Live Long and Well with Dr. Bobby
Let's explore how you can Live Long and Well with six evidence based pillars: exercise, good sleep, proper nutrition, mind-body activities, exposure to heat/cold, and social relationships. I am a physician scientist, Ironman Triathlete, and have a passion for helping others achieve their best self.
Live Long and Well with Dr. Bobby
#31: Red, White, and Blue Light: Healing or Hype?
Take the Health Type Quiz here
Does red light therapy actually work? Can morning sun improve your health? Do blue light blocking glasses really help with sleep? In this episode, Dr. Bobby takes a deep dive into the science behind light therapy—what’s backed by evidence and what’s just hype.
Dr. Bobby shares personal experiences, from childhood eczema treated with sunlight to his daughter’s improved sleep from morning walks, and unpacks the latest research on red, white, and blue light exposure. With thousands of red light therapy devices on the market and endless claims about their benefits, it’s time to separate fact from fiction.
Starting with the strongest evidence, Dr. Bobby explores how light affects skin conditions, depression, and sleep. While white light (and UV) therapy has long been used for conditions like psoriasis and seasonal affective disorder (SAD) 【AAD guidelines】, red light therapy is a mixed bag. Studies suggest it can improve wound healing 【Study】, aid hair regrowth 【RCT Review】, and even reduce wrinkles—but much of the research is small-scale and often funded by device manufacturers.
Deeper effects of red light therapy, such as pain relief for arthritis and fibromyalgia, remain controversial. Some studies show moderate pain reduction 【Meta-analysis on osteoarthritis】, while others suggest a placebo effect. And when it comes to weight loss or cognitive enhancement, the evidence is weak at best.
Finally, Dr. Bobby revisits the hype around blue light blocking glasses. While early studies suggested blue light exposure/protection might affect sleep, newer research, and expert opinion indicates that it’s not the light itself but rather the mental stimulation from screens that affects sleep 【Study】. The best solution? Reduce screen exposure and engage in relaxing activities before bed.
Takeaways:
- Sunlight/UV exposure has well-documented benefits for skin conditions, depression, and sleep regulation. Morning light can help set your biological clock and improve sleep quality 【Study】.
- Red light therapy shows some promise for surface-level treatments like wound healing, hair growth, and wrinkles, but claims about deeper effects, like pain relief or cognitive improvement, lack strong evidence.
- Blue light blocking glasses may not be the key to better sleep—instead, reducing screen time and mental stimulation before bed is more effective.
Is light therapy worth the investment? Maybe. If you are thinking of spending hundreds of dollars, consider trying an N-of-1 experiment—track your own results and see if it actually makes a difference. And, as always, focus on evidence-based approaches to living long and well.
Until next time, get outside, soak up some sun, and take the Health Type Quiz to better understand your health type!
Hi, I'm Dr Bobby DuBois and welcome to Live Long and Well, a podcast where we will talk about what you can do to live as long as possible and with as much energy and vigor that you wish. Together, we will explore what practical and evidence-supported steps you can take. Come join me on this very important journey and I hope that you feel empowered along the way. I'm a physician, ironman, triathlete and have published several hundred scientific studies. I'm honored to be your guide. Welcome everyone to episode number 31,. Red, white and Blue Light Healing or Hype. Well, does red light therapy work? Is the morning sun good for you? Do blue light blocking glasses help your sleep? What do we know based upon real evidence, and what works and what doesn't? That is today's episode, so join me.
Speaker 1:Well, why am I wanting to talk about this topic? Well, when I was a child a bit ago, I had atopic dermatitis or at the time we often called it eczema, and my feet would have real problems Cracked, skin, itchy. It was a mess, went on for a number of years and I remember going to the dermatologist and him saying to me well, go out in the sun and stick your feet up towards the sky, and that may help your symptoms and in fact it really did help. So I remember that my daughter recently has been going out for early morning walks and getting sun in the morning and she's finding benefit for her in all sorts of ways, especially her sleep. My wife, my dear wife Gail, wears blue light blocking glasses at night before bed to help her fall asleep. And almost everywhere you turn there are advertisements for red light therapy boxes with claims about all sorts of things they can solve. So why not talk about light and light therapy?
Speaker 1:Let's go down the rabbit hole together and learn about white light as therapy, red light as therapy and whether blue light is bad for you. Now the timing is really really good because we recently talked about placebo. That was episode number 28. And many of the benefits that people might claim from a red light therapy frankly may be the placebo effect. And if you want to re-listen to that episode to remind yourself about all the ways that placebo can be powerful, feel free to do so. And the end of one approach, which was episode 27,. And we're going to end today's episode with how you might test out these approaches for yourself. Keep in mind that, whether you get excited about red light therapy or these other therapies, whether you get confused by the information, whether you think it's just the perfect way to dial in your health. That may depend a lot on your health type. And remember, we've got that quiz, the health type quiz, where it will tell you which type person you are and send you information about that. Feel free, if you haven't done it already, or do it again if you wish, go to my website, drbobbylivelongandwellcom.
