How 3 Minutes of Red Light Therapy a Week Can Improve Your Eyesight ✨ Ep. 62

Can red light therapy actually improve your eyesight? Every time I post about my red light mask, I get tons of comments telling me to close my eyes. And I totally understand! It’s unexpected to see someone with their eyes open during the treatment. But stick with me…

I actually learned about red light therapy for improved eyesight when my naturopath told me she needed a new prescription. I assumed her eyesight was getting worse! Because trust me, I know what it’s like to see that 20 20 vision suddenly turn into blurry ingredient lists. But she surprised me by saying it had improved! And of course, that sent me down a whole research rabbit hole. 

So whether you’ve always struggled with poor eyesight or you’re like me and your eyesight has worsened over time, the research in today’s episode may interest you! Tune into episode 36 for the full rundown on how red light therapy can improve your thyroid function. But today, it’s all about our eye sight! 

Studies actually go back to 2000 showing the benefits of red light therapy for things like glaucoma, retinopathy, and even lazy eye.

MY FAVORITE RED LIGHTS:

Get 40% off the LUMEBOX handheld red light
Get 15% off the BonCharge Red Light panels w/ code WENDYKATHRYN

In this episode, we’re chatting about: 

• The 2021 study that showcases the benefits of 3 minutes of exposure to red lights in the morning
• Why doing red light therapy in the morning vs. any other time of day is so important
• What is ATP and what happens when it declines at the age of 40? 

If you enjoyed this weeks' episode, please:

• Leave a a positive review or rating wherever you listen
• Shop toxin free products on my Toxin Free Shopping Guide
• Download your free Tossing the Toxins Guide
• Post a screenshot and what you loved and and tag me on instagram @wendy_toxinfreeish
• Want to ask me a question to get answered on the podcast? Leave me a voice message here.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

The red light therapy is gaining popularity and more and more people are bringing red lights into their home and using them for anything from smoothing wrinkles and fine lines, improving collagen production, reducing pain and inflammation and even speeding up healing. I have personally been using red light therapy to improve my thyroid function with incredible results. But one trend is getting mixed reviews, and that's because, rather than keeping their eyes closed, many people are finding that opening their eyes for a quick three-minute session in the morning is helping, not hurting, their eyesight. While most people wear goggles or are still closing their eyes during a red light session, more and more research is showing that something as simple as a three-minute red light session on your eyes once a week in the morning can significantly improve eyesight. So if you're somebody who's wondering if this trend could benefit you, this episode will take a quick look at the latest research and then you can decide for yourself. As always, I'm your host, Wendy, and welcome to the Detox Dilemma Podcast. Let's dig in. This episode is actually brought to you by all of the people who love to comment on my Instagram when they see videos of me using my red light that my eyes should not be open. They should be closed. I should be wearing goggles and all the things, and I know that people are just concerned. But you know, I've been doing this for a year and a half now and the reason why I started doing it was because I have a naturopath who's a friend of mine in Arizona and I was doing a consult with her and she mentioned to me that she was actually going to an appointment because her prescription eyeglasses her prescription had changed and she actually needed to change her prescription, so she was going to get new glasses. And I said, oh, you know, is your eyes, is it getting worse? And she actually needed to change her prescription, so she was going to get new glasses. And I said, oh, is your eyes, is it getting worse? And she said no, it actually improved. And I said what? How did that happen? She said she was doing red light therapy with her eyes open in the morning, and then she shared the research with me and I think my story is probably pretty common.

Speaker 1: 2:04

I hear this a lot and once we hit 40, our eyesight declines and for me that could not have been more true. I have always had 20, 20 vision, perfect vision. I've never had anything wrong with my vision. I can see perfectly far and perfectly near. And three years ago, when I turned 40, I will never forget, it was literally the day that I woke up. I went into my kitchen and I pulled out a supplement that I was taking every morning and I turned it around to look at the label for some reason I think one of my kids had asked me a question and it was blurry. I couldn't believe it. I was like, why can't I see this? This is terrible.

