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What is light therapy? What is infrared light? What is a laser bed? Is it similar to the Death Star's laser? On this episode, Dr. B discusses the benefits of light therapy and why you should try a laser bed!
Creators & Guests
What is The Real Health Podcast with Dr. B?
On a mission to share practical solutions to improve your wellbeing, The Real Health Podcast will equip you with evidence-based recommendations essential to achieving a healthy lifestyle. Join Dr. Barrett Deubert as he shares his passion for educating, inspiring, and empowering individuals to achieve “real health for real people”. Breaking down health topics such as: immunity, stress, real food, natural living, and much more to provide you with actionable steps to improving your family’s health.
Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Real Health podcast. Today, we're gonna gonna talk about something called photobiomodulation. So this is gonna be a 2 part series. Today, we're gonna help you understand a little bit about light energy, which is kind of a big thing nowadays. People are using these red light towers.
Dr. Barrett:So we're gonna talk about, hey, are they are they worth it? Should I be investing in this? Should I be doing this? And then we're also going to be next episode talking about how to enhance photobiomodulation or how to enhance light energies effects on our body. So that's really how we're gonna break it down today.
Dr. Barrett:When you hear this term photobiomodulation, really just think light energy. And to help you understand a little bit about light energy, you have to look at this like spectrum of light. So there's light that you can see, visible light, and there's light that you can't see. So on this like spectrum, you have light that you can't see like x rays on this really like left side of the spectrum. And then on the on the on the other side, going through even visible light, you have something called infrared light, which you can't see.
Dr. Barrett:And then somewhere in the middle, there's something called called visible light, and visible light is obviously what you can see. And so that's typical like blue light or red light. I don't know if you remember being in science class and they had you memorize the rainbow colors by saying ro ROY g biv, like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Like, those are lights that we can see. And so light energy has this amazing ability for our bodies to heal.
Dr. Barrett:And so we're gonna kind of have a discussion on light energy today and what its purpose is when it comes to enhancing one's health or helping aid in recovery. We're probably gonna hang out more in the red and infrared light space today. So that's our that's our primary focus of today's discussion. We're gonna even talk about saunas and how does that compare because that is a type of infrared. So how does saunas compare?
Dr. Barrett:But before we do, let's take a step back and let's just process for a second what light energy does to the body. And this is this is probably the coolest thing and really what the goal of light energy is is that when we're exposed to light, so infrared light or visible light, really what what we're trying to accomplish is an enhancement in something we call the mitochondria. Now, this is something we talk about a lot on the podcast. And in essence, the mitochondria is like your power plant of the cell. So in order for your body to have energy and energy, we talk about ATP being the energy molecule, your mitochondria make energy.
Dr. Barrett:Your mitochondria make ATP. And so when we look at where light energy and infrared energy comes into play, It's really all about enhancing the mitochondria. Now, mitochondria, are damaged and diseased in in a lot of humans today. We are full of toxins. We have high levels of inflammation, and we have poor nutrient value.
Dr. Barrett:So these these mitochondria inside the cell, they are starving. They need help, and that's why we eat well. Right? That's why we move our body and and and and that's why we reduce toxic load. Right?
Dr. Barrett:Those are some of the pillars behind, you know, these kinda core principles of health. And in essence, all we're trying to do here is enhance mitochondrial function. There's a great book called Cancer as a Metabolic Disease. When we talk about cancer from doctor Thomas Seyfried, what we understand is cancer at the core of what's happening is mitochondrial disease. Cancer disease is mitochondrial disease.
Dr. Barrett:And so we should look at a lot of symptoms that we're dealing with today as really a source issue of mitochondrial disease. Chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, inflammation, cancer can all be linked to the mitochondria as being defective or not functioning optimally. So when we use this term photobiomodulation, really, my passion is to use light energy and enhance my mitochondrial function so that I'm making more ATP or my power plant is strong and making a ton of energy, which affects everything. Brain health, right, body health, helps your recovery, helps with sleep, helps with energy. And so when we when we kinda frame this conversation out, just think that light energy is really designed to improve mitochondrial function.
Dr. Barrett:And through that, you can get an elevation of healing and we can improve our recovery. So let's take a step back now and kinda go back to this word, photobiomodulation, and let's talk about the differences between, like red light and infrared light because this is this is kind of the separator when it comes to light energy. You know, there's a lot of people that use red light and when you look around, there's a lot of companies that sell these red light boxes and red light can be on a spectrum and most of them are we we use a a term wavelength. We measure light on wavelengths. So red light is about 650 nanometers of wavelength.
