really a thing. It was still nobody had really heard of it. It wasn't mainstream at all. It was kind of this fringe thing that only a very small percentage of people had ever heard of. It was kind of a weird notion that red photons of light have biological effects in humans. You know, most it was kind of outside of most people's paradigm. And I had been studying it for several years prior to that. I was fascinated with just the the the concept that photons of light were interacting with our biology because that was that's really outside of the typical ways of thinking about human biology and human health. we're used to thinking of light as having an impact on plant cells. We're not used to thinking of it as having an impact on human cells. And so I was studying the science of what was then called low-level light therapy, or low-level laser therapy is now the term that's used more broadly now is photobiomodulation. Light is photo, and bio is biology, and modulation is what it sounds like. So it's the use of light to modify biology. and uh i was studying this and i was thinking man this is this is really cool amazing stuff people should know about this stuff and so i kind of just in my spare time threw together this book uh very quickly just in a few months and i threw it up on amazon i self-published it and i guess my timing was good because it became the most popular book in the world on the subject Nobody had written a book for the general public on that subject. The only books that existed were books like this, which are clinical textbooks. This is written by a guy named Dr. Michael Hamblin, who is now my co-author on the new book I just published. He's the most prolific photobiomodulation scientist in the world and former Harvard professor, now retired. so i published this book it became the most popular book on the world on the subject red light therapy exploded and became mainstream and my book has been this little self-published book that i threw together in a few months has been the most popular book in the world on the subject for seven years so because of that penguin random house reached out to me and said, how would you like to do version 2.0 of this book? I said, as a matter of fact, I've already been working on it for a year because I've been intending to do that. I would love to do it with you instead of another self-published version. And then fortuitously, Dr. Michael Hamblin became my co-author on this new book in the process of me doing consultations with him and several other scientists in the field to basically to make sure that I'm getting the science right. I'm doing consultations with lots of different experts so that I don't have any blind spots, so that I'm not misrepresenting things, and I'm making sure the information in my book is as accurate as it can be. At some point in the process of working with him, he said, hey, how'd you like me to be your co-author on this book? So here I am seven years later, eight years later, whatever it is, with the most popular book in the world on the subject and the most prolific scientist in the world as my co-author and one of the top publishers in the world as my book publisher. Yeah, what a story. And, you know, I used to always say back when I was early in my chiropractic practice, I used to talk to people about, because I had full spectrum lighting in my office, and I used to talk to people about how mal-illumination is to the body, what malnutrition is to the body, meaning bad light exposure or the wrong timing of your light exposure, because that's a form of information into the cells, is just as bad as malnutrition. And most of my listeners are going to be real familiar with malnutrition, eating bad foods, foods that are too high in toxins, not enough nutrients or having nutrient deficiencies, how that impacts our health. But very few people really understand the impact of light. So let's talk about how light photobiomodulation impacts us at the cellular level. Yes, absolutely. So, So, you know, I think a useful frame to understand this, to begin to understand this interaction between light and human biology is we start with things that are a bit more familiar to us. So everybody's familiar with the idea of vitamin D. And we all have some sort of vague awareness. Maybe we don't understand the mechanisms, but we have some vague awareness that the sun, that light from the sun, particularly UV light, does something with our body to lead to this compound called vitamin D. It's actually not a vitamin. It's a hormone. And that vitamin D is important. It's important in immune health. And maybe people know that it's important to lots of other things, musculoskeletal health and all kinds of things. It regulates over 2,000 genes in our body. So we have this story, okay, light from the sun is doing something at the level of our skin. We get vitamin D synthesis. Vitamin D is important. Probably also have some familiarity with tanning, right? What's going on there? Well, that's another part of the band of ultraviolet light, of UV light, interacting with cells in our skin called melanocytes, which lead to the production of a compound called melanin, which gives us the tan. Melanin is its own unique story. And there's actually likely a pretty significant health side of that story of melanin and melanocytes and what's going on there. Most people just think of it as a tan, as an aesthetic thing. But actually, this is basically our body's internal sunscreen. And there's very profound things going on there. But we'll leave that aside for now, just as a reference point to start to understand, OK, photons of light causing some kind of interaction with human biology. The other layer of the story that we're all much more familiar with in recent years is circadian rhythm. So the blue wavelengths of light from the sun go through our eyes and hit receptors that then feed back through nerves, feed electrical signals into a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And this is where our 24-hour biological clock resides. And that biological clock, we now know, basically interfaces either directly or indirectly with essentially everything that's going on in human biology. it impacts on many different hormones that are directly tied to it things like testosterone and thyroid hormone and cortisol and melatonin and and and others it impacts on neurotransmitters it impacts the whole sleep and wake cycle this is the reason that every night through no volition of your own you enter an entirely different state of consciousness it's because that biological clock in your brain which is primarily responsive to these light inputs is regulating this 24-hour rhythm and we now know more recently a more recent scientific discovery that we have circadian clock genes or circadian clock responsive mechanisms essentially in every tissue of the body and everything is being impacted by that biological clock which again is being run primarily by light. So within that, there is this other category of, or this other part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which are the red and near-infrared wavelengths. And these wavelengths, which, and I would encourage people to maybe do