Red

light

therapy

and

anxiety

Being human means experiencing anxiety from time to time. Even the happiest people you can imagine dwell on things and wrestle with demons. It's simply how evolution has kept our ancestors on their toes and prepared them for one thing or another. You can easily imagine how difficult it would be for a person to survive as a hunter/gatherer if they were completely content with life in every way. No worry about whether there would be any berries to pick tomorrow, or about that beaver living by the lake biting back when it was to be felled. No thoughts on how to make life as safe as possible for oneself and one's loved ones. No thought at all about the approaching winter with subzero temperatures and an impenetrable snow cover. Nor any planning on how to best protect one's tools, clothes, and food supplies gives an overall picture of a person who might be carefree but also clueless and would soon have been weeded out by evolution.

We carry these genes with us, and today the same instincts are channeled in new ways. When you wake up at the witching hour and can't fall back asleep, it's hardly the availability of blueberries that worries you, but rather work, relationships, and the state of the world. The feeling of anxiety can take over people's lives and becomes more of a limitation in existence rather than a help for survival. Moreover, there are people whose anxiety completely dominates their emotional life, and this is called generalized anxiety disorder. Interestingly, RLT has been shown to help with this difficult type of almost constant feelings of anxiety.

In a study, participants were treated with an RLT lamp on the forehead every day for 20 minutes (1). Anxiety was measurably reduced and participants reported better sleep at night. The treatment is called transcranial and it is primarily the near-infrared light that can penetrate the skull bone deeply enough to have an effect. In this study, the wavelength was 830 nm and no side effects were reported. Possibly, the red light can also help considering the systemic effect with less inflammation, and in any case, it does no harm to use both types of light.

If you want to achieve a transcranial treatment, it is good to lie on your back with your head when the lamp is illuminating the crown. The skull is thinnest at the temples, and it might be a good idea to sit with the side facing the lamp for maximum effect. The important thing is that the lamp is high enough to reach over the head. The advantage of the sitting position is that you also treat the rest of the body at the same time.

Transcranial Photobiomodulation with Near-Infrared Light for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: A Pilot Study – PubMed (nih.gov)

Author: Fredrik Paulún

The studies and research presented here are conducted by independent researchers and institutes. Nutrilight does not fund these studies and has no connection to their execution. These studies generally concern photobiomodulation and are not specifically related to Nutrilight's products.