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There is an epic fight unfolding between the light side and the dark side of, no, not the Force, but the light spectrum itself. You will have seen the countless gadgets claiming to heal you with red light鈥攖he creepy masks full of LEDs, the therapeutic light boxes, even the full-body infrared saunas. Red light, we are told, has health benefits.

I will be using the term 鈥渞ed light鈥� for ease of reading, but technically the claim is being made about a portion of the light spectrum, both visible and invisible to us, that includes red light, near-infrared, and infrared light. A more accurate term would be 鈥渓ong-wavelength light,鈥� but for simplicity鈥檚 sake, I will use 鈥渞ed light.鈥�

Red light is not very energetic. Sure, infrared light from the Sun is what we perceive as heat, and infrared lamps are used in restaurants to keep your order warm before it is served, but light can be聽much more聽energetic. As we pass through orange, yellow, green, cyan, and blue, light carries more energy. And that鈥檚 where we encounter red light鈥檚 nemesis, so-called blue light. It includes blue and violet in the visible spectrum (and possibly ultraviolet rays, which we do not see). Technically, we should refer to it as 鈥渟hort-wavelength light.鈥�

LED lights are everywhere now. Although they often look white, they emit a lot of blue light and not much, if any, red light. Recently, I learned that some scientists were referring to this indoor lighting revolution as a public health crisis on par with asbestos. Blue light is said to be causing harm to the little energy factories of our cells, while red light is being alleged to cure, well, just about anything.

This good-versus-evil battle between two different kinds of light has been blown way out of proportion, and the anecdotes and scientific studies being weaponized here deserve a lot of scrutiny.

Blue light bad?

础听聽on indoor lighting caught my attention because of how it had been distorted by one media outlet, NewsNation. You may not be familiar with it. I wasn鈥檛. It鈥檚 an American cable news network and it belongs to Nexstar Media Group, the largest television broadcasting company in the U.S. On聽, this new study鈥檚 results are framed as a 鈥渃risis鈥� for our cells, specifically our mitochondria.

What鈥檚 funny is that the study itself did not look at our mitochondria. Mitochondria鈥攊n its plural form, and 鈥渕itochondrion鈥� in the singular鈥攁re little bodies inside of our cells, and one of their jobs is to convert what we eat into energy that our cells can use. If a cell is a city, the mitochondrion is its power plant, and most cells contain hundreds of these mitochondria.

What the study actually did is give 11 people who worked in a gloomy building in London lit only with LED lights a desk lamp. The LED lights emitted a lot of blue light; the desk lamp was incandescent, much closer to actual sunlight and thus full of red light as well. A separate group of 11 people was not given a desk lamp. Both groups underwent a vision test that specifically looked at colour discrimination. For example, a red letter 鈥淭鈥� was presented on top of a blue background, and the letter was very faint. Their eyes had to be sharp enough to distinguish the 鈥淭鈥� amid the background. This test was done at the beginning of the experiment and after two weeks of the first group using their desk lamp.

The group with the lamp did better at discerning these letters, and not just right after the experiment but months later, one of the authors聽.

Again, nothing about mitochondria; but this experiment is part of a larger research programme by Dr. Glen Jeffery trying to prove that red light is good and blue light, at least in isolation, is bad, and that the reason for this involves our mitochondria.

Dr. Jeffery is a professor of neuroscience and researcher at University College London and is聽迟丑别听scientist at the eye of this red-light-versus-blue-light storm. His theory is that different types of light have different effects on our mitochondria, and that it all boils down to water. Jeffery聽聽to the parts of mitochondria that produce energy as 鈥渢hese little wheels, these pumps that spin around, but they spin around in water.鈥� And because the pump is so small, the amount of water is tiny. He was told that at that scale, water is viscous (as proposed聽). He believes that when red light is shone on the body, it makes this mitochondrial water聽less viscous. The wheel, like a motor, can thus spin faster. Cells make more energy. Blue light in the absence of red light keeps that water viscous like molasses, and the wheel spins much more slowly.

The wheel he is referring to is called聽, which does indeed have a rotor that spins. When we invented the wheel, we were unknowingly reproducing something inside of us we couldn鈥檛 even see.

But to believe Jeffery鈥檚 grand theory of light鈥檚 benefits and harms on our health through our mitochondria, we need the green light from scientific evidence, and unfortunately, I am not quite seeing it.

Red light good?聽

If we suspect blue light of making people sick, then experimenting on people with it is akin to asking research participants to take up smoking to see what will happen. It鈥檚 unethical. So the majority of the research has examined if red light, instead, benefits the human body and if its rays can rescue ill health allegedly caused by blue light exposure.