a Google image search of the electromagnetic spectrum so they can bring this up for context. The spectrum runs from things like gamma rays and x-rays on one end, very small wavelengths, to microwaves and radio waves on the other end of the spectrum. Now, within that electromagnetic spectrum, there's a part of it that's the visible light spectrum. So if you take a prism out into the sun, or if it's raining and misty in the sky, you will see a rainbow. You will see the spectrum of light, of visible light from the sun. And these are the colors of the rainbow, ROYGBIV, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Now, so, you know, a lot of people ask me, what is red light? And I'm like, it's literally light that's red. You know, it's the part of the visible light spectrum that the human visual system evolved to see, which is the color red. And those wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum run from about 600 to 700 nanometers. Now, just outside of that visible light spectrum of red light is another band called near-infrared. And for our purposes here to simplify, near-infrared is essentially doing physiologically all the same things that red light does. They can be lumped together. That's why you'll hear me refer to this as red and near-infrared light. The difference is, there are a few differences, but the main sort of obvious one is that near-infrared light is not visible to the human visual system. So we can see red light, but near-infrared light is this invisible range of wavelengths just outside of what our visual system can see. Okay, so this spectrum of light, roughly, let's say 600 to 900 nanometers, You can parse this in different ways, but I'd say 600 to 900 nanometers, red and near-infrared light. Human biology is designed or evolved to be uniquely transparent to these wavelengths. Okay, and here's what I mean by that. Almost all these other wavelengths that we might look at, whether ultraviolet light, green light, blue light, yellow light, infrared light that's invisible to us almost all these bandwidths of light basically stop at the surface they stop right at the at the skin surface or just beneath the skin surface and the reason for that is because they're being absorbed by different chromophores these are compounds in our body that absorb certain wavelengths of light okay and there's a few key chromophores in our body that that absorb light one is water so literally water absorb certain wavelengths particularly infrared wavelengths the other one the other big one is melanin so I mentioned that melanin absorbs UV light melanin absorbs many other wavelengths of light as well and The other one is hemoglobin which is in our blood Okay so you have these three big chromophores and most types of light are absorbed very strongly by those three different compounds And so that the hemoglobin by the way is in our blood in our blood in our Capillaries and our blood vessels very much at the surface Okay, so between water and hemoglobin and melanin basically all of those wavelengths are getting absorbed very very strongly right at the level of the skin they don't really penetrate in our body beyond that that initial surface layer but there is this band of wavelengths which is red and near infrared light about 600 to 900 nanometers which is called the optical window and the reason it's called that is because the tissues are uniquely transparent to that band of wavelengths of light. And what that means is those wavelengths of light don't absorb well in water or hemoglobin or melanin. And because they don't absorb well in those things, that means they pass through them. And by passing through them, what that means, in other words, is that those wavelengths penetrate into our body beneath the surface of the skin. They penetrate deeply. You can observe this effect very easily in the next 10 seconds in your own home by going into a dark closet and taking a flashlight and sticking it on your hand. Very common childhood experiment. And what you will notice is that you will literally see, especially if the flashlight is powerful, you'll literally see some of that light going all the way through your hands, certainly your fingers. but even if it's a powerful flashlight, you'll see it go through your entire hand. And some of that light will come out the other side. And that light will be red colored, okay, or reddish colored. And that's because those are, that's the part of that light spectrum that travels through your tissue. The other part of the light spectrum gets filtered out and stops at the skin. so all of that would be a sort of a very trivial set of facts if it turned out that these wavelengths of light weren't doing anything meaningful in human biology okay they penetrate into the body who cares they're not light doesn't interact with human biology what's the big deal but it turns out and we now have uh like over i don't know 8 000 studies to show that these this band of wavelengths of light red and your infrared light do interact with human biology and do have all kinds of amazing health benefits in various contexts everything from combating skin anti-aging to helping heal wounds and injuries to combating hair loss to improving hormonal function to improving immune function to reducing inflammation to improving mitochondrial function bone healing muscle healing tendon healing uh there there's all kinds of you know diabetic neuropathy ulcers body composition athletic performance improving muscle gain reducing fat uh there's so many different benefits of this technology that that we now have evidence for um it's it's pretty incredible so what we have if you if you understand all these layers of the story that i've piece together is that our biology has been designed or has evolved in such a way that it has this transparency to this particular band of wavelengths. And those wavelengths have very unique and very special biological effects that benefit human health. Yeah, what a great explanation. I just want to take a moment to interrupt this podcast to tell you about one of my favorite podcast I listen to. It's called the Dr. Josh Axe show hosted by my good friend, Dr. Josh Axe. Every week he shares how to balance your hormones, restore your gut, boost your energy and slow aging without relying on harsh medications or quick fixes. He shares both ancient biblical practices and the latest breakthroughs in nutrition, herbal remedies and lifestyle medicine. And he sits down with world renowned experts to have real unfiltered conversations you won't hear anywhere else. So if you're ready to take control of your health, renew your energy and transform your mind, body and spirit, tune into the Dr. Josh Axe show every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. You know, talking about how these these forms of light get through those those natural barriers, the melatonin, the water, the hemoglobin. There are light. I know when I was reading your book, it was interesting to note how you talk about there's light sensitive cells or organelles within the cells. There's light-sensitive structures within our body that are very sensitive to any light, and they naturally just absorb that light and has a