white paper

Light-seeking algae gave us a switch for nerve cells

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Abstract

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 is awarded for optogenetics — a method that makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, feelings and behaviours in the living brain. Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel discovered a remarkable protein, channelrhodopsin, in a single-celled alga. Karl Deisseroth transformed the protein into a light-controlled switch for nerve cells. The Laureates have laid the foundation of a new era in neuroscience.

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white paper

Can red-light therapy treat brain injuries? Some research shows ‘striking’ results

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Abstract

Larry Carr and his wife, Laurie, got into a terrible fight. It was 2010. He remembers that he yelled and yelled. She left, trying to gather her own emotions. Alone with his thoughts, Carr felt he had reached a bottomless abyss.

“Broken,” he says.

No one understood what was happening to him. Out of nowhere, he’d explode in anger. Paranoia and depression hounded him. Laurie tried to tiptoe around his emotions, unsure what might trigger an outburst. He didn’t resemble the man who had been her high school sweetheart — even-keeled, playful. Logical. He held a Ph.D. in physiology/exercise physiology. He had been a star middle linebacker for BYU’s football team in the 1970s, still holding the record for tackles per game over a career.

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white paper

Former BYU, NFL greats have their brains examined, results positive

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Abstract

To the growing list of former football players who have participated in a clinical trial testing the viability of photobiomodulation, or infrared light treatment, to enhance brain health, add the names of Tom Holmoe, the recently retired BYU athletic director who played at BYU and won three Super Bowl rings playing for the San Francisco 49ers, and Jim Herrmann, who anchored BYU’s defensive line when the school won the national championship in 1984 and then spent time in the NFL.

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white paper

The Surprising Science Behind Red-Light Therapy — and How it Really Works

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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?”

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LindellTV

110 Million Patients. Zero Documented Side Effects.

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white paper

Red Light Therapy Might Protect Football Players From Brain Damage

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Abstract

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.

Read More on healthday.com or download the PDF.