RLT and Sleep Quality
In a noteworthy randomised controlled trial, the impact of red light therapy on sleep quality and athletic performance was put to the test with Chinese female basketball players. This study, conducted within a cohort of 20 elite athletes from the Chinese People's Liberation Army team, provided compelling evidence on the efficacy of red light therapy as a recovery and performance-enhancement tool.
For a fortnight, half of the participants underwent a 30-minute session of red light therapy each night, while the other half, the placebo group, did not receive any light exposure. The outcomes were remarkable—those who received the red light treatment showed significant improvements in their sleep quality, a surge in serum melatonin levels, and an increase in endurance performance, as gauged by a 12-minute run test. The improvements were quantified using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, which displayed a strong inverse correlation with serum melatonin levels, indicating that as melatonin increased, sleep quality scores also improved.
The implications of these results are profound, suggesting that red light therapy could serve as an effective non-pharmacological and non-invasive intervention to enhance sleep and athletic performance. The findings align with the growing interest in the use of light therapy for athletic recovery and highlight the potential for red light therapy to aid in the prevention of sleep disorders following intensive physical training.
This study adds to the body of literature that recognizes the therapeutic benefits of red light therapy and opens up new avenues for its application in sports and clinical settings. As research progresses, red light therapy could become a standard component of athlete recovery protocols, offering a science-backed approach to improving sleep and performance without the need for medication.
Source: Red light and the sleep quality and endurance performance of Chinese female basketball players
NASA Research Illuminates Medical Uses of Light with US Navy Seals study
Red Light LED devices were given to U.S. Navy crews for treatment of training injuries. These produced more than a 40 percent greater improvement in musculoskeletal injuries and a 50 percent faster healing time for lacerations, compared to control groups.
Experimentation helped demystify, legitimize, and simplify medical uses for long-known but little-understood light therapy
Can light help a wound heal faster? Alleviate pain? Prevent loss of eyesight?
Although decades of studies indicate it can – including extensive research funded by NASA – the mounting evidence hasn’t always drawn the attention that might be expected for such a striking discovery.
This may be because the science behind it hasn’t been well understood. For example, although a Danish physician received a Nobel Prize in 1903 for discovering that exposure to concentrated red light accelerated the healing of sores, he remained reluctant to put it into practice without understanding why it worked.
A larger barrier to acceptance, though, has probably been that it simply sounds unbelievable.
In a 1989 paper about the health benefits of low-powered laser light, biophysicist Tiina Karu noted that the treatment appeared “highly incredible and even mysterious.” What’s more, she wrote, its effectiveness against many different ailments only added to doubts by creating the appearance of a proverbial snake-oil panacea.
Karu hypothesized that red light treated many afflictions because it improved overall cell function by stimulating the mitochondria that drive metabolism in animal cells. This would accelerate cell production and relieve oxidative stress, a factor that causes inflammation and symptoms of aging and ultimately contributes to diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and other illnesses.
Today it’s thought that red and infrared wavelengths are absorbed by cytochrome C oxidase, a key enzyme in cellular metabolism, and probably by other light-sensitive chemicals, triggering a cascade of effects within the cell.
Karu and others began to suspect that “uniform” laser light probably wasn’t necessary for producing beneficial effects, but it was NASA that finally answered that question after the space agency stumbled on it accidentally.
A Controlled Trial to Determine the Efficacy of Red and Near-Infrared Light Treatment
In a German study conducted in 2014, the authors conducted a study on the effects of Red Light Therapy. A total of 136 volunteers participated in this randomised, and controlled study. Of these volunteers, 113 subjects were randomly assigned into four treatment groups were treated twice a week with either 611–650 or 570–850 nm polychromatic light and were compared with a control group (n=23). The purpose of this study was to investigate the safety and efficacy of two novel light sources for large area and full body application. The title of the paper was “A Controlled Trial to Determine the Efficacy of Red and Near-Infrared Light Treatment in Patient Satisfaction, Reduction of Fine Lines, Wrinkles, Skin Roughness, and Intradermal Collagen Density Increase” and you can see the results after just 30 days in the images below.
I’ve provided a link below with the research paper in case you wish to read the full article.