Should You Try Red-Light Therapy?

The anti-aging product market was worth roughly 53 BILLION dollars in 2024. One of the latest big trends: red light therapy. Social media is rampant with claims about all sorts of purported health benefits to using directed red light regularly … but does the research really live up to all the hype? For answers, we turn to cosmetic chemist and science communicator Michelle Wong https://labmuffin.com/about-michelle/. Together, she and host Regina G. Barber https://www.npr.org/people/1082526815/regina-g-barber sift through the thin (albeit growing) research on red light therapy to find out which claims are clearly backed by the literature – and which still need a bit more experimental data. Interested in more science behind skincare products? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:46Regina Barber?

  If you've ever bought a product to prevent aging, you're not alone. The anti-aging product market was roughly worth $53 billion in 2024. There's moisturizers, chemical creams, jade rollers, and of course, something that's gotten popular in the last few years: red light therapy masks.

• 1:09Regina Barber?

  And I have to admit, I'm susceptible to. Aging is something I think about a lot. Like, every single day for the last three decades as I applied my moisturizer and sunscreen. Which is why I was intrigued by the claims that red light, literally light at the wavelength of visible red light and some near-infrared red light, could actually reduce signs of aging. And as I scoured the scientific literature for this episode, I also became obsessed with any real-time anecdotal data and validation in the meantime. Like, was I totally on an island with this reporting obsession, or were my colleagues too?

• 1:51Regina Barber?

  So I polled a ton of people around the office, from producers in their 20s like Monse Karana. I use it once a week. I think, surprisingly, I do think it works. Like, I do notice that my skin feel, like, looks just a little tighter after I use it. Two colleagues closer to my age, like Nina Phil.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  I had heard great things about red light therapy for skin. I have a skin disease and very sensitive skin on my face, so I thought, this isn't a bad thing to have in addition. It can't hurt, right? I love it. I'm obsessed with it.

• 2:30Regina Barber?

  Obviously, next step in my quest, try it myself. And, OK, yeah, after using a red light therapy mask as directed, 10 minutes, three to five times a week for over a month, I thought I saw a difference for the better. But I'm a scientist. I can't fall into these anecdotal data traps. I needed to get to the bottom of the science. So I reached out to someone who skillfully breaks down the science of beauty.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  What does it do? Which masks actually work? Why are they so expensive? And can you make your own cheaper version?

• 3:03Regina Barber?

  That's Michelle Wong. She's a PhD chemist who hosts the YouTube channel Lab Muffin Beauty Science. So I asked her point blank, is there science behind all these red light claims?

• 3:15Speaker 03

  It's meant to be good for skin. It's meant to be good for a whole list of things. There's a lot of woo around it, I feel, which is why it feels so pseudoscience to begin with. But it turns out there is stuff behind it.

• 3:33Regina Barber?

  Today on the show, the benefits of red light. What is the science behind this craze? And what other methods might be just as good for your skin? I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 5:26Regina Barber?

  So let's get into the science. Like, how could red light or near-infrared light help your skin? Can you break that down for us?

• 5:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, so red and infrared light, they are the longer wavelengths. So red is the longest wavelength of visible light.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  They aren't absorbed by as much stuff near the surface of the skin. So they can penetrate deeper.

• 5:46Regina Barber?

  Okay.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  And now, the mechanisms of how exactly it works, it's not fully established. But it seems like the main way that red light works is, inside our cells, we have things called mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, that produce energy through respiration. And that energy powers a lot of the biological processes inside our cells. And there's part of the respiration process, which is done by an enzyme, like a little chemical factory. It's the one that chops up oxygen in half. And so there's nitric oxide that's sitting in the space where oxygen should be. And the red light just kicks out the nitric oxide. So now the oxygen can come in for respiration.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  You get more chemical energy, which means you get more cell processes.

• 6:33Regina Barber?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  So that's why we have this very general sort of... Benefits of light, we get all this stuff where it just seems to increase like cell growth, it increases hair growth, it increases um healing of wounds, things like that.

• 6:50Regina Barber?

  And is that pretty established that it is, the red light is doing that to our cells?

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the mitochondria mechanism, that's the one that seems to be happening the most. But there is actually a little bit of evidence that um in cells that don't have mitochondria that seems to also have improvement.

• 7:07Regina Barber?

  Yeah, so as a physicist, I kind of expect like light, which is energy, to be bad for my skin. So how is sending, you know, light into my skin, how can it be good for me?

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think light does stuff to our skin in more ways than we'd expect. We have a precursor to vitamin D in our skin. And at one point in the process of vitamin D production, UVB will come in and chop a bond. And yeah, that takes it closer to vitamin D. So that's why people are low in vitamin D in winter because they go into the sun less, there's less sun around to begin with, there's less UVB.

• 7:46Regina Barber?

  Right.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Which means that you don't have that um natural production of vitamin D in your skin. And everyone's like, you have to take supplements or whatever. Light is good at chopping up bonds. So whether it's the bond inside the vitamin D or it's the bond that's sticking the nitric oxide to the mitochondria.

• 8:02Regina Barber?