profound impact on them. Can you break that down a little bit? The mechanisms of how it works? Well, just how, for example, the amount of light needed, for example, to stimulate melanin to produce, you know, more coloring for your skin would be pretty intense amount of light, right? Versus the amount of light that a mitochondria in, let's say, a joint would need to have some sort of, you know, expression, some sort of, let's say, positive health expression is so much less. Yeah, I see the part that you're getting at. So you're talking about the sensitivity of different kinds of cells in the body to different intensities of light. Correct. Yeah, this gets detailed fast. So the gist of this is that certain types of cells in our body are more sensitive to light than others. And as a generalization, cells that are more rich in mitochondria are going to be highly sensitive to light. and cells that are much less rich in mitochondria, much less dense in mitochondria, are going to be much less responsive to light. This also overlays and is kind of another sort of aspect of this issue is the superficiality or the depth of those tissues. So tissues that are near the surface of our body, more superficial. I don't mean that in a judgmental sense. I mean, as an anatomical term, more superficial. I know, you know, Dave, but for listeners, sometimes people hear that word superficial and they think it's an aesthetic or judgment thing. But things that are more near the surface are essentially designed or evolved to expect much more light exposure. Things that are much deeper into the body have been designed in a way where they're expecting much less light exposure. okay now there's another layer to the story which is the type of tissue so we could talk about skin we can talk about fat and we can talk about muscle and and tendon and things like that and we can talk about bone so for example the depth of light penetration which is a whole other story we could talk about the depth of light penetration through this part of my body on my forehead what I have here is a layer of skin and then it goes straight to bone. Okay. Whereas on my belly, I've got a little layer of fat and then I get into muscle and tendon and that kind of stuff. And sometimes people have much, you know, anatomically are very different. Sometimes people have thick or very thin layers of fat, right? That greatly impacts this light absorption. But leaving all of that aside, and those are all things we could talk about, but leaving all of that aside, basically tissues that are highly dense in mitochondria, which are things like muscle cells, things like, let's say, the heart, things like the brain in particular, are going to be way, way more sensitive to minute amounts of light compared to tissues that are near the surface, like skin and fat cells, subcutaneous fat and things like that. So, yeah, that's the gist of There's a number of ways that this becomes interesting because sometimes you have experiments like one I mentioned in the book is an experiment where they found that when you take rats and you do essentially open heart surgery on them, you cut open their chest and then you shine a laser light directly on their heart. You can induce negative effects, meaning this is something called the biphasic dose response. You can create harm by doing that. Is it too strong a dose? Yes. So if you apply too strong a dose to a tissue that is highly sensitive to light, you are going to encounter that that tissue gets overwhelmed. It's not – the heart tissue is not used to being cut open and directly exposed to the air and directly having a powerful laser device shined on it. So anyway, there's a lot of different aspects to the story that you're getting at here. But that's the sort of overview is that we have these different tissues that are either much less sensitive or much more sensitive to light. And yeah, there are a number of practical considerations that play into that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I know before I read your book, I was trained to think that, okay, red light is particularly good for the skin, for collagen, for anti-aging. But its main benefits had to do with skin, didn't really penetrate past the dermis layer. Whereas the near infrared, that's what would penetrate deeper into the system, have a powerful anti-inflammatory effect on the whole body, stimulate nitric oxide for better dilation, stimulate mitochondrial melatonin production for healthier mitochondria. Now, in the book, you talk about how red, and you use the flashlight example, how red actually will penetrate deeper, but there's still kind of this idea, I guess, that's going around. And I guess it's somewhat controversial that red, its primary benefits are in the skin. Can you break that down more? Yeah, absolutely. So the controversy here is on penetration depth. And there's a there's a really fascinating controversy here that has to do largely with a convention of how penetration depth of electromagnetic wavelengths into different materials, the convention of how that's measured. I don't know how technical I want to get here. I don't want to spend too much time explaining the technicalities of it. But the gist of it is that if you were to Google right now, how deeply does red light penetrate in your body? You might find sources saying it penetrates only one millimeter or five millimeters into the body. Now, what's interesting, you could even find scientific sources saying that. Now, what's interesting about that is, again, you can go do that experiment that I described earlier. in the next 10 seconds, flashlight in a dark room, you'll see light traveling through your hand, which is an inch plus of tissue, right? How do we have this crazy mix of contradictory claims of people claiming it penetrates one or two millimeters deep in the body, and yet you can clearly observe in your hand or other parts of your body at traveling through much much thicker distances of tissue um and that's red light near infrared light penetrates even deeper into the body and near infrared light that you would need night vision goggles to see it in which case you'd be blasted with light but you could see if you wore night vision goggles you can see that red light or if you have the right equipment to measure it you can that near infrared light you'll see it penetrating very very deeply in the body now there are studies where they've actually measured in living humans and in cadavers, they've taken different intensities of devices of red lights and they've shined it through different parts of the body. They're shined through the fingers, the wrist, the upper arm, the leg, the elbow, and so on. And they measure how, with very sensitive equipment, they measure how deeply that light penetrates before it gets extinguished. they've shown even with red light that it can penetrate with a powerful enough device it can penetrate nearly a hundred millimeters into the body 10 centimeters i think there's like something like 2.5 centimeters per inch so you're looking at four to five inches into the body is where light is still detectable now again near infrared light penetrates even deeper than that And in