Speaker 1:All right, my approach for today. I'm going to begin where the evidence is strongest, where we see that in fact, it's been tested, it's been tested quite rigorously and we can believe the results, and then we're going to work our way towards areas that, frankly, frankly, the evidence is much more scanty and I'm not convinced by it. When we think about light therapy and we think about where it might benefit us, if it's the skin that we're trying to deal with, whether it's a skin disease or cosmetic issues, there is some evidence to say that light therapy works. However, if we're starting to say that light therapy can cure headaches and reduce your risk of dementia and solve pain all across your body, that's issues that are deep inside you body. That's issues that are deep inside you and light really doesn't penetrate very far. So here I'm much more skeptical of the evidence. So we'll talk about that All right.
Speaker 1:The first area where, in fact, there's some pretty darn good evidence that light therapy works. In this case we're going to begin with white light or sunlight, and sometimes that actually are light bulbs that are ultraviolet, but it's all about kind of the white light total light spectrum. Now I mentioned earlier that for me it seemed to help for my atopic dermatitis or eczema as a child. Well, nowadays, obviously, they use more powerful lights than just the sun, and before there were these new psoriasis drugs and wonderful atopic dermatitis and other drugs, light therapy was really the mainstay. It goes back 100 years for psoriasis, where they put a tar-like substance on you and expose you to light. So it's well recognized, has been used for a very, very long time, and the American Academy of Dermatology guidelines support light therapy for these kinds of things. And, as I mentioned, nowadays we use ultraviolet light for some of these skin disorders.
Speaker 1:Also, if you have acne, these light therapies, white light therapy, ultraviolet therapy can be very effective. But now here's the wrinkle, and it's going to be a lot of wrinkles that we're going to talk about today. Yes, light therapy can help your acne, but it's no better than benzoyl peroxide and, frankly, sitting under a light for quite a while is a burden. Now, you may not want benzoyl peroxide and, frankly, sitting under a light for quite a while is a burden. Now, you may not want benzoyl peroxide on your skin, but it works and it's a quicker way to deal with it on a daily basis. So just keep that in mind. So when we think about light therapies, yes, it's important to say compared to placebo, does it work better? Okay, but there's another question, which is are there alternative therapies that are just as good, if not better? So light therapy may not be the panacea.
Speaker 1:Now, in one area there's almost no alternative to good light therapy and that's for a type of depression called seasonal affective disorders. Now, this has actually only been recognized back in the 1980s. I would have thought this had been known about for a century or more. But people who live in cloudy environments think of the Seattle area or Sweden or someplace where maybe it doesn't have a lot of sun, especially during the winter months. Folks get depression, folks who are sensitive to this issue. So the sunlight, or the lack of sunlight, brings on their depression symptoms. And lo and behold, if you look at a summary of 10 randomized controlled trials, being exposed to light therapy for two hours really improved their depression, not just for those with seasonal affective disorder, but generally depression as well.
Speaker 1:Now, I said earlier we should be skeptical when we're trying to have an impact deep in our body, and obviously depression is something that's going on in our brain. And how could this sunlight or white light therapy penetrate deep into the brain? Well, we're not asking it to do that, because what happens is the light goes in your eyes. Your eyes are connected to your brain, and that stimulation appears to be the way that it improves your depression. So keep that in mind. So keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:Now, as I mentioned with my daughter, going out in the morning and exposing to sunlight has helped her sleep, and it's not just an anecdote. In the morning helps to set your circadian rhythms and set you up for a day of feeling well and a night of good sleep. Now, getting light in the morning is one of 12 things that I've talked about in episode three to improve your sleep. So there's 11 more. If you're having troubles with sleep, by all means listen to that episode or go to my website and read the blog and it will list all of them and try them all that you wish. It's felt that the light in the morning helps our biologic clocks, as I mentioned, and it has an impact on our melatonin levels. Now more about melatonin levels in a little bit when we talk about blue light glasses. And finally, being out in the sun improves vitamin D production.
Speaker 1:So there are many areas that light sunlight, ultraviolet light help us and the evidence is really pretty good. But all the things I've talked about were because they were focused on improvements in the skin, which is very, very not deep in our bodies or it went through the eyes. Now we're going to move into red light therapy, where the evidence is much more uncertain. Now I went on Amazon to see well, are there a lot of red light therapy boxes or options out there? Amazon has over 2,000. So everybody's trying to sell you a red light therapy, red light box, red light contraption that will help improve all sorts of different things and it's been touted for hair growth, skin problems, pain relief, arthritis, cognitive function and many more.
