Why is Red Light Used in Hair Growth Treatments?

You may or may not have noticed that “red light” is often used in devices that promote healing. This includes hair growth treatments such as laser hair therapy. Since laser hair therapy is unarguably the best at home hair loss treatment out on the market, as it has no hazardous side effects such as other hair loss medications– and can be extremely effective with the right device– let’s explore the usage of red light in laser hair therapy.

 

The red blazing glares of laser helmets neither promote love, jealousy, nor Soviet-style communism. Red light happens to be the only color that is effective at treating hair loss with the principles of laser hair therapy. Light, regardless of its color, is composed of photons, which are small packets of electromagnetic energy that propagate with a defined wavelength. Remember your high school science classes that involved passing light through a prism, forming a rainbow of colors in front of your bewildered eyes? The purpose of that experiment was not for entertainment, as you may have thought, but to demonstrate that different wavelengths of light correspond to different colors.

 

So knowing that all colors belong to a specific wavelength range, let’s focus on the longer part of the visible spectrum of light– red light, which ranges from about 620 to 750 nanometers (nm), and which is used in hair growth treatments that claim to use the basics of laser hair therapy. And what do we mean by that? Laser helmets that actually do effectively promote new hair growth are NOT made with inexpensive Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) but emit true, laser light– meaning their light is coherent. The term “coherence” implies the photons that make up a wave of energy are all traveling in synchronicity. Any legit laser-based at home hair loss treatment emits coherent light, since it a characteristic of laser light.

 

Did you frown (even a little) when we mentioned the term “nanometer” up there? Yes, a photon’s wavelength is measured in nanometers (nm), which is simply 10^-9 meters (0.000000009 m). Different wavelengths stimulate various parts of the body, which means that different parts of human tissue absorb different wavelengths of light. For instance, in the case of non-visible light, certain wavelengths of light affect your skin, like UV light in tanning beds, while others affect your bones, like in radiology. So stimulating hair follicles at the right wavelength is crucial for the success of laser hair growth helmets. This implies that there is a therapeutic window for laser hair therapy in which hair follicles will actually be stimulated by light energy. In this case, our window ranges from 660 nm to 690 nm, which falls smack in the red portion of the visible spectrum of light.

 

Our previous red light window began at 620 nm, so how and why did we jump to 660 nm? It turns out that hemoglobin, the crucially important oxygen-transporting molecules of red blood cells, is also susceptible to absorbing low-level laser light, but at a lower range of approximately 400 to 650 nm. Yes, 650 nm– belonging to the red spectrum of light. Irradiating hemoglobin with low-level laser light is not necessarily a good thing, which is another reason why a high quality hair growth laser helmet should ALWAYS emit red laser light at a wavelength longer than 660 nm. This will ensure your hair follicles are being stimulated (and not your hemoglobin!) .

 

To make matters worse, if you enjoy listening to CDs or own an extensive collection (of soon-to-be antiquated) DVDs, guess what– cold lasers with wavelengths of 635 and 655 mm are normally used to read these types of disks. So it turns out 635 and 655 nm lasers are readily and (very cheaply) available for purchase overseas. Some manufacturers of so-called “hair growth” devices hence buy these low-grade lasers in bulk and manufacture “hair restoration” devices of poor quality that may end up being harmful to your health. Other manufacturers use LED lights instead of lasers, and attempt to add lenses to fabricate ineffective “laser hair therapy” units that produce collimated light beams (as opposed to coherent).

 

So for laser hair therapy to be efficient, it is not only crucial that the base of hair follicles is reached by laser light (at a depth ranging from 3 to 5 mm under the scalp), but the base needs to absorb light energy delivered at an optimized wavelength. With many years of dedicated research, the FDA-cleared Theradome LH80 PRO laser helmet, designed by biomedical engineers and former NASA scientists, determined that a laser’s optimal wavelength ought to stay between 670 and 686 nanometers (678 ± 8 nm). Only a diode laser can hence be used for effective laser hair growth treatments. Don’t be fooled too easily though– all red light will not make for an effective at home hair loss treatment. The aforementioned LED devices disperse light randomly, as opposed to coherently, and thus can never stimulate the mitochondria of cells at the base of hair follicles. Laser combs, on the other hand, never expose a particular scalp area for more than an average of 4 to 30 seconds while a patient combs their hair impatiently to complete a thorough treatment session. The revolutionary Theradome LH80 PRO offers full scalp coverage with lasers that utilize a wavelength specifically designed for the purposes of hair growth while penetrating the scalp, giving the opportunity for the base of hair follicles to absorb an optimal energy dosage during a 20-minute treatment window. Oh– and no need to put your life on pause while wearing our cordless and hands-free laser helmet. You can regrow your hair while partaking in light activities such as reading, answering emails or watching television.