At first light, the papers I read are either very preliminary and thus not informative, or their results beggar belief. They are often done in mice or rats or fruit flies, and the control groups, when they exist, are not as rigorous as they should be, in my opinion. Animal research is often a required stepping stone in doing experiments in humans, but we are not giant mice.

What is alleged in these papers is that red light helps with vision loss due to ageing; that it makes fruit flies live longer and improves their memory and mobility; that it protects bees from stress; and that it prevents blood sugar spikes after a meal. This already sounds a little too good.

But it is Jeffery鈥檚 appearance on聽, the popular 鈥渟cience鈥� podcast hosted by Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., that raised my eyebrow. Huberman鈥檚 second career, outside of the halls of Stanford University, has blessed him with accolades, but his show often spreads fear-inducing misinformation (on topics like聽, for example) while promoting聽highly questionable products. The episode in which Jeffery was interviewed about red light was interrupted by聽蹿颈惫别听separate sponsor ad reads: a financial investment service, the pseudoscientific聽green smoothie powder聽for which Huberman is a well-paid ambassador, a water filter the value of which hinges on a study conducted by 迟丑别听pseudoscientific Environmental Working Group, a paid service to have hundreds of unnecessary medical tests conducted, and of course a provider of red light therapy products whose light boxes聽.

My eyebrow started going up after Jeffery described his invasive experiment in humans in which participants were starved overnight, given a big cup of glucose to drink, had their finger pricked repeatedly to test blood glucose levels while they had a tube up their nose to detect oxygen consumption. 鈥淚t鈥檚 hard getting subjects for this one. [鈥�] I even dragged my son in as a subject for that one,鈥� he聽, sounding like he鈥檚 making light of it. As a grad student, I was taught I could not participate in my lab director鈥檚 experiments because I couldn鈥檛 give informed consent. I wanted to make my boss happy so I could graduate, and that desire could be exploited in a research context. Asking his son to get multiple invasive blood tests and have a tube shoved up his nose for a study rings an ethical alarm bell in my mind.

My eyebrow was raised some more when he described how little amount of red light was needed to achieve a benefit. Sure, you can shine a red-light flashlight a few inches from your eyes for a few minutes, but by mistake they used a flashlight in the lab that was low on batteries and that ended up delivering聽鈥攁 very, very dim red light鈥攁nd improvements in vision were measured there too.

My eyebrow kept moving up my forehead when I heard mentions of 鈥渞ogues鈥� and 鈥渕overs and shakers,鈥� of the need for contrarians in science. Jeffery proudly talks of a dermatologist friend who claims that people who get聽lots聽of sunlight actually live longer even though unprotected sun exposure leads to sunburn which is a risk factor for skin cancer. This dermatologist, he says, no longer has any dermatologist friends anymore because of his belief. I鈥檝e heard this Galileo gambit before, where scientific research is portrayed as crusted over until a revolutionary comes along with a crazy theory he wants proven right. This idea that the so-called tenth dentist is always right because contrarianism is good is just misguided.

My eyebrow went full Vulcan when he mentioned聽聽in which he tried to improve the eyesight of women with age-related macular degeneration using red light. They got no effect, but their husbands, who were recruited as the control group, did improve! This is not seen as potential noise in their experiment and a failure of the control group to be a good control group; rather, the women鈥檚 disease was interpreted as being too far advanced, whereas the husbands were healthy enough to benefit from the light.

(Jeffery mentioned an independent replication that seems to show that red light聽诲辞别蝉听improve vision in macular degeneration. He is referring to 迟丑别听, which was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and which has received聽. It was also financed and conducted by the company that makes the red light device tested. You can read the LIGHTSITE II trial鈥檚 authors rebuttal聽, but even they agree that 鈥渁 small study interrupted by COVID is difficult to draw strong conclusions from.鈥� 础听聽of the evidence before LIGHTSITE II stated that we do not know if this type of therapy works for macular degeneration.)

My eyebrow finally reached my hairline聽, when red light was insinuated as the saviour for people with certain genetic diseases. Mitochondria have their own DNA molecule, and the genes this molecule contains code for proteins the mitochondria need to do their job. Mitochondrial disease arises when one of these genes is mutated and the protein it codes for doesn鈥檛 work well. Jeffery told the story of children who have a type of mitochondrial disease so severe that their ability to make energy is impaired and they usually die by the age of 25. Parents reached out to him, and he told them they might want to consider red light therapy. Lo and behold, Jeffery reports a 鈥済ut-wrenching improvement.鈥� Within a month or so, one of these children was semi-mobile again. He sobbed when he saw a video of her walking to school.

