WEDNESDAY, Jan. 28, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Red light therapy might be able to protect football players from brain damage caused by frequent head impacts, a new small-scale study says.

College football players treated with red light therapy over the course of a season wound up with much less brain inflammation than others provided a placebo treatment, researchers recently reported in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

In fact, the study found that the group receiving red light therapy appeared protected from inflammation throughout almost all the regions of the brain.

“My first reaction was, ‘There’s no way this can be real,’ ” lead investigator Hannah Lindsey, a research associate in neurology at University of Utah Health, said in a news release. “That’s how striking it was.”

Red light therapy involves exposing a person to powerful near-infrared light, researchers said in background notes.

The therapy is thought to activate mitochondria, the “power plant” within the body’s cells, thus stimulating cells to work more efficiently.

Forget reducing wrinkles and fighting hair loss.

A new study suggests a unique form of a treatment already popular in the US for skin health, pain relief and faster healing may also offer a surprising benefit: Protecting football players’ brains from chronic inflammation caused by repeated blows to the head.

“I would call it incredibly groundbreaking,” Dr. Shae Datta, co-director of the NYU Langone Concussion Center, who was not involved in the research, told The Post.

While it hasn’t been put to the test yet, experts hope red light therapy may one day offer a valuable tool in the fight against the deadly brain disease known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE.

The degenerative brain disease is caused by repeated head injuries and is most common in contact sports athletes like football players and boxers, as well as soldiers in war zones.

It can lead to a wide range of symptoms, including confusion, memory loss, emotional instability, aggression and, eventually, trouble walking, speaking, swallowing and even breathing. There’s no cure, and doctors don’t know how to slow its progression.

Right now, the only real way to prevent CTE is to avoid repeated brain injuries by wearing helmets and reducing hits to the head.

But with more than 100 former NFL players diagnosed with CTE after death and countless others likely affected, experts say additional tools are needed.

“We don’t have enough information to say that using this could prevent CTE,” Datta said. “But we can say it’s a potential use for it if it’s bringing down neuroinflammation, because that’s what’s causing the long term effects.”

As an increasingly popular longevity tool, red-light therapy is said to help improve skin and hair health, enhance cellular vitality, and reverse the signs of aging. While there is evidence to support the claims of red-light therapy, studies are limited. To discover best practice when it comes to red-light therapy and how to make it work into our everyday lives, we asked the experts to share insight into its effectiveness.