This is not news, but I am only just now getting around to posting it.

I first got the idea about this when I started to hear that blue light killed other types of bacteria in only seconds, such as the bacteria that causes the gum disease peritonitis, then later, MRSA.

A company called Solta Medical did some specific research for their acne treatment product, Claro, and they proved that blue light kills the majority of exposed acne bacteria in as little as 6 seconds.

They tested their light against 4 others, two of which used only blue light, the Evis Marvel Mini (414nm) and Tanda (415nm.)  Evis killed 68.3% of the acne bacteria in 6 seconds.  Tanda – 62.1% of acne bacteria dead after a single 6 second treatment.

My Own 6 Second Test

As soon as I read this research I tested it on a pair of stuborn zits I had on between my shoulder blades.  I used the enLux Hybrid at a distance of 6″ away for 6 seconds over the course of 4 days.  Only 24 hours after a single 6 second treatment you can see most of the inflammation is gone – the zits are on their way out.

My 6 second test using the enLux Hybrid LED

As a result of their research and my own 6 second test, I reduced the treatment time on every acne light I’ve sold since to  about 12 seconds per area with excellent results over the last 3 years. My LightWave CS is an example of this.

What does this all mean for you?

It is safe to say that any blue light near a 415nm peak will kill roughly 60% of the acne bacteria it can reach within 6 seconds of treatment time.  Lights that peak farther from the UV, such as ones that use 450nm or 470nm, will take longer, but still only measuring in the seconds.

If you are currently using a blue light acne treatment product that peaks at or near 415nm, cut your treatment time down to about 12 seconds per area.  You will get the same results as the longer treatment times, or likely better.

If you opted away from the UV and your acne light peaks above near 450nm or above, try 25 seconds per area.  Since your light penetrates the skin a little deeper and so reaches more bacteria, you might get even better results.

If you are using a combination of red and blue light, use it a little longer, say 30 seconds or up to 60 seconds to get more benefit from the red.

What if you want the anti-aging benefits of red light, too?  Then you should be using blue and red light separately.  Use the blue light for 15 or so seconds, then use the red for up to three minutes per area.

Don’t Waste Your Time

Whatever acne light you own or are intending to buy, it will kill acne bacteria in as little as 6 seconds, so do not waste your time sitting there for 15 minutes.  When it comes to light therapy, enough is enough, more is never better.

1. Light is light.  Red light therapy can be accomplished with any light source including incandescent, fluorescent, and LED and (cold, soft, low-intensity) laser.  There are benefits and drawbacks of each, but ineffectiveness is not one of them.  For certain applications, especially on the surface of the skin, a $25 red incandescent floodlight will do the same thing as a $350 red LED panel array.

2. Red is Red.  If the light looks red, you’ve got red light therapy. The whole range of red light, from about 620nm – 700nm does the same thing.  Don’t get roped into spending more for one red light that might be 30nm different than the one you can afford just because they say it’s better.

3. Intensity does not equal effectiveness.  Don’t buy a red light therapy product based on claims of intensity.  Get the light that best fits your budget and your lifestyle.  They will all work when used as directed.

4. More is not better.  The treatment time for just about any red light therapy application is between 1 and 5 minutes per area.  Research has shown that longer treatment times are not necessary and, in fact, can render treatment ineffective.   Sometimes it’s even better to do treatments twice or three times per week instead of daily. Resist the urge to over do it, and be patient as your results are revealed.

I’ve moved this article to my other site on IntelligentAcneTreatment.com.
Please view it there. Thanks!

Sorry, but I’ve moved this article to my other website at IntelligentAcneTreatment.com.
Please click here to view it over there. Thanks!

Table top acne lights have been around for years. These lights are more affordable than the hand-held type, and they cover a much larger treatment area, making them more convenient for those with moderate-severe acne.

Table-top type acne lights are more affordable than their hand-held counterparts, however they lack the portability many people need today.

Like the hand-held chart, this is a “real-life” type of chart, designed to reveal things that are going to matter to you over time, such as warranty, cost of replacement bulbs, and return policy details.

The chart also assumes each product will be effective when used as directed and they should be, for about 86% of people.