fact, there was just a new study that came out maybe six months ago, seven months ago from Glenn Jeffrey, who is a red light researcher. And they published a study where they use very sensitive equipment and they looked at sunlight exposure. And what they showed is that there are small amounts of photons that are detectable from sunlight here on the back, you know, by your spine. when you're receiving red light on the front of your torso, your chest. In other words, they're detecting, and this is a pretty remarkable finding. It would probably need to be replicated because it's pretty astounding. They showed that some of these light photons are traveling through an entire human torso. okay so this really kind of upends a lot of the the thinking and the understanding of how deep red and near infrared light penetrate into into the body the first study i mentioned was with red light wavelengths the second one i just mentioned they were looking at near infrared wavelengths now it is the case that um near infrared light penetrates more deeply and red light doesn't penetrate as deeply. So it is a reasonable, another way of saying that is that more of the red light will absorb in the more superficial tissues at the level of the skin and just beneath the skin. More of the near infrared light will penetrate through the skin and be absorbed in deeper tissues. Okay, and this might be a difference. Let's say you're measuring at two inches of depth or three inches of depth into the human body how much light is present there the difference between even if you have red light and near infrared light still detectable at a given depth into the body there might be 10 or 20 times more intensity of light so like let's say photons per second of near-infrared light at that depth compared to the red light. So again, a higher proportion of those red light photons are absorbing in the more superficial tissues in the skin. Because of that, it is a reasonable heuristic rule of thumb to say that red light is better for the skin, near-infrared light is better for deeper tissues. It's just important that you don't interpret that in a black and white way where you think, oh, yeah, red light doesn't penetrate into the body beneath the level of the skin. And near infrared light doesn't absorb in the skin. It only absorbs in deeper tissues. It's not that black and white. This is a matter of of degrees. So it's still the case that near infrared also benefits skin health. And it's still the case that red light wavelengths don't only travel to the skin, but a portion of it travels much deeper into the body. What if you knew there was a way to strengthen your cells and reverse aging at the cellular level so you could stay healthier longer? Well, meet C15 from Fatty15, your crucial healthy aging nutrient that scientists have called the longevity nutrient. You see, pure C15 is unlike anything else on the market. it. It's a true geroprotector, meaning it can slow down aging at the cellular level. Here's how it works. Number one, it strengthens cell membranes, helping them resist age-driving lipid peroxidation. It also activates AMPK and inhibits mTOR, which are both core pathways in the human longevity system proven to enhance longevity in mammals. 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You can get an additional 15% off their 90 day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com forward slash Dr. Jockers and using the code Dr Jockers at checkout So that 15 off their 90 day starter kit by going to fatty 15 forward slash Dr Jockers and use that code Dr Jockers at checkout today Yeah, yeah, it's good explanation. And, and red light is, I mean, that's something I use personally on my face. I use a red light mask. Actually, I put it on while I'm in my infrared sauna. And a lot of people are using red light masks and seeing really good benefits for the skin. And so what are those great benefits? What's happening at the skin layer when you're using red light? Yeah. You know, in the book, there's a whole long section. I don't know if it's 20 pages or 40 pages where I talk about all the different mechanisms of how red light therapy works. And you can get really detailed in talking about, you know, cytochrome C oxidase in the mitochondria absorbing photons of light and how that affects the mitochondria. or you can talk about TGF beta or you can talk about, you know, TRPV1 and you can in opsins and we can get very detailed on these specific mechanisms of, quote unquote, how red light therapy works or how it's interacting with our biology. I'm generally averse to this kind of reductionism because I think what we're going to find 10 or 20 years now is it's interacting with our biology in all kinds of ways that we don't even understand yet even if we just look at how it's evolved in the last 10 or 15 years 10 or 15 years ago the story was it's all about cytochrome c oxidase that's the main thing and mitochondrial energy production and now the thinking in the in the pbm the photobiomodulation community among scientists is that that mechanism is actually a relatively small part of the story and that really the changes in gene expression and growth factors and things like stem cells and the cascades of growth factors that last not just minutes or hours but last days or sometimes weeks after an exposure to red and near-infrared light therapy that those mechanisms are much more important in the story so with that said the point i'm trying to make is that I generally don't like the reductionistic view of saying it works through this mechanism. I think if we paint with broader brushstrokes, what we can see is what red and near-infrared light are doing more broadly is they're activating growth factor cascades and mechanisms at the cellular level that are involved in tissue and cellular repair and regeneration and growth not unconstrained growth like cancer or something like that that's not a concern but growth in the sense of regeneration and repair and at the level of the skin you can conceptualize skin this is this principle that i just described is true in all kinds of different tissues so for example at the level of the brain it activates brain specific growth factors like nerve growth factor, NGF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor. At the level of the muscle and tendons, it activates growth factor cascades that are involved in tissue repair and regeneration like IGF-1. And there's all kinds of tissue-specific growth factors in the blood vessels. You have VEGF and so on and so forth. Now, at the level of the skin, you can think of kind of skin aging as a battle being waged between how much collagen and elastin are being synthesized and how much is being broken down. And sort of the net change in that is going to determine how much skin aging is occurring, how much wrinkling is occurring, how much loss of collagen is occurring, and how fast it's occurring. And so it's sort of this tug of war. Now, different factors can impact on that tug of war in different ways. You could have factors like, let's say, green tea impacts on inhibiting collagenase enzymes, inhibiting enzymes or matrix metalloproteinases that would be breaking down some of