The Many Benefits of Red Light Therapy
Once only dermatologists and spas had red light therapy equipment for their clients. Now, many pieces of red light equipment can be purchased for home use. It’s worth investigating red light’s benefits to see how it could help you.
Mood
First of the many red light therapy benefits is that it can improve the depression caused by a lack of natural sunlight. This often happens as the days get shorter in the fall. It’s referred to as seasonal affective disorder, SAD for short.
SAD can also strike if you spend too much time indoors, especially in a space without windows.
Sitting in front of a red light device makes your brain think you are outside in the sunlight and your mood will improve after a few red light sessions. These sessions can also promote better sleep.
Healing
Red light is effective at both helping to heal wounds and in treating old scars. The light penetrates deeply into the skin to kickstart skin cells into rapid repair mode.
Red light therapy is also used on burns, which have traditionally been very difficult to heal. It heals the burn by stimulating the generation of fibroblasts, which are cells that help tissue repair. It can also encourage the growth of new blood vessels which speed the healing process. Another benefit is that it’s painless, unlike some historic burn treatments.
Mouth Sores
Red light treatments have been proven successful in treating painful mouth and lip sores including cold sores caused by the herpes virus and canker sores on the inner lips and cheeks.
Mouth treatments are delivered via a wand. In the case of cold sores, the light causes the virus cells to explode so healing can begin. With other mouth sores, the red light speeds up the healing process and pretty quickly stops the pain.
Hair Regrowth
A fairly new discovery concerning red light is that it can help with hair regrowth. The device most commonly used to treat balding is in the form of a cap which is worn on the head for approximately 30 minutes a day.
Although red light therapy will, unfortunately, not be able to help total slick baldness, as long as there is some hair, even if it’s sparse, red light can help. The way it helps is by penetrating all the way down to the base of the hair follicles. Once there, it stimulates the cells and makes them produce more hair follicles to thicken the hair and also awakens hair follicles that have gone dormant.
Follicles can go dormant for many reasons including illness, aging and certain drugs. No matter the cause, red light can help. When other methods of treating baldness include painful transplants and possibly dangerous drugs, this is a sensible and painless alternative.
Skin Rejuvenation
Possibly the most popular use of red light therapy is in the treatment of wrinkles. Most people have never heard of red light therapy unless they regularly visited a gym, spa or dermatologist and it was recommended to them.
With the advent of devices for the home, more and more people are working on improving their skin every day. One of the most popular forms for treating facial wrinkles is a mask that fits over your face and treats your whole face at once to red light.
The second device is hand-held and can be as big as a microphone or as small as a shaving razor. With the handheld devices, one area of concern is treated at a time for about 5 minutes in each area.
Red light therapy is very soothing and relaxing. Many people find it so relaxing that they choose to have their treatments before sleeping.
Red light can treat everything from puffiness to wrinkles and rosacea. It works by reducing inflammation, increasing circulation and by promoting the production of collagen which keeps skin healthy and elastic.
In a world where it seems there is a new gadget available every second, red light therapy devices are actually worth looking into.