Hand-held acne lights are becoming very popular for their sleek design and travelability. If you are treating the occasional zit or trouble spot, a hand-held acne light is perfect and wonderful. If you have acne more often, or over a larger area, a head-held acne light might become tedious and time consuming, and you might find a table-top model more convenient for daily treatments.

This chart compares the following hand-held acne lights: LightStim, Tanda, Evis MD, Baby Quasar & LightWave CS. This is a real-life type comparison, so you can see the things that really matter, such as how you are going to spend – not just your money, but your time – along with how long your investment is protected (warranty) and if you get your money back if it doesn’t work for you (return policy).

The  chart assumes every product will be effective when used as directed and, in fact, they all should be. Whatever the product, acne light therapy is effective for about 86% of people.

You can see that LightStim and LightWave are a single unit, where the others are red and blue separately. If you are looking to treat acne alone, an acne light that combines red and blue light would be most convenient for you. If you would like to use red light for other things too, such as to build collagen, then you might like having the red and blue lights separately.

If there is an aspect of the acne lights that you are interested in which is not included on this chart, let us know and we’ll add it.  Also, if you find anything about this chart to be inaccurate, please send us a quick email so we can fix it.

By the way, LightWave CS is our light, and so here’s a coupon should you decide to buy it.

Coupon Code: LTOHHCT – Save an additional $20 off current sale price.

If your son or daughter suffers from acne, it is natural for you to want to help him or her get rid of it as quickly as possible. You want to protect your child from the painful ridicule from classmates, the weakening self image, and the physical scarring that acne can cause. You may already feel that you have tried everything, so now you are looking into alternative treatments as a last ditch effort to avoid the doctor’s recommendation to put your child on harmful antibiotics, birth control pills, or Accutaine.

As a parent, you’re looking for an acne treatment that works, and works consistently. You’re looking for an acne treatment that your teen or preteen will actually use, not another fading ‘ritual’ of bottles and tubes of “miracle products” day and night. You’re looking for an acne treatment that is SAFE for your child, and that won’t cause any harmful side effects, discomfort, or down-time. (Not to mention birth defects in your grand kids.)

Blue and Red Light is the acne treatment you are looking for.

Blue and Red light therapy works and works consistently. Blue and Red light has been scientifically and clinically proven to be effective for the treatment of mild-to-severe cases of inflammatory acne. Eighty six percent of people who use blue and red light acne therapy find some degree of success, including total clearing within 12 weeks of consistent treatment with recommended use.

We’ve found that blue and red light works fastest for teenagers and preteens, so you may begin to notice improvement in cases of mild-to-moderate acne in just a few days.

Blue and Red light therapy works best for mild-to-moderate acne, but our research and experience has equipped us to help you handle even severe acne cases with light therapy as part of a holistic approach.

Blue and Red light therapy is quick and easy. Blue light therapy is something your teenager is likely to actually stick to without complaint. Our light, LightWave CS, features 6-10 second treatments per area – they can treat their whole face in 36 seconds once or twice per day.

Blue and Red light therapy is SAFE. Blue and red light is completely safe for your child, inside and out. It is 100% natural, simple light. It is completely non-invasive. It does not cause the skin to dry out, itch, redden or swell. In fact, there are no adverse side effects reported at all.

Click here to learn more about blue light acne treatment.

Learn more about our ‘acne light,’ LightWave CS.

Tackling Severe Cases of Inflammatory and Cystic Acne

If your son or daughter is suffering from a severe case of inflammatory or cystic acne, then they may be suffering from a severe hormonal imbalance and/or Vitamin D deficiency as described above. You may notice symptoms of this showing up in other areas of their health and well being as well, aside from their skin. For example, their mood, concentration, weight and immunity may also be effected.

Blue and Red light therapy with LightWave CS can certainly help treat severe and cystic acne from the outside, often with good success over time with consistent treatment. However, especially in cases of severe acne, it is best to find and treat the cause of the problem. Total clearing may then be achieved safely and naturally by taking an “inside-out,” holistic type of approach as outlined below.

Let’s get rid of your child’s acne all together.

You can.

Consider this: In non-westernized societies, acne as a condition does not exist – not even among the teenage population. So why do our children suffer from this sometimes disfiguring disease?