Speaker 1:So a high level questions to ask yourself. High-level questions to ask yourself Is it biologically plausible that a red light therapy box could be helpful to you, and we'll talk in a moment about how deep the light goes and can it work. Also, keep in mind that many of these studies were done in dermatologists or others offices and they're not using a simple red light therapy box from Amazon. They're using lasers. Now, lasers are a lot more intense, a lot more focused, and benefits that are seen from a study in a dermatologist office are not the same as what you might do at home, where those devices are broader spectrum, not as focused and certainly nowhere near as intense. Okay, so if you use one of the sort of home devices, the red light that comes out of them goes in maybe a millimeter to three millimeters goes in maybe a millimeter to three millimeters, so a really tiny amount. So that should then raise the question could it really affect us deep in our bodies? Yeah, maybe it affects our skin, but how about deep in our bodies? Now, if can go in one to three centimeters, so maybe an inch or so, so that might be more effective, but it's not going to go deep inside your body, so keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:Okay, in the lab and, as my listeners know, I'm not real excited about lab data. I want to see what happens in people, but we'll begin, at least for the moment, about the lab. So if you take cells and you put them in a lab, and put them in a petri dish or a test tube and you blast them with light, what happens? Well, you can show that the mitochondria, those little energy powerhouses in our cells, become more active and they produce more energy, atp production. And you can show that if you take cells and you expose them to light, yeah, some collagen is produced and collagen can sort of make the skin more life young-like. So that makes some sense. But again, this is in the lab where you're blasting these poor little skin cells. But what about in people? As I've alluded to a couple of times, the data in general is better about impact on the skin. So red light therapy has been shown to improve wound healing. So chronic wounds that are not getting better for one reason or another, there's data to suggest that red light therapy works. But again, this is that low light laser therapy not something you get off of Amazon and it does seem to work.
Speaker 1:The other area, and this one, actually can use some of the things you could buy over the counter, and that's hair regrowth, and there's been about seven randomized controlled trials that showed some benefit. Now, these are very small studies and many of them, as you wouldn't be surprised, have been done or funded for by the companies that make them, but there is some suggestion that it improves hair density. So here's an example of just one. So there were 60 patients in a randomized control trial and they wore this red light helmet, so something that goes over your head, and people had to do this for 16 weeks. So it's a big investment of time and money as well. Now, on your head, the way they tell how your hair is doing is they count the number of hair follicles in a centimeter squared, so a small area of your head and normal is about 200 hair follicles in that small space. Obviously, as you lose hair and become bald, that number 200 falls. So in this study they looked at people that had about 42 hairs in that square centimeter and that was their baseline. After the 12 weeks of using the helmet, that increased to 110. So in this one study it didn't take people back to normal hair, but it took them in a very positive direction. Is this going to be true for you? Who knows? Are there alternatives that you could do that might be just as effective? Sure, but this is one modality that might have some benefit, and we'll talk at the end about end-of-one trials and how you can test out some of these concepts yourself.
Speaker 1:Well, what about the skin itself Wrinkles? Now, there have been some studies about whether red light therapy improves wrinkles, and these have typically been really small studies 10 people, 20 people and they're typically done again by the companies that make the devices. But in one study they looked at 20 women and they looked at how deep the crow's feet were, the wrinkles around their eyes, and they looked at skin firmness and the elasticity and smoothness and they did show some improvements. But, as I mentioned here, one of the authors was from Parfum, christian Dior. They're in the business of focus on wrinkles, so you have to again take that carefully. Another study a bunch of patients in a randomized controlled trial. They took photographs and they asked people to analyze the before and after photographs, and again, it was done by folks that make the device, but they did show some benefits. All right. So for skin, there is some suggestion that red light therapy can help.
Speaker 1:Now let's go deeper in the body, and this is where the evidence gets trickier. How about arthritis pain disorders? Can it work? Can it work better than the usual things we would do? So there was a study, a meta-analysis, of 22 randomized controlled trials for osteoarthritis that's the typical arthritis of aging and they tested red light therapy for a week, five weeks, up to 12 weeks. Some of them were done and they did show pain improvement. Okay so, dr Bobby, it could work for osteoarthritis.
Speaker 1:Well, there was another meta-analysis of five studies for rheumatoid arthritis, a very different type of arthritis, and it too showed some improvements in pain and morning stiffness and some flexibility improvements in the hand. But this is where these studies start to get tricky. In that rheumatoid arthritis study, where they showed benefit, they showed benefit not only in the hand that had the laser light or the red light, but in the other hand as well. How could that possibly be? We know that it only penetrates a small amount. We could potentially see how it could help the hand that you were receiving the therapy with, but the other hand? So that begins to raise questions like placebo. Is that really what's going on? And there was another rheumatoid arthritis meta-analysis which showed no benefit.
