Episode 92: Red Light Therapy for Pain Relief: Does It Actually Work or Is It Overhyped?

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• Joe Gambino
• Joe LaVacca

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Summary

In this episode of the Beyond Pain podcast, hosts Joe Gambino and Joe LaVacca discuss the topic of red light therapy, exploring its potential benefits, safety, and the subjective experiences of individuals using it. 

They emphasize the importance of foundational health practices such as sleep, nutrition, and exercise while considering the role of red light therapy as a supplementary recovery tool. 

The conversation also touches on the significance of personal experiences in evaluating the effectiveness of various recovery modalities and the importance of focusing on the process of health rather than just outcomes.


Takeaways

• Red light therapy may provide subjective benefits for some individuals.
• Safety is a primary concern when considering any therapy.
• Mitochondrial function plays a crucial role in recovery.
• Personal experiences can vary widely with recovery modalities.
• It's essential to focus on foundational health practices first.
• The effectiveness of red light therapy is still debated in research.
• Contextual factors influence the success of recovery protocols.
• Investing in recovery treatments can lead to higher expectations of results.
• The process of health improvement is more important than just outcomes.
• Consistency and enjoyment in recovery practices are key to long-term success.

Transcript

Joe Gambino (00:00)
Welcome back to the Beyond Pain podcast. I am one of your hosts, Joe Gambino. I'm here with our other host. All the ways out in Hilton Head today, Mr. Mr. Doctor, Joe LaVacca You can find us both on Instagram at Joe Gambino DPT for myself at strength and motion underscore PT for LaVacca over there. Podcast also on Instagram Beyond Pain podcast. And you can always find this and watch this live on YouTube at cups of Joe underscore PT. Welcome back in.

Joe LaVacca (00:11)
That works.

Nailed it. Yes, I am in Hilton head right now. Courtney is leading her gate happens work summit. She has a ⁓ group of people here who are really, really wonderful. So being the only person who does not work for the company, I was still able to come to the podcast, but they have made me feel very welcome with the exception of not ordering me a bicycle. ⁓ and that was just this morning.

Joe Gambino (00:53)
Hahaha.

Joe LaVacca (00:56)
walked with the group of 12 or 15 of us, all holding hands. It's really great to be here. We get to the bike shop and they were like, we only have 12 bikes. We needed 13. We forgot to order you one. So then I walked home alone with my thoughts on the beach, wondering if they really even wanted me here. But I knew, I knew come 10 o'clock, I was going to have you, I was going to have our listeners and they want me here.

Joe Gambino (01:25)
Mm-hmm,

Joe LaVacca (01:26)
So that's

Joe Gambino (01:26)
there you go.

Joe LaVacca (01:27)
what pulled me through the day.

Joe Gambino (01:29)
I mean, also a nice little, little stroll on the beach sounds quite fantastic, Joe. So.

Joe LaVacca (01:34)
It was, it was a good way to start the day. And I wondered why I didn't do it more. And I realized it because I live in a two bedroom apartment in the middle of New York and that's not going to be conducive to the bank account to change that right now. So that's why I don't do it a little bit more. But for the people who do do it, I can see the appeal. I can really see the appeal.

Joe Gambino (01:36)
Yeah.

That's very nice.

It's a life goal over here, No longer have to drive three hours to the beach is something that we like.

Joe LaVacca (01:58)
Yeah, for

sure, for sure. So what's going on in the world of the Gambino's? Anything fun, exciting this week or weekend?

Joe Gambino (02:12)
No, it's pretty status quo. We're going to be warm weather here. We've been, we've had like some eighties. We've had a little dip. We're going to be back up in the eighties and nineties. So it's just, just enjoy the weather, play some golf, hang with the fam. Nothing, nothing crazy waiting for you to come back and visit. You know, that's the last thing missing, man.

Joe LaVacca (02:24)
There we go. There

Yeah, I know, I know. will, we definitely have to get together and do some little extra projects and release them to the world for sure. So I am looking forward to that as well. But what do we got on store today? I think there was a question of the day.

Joe Gambino (02:46)
Yes,

yes, I have a question of the day for you today. This actually popped up with a conversation with one of my clients. He's been working with them for a while. He told me that he started doing some red light therapy. He says that has been very helpful. He says he's not sure you know, which way the research goes. And I told him pretty much like, I don't really care what the research says, because it's you're saying that it's helpful. And that's really at end of the day, the only thing that matters here. But

Joe LaVacca (03:07)
Yeah.

