You Might Also Like: Health vs Hype with the American Medical Association

**Rosa Hoffman** (0:07)
Red Light Therapy is more than just skin care. To me, it's part of my health care. It's a health care stack.

**Sly Huncho** (0:13)
And then I started seeing the mask and stuff. It's like, it got red light, blue light, and then you could do both at the same time. So I was like, oh, it's not.

**Mika Stambaugh** (0:19)
Red Light Therapy every day is just gonna really help with all those dark spots, aging spots.

**Dr. Margareta Masse** (0:25)
I feel like it's hard to live in this day and age and not have heard about Red Light Therapy.

**Trace Dominguez** (0:29)
Maybe the glow of a Red Light Therapy mask caught your eye while scrolling social media, or you saw a targeted ad for a Red Light helmet promising to reverse hair loss. Using light to influence the body's biology, a practice known as photobiomodulation, has become one of the fastest growing trends in health and wellness. Today you'll find Red Light Therapy everywhere, from medical clinics to gyms to at-home devices promising professional grade results.
Some, like content creator Rosa Hoffman, say it smooths wrinkles, fades acne, eases joint pain and reduces inflammation.

**Rosa Hoffman** (1:06)
When I'm not using Red Light Therapy, the first thing I notice is my hands. My hands start to feel that inflammation right away, and I will immediately go and sit in front of my Red Light Therapy.

**Trace Dominguez** (1:19)
Online influencers like Sly Huncho were drawn in by the made for TikTok glow and promises of this latest self-help tool.

**Sly Huncho** (1:27)
I definitely love the mask. I just seen it on social media. I'm like, what is the benefits of this? Because I'm really a self-care type of guy. So I'm like, anything that helps, I'm going to try it.

**Trace Dominguez** (1:37)
Others like Mika Stambaugh, who was diagnosed with melanoma and had multiple facial surgeries to remove the skin cancer, claim it boosts collagen and speeds wound healing.

**Mika Stambaugh** (1:47)
All I really cared about was minimizing what my face was going to look like post-surgeries. I would pretty much try anything that anyone with any dermatology background has to offer, I would do it.

**Trace Dominguez** (2:00)
Thankfully, we have someone with a dermatology background to set the record straight about red light therapy. Dr. Margareta Masse, whose areas of specialty include general dermatology, cosmetics and surgical dermatology. She brings the evidence.

**Dr. Margareta Masse** (2:14)
There are some cool studies that actually take people and expose half of their face to red light and then don't do anything to the other half of the face.

**Trace Dominguez** (2:21)
Welcome back to Health vs. Hype with the American Medical Association. I'm your host, Trace Dominguez. Red light therapy has gone from dermatology offices to at-home masks, helmets and panels that promise professional results from your living room. But how much of that is actually backed by science?
Where does the evidence stop and the internet hype begin? On this episode of Health vs. Hype, we're bringing the facts about red light therapy into the spotlight.
Join me as we find out whether red light therapy is all health or just hype.
Okay, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's first understand what red light is in this context, or for that matter, what light is.
No big deal, not a huge subject at all. Simply put, light is a form of energy. Different types of light have different wavelengths, which is the physical distance between the peak of one light wave and the peak of the next. This is important here because the wavelength of light determines its color. We can see some light, like the colors of the rainbow, visible light, while other types like ultraviolet and infrared are not visible to the human eye. In fact, red light sits just on the border of the spectrum of visible to invisible light, and just beyond those red wavelengths, you'd find infrared light. Keeping this basic science lesson in mind, red light therapy uses specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared light that researchers believe can interact with ourselves. Some of those researchers are from places like NASA. Red light therapy has its roots in space research. NASA first studied how specific wavelengths of light could help plants grow during space missions and then explored whether the same technology could promote wound healing and astronauts. That's just the beginning of how red light therapy made the leap to skincare and the wider health and wellness communities. We've seen over and over in the wellness community, a willingness to try something, especially if that something doesn't seem to carry too many risks. I was curious how our guests first found out about the red light therapy. Here's Sly Huncho.