  Interesting, okay, so light can be good sometimes. Getting back to this specific light, um what are the differences between red light that you might find in the dermatologist's office and what you can do at home?

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so um usually when you go into an in-clinic treatment, it's going to be a lot stronger. It's going to be very bright because they can afford these much bigger panels. There's a lot more LEDs. There are panels you can get at home, though, which are still pretty bright. And then there are masks. Masks usually have a lot less LEDs. And I guess there's a bit of a question mark around how effective home treatments are because there's not that much research and there's not that much incentive for research or publicly available research because approval of these devices isn't necessary.

• 8:48Regina Barber?

  Right.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  This is generally the case with skincare. If there's something where they need to convince doctors, then they'll do peer reviewed studies, but if they don't, then You get very spotty, publicly available evidence. A lot of it is done within the industry and it's locked up. Um, and they just don't share it, which is very annoying as someone who's trying to talk about the size behind beauty products.

• 9:09Regina Barber?

  So with that in mind, there's masks, there's these panels. There's also like these handheld red light therapy devices. Do you have any sense of how effective these devices are?

• 9:21Speaker 03

  That's a really difficult question because there's just like a lot of lack of regulation and standardization when it comes to these things. I mean, a lot of people buy panels and masks off Alibaba, for example. Um, and one of the big problems is that it doesn't seem like a lot of them have specs that are reliable.

• 9:40Regina Barber?

  Wow.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  But yeah, I think generally looking at that, looking at reviews and then just using the specific product. That is probably the safest bet in terms of which ones to go with. Um, there are things like, I've, I've been in a lot of forums looking this stuff up just to try to get some sort of grasp of what the real use situation is like. And you see a lot of people who have just gone too bright for too long. Um, and they're reporting side effects, there's things like broken blood vessels, um, their dark spots getting much darker.

• 10:11Regina Barber?

  Yeah, when they say like three to five times a week, it doesn't mean daily. It doesn't mean you need to do like that and more light or something like that.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think a lot of people do think more is better, um, especially people who are new to skincare.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  So it seems like biologically, um, it's a bit like when you're eating food. If you try to eat all your food for three weeks on the first day and then go hiking for three weeks and eat nothing, that doesn't really work. Your body doesn't process the food the same way.

• 10:41Regina Barber?

  Our bodies don't work that way.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:43Regina Barber?

  Got it. And you're saying that there are some products that aren't necessarily what they say they are. So like, how do we, how do we as a consumer, like? No.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  It's always a good idea to consult with a dermatologist before you add anything to your routine that might be a bit iffy, like a red light mask.

• 11:02Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  But yeah, I think the safest thing to do is to look for a company that has a lot of reviews. Ideally, it's a company that's done some research. So the one that has done the most research is Omnilux, the most published studies on this. They've also done a lot of the panel research, so they are probably the safest option. But I don't think by any means they're the only option. I think also just a company that has a good return policy, I think, is also really important because it is such uncharted waters. And looking at reviews for your specific skin tone and for what you actually want to use the product for. Because I think there's just a lot of people buying products that are hyped up without thinking whether or not it matches what they want out of it. And I think in

• 11:48Speaker 03

  general, the amount of evidence for red light is much less than for other skincare things that are really well established.

• 11:58Regina Barber?

  Oh, can you kind of go into depth with these other things that may be cheaper and, like you said, more scientifically studied?

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, and also a bit easier to use, I think, and less commitment and less pain.

• 12:13Regina Barber?

  Okay.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  So sunscreen is the best skincare product because a lot of our skin aging is from the sun. I think for white people, it's been estimated that eighty percent of visible skin aging is from sun exposure. And the amount of sun you get, it's not just when you're going to the beach, it's every day. So there are studies done, there's one especially famous one from Australia, where they found that people who were wearing sunscreen every day, their skin during the four to five year time they were wearing the sunscreen, there were no increased visible signs of aging, whereas the people who were wearing it just to the beach did have this. And this was done in Australia, in our skin cancer capital of Australia, which is the skin cancer capital of the world.

• 12:59Regina Barber?

  Wow.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  And this is also important because there are some anti-aging products that can actually make your skin more sensitive to the sun. And I've had friends who did this, where they started using the anti-aging product without sunscreen, and their skin got worse. So. Sunscreen, number one.

• 13:15Regina Barber?

  OK, check.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Nice. Um, the second biggest thing is probably tretinoin. This is a type of vitamin A. Um, it's a prescription product. It seems to increase cell turnover. Um, so your cells are produced faster. Um, and it can increase collagen and elastin. These are the proteins that are deeper in the skin that help with texture. Um, so tretinoin is the prescription version that has the most evidence behind it. But there's the cosmetic versions like rational, which are one step weaker, but they do seem to work. They were actually investigated first before they started looking into tretinoin. Um, but they weren't stable enough back then. Now they are stabilized, so they also work.

• 13:58Regina Barber?

  Michelle, thank you so much for talking to us today. I had a great time. You illuminated, uh, me, my thoughts. Uh, you really, really helped me think through this. Um, so thank you so much.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 14:17Regina Barber?

  This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Burley McCoy and fact checked by Tyler Jones. Robert Rodriguez was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.