Joe Gambino (03:15)
I was telling them, was like, listen, I know this guy, he's a pretty good guy. He did some, he's done some research with some red light therapy. I'll chat with him on the podcast. I'll see where the research is at. And then I'll send that episode your way so you can, you can get a little bit more information. the question of the day is your experience, the research that you've done. Give us the down low is red light therapy worth it? Is it something we shouldn't be doing? Obviously.

I think we have our low-hanging fruit of sleep and food and hydration and those things, but if those things are covered and someone wants a little bit more, should they look towards red light therapy.

Joe LaVacca (03:54)
Yeah, I think obviously we've said this over and over again. Your low hanging fruit, your big buckets are your exercise, your sleep, your social environment. We don't have to get into all that again right now. The smaller pieces of the pie. I sort of equate to a roulette board. When you are at a roulette table, sure, there is a chance that your ball will land on any single

space. But when we look at that roulette board in the way that we're describing it with the bigger pieces being sleep and diet and exercise and relationships and blah, blah, you have to realize that the other parts of the board become a lot smaller in terms of their overall effectiveness or probably bang for their buck, at least the way that I see it. So the first question I always ponder

with red light therapy or anything else, is it safe? Is it going to be something that could potentially harm you? And the answer is no. Short of you cranking up your red light machine to 11, falling asleep maybe with the panel wrap, whatever you're using, like directly on your skin and then keeping it there for hours at a time.

you're probably not going to risk any harm whatsoever to your skin. Occasionally, if people do do that, I've heard of people falling asleep with it and then their skin getting a little bit irritated or blister or whatever. So please don't do that, but don't do that with ice or don't do that with heat. That just goes without saying. Secondly, we got to kind of think about mechanism. What is this proposing to do?

Joe Gambino (05:37)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (05:48)
And just like exercise, the idea of the red light and the heat from the red light, if you have kind of both, most of the time now they're both, it's providing a stress to the cellular environment, promoting repair and recovery. What did we say before? What's going to promote the most repair recovery? The big pieces of our roulette board, right? Taking care of that first and foremost.

The research I've read, and I haven't dove into it a lot over the last couple of years, but the research I was reading at the time was not very impressive. ⁓ There was a lot of issues with the methods. There was a lot of issues with control. There was a lot of issues with bias. So when you have a product and you're studying that product, there's obviously incentive for you to build outcomes or build a research

platform design that's going to let you sell more product, right? Like that's the whole like sort of like crux of this. I believe that it is safe. I believe that if you are going to try it, you don't need a super expensive elaborate machine. The cheaper ones will work just as effectively as the more expensive ones. And

Joe Gambino (06:53)
Hmm.

Joe LaVacca (07:17)
Again, when we're thinking of spectrum of light, the red light supposedly goes and penetrates a little bit deeper into the wavelength of our body. So that's why people pulled out the red light wave because of its absorption capacity. But white light also has red light in it. It has blue light and green light and all the lights because

Joe Gambino (07:34)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (07:46)
White light is the entire spectrum of the rainbow coming together. So if you just go outside, you are getting red light. So you can just stand outside for 10 or 15 minutes. That might be harder, especially in the winter for some New Yorkers bundled up. So can there be maybe some more efficacy for your red light protocols when you're not outside a ton? Yeah, maybe, sure. ⁓

Joe Gambino (07:48)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (08:14)
Bright light protocols, you probably can get bright light waves and find that you get very similar benefits, if not the same benefit. And then I think at the end of the day, in terms of suggesting it to people, I wanna know where they're gonna fit it in. I wanna know what they're willing to spend, and I wanna know what their sort of anticipated outcome with it is. Most people are gonna try to use it to find relief.

⁓ with pain. So if you just sit still for 15 or 20 minutes and you apply a nice low grade heat and the idea that I'm helping cells repair or my tendon heal, I think there are a lot of contextual factors that go into the red light application. And would you have had the same benefit if you just sat still meditated for 20 minutes? I think you'd have probably comparable benefits. Sure. Absolutely.

Joe Gambino (09:09)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (09:14)
Do I think it's over hyped in the sense of all the things that it can treat? And that's, think, a little bit of a flag for me when you see companies saying that red light will help your brain, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, tendonitis, chronic pain, acute pain, irritable bowels, ⁓ stomach pain, eye pain. It's like, whoa, why didn't we figure this out a lot sooner? Right. ⁓

Joe Gambino (09:36)
Yeah.