Speaker 1:And finally, what about fibromyalgia? This is a disorder often related to poor sleep. They're connected where you have a lot of aches and pains and what are called trigger points, and so this study looked at nine randomized control trials and about 300 people, and they did show improvements with red light therapy, but in this case this was the laser light, so again, something you would need to do in a doctor's offices. But what they found was, yes, there was some improvement in discomfort, but it was really no better than exercise. So, yes, there's some suggestive evidence of light therapy helping.
Speaker 1:But when you look more carefully, you find there are problems with these studies. There are those that tout that red light therapy can help body contouring and weight loss, and in one interesting study, they took photographs of their abdomen and one side they gave the low light laser therapy. Again, this is the thing you would have to do in a doctor's office and the other side nothing. And they took pictures of each side and then, in a blinded way, doctors looked at them. Guess what? There were no difference between either side.
Speaker 1:There's, finally, some thoughts that maybe it could help your cognitive function. These are again tiny studies conducted by the device manufacturers and I'm not impressed with them or the results. So, as we think about red light therapy, do we believe the evidence? Well, some of it, yeah, makes sense if it's in the skin areas. As we go deeper in, I'm not sure I believe the evidence. Secondly, are the home units even strong enough? Because, again, many of these studies were done with the low light laser therapy in doctor's offices and there's so much confusion about, well, what's the right intensity of light and how long and what wavelength. And then, finally, of course, is the issue of safety, and you would want to cover your and protect your eyes, and there is always possibility of you know, sort of sunburn of your skin.
Speaker 1:All right, let's turn to the last topic, which is blue light and whether blue light glasses that block the blue light are helpful in your sleep. Now here's the theory. The theory is that your body, over the course of the evening, builds up levels of melatonin which tells us it's sleepy time and it's time to go to sleep. And it's time to go to sleep. Well, darkness promotes melatonin production. So blue light also appears that potentially it interferes with that production. So we want the melatonin to go up. Darkness gets us there, but blue light might interfere with that.
Speaker 1:So there was this whole focus on these blue light glasses, and there were some studies that show that reading a book is better than your iPad, and if you wore blue light glasses, maybe that would help. And so there was an excitement around blue light glasses. But recent looking at the evidence, and even experts like Matt Walker, have changed their view, and now what it appears is it's not the blue light per se, it's that blue light comes in your phone and your iPad. So people who are on their iPhone and their iPad are being exposed to blue light. Yes, but really the issue is the agitation, the excitement of looking at your social media, looking at videos, looking at your email. So when you're ready to go to bed, you've been agitated for hours and you're not able to fall asleep. So it likely isn't the blue light blocking glasses or the blue light, but rather the agitation that's associated with that.
Speaker 1:Okay, lots of information, but where do we go from here? Where do I net out? We all want to live long and well, and, of course, me too. Is light therapy the answer? Well, if you're talking about white light, ultraviolet light, for known skin problems or depression, or getting a better night's sleep, the evidence is pretty darn good and I think it's supportive. Red light therapy I don't know For hair regrowth. The data is pretty good. Not the only way to solve the problem, but that's a possible thing to consider. But as we go deeper and hope that it'll do things deep in our bodies, that's where I'm not convinced about the evidence. And finally, blue light glasses. Again, focus on being quiet before you go to bed, reading a book, not having anything stimulating. That's the secret. Probably not blocking the blue light For me.
Speaker 1:I also would ask the question is it worth the cost? As I reviewed for some of the studies, there are alternatives. For acne, you can, of course, use benzoyl peroxide or other kinds of things. For fibromyalgia, you can do exercise. Is it worth spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on red light boxes or the laser light therapies? You'll have to decide.
Speaker 1:And always, is it better than other approaches? Yes, it might provide some benefit, but other approaches may be just as good or perhaps better. So what do you do with this? Well, if you are intrigued and you want to try this, by all means do so. But maybe think about doing it in the context of an end-of-one trial, meaning you're going to measure something at baseline. Doesn't have to necessarily be the counting of hair follicles in a centimeter, but think about something you're hoping will get better.
Speaker 1:Then try the therapy. If you wish, measure it again to give yourself some belief that it is real and that maybe you then stop the therapy. See if the problem comes back, restart it. That will help you figure out how much of this might be the placebo effect and how much might be real. As always, until next time.
Speaker 1:If you like this podcast, please share it with your friends or write a review on Spotify, apple or elsewhere. Take the quiz, if you haven't, and figure out your health type. And if you want to work more directly with me in all these cases, just go to my website and you'll find information that might be useful. So take care, and until next time. So take care, and until next time. Thanks so much for listening to Live Long and Well with Dr Bobby. If you liked this episode, please provide a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you want to continue this journey or want to receive my newsletter on practical and scientific ways to improve your health and longevity, please visit me at drbobbilivelongandwellcom. That's, Dr, as in D-R Bobby. Live long and wellcom.