No doubt you’ve done your research and you’ve learned that the cause of your child’s acne is hormone imbalance. If you can correct the cause of your child’s acne, you can eliminate the problem all together.

Granted, there are many things that bear on our children’s hormone balance today, especially during the teen and preteen years, but let’s consider the two most significant: what they eat, and the amount of sunshine they get.

1. What they eat.

What your child eats and drinks has a dramatic and immediate effect on their hormone balance. Diet has finally been proven to be related to the presence and severity of an acne condition. At least two studies since 2002 have identified the link between what we eat and the cascade of hormones leading directly to the overproduction of oil in the skin and the resulting acne condition. You may find links to these studies from the following articles on our blog:

Yes, Diet IS Related to Acne

There is no Profit in the Acne Cure

2. The amount of sunshine they get.

This is important for at least two reasons related to hormone balance:

i. Natural light is actually a basic human nutrient, just like food or water. Light entering through the eyes travels directly to the hypothalamus in the brain which is ultimately responsible for total hormone balance. Read more about this.

ii. Light striking the skin is the only natural way our bodies produce Vitamin D. Vitamin D3 is actually a pre hormone, not a vitamin. Vitamin D deficiency is now a pandemic. Unless your child gets regular sun exposure without sunscreen, it is likely that they are Vitamin D3 deficient. Most Vitamin D research going on now is focused on the cure and prevention of such things as cancer, diabetes, autism, and other catastrophic diseases, but Vitamin D has been linked to acne in the past, and will no doubt prove to be a visible symptom of Vitamin D deficiency as research continues.

Please follow the links on this page to learn more about how blue and red light therapy, a healthy diet, adequate daylight and Vitamin D3 can get rid of your child’s acne and help sustain their vibrant health, inside and out.

Please feel free to email or call me personally if you have any questions about how to implement this information for your son or daughter.

Louanna Wilson (“Mom”)

Director – Light Therapy Options

(800) 673-9407

Louanna@LightTherapyOptions.com

Hey, everyone! Yep, its still us! Nope, you didn’t visit the wrong site. We’ve just been renovating around here.  Hope you all like the changes.

A visual comparison of the home pages, old and new, for http://intelligentacnetreatment.com/

Not only have we released a brand-spanking-new light bulb for ‘clear skin’ (psst… that’s the CS in LightWave CS), but as of midnight on June 27th, we’ve gone and launched a brand new site to go along with it. We’d been working on the new bulb since late last year, and on the site in our free time since last March.  We’re pretty happy with both so far, though you can expect to see changes to the site almost daily for at least the next month, I’ll bet.

Anyway, first, let’s talk about the new light, which we have named the LightWave CS. The light is great. Even thought it weighs in at 9 ounces, the same as our old enLux Hybrids, physically it’s only about half its length, so its more compact and fits into most light fixtures better.  At only 7 watts, the LightWave CS uses less than 1/2 of the power of the Hybrid.  Even with its reduced size and power requirements however, the LightWave CS replaces a 50 watt light bulb, down only 15 watts from the Hybrid’s 65 watt value, and still seems blinding when shined directly in your face.

Comparison of enLux Hybrid to LightWave CS

As for the light source itself, instead of using one large LED chip “light engine” like the enLux Hybrid (which, let’s face it, is actually pretty cool and one of the main reasons we approached enLux to build the Hybrid in the first place) the LightWave CS uses 7 high-power Cree LEDs.  There are Six LEDs in a circle around a 7th LED in the center. The six LEDs around the outside are made up of two 405nm blue LEDs, two 450nm blue LEDs, and two 660nm red LEDs. While the 660nm red lights are a nice bonus, since enLux couldn’t produce that wavelength, it’s the center bulb that really makes us smile. That center LED is an 850nm infrared light.  We tried for over a year to get infrared into the enLux bulbs, but with no success.  Overall, I think we have a winner on our hands.