He said too few people in the London area suffer from this condition, so he was unable to recruit enough to do a proper randomized clinical trial. All we have are anecdotes.

The way in which Jeffery summarizes the benefits of red light therapy on Huberman鈥檚 show is incredible, in the literal sense of the word.

Apparently, you can shine red light in your eyes and not for long. Its effect lasts for days. And it doesn鈥檛 even have to be bright. It can be very dim. And it doesn鈥檛 even have to be your eyes; any patch of skin will do, like a little rectangle on your back. And you don鈥檛 even need to shine it directly there; red light from the Sun scatters off of plant leaves and you get it this way too.

But somehow, sunlight isn鈥檛 enough. Somehow, working indoors in an environment lit by LEDs is a major health crisis and the red light we鈥檙e already getting isn鈥檛 enough. On the podcast, Jeffery聽, 鈥淭here鈥檚 a group of us that are shuffling around corridors, all mumbling to one another, saying, 鈥楬ow big a stink is this?鈥� [鈥�] Some of [the members of this group] are saying, 鈥楾his is an issue on the same level as asbestos.鈥欌��

It just doesn鈥檛 add up.

Jeffery makes it sound like we all live and die in LED boxes, never seeing any other form of light. But we don鈥檛. We spend time in parking lots walking to and from our cars. We drive with the windows down. We walk to the pharmacy. We mow the lawn and work on our garden. We walk our dog. If red light is so potent that very little of it is needed for a very short amount of time, we鈥檙e already getting it. There鈥檇 be no need to panic people about the harms of LEDs if they could be reversed by a homeopathic dose of red light, which is way less than what almost all of us get on a daily basis.聽

You can鈥檛 have it both ways. You can鈥檛 say that LED lights are so damaging that they are an important cause of every illness鈥� and also claim that red light is a cure-all in tiny doses for a few minutes at a time, even reversing diseases baked into our genes!

If Jeffery鈥檚 theory is correct, then red light therapy is redundant because brief exposure to sunlight is enough. And what does he say聽聽if we can indeed get the same effect with sunlight? 鈥淚鈥檓 not going to spend whatever is left of my career hunting that down.鈥� I was stunned.

This casts his motivation in a bad light, in my opinion.

When all you have is a hammer

I鈥檓 not dismissing the whole story. LED lights can be overly clinical and depressing. Ask any interior designer and they will remind you of the importance of lamps with warm light bulbs, especially in the evening, to create a cozy, relaxing atmosphere. Incorporating warm bulbs both at home and in work environments is not a bad idea. Moreover, staying indoors under artificial lights is not good for us: it makes us sluggish and can impact our circadian rhythm, and it鈥檚 usually associated with sitting down for too long and staring at screens. Going outside鈥攚ith adequate protection from sunburns鈥攊s beneficial, and few people would argue against that.

But to ascribe so much illness鈥攍ow sperm count, blood glucose spikes, age-related vision loss, obesity鈥攖o blue light and, contrapuntally, to insist that a tiny bit of barely visible red light can reverse all of this is a hard pill to swallow. The use of red light to treat disease is part of the field of photobiomodulation, and聽as I鈥檝e argued previously, its early research findings are coated in a thick,聽thick聽layer of hype.

Dr. Jeffery ends his podcast conversation by stating that 鈥渆verything is pointing towards light bulbs,鈥� and his聽id茅e fixe聽gets amplified and twisted in the media, with聽聽as 鈥渇lickering synthetic weapons鈥� conducting 鈥渨hole-body attacks鈥� and proposals of completely evidence-free聽. This adds an unnecessary anxiety to our already anxious lives.

When your entire research career is aimed at proving one thing, it鈥檚 a hammer-and-nail situation. What I would recommend is going outside, basking in the sunlight for a bit, and looking at other causes of disease. Putting a spotlight on something is not bad, unless it blinds you to what is happening outside of that tiny splash of light.

Take-home message:
- Some researchers and influencers are claiming that LED lights, by emitting a lot of blue light and not enough red light, are causing a slew of health problems.
- They will also claim that red light (meaning red, near-infrared, and infrared light) shone on a small part of the body in tiny amounts has significant health benefits and can counteract the dangers of blue light.
- These claims are greatly exaggerated and require much better scientific evidence to prove.
- One researcher has said that a bit of red light therapy appeared to reverse the debilitating symptoms of a genetic disease that typically kills people by the age of 25, which is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.