The Surprising Science Behind Red-Light Therapy — and How it Really Works
Abstract
People are buying helmets, face masks, vests and beds that emit long-wavelength light. Beneath the hype, there is some interesting biology.
In 2021, dermatologist David Ozog was on holiday with his family in the Bahamas, when his 18-year-old son had a massive stroke. The teenager was airlifted to Florida, and then to Chicago for surgery. As his son was lying partially paralysed in a hospital bed, Ozog got a call from a colleague who had an unconventional suggestion.
The colleague, a dermatologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, told Ozog about research he was conducting with the US Department of Defense. Early results hinted that red and near-infrared light applied to the head might protect neural tissue after brain injury. He urged Ozog to consider trying it on his son.
Ozog stayed up until 4 a.m. that night reading scientific papers and, ultimately, ordering several panels made of red and near-infrared light-emitting diodes (LEDs). “I started sneaking them into the hospital,” says Ozog, who works at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Michigan.
Today, his son is walking and back in university. Ozog cannot prove that light therapy made a difference, but he thinks that it helped. He has since become a convert to an idea that, at the time, was considered fringe. “I thought the same thing,” he says, “How could shining this thing on you possibly have any biologic effect?”