Speaker 1: 2:42

And so over the next year, year and a half after that, it slowly started to get worse. I became that person that would look at their phone and I was like I can't read that. And I slowly made the text a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and I thought, gosh, is this just what I have to look like? Is my eyesight just going to degenerate? And I'm really good about nutritional support for things for eyesight. And when she mentioned to me that red light was something that was being used for therapy, I was all about it. I was already doing red light therapy for my thyroid and if you want to learn all about how red light therapy can improve your thyroid function. Episode 36 goes deep into the research on that topic, but today I want to stick to eyesight.

Speaker 1: 3:30

I think the thing that I found most interesting when I started looking at the data is we actually have data going back to the early 2000s that show things like the benefits of red light therapy for things like age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, even lazy eye. One of the more fascinating studies back from 2010 shows that red light therapy can actually heal and repair optic nerve damage. It can improve dry eye and it can even help heal styes quickly. But the study that I was most intrigued by, and that it was the thing that actually prompted me to start doing these three minute morning sessions, was a study that was done at the end of 2021. And they took some people who were between the ages of 37 and 70, because previous studies have shown that red light to improve eyesight really works the best in an aging population, and I'm going to explain that in a second. They think they know why they took these volunteers and they gave them each a three minute. That's it. Three minutes, that's all it takes. A three minute exposure to deep red light in the morning once per week, just one time, and found that just that one session can improve their vision for up to a week, and they found the most incredible results, the most significant results, the older that a participant was. There were a couple interesting tidbits that came out of this. One is if you do a three-minute session or a 45-minute session, the results are the same, but if you use it for hours, then it doesn't work at all. The other thing is it didn't work if the light therapy was done in the afternoon. It had to be done in the early morning, between the times of eight and nine. Now, whether or not it would work between six and seven, seven or eight, eight and nine, it seemed to be the most important that it was done in the morning.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Researchers say they think it's because the mitochondria that are in your eyes follow your body's circadian rhythm and that makes total sense to me. It's the reason why, you know, I always tell people wake up in the morning first thing, go outside, put light on your eyes. It triggers your body to start all of its daytime functions, creating that serotonin and getting your hormones ready. It just is the way that we are designed to be and they say that's the whole point. See, eyesight declines after the age of 40 and it's linked to a 70% reduction in what they call ATP, and that ATP is what fuels your mitochondria, it's where it gets its energy from, and so when you don't have enough ATP and it is not charging up your mitochondria, then your mitochondria aren't really working optimally anymore. And what they're finding is that red light therapy actually charges up your ATP and then that ATP gives the energy to your mitochondria. See, that mitochondria improvement is the reason why researchers not just from this eye study, but studies done on injury and repair and wound healing and hair regrowth it all leads back to mitochondria function and as we age, that mitochondria start to decline in function.

Speaker 1: 6:39

I'm a huge proponent of red light therapy. I think everybody should have a high quality red light device in their home. It used to be something you could only get at doctor's offices and clinics and chiropractor offices where you had to pay for sessions, but now the prices are reasonable. It's something you can have in your home. You can wake up, you can do a three minute session or, like me, I do two 12 minute or two 20 minute sessions daily, depending on which device I'm using, and it's just part of my normal day, I went ahead and linked my two favorite devices the one that I have downstairs in my gym that is more of a full body red light that I just upgraded to recently, and my loom box, which is the travel device, the small handheld device that I've been using for a very long time, and I have discount codes for both of those in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 7:28

Red light therapy has become such an important part of my healing process. It's just another tool in your toolbox. I'd love to know what you think. Do you use red light? Do you think you could potentially benefit from red light? Hop over to Instagram. Give me a follow at at Wendy underscore toxin free-ish. Ask your questions, let me know, share your stories. I love it when I see listeners pop up in my DMs. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week. Thank you.