Is Your Red Light Panel Really Helping?

My Surprising Discoveries!

Lately, it seems like everyone in the health world is talking about red-light therapy. You might have seen ads for those big red light panels, right?

They promise amazing healing powers, saying that special red and near-infrared light can fix all sorts of problems. It sounds pretty great, and a lot of people are really excited about it.

To watch or listen to this blog post instead, click here.

But what if what everyone is saying doesn’t quite match what actually happens?

I need to tell you about my own experience, because it’s a bit different from all the hype. Even with all those big promises, using these popular LED lights (most of them made in China) just left me feeling...well, nothing much happened.

I decided to try it seriously. For a whole month, every single day, I used a red and near-infrared light panel. What were the results?

I don’t have any health problems besides lifelong anxiety, which sometimes contributes to sleeping only a few hours, in stressful periods of my life.

My anxiety and sleep didn’t improve, during that month. But the most worrying thing was about some small pre-cancers I have on my skin. After a month of daily light, they actually got redder, scaly, and worse.

So, I stopped.

(Please feel free to share your experience with red-light therapy. My husband believes it helps his joints–he had two knee surgeries in his 20’s. I don’t know if it really helps him, or he thinks it helps him–he doesn’t know, either. Placebo effect is real. Things work if we expect them to work.)

My experience made me ask a big question, one that many people who try to listen to their bodies often ask: Does it really make sense that a human-made light with LEDs (almost always imported from China) can give us the same powerful, natural benefits that our real sun does?

Yes, I know there are two books out there reviewing the research studies, and lots of studies–I’ve read them!

Today, I want to talk about a different idea. We need to think about the difference between “reductionist science” and “holistic biology.”

“Reductionist science” tries to pick out just one “magic bullet” part of something. Holistic biology, on the other hand, understands that we grew up as humans with the help of the sun’s full and changing light.

Where did we first learn about the science of sunlight? Why might an LED panel not work where nature does? And what does science say about how we should actually use the sun – both on our skin and with our eyes?

The Story of Vitamin D: How We Learned the Sun Was Medicine

To understand why an LED panel might not be the whole answer, we need to go back to how we first realized the sun was like medicine.

We often just think of “The Sunshine Vitamin” (Vitamin D) without much thought, but finding out about Vitamin D is actually a cool story from the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Before factories and big cities, most people worked outside. A bone disease called rickets, which makes bones weak and bendy because of not enough calcium, was very rare.

But as people moved into smoky cities and started working in dark factories in the 1800s, rickets became a big problem, especially for kids in Northern Europe and America. (I’m sure you’re aware that on those continents, child labor was not yet illegal. And there was mass poverty.)

At first, scientists thought it was only about food. But in the early 1900s, researchers noticed something amazing: kids with rickets who got sunlight from open windows, or even special UV lamps, got better!

By the 1920s and 30s, scientists who won Nobel Prizes figured out how it worked: a special kind of fat in our skin, when hit by ultraviolet B (UVB) light from the sun, turns into what they called Vitamin D3.

Here’s the really important part: This discovery wasn’t made because someone found a special red LED light. It was found because people were exposed to full-spectrum light that included UV light.

The sun was the original healer. Science just helped us understand one of its secrets.

Taking a Light “Vitamin Pill”: The Problem with LEDs

This brings us to why the red-light therapy craze might not be what it seems. It’s a classic example of “reductionist science.”

Science loves to look at one thing at a time. Researchers found that red light at certain wavelengths (like 660 nanometers) helps our cells’ powerhouses (called mitochondria) make more energy. This part is true! The science really says that.

So, companies took that one fact and made a machine that just blasts you with only that one wavelength. It’s often much brighter than what you’d get from the sun, and it doesn’t have any of the other natural lights the sun gives us.

When you step outside into natural sunlight, you’re not just getting red and near-infrared light. You’re getting a huge, amazing mix of different light “flavors”:

• UV light (UVA and UVB): This is super important for making Vitamin D, helping your body create something that lowers blood pressure, and keeping your immune system working right.

• Visible light (the rainbow): This affects your mood and how awake you feel.