Joe LaVacca (09:39)
And then the sort of all the thing is like, we have like sunlight and this is why like plants survive and we survive. Like we can't survive without light, right? Okay. The last like little point I'll make is even if you kind of have a lot of this like research to back it up, I'm going to kind of quote Eric Mehta here and use the term, I don't know if we've ever talked about this, tooth fairy science.

Have you heard of tooth fairy science, Joe?

Joe Gambino (10:08)
Hmm.

I have not heard the term specifically but I'm assuming it has to do with placebo.

Joe LaVacca (10:17)
or what can actually be proven, right? Because if you do a study of kids between the ages of five and I don't know, eight, five and 10, right? When they're losing their teeth and they're putting their teeth under their pillow, you could ask them, hey, what did the tooth fairy leave you? And they would tell you.

Joe Gambino (10:21)
Uh-huh.

Joe LaVacca (10:43)
the tooth fairy left me $3 or $5 or $10 or whatever. And then you can dice this out and be like, okay, well, does the tooth fairy leave more money for five year olds? Does the tooth fairy leave more money for first teeth? Does the tooth fairy leave more money if you're on the first floor of an apartment or a second floor of an apartment? Does the tooth fairy leave more money based on your neighborhood? And you come up with all this data? What's the problem? There's no such thing as the fucking tooth fairy. So you can still have data on something that literally

Joe Gambino (11:09)
Hehehehe

Joe LaVacca (11:13)
doesn't exist or work or has no mechanism behind it. And to me, that's sort of what red light feels, right? If it's just a wavelength and we would get that wavelength from the sun or white light, right? Then why would I need to just isolate red when I can get green and blue and all the other colors on the spectrum? So what was your client hoping, searching, trying to use it for?

Joe Gambino (11:21)
Mm-hmm.

that's a, I'm trying to remember our conversation. ⁓ I think it was just a recovery tool. Like he does all the things already. Like I think he was saying he was like, could maybe use like, was like a, a season of just like a little less sleep and things were a little bit more crazy, but like, it was just like a recovery tool for him on top of like, he already works with me and another trainer and he's very active and he's, know, he's lived a very active life and, you know, he's in his, he's out of like,

just turned 70 or in his seventies, right? like, you know, and to me that that's fine. And he's, he's said since he started it, it's been a proposed benefit. But I think part of the thing for him was he he's had some major, bigger injuries in the past, some surgeries that have this like changed his, you know, body in a sense, like he doesn't have full extension on one elbow, his hips, you know, like his.

His hips will sit a little bit unevenly. I think one of his legs is actually physically shorter because of the surgery. So those areas get treated up from time to time. So I think for him, it was also just like, how do I recover? How do I help with some of the pain a little bit? But he's also doing all the other really good things. So is it really just like, that stuff just recover pretty quickly because of all the things that he's doing? Is it because of the red light therapy? I don't know. I mean, he says he's been noticing an effect, so I'm not gonna tell him to stop as a result of it.

And he has it in his house, like it's very easy for him to do low hanging fruit as far as like not hard for him to fit it in. So he's also doing other things like he started meditating. like there's I think there's a number of factors, right. To your point.

Joe LaVacca (13:24)
Totally, totally. And look, and like you said, I think that's the ultimate thing here too is if you are finding subjective benefit, I don't need to prove that or disprove that objectively. I'm going to rely on your report. Okay. I'm going to validate your experience. And to your point too, if it's super easy for you to do, if you can afford it, then why stop, right? I would never have you do that. It doesn't make any sense, but it's sort of like,

Joe Gambino (13:35)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Joe LaVacca (13:53)
the peptide conversation that's happening out there in the world, right? Is that certain people will get a peptide or go for red light therapy and come out. It has worked miracles. I feel so much better. I can't believe I didn't do this before. I'm going to keep getting my peptide therapy. I'm going to keep going to red light. And then some people come out and they're like, I felt literally no difference whatsoever.

Joe Gambino (13:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

You're right.

Joe LaVacca (14:20)
And I would probably say it's closer to like a 70, 30, 80, 20 kind of split on the people who are just like 80 % of the time they're like, I don't even know what happened just now. And yeah, again, maybe 20 % of the time they're like, okay, think I feel a little bit better or maybe I just hope I feel a little bit better or maybe I want to feel a little bit better. And I read a while ago in a book called Cure that the more expensive or elaborate

Joe Gambino (14:32)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (14:50)
the treatment, the better the subjective outcomes associated with that treatment. And that makes sense, right? You're investing a lot more, you want it to work, you maybe need it to work at that point. But if that's all we're relying on, then that's where we really want to try to steer people into this idea of like, all right, the red light or this therapy we'll go back to is trying to help your mitochondrial function, right?