that collagen. So that's one thing, and there's a number of different phytochemicals that work. And also, it's important to note that when we're young, we have higher amounts of growth factors circulating in our system. And so we are able to repair well. As we get older, those growth factors, just naturally the endogenous production of them goes down. And so we end up with higher amount of breakdown, more catabolism, not as much building and repairing. And so having something, whether it's supplements, right? There's a lot of collagen products out there, things like that, that provide raw materials, stuff like that, that can help support the overall production is good. It's important. But those types of things, supplements alone are not necessarily stimulating those growth factors. Exactly. Yeah. And that's impacting on that story in a different way. Now, with collagen peptides, you're now providing building blocks. there's other phytochemicals that build up at the level of the skin that can act as internal sunscreens and can prevent collagen breakdown from too much exposure to uv light for example things like astaxanthin and other carotenoids for example lycopene pomegranate cacao things like that And then another layer of this story is the direct stimulation of fibroblasts that are involved in collagen synthesis. And that is more what red light therapy is doing. So it's directly stimulating the cells that produce collagen. so it's just an it's another tool in our battle to stay young and beautiful forever hopefully and um and and it works there there's many many dozens of studies uh showing that it does positively impact on that tug of war balance between collagen breakdown and collagen synthesis and it does notably reduce wrinkle depth and provide these effects so um having said that not this is not an endorsement of every device on the market um there are a lot of devices on the market that look like this something like this on the surface on the exterior and i'm showing for people listening rather than watching i'm showing like a typical looking face mask red light device now if you were to look on this side of the device this is where there are drastic differences on the underside of the device, the part that's where the lights are that shine on your skin. This is where there are dramatic differences in the quality of devices. And specifically, just to give people an idea of a couple dimensions of why most devices on the market are junk and why some are better than others. One is irradiance. You need the right irradiance, which is the measure of light intensity to do the job. And for skin anti-aging on the face, there's a particular irradiance range, light intensity range that you want to be in somewhere between 10 and roughly 40 or 50 milliwatts per square centimeter. So you want a device that, number one, has the correct irradiance for benefits in that area. For reference, if you're treating deep tissues, let's say you want to treat a knee joint injury or arthritis or something, you want a much higher irradiance to deliver light to those deeper tissues. We can talk more about that if you want. And irradiance would be like the strength of the light. Yeah, essentially the strength of the light, the overall intensity. You could think of it as brightness. You could think of it as photons per second of light. But yeah, the intensity of that light source. So I can have a very, very dim light source say a single candle flame versus the sun right there's a big dramatic difference in the light intensity of those sources now you need to have the right irradiance another factor that's really important is um the led density of that device so what you see in this face mask that I'm holding. This is a very unusual one because it has maybe 300 or 500 percent more LEDs than a typical face mask that you might find, the typical junk ones kind of sourced from China by lots of different companies. And the reason that this is important is that when you use one that has fewer LEDs, a lower LED density, what it means is that you have a light here and you have a light here and you have a light here and you have a light here. And in between those spaces, that half inch or inch space between each LED, it means that you have a cold spot there, meaning you don't have light on that area. Whereas with this kind of device, You see how densely the LEDs are spaced in there. What this does is it gives you uniform light coverage. So every spot on that skin surface is receiving light and is receiving the same amount of light. And that's a really critical, that's a very, very big difference. And it's something that you can't see from the outside. If you're looking at somebody wearing a device like this, you don't see what's going on as far as how that light is actually interacting with your skin. And all you see is the outside of the mask. But these are the kinds of differences that are the difference between something being a junk device versus something actually being an effective device. Yeah, that's important to note. So you got to have the right intensity and then you want that amount of density of those LEDs, especially when you're putting it right up on your skin. So if you're using like a panel, you're typically not going to be pressed right up against it. you're going to be, let's say, four to six inches away from a large panel. And therefore, the LEDs, the light actually kind of spreads out, right? And it impacts, you know, every area that it's exposed to. Yes, yes and no. Depending on the intensity, right? Yeah, there's a couple distinctions here. one is that a panel can absolutely spread out the further you are away from it and potentially impact much larger areas of the body that can be good in some context and not good in some context the other aspect of what's going on is the degree of of of conformance to the body surfaces is important for the penetration of light if you look at my face or any human face you will see that it is not a flat surface. It has lots of curves. I've got a nose, I've got cheeks, I've got all these different curvatures on my face. Now, if I have a flat panel that is emitting light from, let's say, six or 12 inches away from my face, that light is all coming at my face from this angle, perpendicular to, let's say, the center of my forehead. And on those areas that are facing that panel well, I can get good light exposure. The problem is to the degree my face starts to curve away from that, like the sides of my eyes, the sides of my forehead, the sides of my cheeks, the sides of my nose, all these different curvatures, the skin that's not perpendicular to that angle of light is going to receive much, much less light. And the light will penetrate through the skin far less effectively to the extent that the body surface is curving away from the light source. So what you have with a device like this, like this face mask that conforms to the surface of your body, is this maintains the perpendicularity of the light to that body surface, that skin surface, much, much better than something like a panel would. right that makes sense so figuring out the right devices is going to be key for people and so a lot of the