• Far-infrared light: This is basically heat that goes deep into your body to help your cells and improve blood flow.

Nature doesn’t work by itself. Everything in nature works together!

When we use an LED panel, it’s like taking a “vitamin pill” of light. We’re getting way too much of one kind of light, while missing all the other kinds that nature meant for us to have.

Thinking back to my pre-cancers getting worse: Could it be that blasting my skin with intense cell-boosting light (red light), without the balancing signals from the rest of the sun’s light, caused my fair skin to overreact?

The sun gives us both the “gas pedal” and the “brakes” in perfect balance. An LED panel might just be like pushing only the gas pedal.

The Missing Piece: Light Through Our Eyes

Also, focusing only on shining LEDs on our skin misses one of the most important ways sunlight controls our health: through our eyes.

We are creatures of the day. Our bodies are designed to be awake when the sun is out and asleep when it’s dark. This isn’t just a choice; it’s built into our bodies.

Light that enters your eyes isn’t just for seeing. Special cells in your eye send signals directly to your brain. This part of your brain is like your body’s master clock. It controls when you get a burst of energy (cortisol) to wake up, when you make melatonin to help you sleep, how you digest food, your hormones, and how your body repairs itself.

You can’t really control this master clock by shining a red light panel on your stomach. You control it by looking at the changing light of the sun throughout the day.

My “Counter-Narrative” Plan: How to Use the Sun Naturally

So, if the LED panel isn’t the amazing cure-all it claims to be, what’s the better way? The better way is to get back in sync with the sun’s natural cycles.

You might have heard the term “sun gazing.” This often makes people worried because they imagine staring at the super bright midday sun. After all those years of your mother saying, “Don’t look at the sun, or you’ll go blind!”

That’s not what we’re talking about. You should never stare directly at the bright, high sun for a length of time. It can hurt your eyes.

However, old traditions and modern scientists who study our body clocks all agree that looking at the sun when it’s low in the sky is incredibly powerful. Also, tilt your whole face to the sun, and close your eyes.

Here’s a simple, three-part plan based on the sun’s natural cycles, not on gadgets.

1. The Morning Reset (Sunrise)

The most important light of the day is the very first light.

When the sun is rising – that beautiful golden, orange, and red light low on the horizon – it has almost no UV light. But it is full of natural red and near-infrared light, which are the exact kinds of light those LED panels try to copy.

The Plan: Get outside as close to sunrise as possible. Don’t look through a window (glass blocks important light). Don’t wear sunglasses. Just go outside and look towards the eastern sky. You don’t have to stare right at the sun if it’s too bright, just look at the light in the sky.

How Long: 5 to 10 minutes is usually enough. If it’s a cloudy day, and you have time, 20 minutes.

This morning light tells your body’s master clock that the day has begun. It helps your body release a healthy amount of energy (cortisol) and starts the countdown for when your body will release melatonin to help you sleep later (about 12–14 hours later). This is one of the best things you can do for anxiety and sleep!

2. Midday Vitamin D (When the Sun is Highest)

If you want to make Vitamin D (which is what I call the complex of secosteroid hormones, but you know it as Vitamin D because it was named that long ago), you need UVB light.

This light can only get through our atmosphere when the sun is high in the sky – usually between 10 AM and 2 PM during the summer.

The Plan: Expose as much skin as you can without sunscreen.

How Long: This is different for everyone, depending on your skin color. Very pale skin makes Vitamin D much faster than darker skin. The goal is to get just enough sun so that your skin turns slightly pink a few hours later – this is called a “sub-erythemal dose.” For some people, that’s 10 minutes; for others, it might be 30 minutes or more. You don’t want to burn, where your skin hurts, and it’s a medium or dark pink. Burning is when the sun actually causes damage. “Too much of a good thing.”

3. The Evening Wind-Down (Sunset)

Just like sunrise helps you wake up, sunset helps you wind down. The light changes back to those deep reds and oranges. Looking at this light low on the horizon tells your brain to lower your energy hormones and get ready to make melatonin for sleep.

The Plan: Go outside around sunset. Again, no sunglasses, no windows. Just watch the sky change for 10–15 minutes.

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