Joe Gambino (14:51)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (15:20)
⁓ So, mitochondria, this is my favorite thing because everyone remembers what mitochondria is. Joe, what's mitochondria? What is it?

Joe Gambino (15:28)
Yes, it is the

powerhouse of the cell,

Joe LaVacca (15:32)
I mean, if there was a fact as sticky as if every fact was as sticky as that, I mean, can you about like, it doesn't matter what you do. And if in your listing, like what your background is? Yeah.

Joe Gambino (15:42)
That person belonged to marketing, not just labeling,

not just putting stuff in a textbook, you know.

Joe LaVacca (15:47)
100%. Everyone in their cars or at home was like, I know this. It's the powerhouse of the cell and I'm an accountant. It's like, yeah, of course you do. So the powerhouse of the cell is kind of the target, right? But the thing that's going to really help us is mitochondrial density, right? So the amount of mitochondria that we have. even if I got my mitochondria that I currently have to function a little bit better, it's not

Joe Gambino (15:49)
You

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (16:16)
the same as me adding more into my body through aerobic exercise ⁓ and that sort of a stimulus, right? So if I have shit mitochondria, it's probably because my lifestyle's also shit and I probably have bigger things to work on than trying to jump start my mitochondria with red light over aerobic training or base training and things like that, right?

Joe Gambino (16:23)
Mm-hmm, right.

Sure. ⁓

Joe LaVacca (16:45)
So I think that's probably, again, like the contextual stuff of everything we do. I would say the same for exercise. I would say the same for manual therapy. We know there are contextual factors. We just don't know what necessarily those contextual factors are, I think, for person to person in terms of who's going to respond. So if it's safe, if it's affordable, if it's convenient, ⁓ if you're aware of

Joe Gambino (17:03)
Hmm.

Joe LaVacca (17:13)
accepting the outcome either way, then you can try whatever you want. But just realize that we're spinning the roulette wheel and we're trying to let that ball land on an edge and that edge is going to get harder and harder to hit. And the more times you spin, you're not going to have any extra likelihood of success. It's always going to be the same thing. So if you didn't get your benefit after the first 10 red light sessions, it ain't coming on the 20th.

Joe Gambino (17:22)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (17:41)
All right. It ain't coming on the 18th. All right. It ain't coming, you know, three months from now it's done. Like you, you had a 1 % chance of it working. Great. You tried it. Move on. If you get it to land on the edge and you're lucky, cool. Use it as long as you want to, as long as you need to. But again, don't stick with it just to stick with it. And I think that we could probably say that for a lot of these recovery protocols now, you know,

Joe Gambino (17:52)
Mm-hmm.

You sure?

Joe LaVacca (18:08)
Why are you doing it? Is it just to do it? Or do you actually have some sort of process that you're hoping is going to help?

Joe Gambino (18:17)
Yeah, I agree. think that was all all very well said. I mean, I wasn't very much into the research. So I was like, I don't know the research. So I don't really have an opinion on it. ⁓ But I think that this is the conversation for all recovery modalities. You can probably poke a lot of holes in all of them. ⁓ People will tell you some people will swear by them. Some people will say they did nothing for them. And you know, that's everyone's going to be different. So

I think in a nutshell, I don't think people need to shy away from these things. think it matters like again, right? Is it safe? Is it something that you are willing to spend your money on? And you know, I think you people should realize that for a lot of these things, it's not going to take months and months and months and months to like notice like at least some benefit towards it. And if you're not noticing the benefits, then should you want to continue doing it? That's probably the main reason why someone should do is because they want it. They like it.

it's something enjoyable to them, maybe it helps them relax a little bit. Those are probably more of the bigger things that they can offer than anything else. If someone really likes the cold and they feel energized and they have energy for half the day because they did a cold plunge, then go do it. It doesn't matter what the research shows because you enjoy it and you're seeing benefit from it and go for it. I think that should be the lens I think people use recovery for, dabble in it. You can try it for a while.

Joe LaVacca (19:42)
Totally.

