I want to state up front that I am a HUGE fan of red light therapy and I do it daily. But think about it, your inability to sleep isn’t caused by a lack of red light.
Wasn’t there a time in your life when you slept great (perhaps a child) and you were not doing photobiomodulation aka red light therapy?
If it was possible for you to sleep without doing red light therapy, then the absence of red light cannot be the cause of your insomnia. You have to think about it logically.
I want to explore these thoughts further about using red light therapy for sleep in this article.
1. A Lack of Red Light Isn’t Your Problem
Like I mentioned before, there was a time in your life when you fell asleep quickly, didn’t wake up in the middle of the night and you got a full eight or nine hours of sleep.
Remember that?
Maybe it was when you were a kid or a teenager with hormones surging in your bloodstream and you slept 10 hours a night, no problem.
Were you doing 20 minutes of red light therapy for sleep back then?
Probably not.
Were you focused getting deep restorative sleep back then?
Probably not.
The thing is, you have a broken circadian rhythm and you’re no longer living a lifestyle that’s connected to nature. Every little detail about your environment is the worst thing for sleep.
Imagine breaking your arm and thinking that by taking a calcium supplement your bone will heal faster. It might help and yes bones are made from calcium (along with magnesium, silica, boron, vitamin c, collagen and strontium) but taking a calcium supplement isn’t going to magically fix your broken bone in a day.
Same is true for using red light therapy for sleep.
Red light itself isn’t going to magically cure your insomnia naturally over night.
You need to fix your circadian rhythm, balance your hormones and maybe even get some genetic tests done or blood work to see how things are looking.
Here’s the problem with using red light therapy for sleep. People will use photobiomodulation (aka low level laser therapy LLLT) before bed but then turn on an LED or fluorescent light in the bathroom to brush their teeth before bed.
Light has to be used correctly in order for it to be effective for sleep.
Using an LED or fluorescent light AFTER using red light, you’re going to activate cortisol and adrenaline (both stress hormones) right before bed. This is going to activate the fight or flight response and prevent your body from releasing melatonin before bed.
You have to know when to use light and the order in which to use them if you want red light therapy for sleep to be effective.
2. Red Light Isn’t Natural
Red light is not natural (but incredibly healing). Red light is just one of the color frequencies of the sun and by using a red light panel (which I use daily and love) you’re essentially taking only that color wavelength of the sun and hyper concentrating it for healing purposes.
But let’s be clear, it’s not natural (which doesn’t necessarily make it bad).
It would be similar to juicing 20 carrots. In nature, you’d never be able to eat 20 carrots but you could drink them in a juice.
Using red light therapy for sleep is like juicing carrots.
I mentioned above that the order in which we utilize light and when we use light is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE if you want sleep benefits.
With that in mind, the question I have for you is….
How much red light comes from the sun after sunset?
I’ll wait…..
The answer is zero.
Should you use red light therapy for sleep after the sun has set?
If you want to live a circadian lifestyle and live in alignment with nature, the answer is no.
You might be asking, well if I want to use red light therapy for sleep and can’t do it before bed, when would I use it and would red light therapy help with sleep if I did my treatments during the day?
Red light therapy can be extremely beneficial for sleep but I don’t recommend doing it before bedtime, which for most people happens when it’s dark after sunset. There are rare cases like living in Alaska where the sun never sets but that’s a different article entirely.
I recommend living under ambient red light after sunset (if you absolutely need to turn on lights) but doing red light therapy or treatments with high irradiance panels that are super bright, are not what I recommend. Only do this during the day.
3. RLT Gives A False Sense of Hope
You’re probably not like this but most people suffering with insomnia (or any health condition for that matter) want a pill to make everything go away. They want to just take an herb or supplement to get rid of any symptoms.
They don’t want to do the hard work of figuring out what the causes were and making difficult lifestyle and environmental changes to fix it.
I think this stems from a culture where we learn from an early age that we can continue banging our heads against the wall and take an over the counter medication to get rid of the headache.
It’s so weird.
Somehow they’ve convinced us that banging our head against the wall is the right thing to do or it feels good. So in order to have the privilege of banging our heads against the wall, we’ll need to take a prescription medication to get rid of the consequences of doing so, the headache.
But we never ask ourselves why are we banging our heads against the wall in the first place?
Does it even feel good?
Why put a poisonous prescription drug into my body (which has its own longer term side effects) when I can just stop banging my head against the wall?
If you’re more naturally minded you might take white willow bark instead of aspirin for your headache. But the question remains, why bang our heads in the first place?
If we stop doing that, the headache will just go away because your body is always seeking homeostasis.
Same is true with using red light therapy for sleep. Yes it’s better than taking over the counter sleep medication but why not just live more in alignment with nature, fix our circadian rhythms and then sleep will come naturally.
You will not even need to use red light therapy for sleep.
Make sense?
With that said, I do red light therapy treatments every single day and highly recommend it.
Benefits of Red Light Therapy
As I mentioned I love red light therapy. I don’t use red light therapy for sleep but I do use it for all the benefits listed below. I just don’t use it after the sun sets.
- Improves Skin Complexion – Study Link
- Reduces Wrinkles – Study Link
- Enhances Muscle Recovery – Study Link
- Alleviates Joint Pain – Study Link
- Speeds Wound Healing – Study Link
- Decreases Inflammation – Study Link
- Improves Hair Growth – Study Link
- Reduces Acne Scarring – Study Link
- Enhances Mood – Study Link
- Boosts Collagen Production – Study Link
- Aids in Weight Loss – Study Link
- Improves Sleep Quality – Study Link
- Increases Circulation – Study Link
- Enhances Vision – Study Link
- Reduces Oral Inflammation – Study Link
- Supports Brain Health – Study Link
- Improves Skin Barrier Function – Study Link
- Decreases Diabetic Neuropathy Pain – Study Link
- Speeds Recovery from Thyroidectomy – Study Link
- Reduces Symptoms of Tinnitus – Study Link
Conclusion
The takeaway from what I’m saying here is that yes if you want to use red light therapy for sleep, do a 10 to 20 minutes treatment anytime before the sun sets in your area. You may get benefit for sleep but you definitely will not, if you’re exposed to LED or fluorescent lighting AFTER a photobiomodulation session.
For this reason, I recommend upgrading all of the light bulbs in your home to special circadian lightbulbs.
There’s nothing magical about what’s in red light that will be beneficial for sleep, it’s what it DOESN’T have that helps you to sleep. Red light does not have any of the blue or green wavelengths that we know suppress melatonin.
As a result, you can be exposed to red light (as long as it’s not too bright, because the irradiance of light also matters) and your body will still secrete melatonin so you can fall asleep. But doing a red light therapy session in order to fall asleep isn’t going to happen.
Do your red light therapy sessions while the sun is up and after it sets, make sure the ambient lighting in your home is red or wear orange and red glasses to protect your melatonin and circadian rhythms.
Do this for 30 days and you’ll sleep better.
Questions:
- Do you have a red light panel?
- Have you used red light therapy for sleep?
- How did red light impact your sleep (good or bad)?
Comment below!