How does Light Therapy Work?
If you have heard about light therapy and are wondering if it works, this article is for you. Here we will discuss how light therapy works on different areas of your body.
Light therapy works on your body to give therapeutic benefits in the following ways:
- Increase metabolism
- Enhance circulation
- Boost collagen and elastin production
- Antibacterial protection
- Restore circadian rhythm
- Boost hormone production
- Relieves pain
- Induce healing
Let’s review these benefits in detail:
Working Principle of Light Therapy
Increase Metabolism:
Light therapy exposes your body cells to specific light wavelengths suitable to receive therapeutic benefits. When these light wavelengths fall upon your body, it starts to work at the cellular level.
The mitochondria of your body cells get energized when specific light wavelengths reach those cells. By gathering energy from light, mitochondria successfully enhance the cellular activity in those cells.
These increased activities allow your body to reduce inflammation, heal wounds rapidly, and reduce fat particles from your body.
Enhance Circulation:
With enhanced metabolism in your body, the circulatory system gets a boost. This increases blood circulation in your body.
With enhanced blood circulation, the oxygen intake in your blood increases. Also, the blood can transport nutrients and other crucial elements all over your body. As a result, your overall health gets a boost.
Also, enhanced blood circulation can transport antioxidants to necessary parts of your body. If you are suffering from inflammation, antioxidants will help reduce inflammation and swelling.
Boosting Collagen and Elastin Protein:
Research has proven that taking light therapy at home successfully boosts collagen and elastin production in your body.
Collagen is one of the primary elements of your skin. With boosted collagen production, you can avoid different skin conditions. Also, it will help remove scars from your skin and give you a better skin condition overall.
Elastin is responsible for keeping your skin away from sagging and wrinkling. Wrinkles and sagginess bring aging signs to your skin. With boosted elastin protein, you can easily achieve younger-looking flawless skin.
As light therapy boosts necessary proteins for your skin, you can avoid different skin conditions like acne, eczema, and rosacea. Light therapy will help you heal these wounds and scars and give you a boost in confidence.
Additionally, you can protect your skin from different undesirable spots like sunspots, freckles, acne spots with the help of light therapy.
Antibacterial Protection:
Light therapy can help your skin protect from bacteria. Blue light can damage the bacteria cell and kill them to protect your body.
400 – 470 nm light wavelengths penetrate the cell of gram-positive bacteria and some funguses. Thus, these harmful life forms go through severe damage and eventually die.
For many skin diseases caused by bacteria and fungus, blue light therapy has shown significant promise in managing and controlling the conditions.
Restore Circadian Rhythm:
Our body’s biological clock is responsible for our overall well-being. Different body functions are highly dependent on our circadian rhythm.
This circadian rhythm can be disrupted due to various reasons. Once disrupted, it can pose some severe health problems to the individuals. However, light therapy can address this problem and restore your circadian rhythm.
Blue light helps your body to generate serotonin hormone. This helps your body to keep awake and elevate your mood. On the other hand, red light therapy helps your body to generate melatonin to help you fall asleep.
Light therapy can be an excellent option for you if you frequently travel in different time zones or have problems with your day-night cycle.
Boost Hormone Production:
Light therapy is beneficial in boosting your hormone production. With boosted metabolism, the body cells can produce necessary hormones effectively.
Also, the color of light dictates the hormone production in the body. Therefore, you can determine the type of hormone boost you need and choose the color of light therapy to get.
Also, red light and infrared light therapy boost the testosterone hormone in your body. Testosterone increases libido and gives you better health.
Relieves Pain:
Pain relief is one of the significant benefits of light therapy. As light therapy boosts metabolism in the body, the damaged cells can repair and replicate themselves more rapidly.
Also, increased circulation allows nutrients and antioxidants to reach the affected area conveniently. Therefore, inflammation and swelling can be controlled to ease the body from pain.
Infrared light wavelengths spread ambient heat in the pain-infected area. It allows the body to heal more efficiently and reduce pain.
Induce Healing:
Red light and infrared light therapy have healing effects on the body. These light wavelengths work to reduce cell damage while encouraging healthy growth. Therefore, the cells can gain strength to repel damage from viruses and bacteria while effectively repairing and replicating themselves.
With twenty minutes of exposure to the therapy light every day, your immunity system gets a huge boost and allows you to have a comparatively healthy life.
Drawbacks of Too Much Light Therapy
Although light therapy is completely natural, way too much exposure can have some mild to severe impacts on your body.
You may experience nausea, headaches, or irritation if exposed to too much bright light. Patients with bipolar depression can experience manic periods when exposed to too much light.
If you are constantly exposed to bright light without protection, you can damage your eyesight. Also, too much-elevated blood circulation can cause damage to your heart.
Consult your doctor before getting light therapy for your condition. They can give you the best advice and will help you generate a routine to have light therapy without causing damage.
Bottom Line
Light therapy has opened a great opportunity for various prominent industries. Even if the therapy was generated to deal with severe medical conditions, now skincare, haircare, even the bodybuilding industry is using this therapy for better results.
The effects of light therapy start from a cellular level and give your overall health a huge boost to keep healthy. This therapy is very versatile, and different areas of your body get different benefits from this therapy.