The price of the LightWave CS is certainly higher than the enLux, but still very competitive with other options on the market.  Still, we understand that a number of you might have been in the middle of doing research and RIGHT on the edge of purchasing. Not to worry, I think we’ve still got your covered. We have a limited number of Hybrid’s still in stock, though we expect they’ll sell out pretty quickly. Or, if you’ve decided that you’d like to try the new bulb instead, we’re running an introductory sale. Starting at $249, the price of the bulb will go up $5 the morning of every business day for the next 4 weeks, until it reaches the $349 full-retail price.  While we won’t be making much (if any) profit off of these initial sales, it will be worth it just to get it into your hands and maybe grab some feedback on the product.

Now, as for the site, we hope its more than a cosmetic lift. We’re using a new ecommerce system that we hope will make things easier not only for us, but for you, too. We’ve still got more information on using light to cure acne and to heal and rejuvenate skin than most anywhere else, but now the information is separated out from the information on our light, so its easier to just sit back and read up on the subject without getting bogged down in how our lamps work.  Just click on the “Science” tab, and read up on blue, red and infrared light. If you’re the type who IS interested in the lamp specifics, well, we’ve got that information too, right under “The Light” tab.  If you think we’re missing any important information or features to the site, drop us a line and let us know.

We’re sure you’ll love these lights as much as we do, but if you don’t, we’ll give you your purchase price plus 10% back.

Chris Wilson
Devoted Assistant to the President

In doing research for the new website, I ended up at the American Academy of Dermatology’s Acne website. Right on their home page, this article caught my eye:

“Food Does NOT Cause Acne”

(They did the “NOT” just like that.)

So I read it.

It baffles my mind that a group of dermatologists can take a negative stance on positive research.
If they must say that more research needs to be done to prove anything, they could at least highlight the positive aspects of the research, (because there were no negative aspects of the research) and encourage a healthy diet, since it was found to reduce acne by 50%. If there is a chance of reducing your or your child’s acne by 50% without drugs of any kind, shouldn’t they be happy to say so?
Shouldn’t they?

In doing more research on acne and diet, I came across another article last night on WebMD. It’s title: “Is Acne Fed by the Western Diet?”

The article focused on the research done by Dr. Loren Cordain, PhD, at Colorado State University. Her study, “Acne Vulgaris -A Disease of Western Civilization”, publsied in the December 2002 Archives of Dermatology, nailed the diet > insulin > androgen > oil production > acne link that I was talking about in previous posts. (Yes, Acne IS related to Diet and Acne Cause, Acne Cure.)

Here’s what blew me away: The date on the article was 2002. To me, these people have isolated the cause of acne, and the cure. They published it for the world to know. Seven years ago. And doctors and dermatologists today are still telling their clients the cause is really unclear and there is no cure for acne? I was astonished. I kept asking myself things like, “Why were more studies not done immediately?” “Why does not every dermatologist know this and tell their patients?” “Why is this not common knowledge and common practice 7 years later??”

Then it dawned on me, and I hate to sound cynical, but I quit asking myself questions when I realized this:

There is no profit in selling someone a healthy diet and daylight. You can’t sell it and make a killing. You can’t sell a monthly subscription to it. You can’t charge an insurance company for it. You can’t keep them coming back. There is no money in it.

Certainly no one who profits from selling an acne treatment of any kind is going to tell you the cure. I will. Here it is: change what you eat and drink and spend more time outside.   If its your child who is suffering from the condition, change what the whole family eats and drinks. You can start right now.

How?  Here are some links to get you started:

The Teenage Anti-Acne Diet Booklet. The doctors who did the most recent study created this booklet to help parents implement a high protein, low GL diet for their teenagers.   It is an excellent publication, and it’s free.

The Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth About Losing Weight, Being Healthy, and Feeling Younger

by Diana Schwarzbein, M.D and Nancy Deville.  This book explains food in relation to your hormone balance and provides practical ways to make the simple changes in diet and lifestyle.

The Easy GL Diet Handbook: Lose Weight with the Revolutionary Glycemic Load Program – A great little ‘quick-start’ guide to eating well.

There has been no formal research into the link between Vitamin D3 deficiency and acne vulgaris, but when they find it, I doubt it will be widely publicized, because Vitamin D3 is dirt cheap, too.  Please get your family’s Vitamin D3 levels tested, and start supplementing with 2000 IU Vitamin D3 daily unless you get regular sun exposure without sunscreen.