Dr. Barrett:And so red light penetrates, superficially. So it doesn't really get deep into the body. So most people use red light for like superficial skin, right, trying to heal skin conditions or trying to help hair loss, that's where you're gonna usually see red light. As the wavelength increases, So from, like, 600 to 700 to 900, as that wavelength increases, the penetration into the body increases. And that's really where the science of photobiomodulation is so cool is we can use, certain wavelengths to penetrate all the way through the body and enhance deep cellular healing like into the organs, into the bones of the body and cause a, an amazing response, but you can't get that with certain wavelengths.
Dr. Barrett:So the first thing to keep in mind is that if you're using, like, red light, just think that this is very superficial. Now it's great. It helps with cellular recovery, and it helps with, like, recovery time, but it's not gonna get deep. So so any thought process of, like, getting all the using red light to heal all the way down deep into like the visceral system or trying to really significantly improve blood flow and oxygenation and mitochondrial health, that's really not happening. Also, when we talk about these wavelengths, it's not just about the wavelength itself.
Dr. Barrett:It's also important to know that the power of that wavelength, like how much we call watts are being used or joules are being used, which is a super sciency. I get it. And also, is it continuous or is it like a pulsed frequency? And pretty much, we don't have to dive deep into this like rabbit hole, but just I want you to know that just buying a red light doesn't mean it's gonna do anything to the body. There's this bell curve of response, of this dose response where if you honestly, if you get too much light energy, so if you're just kinda baking in, infrared light, you can actually have a negative response in the body.
Dr. Barrett:And if you don't get a strong enough dose, it's not gonna do anything. So somewhere in the middle, we have to look at science and figure out, hey, what is the right, like, dose response? How much does my body actually need? How long, and and, what type? And you have to answer those questions before you just start throwing light energy on your body because you may not be getting any response or you may be doing damage.
Dr. Barrett:You may be pushing out too much light energy. So going back, in this discussion of, like, red lights and infrared light, We also, outside of, like, red light boxes we hear a lot of conversation. I'm a big fan of of, of, like, saunas. Right? So there's, saunas that are infrared.
Dr. Barrett:You'll hear infrared saunas. And what you have to understand about infrared saunas is that it is thermal energy. Okay? So thermal energy means just heat energy. So it just heats you up.
Dr. Barrett:Far infrared just penetrates deep into the body, heats you up from inside out. And this type of infrared is great for like detox ification support and sweating because again it's thermal energy. So saunas are fantastic to help your body heat up and in essence go through detoxification and sweat. It also activates heat shock proteins that we talked about in previous episodes, but it doesn't actually cause cellular mitochondrial change. So we're not getting these deep cellular changes.
Dr. Barrett:We're really just heating our body up. And then if you look at the sun, which is which is a type of thermal energy, that's gonna emit something called UVA or UVB light energy, and that's that can be actually destructive to our body, but it also can be beneficial, helping vitamin d. And so when we're, like, processing this, like, red light versus sauna and even sun, they all have beneficial responses. But, where do we, like, have this I where do we, invest our time and our energy to get the best bang for our buck? Because for me, if I'm really trying to improve my health, I know at the core of my health, the mitochondria are the most important part of the cell to keep healthy.
Dr. Barrett:So let's let's talk about then, light energy, photo biomodulation, but specific wavelength. So there's there's 4 that are really potent for the body, and the first one is in that like 6 100 category, 600 nanometer category, and that is red light. So again, red light is superficial. It helps improve the skin surface. It gets a little bit lower than that, and it's good for recovery.
Dr. Barrett:And then you get into, like, the 8 hundreds. And in the 800 category, we're now targeting mitochondria. So now we're in this like what we would call near infrared category. Okay? Near infrared, 800 nanometers is gonna dive deep, deeper into the body and really enhance mitochondrial function.
Dr. Barrett:So this is a particular wavelength designed to improve oxygenation and ATP production of your cells. K? It also accelerates cellular metabolism or metabolic activity. And again, penetrates deeper into the body than red light. There's another one that's 900, in the 900 range, so 915 specifically nanometers, and this is really designed for pain.
Dr. Barrett:So if you're targeting pain, this type of light energy is very good at helping reduce inflammation and actually helping with pain, pain levels, decreasing pain. It targets specifically, actually a part of your red blood cells called the hemoglobin, which is really just oxygen delivery and blood flow, but this is in a this WIS wavelength is awesome, awesome for pain. And then in the upper 900, 980 nanometers, this is where we're targeting the water in the blood. So this is more of just like providing, circulation and, faster recovery to all of the areas that you're treating with it. So it's really cool when you think about light energy, how it can enhance mitochondria.
