Tuesday, November 5, 2024

These Red Light Therapy Devices Aim to Improve Your Skin, Hair, and Body. But Are They Worth It?

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If you visited Dr. Joel Kahn’s Detroit home around nine p.m., he might answer the door wearing a red-light helmet. Kahn, a cardiologist practicing longevity medicine, is one of a growing number of people using such hair-growth-stimulating headgear and wears his every night before bed. “There’s pretty good data for it, and a lot of people are gravitating that way right now,” he says. 

Doctors have long used various forms of light to improve sleep disturbances, depression, and other conditions. But recent studies have focused on “a more specific wavelength, in the 600nm to 700nm range of red light, which is perhaps deeper than just the general white-light sort of [treatment],” says Dr. Samuel Lin, a Boston-based plastic surgeon and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. What those studies have discovered is that this light, applied correctly, can increase local blood flow while also supercharging the performance of mitochondria, our cells’ power plants. The result? Certain doses have been found to improve fine lines and wrinkles in skin, ease creaky knees, and speed up wound healing. One 2016 report even suggested that exposure to red light before lifting weights can help you build stronger muscles. 

No surprise, then, that there has been an explosion of red-light-therapy devices using lasers and light-emitting diodes to purportedly improve the way we look, feel, and function. And while the best models are built on legitimate science—and come with reassuring FDA clearances—every physician who spoke with Robb Report for this story cautioned that they’re best used to enhance the effects of good lifestyle choices, not replace them. “My 70-plus-year-old mother, who looks amazing, is not going to turn her skin back to how she looked when she was 20 with one of these devices,” says Dr. Morgan Rabach, a dermatologist in N.Y.C. “But I think it’s a good additive treatment to all the other things that we know help the skin look healthy.” 

One caveat: “You have to be very consistent with these devices,” says Dr. Ross Kopelman, a hair-transplant specialist who splits time between New York and Palm Beach. To see results, “once you start, you can’t stop.” Here, a guide to the most cutting-edge examples on the market. 

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