Joe Gambino (19:43)
See if it helps you and if it doesn't then move on to something else, but always have your focus on the exercise component, moving more, eating better, staying hydrated, sleeping. I think that those things get overlooked and you go for the shiny object and like, ⁓ look at this peptides are here. Relight therapy is here. Cold therapy is here. I can use heat or ice or I can go get a tinge unit and do some stim.

You can get distracted by some things and as we know even from like we talked about with manual therapy, we talk about with these any sort of benefits, especially from a pain perspective where if you feel less tight, like those are going to be short term benefits that we still need to load those tissues and move those tissues in order to create like actual adaptations that we want from like a physical movement perspective. So if the goal is always like, how do I move better and feel better and keep up my kids?

hits and flares in the gym and go out and play golf and enjoy without feeling pain afterwards, right? Like you need to be able to move yourself in that direction. And I don't know, I mean, it's my bias. I've been doing personal training and strength and conditioning and physical therapy for a long time and movement is the answer, but it also seems to be the thing that research and experience and all that stuff constantly comes back to that says, hey, this is going to help.

Joe LaVacca (21:08)
Yeah. And I think that's beautifully said, man. And it just, again, reminds me of being process-based versus outcome-based. If you're looking at all this stuff to be pain-free, that's an end result. So the dichotomy just becomes, yes, no. Right. and then I'm searching for the next shiny thing that's going to make me either pain-free or not pain-free. Whereas the process of becoming pain-free is a lot more involved and a lot more in your control. And.

Joe Gambino (21:36)
⁓ Sure.

Joe LaVacca (21:38)
You can control your sets and reps. can control all that stuff. You can do your red light. You can drink more water. You can do this. But you're doing that because you want to be healthier. Like that's your process, right? And I don't know if you skipped your fish oil one day, if you skipped your multivitamin one day, do you feel a difference? I mean, if you skipped your creatine scoop, did you feel a difference on one day? Probably not. So why do you keep doing them? Well, they're just part of my process of staying healthy. I don't know if they're giving me an advantage, but

it seems like there's more evidence to back this and this and this up. And I know I struggle with, ⁓ tendon issues or connective tissue issues. So that's why I take my collagen supplement. Maybe it gives me a slight thing, but you know, there's a, there's a rhyme and a reason to it. Right. And I think that's the most important thing. Like when you supplement, ⁓ take things that make sense. Right. I know that I don't get probably

Joe Gambino (22:25)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Joe LaVacca (22:35)
a well-rounded vitamin mineral every single day. So I don't mind taking one multivitamin a day. Just so I know, okay, I got my vitamin Bs and As and Cs and Ds and whatever, cool, I'm covered. Like I don't care if I pee it out. I don't care if I don't absorb it. I'm like, hey, well, if there was a little deficit, these Flintstone multivitamins only cost me like $8. They last for the month, pop Fred into my mouth and then we're gone. Like we're good to go. ⁓

Joe Gambino (22:44)
Right.

bit.

Nostalgia too, you know,

that's that that's really what gets you Joe

Joe LaVacca (23:06)
Exactly.

So yeah, Matt, think that that sort of like, I don't typically recommend like peptides or red light therapy to people. But I do give them the spiel that I just laid out right now. And I allow them to make their own decision. And I think just in closing, what I would say is to anyone listening or your client, whatever decision they make, I'm going to support you. I'm not going to be like, Oh, well, you shouldn't have done this or what a waste of time.

I'm going to support you. And if you do make the time for a red light therapy for 15 or 20 minutes a day, you're telling me you have more time to do more things. And I think that's what we can probably take advantage of too and say, Hey, well, if you carved out this time, you can probably carve out time elsewhere.

Joe Gambino (23:43)
Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Yeah, no, I think that's well said. I think, you know, I guess one thing that we can't stop talking about on this podcast is goals and is it sustainably moving you towards your goals, right? At the end of the day, it's the only thing that matters. It doesn't matter what you pick, what you choose, as long as you enjoy it, can continue doing it, stay consistent, and actually move towards the things that you want to accomplish. That's all that matters at end of the day.

Joe LaVacca (24:17)
Amen.

Joe Gambino (24:18)
⁓ All right. I got no other thoughts for you. No other questions for you. Well, I do have another question, but we'll save it for another episode.

Joe LaVacca (24:22)
Okay.

All right, sounds good. Joe,

thank you for your question. love you. Listeners, we love you. And thank you for tuning into another episode of the Beyond Paid podcast. And don't forget to come back next week. We'll be waiting for you.