benefits like for example with the panels uh i know in the book you talk about the benefits are really a lot of systemic benefits meaning that just getting a certain amount of intensity of light exposure on the body with the red and infrared you're going to have whole body benefits rather than kind of spot-targeted benefits, whereas smaller devices or contoured devices are going to get more tissue-specific benefits. Yeah. So there's two distinctions of how red and near-infrared light benefit us. One is at the local level, and one is at the systemic level. Local level is direct interaction of light photons with the target tissue that you're trying to affect. So you've got skin on your face and you want to shine light directly on those tissues to create an effect in that area. Or you've got a knee joint issue, injury or hamstring strain or something like that. And you want to shine light directly on that tissue to create an effect in that tissue. And there are many mechanisms of how that works, of how it interacts with those tissues to activate growth factors and stem cells in that local environment to stimulate that healing process. Now, what's interesting is there's this whole other area of systemic effects, which you might call non-local effects or indirect effects. And what that is, is you can't and there are many studies that have shown this now. It's not really debated anymore. You can shine light on. Let me give you an example of the studies to just illustrate it. There are studies in both animal models and in humans where they've looked at brain issues. So, for example, they take rodents and they inject them with some kind of neurotoxic substance. sad that we do this to rodents but this is the reality you in order to induce let's say parkinson's disease or something like that and um and then what they have done is they will shine light directly on the brain of those rodents and assess how much red or near-infrared light sort of blocked the toxicity of this compound or blocked the symptoms of parkinson's disease and they show that it's effective. Now, what's interesting is they can take the same light, they can cover up the head with tinfoil so no light can get in there and they take the light and they shine it on the legs or the abdomen. And what they've shown in many of these studies is that you still get these beneficial effects at the level of the brain even when no light was shined directly on the brain but shine just on other parts of the body. And what that's telling you is that there are some mechanisms being active that are systemic, that are being transported from one place in the body to another place in the body. And there's a few different ways that that can operate. The main one is through the blood. It could also potentially be through the nervous system. And there's there's other sort of theories that exist out there and evidence for other layers of the story. But the main layer of the story is in the bloodstream. You get this you get different kinds of effects. Now, one is changing of the immune phenotype macrophages in particular to from an M1 to an M2 phenotype. This is from a pro-inflammatory to an anti-inflammatory phenotype that kind of helps complete the healing cascade instead of just creates perpetual damage. So it seems to be an important shift for the immune system to make to kind of complete the healing cycle. And red and near-infrared light directly stimulate that. And that's now you have circulating immune factors going through your entire body that are creating this anti-inflammatory effect. And the other layer of the story that I think is two layers. One is growth factor cascade. So some of these growth factors don't stay localized to the tissues. You get growth factors that are circulated in the bloodstream that have effects probably everywhere in the body. And and the other one, which I think will turn out to be a big player in the story is stem cells. So we have stem cells in the local environment. so for example let's say i've got um you know a gum problem in my mouth or i just had surgery on you know dental surgery or something like that and i want to stimulate stem cells in that local environment this is a common thing that's done in dentistry now they're they're leveraging this technology i can shine light directly on those tissues and activate stem cells in that local area. But I can also, and there's been a number of studies that have shown this, I can also stimulate stem cells in certain parts of my body to release stem cells into circulation. And once those stem cells are now in my blood, now they can circulate to all kinds of other parts of the body where they can engage in healing any damaged tissues that are in need of repair So one of the really cool studies that was done was a study in rodents where they essentially induced a heart attack and damage to the heart cells And then they shined light on the tibias, the shin bones of these rodents. And what they found is that that released stem cells into circulation and that those stem cells went to work repairing the injured heart cells within a matter of minutes. So, you know, I think that is going to be a big emerging layer of understanding of how this technology works to help us. I think that's going to be a big layer to the story that's going to become more common knowledge probably in the next five or ten years. I mean, there's no doubt. Stem cell therapy, a lot of people are getting that for hips, for knees, for different joints. And it's a key part of regenerative medicine. But this is a way of doing it without injections, without surgeries, a lot of invasive, highly expensive procedures. And this is something you can be doing at your house. And a good red light device is going to cost you a little bit of money. But to think that it's actually stimulating stem cells and having effects like that, it's really, really powerful. And that's just one of the many benefits, all the different growth factors like you were talking about. We didn't really go into a lot of detail on things like mitochondrial melatonin, but we're finding that melatonin is not just a sleep hormone, but instead it's – well, it is a sleep hormone, But at the same time, it also has a really profound effect on keeping the mitochondria healthy and functioning well. It's the most powerful antioxidant that the mitochondria produce. And it stimulates all the other mitochondrial antioxidants, catalase, glutathione, peroxidase, superoxide dismutase. And so it keeps the mitochondria healthy. So all of these amazing benefits, like if you were to get a – if there were a drug or a supplement that could do all the benefits that this sort of photobiomodulation does, I mean it would be the one – it would be the miracle – in a sense, it would be touted and marketed as the miracle drug or supplement. And yeah, this is something you can install in your house, right? And obviously, we can get it from the sun, right? So if you can't afford it, you can afford to get more time in the sun, more quality time, not get sunburned, but good quality sun exposure on a regular basis. And that's how you get it for free. Or you can get one of these devices, particularly in the