Dr. Barrett:It can improve oxygen circulation, hemoglobin production. We can get pain relief. We can get improved recovery time and, the thing about it when you're looking at using light energy, whether it's from a sauna, whether it's from a red light device or whether it's from a practitioner, who has a type of like medical laser or what we call light energy system, then you can target a specific area of your body. Next week, we'll dive in a little bit deeper and we'll talk about, how we can enhance light energy's effects using something called methylene blue, which is a super fascinating compound that I take on a daily basis. So we're gonna talk about methylene blue.
Dr. Barrett:You may have seen it with people, you know, blue tongues and that are like biohackers. So we'll dive into some detail with that. But kinda stepping back into this conversation with light energy, it's important to keep in mind that just buying a red light device, may not be actually doing anything for your body. It may not be enough dosing, It may not, be actually, doing anything for what your goal is. Like if you're trying to heal deep and improve mitochondrial function and reduce pain and inflammation, yeah, that red light's probably not gonna do that for you.
Dr. Barrett:And so just being mindful that when you're looking in this $1,000,000,000 industry, this wellness industry, and we're trying you're trying to figure out, hey, where what do I do here? What what devices should I buy, and, how do I enhance my sleep and recovery and saunas and cold plunges. There's a there's a there are companies that are marketing, putting putting 1,000,000 of dollars in a marketing to get you to buy their products. So it's important to have understanding about, hey, what are you getting involved in and is this actually gonna do anything for my body? So today's episode, even though kind of sciency, is really just designed to help you understand what light energy is, the benefit and really why we should all be using light energy to enhance our body's ability to heal and recover.
Dr. Barrett:The cool thing is we can use science now to help with our, with our healing journey. We can use science to increase longevity and increase our recovery time, and to be able to train harder, and to be able to recover from eczema or to be able to enhance detoxification or whatever your goal is. So what we use, at our office and so I've been doing, a sauna for I can't even remember how many years, over a decade, I've been in a sauna every practically every day. And I'll do anywhere between 30 to 60 minutes in a sauna session. And and so that's great for thermal energy and detox vacation.
Dr. Barrett:But what we do at the health factory is we use a medical grade laser. So you can't get your hands on this as a, as a as a, like online. You can't you can't just buy this, because it's so powerful in its ability to induce all of these therapeutic changes that, you know, if you don't know how to use it, you can get into trouble. So anyway, what I've been doing, which has been really cool over the last couple of weeks, it finally came in. I was so excited to get it in, is this laser bed.
Dr. Barrett:So it's a class 4 medical laser bed. It has the 650 red light, has the the 810, the 915, the 980 wavelengths, all those wavelengths. And I just like sitting in it. It's almost like a lying in it. It's like a tanning bed.
Dr. Barrett:And just my whole body is being absorb is absorbing these wavelengths. And I'll tell you, this has probably been my best mental clarity week. Usually, as you guys know, I talk about it all the time, I take a power nap every day, like a 15 to 20 minute power nap. I don't I haven't napped in 2 weeks. My recovery in terms of, like, my training, my inflammation levels, I've significantly improved.
Dr. Barrett:My and and and again, going back to it, for me, one of my biggest goals in everything I do is mental clarity. I wanna have the best functioning brain and have sharp mental clarity. And so that's probably the biggest changes that I've experienced. It's been it's been awesome. We use a company called Summis Laser, which specializes in in medical lasers.
Dr. Barrett:But it's been really cool, really cool experience. So, I know you guys listen from all over the, all over the world. And so if you have a practitioner in your area that has like a medical laser and you have an injury, let's just say you have an injury, nagging injury you're trying to heal, right? This is awesome for like chronic tendonitis issues or chronic pain issues, or if you're trying to get a full body like dose exposure, you can do it over your digestive system to reduce inflammation. You can do it like dentists are using it to help heal in different conditions of the of the mouth, even to help like post dental surgeries.
Dr. Barrett:So anyway, it's cool research. Next week, we're gonna talk about methylene blue, which is super fascinating. You can do it. You can take methylene blue without even doing like any type of like light energy modality. But next week, we're gonna dive into detail about methylene blue, the crazy benefits, how it was the first prescription drug ever, but how it's used today just off the shelf, it's used today to enhance your body's ability to heal and really to enhance mitochondrial function.
Dr. Barrett:So thanks again, for listening to the Real Health Podcast.