You may have heard some buzz about about the benefits of red light therapy (RLT). Also referred to as “low level laser therapy” or “photobiomodulation”, this interesting therapeutic method has captured a lot of attention for its efficacy, convenience, safety, and versatility.

Is red light therapy all that it is chalked up to be? Does it really work? Which conditions does LLLT treat well?

Let’s take a look at the potential benefits of using red light therapy benefits.

Red light therapy could help with many health conditions

Photobiomodulation, the science on which red light therapy is based, has shown promise in clinical and real-world applications for treating a range of conditions. The science is based on the ability of certain types of light to activate cellular processes, which in turn can help to trigger or speed up healing, recovery, or wellness outcomes.

Scientists, doctors, and consumers have shared their experiences with using red light therapy in many ways, including:

• Skin. RLT has been used to help wounds heal faster and to improve the look and feel of skin. Many clinicians are using it to reduce wrinkles, treat rosacea, eczema, and acne, and to counter the effects of aging to achieve a younger-looking face.
• Body contouring. Many fitness experts have used RLT as part of a fitness program to help with weight loss, muscle development, and fat and cellulite reduction.
• Immune response. There has been promising research into using RLT to trigger an improved immune response, which can help with conditions like psoriasis,
• Disease mitigation. Medical experts are studying how RLT can help patients recover from cancer, mitigate the effects of cancer treatment, slow or reverse neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and so on.
• Mental health and cognition. We all know that light, generally speaking, is good for us. Red light may be beneficial for mood, sleep, focus, and mental clarity.

We are seeing new experiments with red light and photobiomodulation all the time.

Red light therapy is non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical, and even non-contact

One of the most exciting potential benefits of red light therapy is that it doesn’t involve putting any substances into your body. Pharmaceuticals and medicines are advanced, well-researched, and often effective forms of treatment. But as we all know from every TV commercial, pharmaceuticals can have side effects.

Furthermore, surgeries and even physical therapy have their risks. There is always the risk that something can go wrong, reversing or impeding the progress of the treatment.

Even CBD oil, one of the more recent health crazes, involves ingesting or inhaling a chemical compound into your body. Topical CBD treatments also involve exposing a chemical to your body.

Light is energy, not matter. Therefore, most experts agree that red light therapy is a flexible, low-risk form of treatment that can work both as a complement or a substitute to other approaches. This is incredibly advantageous to the consumer.

Red light therapy can be very cost-effective

Traditional medicine can be very expensive. Healthcare is a very expensive industry because of many factors, including the cost of regulation, the money required to build and manage a hospital or medical facility, the adminstration and overhead involved in running the business of healthcare, and the training and education required of those who deliver service.

Now it is possible to “do it yourself” (DIY). You can administer your own at-home treatments with innovative and cost-effective consumer-grade devices and equipment. For consumers like you and me, these new options can save a lot of money compared to receiving alternative or traditional treatments in clinical environments.

It is very, very safe

I have heard horror stories about all kinds of treatments, ranging from adverse reactions to chemical peels and depression medications. While these therapies surely help a great many people, for a small number of people they can have negative results. It is hard to predict whether any form of treatment will be safe for you as an individual.

And yet with red light therapy, it is very difficult to find examples of negative side effects resulting from its use.

It seems that exposure to red light, at its absolute worst, could simply be time lost. This has led some to conclude that red light therapy has no downsides whatsoever. In truth, there are always potential downsides. But for the time being, it seems safe to assume that RLT won’t do much harm to your body.