winter months. I know that's when I tend to use it more is in the winter months when I'm not able to get into the sun as much. But this is profound. This is really powerful. Yeah, absolutely. You said all the things I wanted to say there. have you ever been to a doctor's visit and just been told that everything is fine or maybe prescribed a medication without really understanding why you should take it this is why i recommend superpower health they do one simple blood draw with over 100 biomarkers which is way more than you usually get and it unlocks a real understanding of your body their app includes detailed information on your heart liver thyroid hormones metabolism vitamin mineral levels and even environmental toxins. So from disease prevention to treating that annoying brain fog or simply optimizing your gym game, Superpower is the most comprehensive and advanced system out there. Superpower doesn't just give you a one-time snapshot. It tracks your results over your lifetime. Each test builds on the last so you can actually see progress year after year instead of starting over every January. They have an on-demand clinician team to answer questions as well instead of waiting to see your doctor or Google what things mean. So stop only reacting to health problems and start proactively improving your health based on real personalized data. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with Superpower. Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code Jockers. So head to superpower.com and use code Jockers at checkout for $20 off your membership. After you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about them. So make sure to mention this podcast to support the show. In your book, you also go through some of the issues when you're trying to get a good panel. And you mentioned some of that earlier, but there's a lot of different companies out there that are selling red and infrared light panels, devices, whether it's face masks, things like that. What should people be looking for when it comes to these types of devices? What should they be on the lookout for? Okay, a lot of things to be aware of. So one, let's go back to local versus systemic effects. So let me tie a bow on this topic real quick, and this will segue into panels. So if I'm interested in maximizing a local effect, let's say facial skin anti-aging using a device like this. I'm interested in... He's got a face mask for anybody that's listening online. Thank you. So I'm really interested in what are the correct irradiance and dosing parameters for this specific issue I'm trying to address. I want facial anti-aging. Okay, so I want, let's say, 20 milliwatts per square centimeter. I want to dose it at, let's say, 10 minutes. And that's the correct dose for delivering the correct amount of light to these specific target tissues. Now, to the extent I'm interested in those systemic effects that I was mentioning before, the whole body systemic effects, the anti-inflammatory effect, the shifting of the immune system, the potential growth factors and stem cells and all these things now in circulation for sort of more general anti-aging longevity benefits, tissue repair benefits. I want to be looking at the kind of devices that I'm using and the dosing parameters differently than I would if I'm using a face mask specifically on facial anti-aging or even if I'm using it on some other area. Let's say I'm treating a specific injury on my knee or my elbow or whatever. If I'm interested in systemic effects, I want a much, much bigger total dose of light delivered to my body. And the way to do that more effectively is to use, number one, a larger device, number two, a more powerful device. And number three, this kind of goes with a larger device, but to use it on a much larger area of your body. And if you're doing those things, you can to give you a sense of it compared to, let's say, using this face mask on my face. I'm just going to make random numbers up to make it easier to understand. Let's say I deliver a total of, let's say, 50 units of light that I deliver to to my face as a result of that, to my whole body as a result of using this face mask for 10 minutes. Well, if I use a large panel or let's say a whole body pod or something along those lines, something that's shining light over my whole body at a higher intensity, I might deliver 500 or 1000 times the total amount of light to my entire system relative to what I did with the face mask. So we're not talking about a small effect. It's not 10 percent or 50 percent. We're talking about many, many orders of magnitude difference in the total amount of light delivered of what you can do with a larger device hitting a much larger portion of your body. So if you want those systemic benefits, that's what you need to be shifting towards. So, you know, to a large extent, this depends on what the person's goal is. If you want facial skin anti-aging, you want to prioritize delivering the right dose to those tissues. If you want whole body systemic effects, you want to prioritize maximizing light delivery over the whole body as much as possible with a more powerful device. So that's the first key layer of the story. And this is where panels become much more useful is delivering those systemic effects to the whole body. now unfortunately the industry is kind of a mess in the sense that number one there's lots of junk devices on the market and number two it's further contaminated by the fact that lots and lots of companies are just overtly lying and misrepresenting the actual irradiance numbers of their devices And this is a rampant thing in the industry, and this is part of what I'm trying to do with my new book, is clean up all of these shady practices that are going on in the industry. The gist of it is that a lot of companies started claiming that their devices were emitting much, much higher irradiances. Companies started competing with each other as far as who could make the most powerful, highest irradiance panel. And so all these companies kind of became enmeshed in this marketing battle between the brands of who has the most powerful device. Everybody's each six months or year trying to make a new generation of device that's more powerful than the last and also lying about the actual irradiance figures that their device emits. So to give you a sense of this, some devices on the market are claiming they emit 160 or 170 milliwatts per square centimeter. The true figure might be something more like 70 or 80 milliwatts per square centimeter. And that matters not just in the sense that they're lying in terms of the ethics and the integrity, but it also matters in terms of dosing the red light correctly. You need to know what the true intensity is in order to correctly dose it. For other devices, let's say flexible pad style devices, even whole body pods where companies might be charging $50,000 or $80,000 for some of these crazy big tanning bed style pods. There are issues that have been discovered where some of these companies are claiming 60 milliwatts per square centimeter and the true number is more like 7 or 10. So not just minor differences, but really significant differences. The same issue is prevalent across the industry with many different types of devices. So what should you look for? Well, number one, if you want the systemic whole body effects, again, a solid, large device that's going to shine light over a large portion of your body, like a large panel, is a great idea. But I would only do business with companies that are providing transparency, that are providing the third-party lab reports showing the true irradiance figures of their device. And that should be listed very prominently on the site, on the sales page. And there are several companies now doing that. So I would only do business with those companies. Again, that's part of what I'm trying to do in my new book is specifically advise people to only buy from those companies that are providing that kind of transparency. And you have a list in your book, and then you have a kind of a – I would imagine a more updated and evergreen site, basically a page on your site. Since your book is already published, there are companies now that are coming in and getting that transparency. So you're keeping that up to date on your website as well. People can reach that. Yeah, that's right. I created a separate website specifically to be a companion to this book for device recommendations. And it's called, it's something really generic, like redlightdeviceguide.com. That's the site, redlightdeviceguide.com. So if you go there, you can find my specific recommendations for brands that are vetted and that have, you know, the real irradiance figures that are quality devices. In many cases, devices that have actually had clinical trials done on them so that they're actually supported by research and, you know, have the have things done the right way. Like, for example, a face mask that has the right LED density, that has the right irradiance, as opposed to the million other face masks that don't. So redlightdevice.com. Check that out so you can see what it is. Redlightdeviceguide.com. Guide. Redlightdeviceguide.com. So you can check out what Ari is looking at, what has been tested, and you can actually get the right specifications and the best brands to do business with. And if there's anybody listening out there that has their own red light brand, which we do have listeners that are selling these, go ahead and get them tested. And if they're not up to spec, get them remade, right? Remade and make sure that we have as much transparency as possible so people know what they're buying. So that's really good. And specifically, if anybody is interested in doing it, there's a lab in Pennsylvania called Light Lab International. And that's the best lab in the country to do it with. Perfect. That was going to be my next question. Where do they actually get that testing done? So Light Lab International in Pennsylvania. Okay, great. Perfect. And so guys, definitely check out the ultimate guide to red light therapy that Ari wrote. Phenomenal book. You'll be really inspired to start engaging in using photobiomodulation, red and infrared light. You know, the healing benefits here are really profound. There's just so much benefit this can have for our body. And it's something we've been exposed to throughout the history of mankind in nature because all of these spectrums of light come from the sun. And our ancestors were in the sun a lot more than we are. And in fact, in our society, it's starting to go away. But many of us have been trained to actually fear the sun. And that's really not the right idea. It's utilizing the sun in a mature and proper way, right? Getting as much good sun exposure without burning, without causing excessive skin damage. That's the key. And then really using these light therapies, this amazing technology we have in a way to help stimulate enhanced healing, enhanced anti-aging benefits, all the different things that Ari talked about today. So really profound stuff. Guys, again, the book is called The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy. I'll have a link in the show notes, but you can also find it on Amazon.com as well in bookstores. So be sure to check that out. Ari, any last words of inspiration here for our audience? Yeah, the last thing I want to say is, you know, we've spent a lot of this interview talking about the more technical side of this and kind of the technicalities of devices and device selection and how to use them and what makes a good device versus a bad device. What I don't want to get what I don't want to get lost in all of this technical discussion is the simple fact of this technology has a lot of profound health benefits for all kinds of different things. I think everybody should have one of these, one if not many different devices. I've got two right next to me, three right next to me, actually, actually four right next to me. I've got a face mask. I've got this device, which is one of my favorite devices for targeted deep tissue use. This is from a company called SunPower LED. I've got another prototype device for a device I'm developing for myself that's been in development for a year now. I've got a hair loss helmet because I'm prone to hair loss. I'm trying to keep as much hair as possible as I get older. And, you know, there are many and I've got lots of other devices that I've accumulated over the years that I don't use anymore because I have better ones now. And what I don't want to get lost in this discussion is there are so many amazing benefits of this technology. and whether you're interested in just having something on hand for wounds and injuries and aches and pains, whether you're interested in whole body systemic effects, whether it's hair loss or facial skin anti-aging or enhancing athletic performance or body composition or amplifying the benefits of the exercise you're doing in terms of muscle gain, in terms of fat loss, in terms of hormonal and metabolic effects, whether it's speeding up recovery from exercise. that, you know, there's and the list goes on and on and on. I think everybody should have one of these in their home. And, you know, if you want to dig into the science, you can get my book, which goes very deep in the science and the practical side of how to to dose them. But whether or not you get my book, what you should do is get a high quality device for sure. Yeah. Awesome. Yep. Great, great stuff. Guys, again, the book is the ultimate guide to red light therapy. Ari, again, thanks so much for your time, your expertise, and keep doing the great work that you do. Be blessed. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Well, that's all for this show. And I want to thank you again for spending your valuable time with me today. And if there was something you heard in this interview that you have questions on, or you want to dive into deeper, then drjockers.com is the best place to go. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider taking just a quick moment and giving us a great review. Your reviews help us influence more people and transform more lives. And if you took something valuable away from this episode, then please share it with someone in your life. You know it can help. We'll see you soon on a future podcast. Be blessed, everybody. God bless you.