Are you suffering from the burning, redness, and other symptoms of rosacea? Have you already tried most everything without success?
I have good news for you. Light therapy is proving effective in soothing, and even reversing rosacea symptoms. It can work very well in combination with other natural rosacea treatments, and has not had any side effects reported in conjunction with its use. Many rosacea sufferers can start to feel a difference within 24 hours of their first session.
You may be wary, and for good reason. There are endless pages of conflicting information out there about light based therapies for rosacea.
Well, now that you’re here, you can take a deep breath and relax. I am going to teach you what light therapy is, and what is isn’t, and exactly how it can help you end the burning, redness, and long list of other symptoms you may have been dealing with for years. As we go, I’ll be here if you have any questions.
Let’s get started.
What is Light Therapy?
If you’ve been doing your research on effective natural rosacea treatments, then you’ve already read more about light therapy than the average person. So let’s start with what light therapy is not.
Light therapy is not laser treatment.
Laser treatment is the most common light based rosacea treatment so far. Lasers take light and focus it (unnaturally) into a continuous beam. Lasers work by destroying specific tissue, then depend on your body to clean up the mess. Lasers have the potential to do a great job – they also have the potential to do more harm than good. Light therapy poses no such risk.
Light therapy is not IPL (Intense Pulsed Light)
IPL is another common light based treatment for rosacea. IPL takes non-laser light and blasts it at your skin at high intensity. Again, specific wavelengths of light are chosen to target certain cells or depths of skin, damage is done to those targeted areas, then your body cleans up the mess. Granted, the damage is usually less with IPL than with lasers, resulting in a less painful experience, and less drastic risks, but still, it’s not light therapy.
What light therapy is. (Photobiomodulation)
Light therapy is a branch of alternative medicine. It has been gaining more and more credibility in the conventional medical community, and has finally been accepted as a legitimate therapy and formally named “photobiomodulation.”
Light therapy uses natural light of different colors (wavelengths) to cure, treat, and prevent a growing list of conditions, including rosacea.
Light by nature is electromagnetic energy, traveling at roughly 186 thousand miles per second. It does not need any help from man to have an impact.
Here’s an example from the field of light therapy that you might be familiar with: blue light therapy for jaundice.
Blue light has been the standard treatment for neonatal jaundice for decades. These infants do not have to be bludgeoned with light for it to work. Instead, their delicate skin is bathed in gentle blue light for hours. Without any sensation or side effect, the light interacts with their blood through the capillaries in their skin, breaking down the bilirubin, so their body can clear it away. That is light therapy.
Every color of light works in a different way, but the overall experience of treatment is the same. Light therapy does no harm. It is natural, gentle, safe, effective, and without side effects.
Here’s how light therapy can work for you.
Red Light Therapy for Rosacea Treatment
Red light helps to reduce redness, swelling, itching, the dry/tight feeling, the burning feeling, and even the little pimple-like bumps seen in the second rosacea subtype. For many, myself included, red light can stop the burning feeling within minutes of the first treatment.
The Research Behind Red Light for Rosacea Treatment
The study of the benefits of red light as a skin care treatment go back as far as 1903, at which time Niels Finsen won the Nobel Prize in Physiology when he used these wavelengths to speed up the healing of small pox on the skin and to prevent scarring from occurring. Those same techniques were later used by Finsen in the treatment of lupus patients, successfully enhancing the treatment of this disease which comes with the risk of disfigurement.
Documented case histories in “Light Years Ahead: The Illustrated Guide to Full Spectrum and Colored Light in Mindbody Healing”, described by co-author David Olszwski, EE, IE, showed that visible red light (within the range of 630 nm to 700 nm) can boost the skin’s rate of healing by 200 percent. This illustrated the way in whichred light therapy is a clinically proven effective and natural skin healing treatment.
Research has shown that red light therapy can:
- Reduce erythema (skin redness)[1]
- Improve healing in wounds and lesions[2],[3]
- Activate the skin homing immune system[4],
- Rejuvenate skin[5]
- Provide photo-aging reversal and anti-inflammatory benefits[6],[7].
- Promote fibroblast (collagen) production[8]
- Reduce the appearance of scarring[9]
Benefits of Red Light for Rosacea Treatment
- Decreases inflammation (which can reduce swelling, redness, and other skin discomforts)
- Boosts the rate of skin healing for faster results
- Reduces the time needed to manage rosacea flushing
- Helps to heal existing acne rosacea and redness without any added irritation
- Assists in the prevention of worsening/progressing rosacea symptoms
- Drug-free with no reported long- or short-term side effects
- 100 percent natural and non-invasive
- Safe for regular daily use for people of all ages
- Easy for home use
- Simple to self-administer
- Requires very little time and/or effort
- Painless
- Does not lose effectiveness over time
- No down-time
How Does Red Light Work for Rosacea?
As of yet, the exact cause of rosacea is not known. In fact, there could be several different root causes of rosacea. However, they all have one thing in common in the end: chronic inflammation. [10][11][12]
Red light therapy works primarily because it reduces inflammation.
How?
Light has the ability to penetrate the skin and into the body, depending on the wavelength. Red light can penetrate about 3/8 of an inch – relatively deep into the skin.
Once the light penetrates the skin, it is absorbed by light-receiving molecules in each cell called “photoreceptors.”
After the light is absorbed, a cascade of molecular events occur – including the increased production of ATP or raw cellular energy.
As a result of all of this molecular activity, certain things are known to happen on a cellular level and most of them contribute improving rosacea symptoms. They are:
- Inflammation is reduced.
- Certain cells proliferate – useful in healing the skin.
- Cell migration is increased – also useful in healing the skin.
- Collagen production is stimulated – necessary for healthy skin.
All of this leads to the clearing of rosacea symptoms without causing irritation or any other unwanted side effects.
Red light therapy can help the burning feeling fast – often within minutes of the first treatment. Swelling, bumps and pimples usually subside over the first few weeks of consistent treatment. However, any redness that has become “permanent” could take many months to heal. This is where amber light therapy can be an additional benefit.
Amber Light Therapy for Rosacea Treatment
Although red light therapy has become the most common wavelength used for the treatment of rosacea symptoms, there are many people with this skin disorder who have also found great benefit from amber wavelengths, as well.
Not too far on the spectrum from red, amber light therapy comes with some similar benefits as well as several that belong uniquely to that color. Also occasionally called yellow light therapy or orange light therapy, the actual shade of this color is generally accepted as amber within the scientific and medical communities.
Amber light therapy can be used on its own, but many rosacea sufferers find that they can find a greater range of benefits in healing their symptoms when they combine the use of this color with red light therapy.
The Research Behind Amber Light for Rosacea Treatment
Amber light is well known for its overall calming and rejuvenating benefits. Aside from its uses in easing the symptoms of rosacea, it is also often used for: soothing irritated or sensitized skin, reducing skin redness, stimulating the production of red blood cells for skin healing and revitalizing, calming swelling and inflammation, decreasing the look of visible blood vessels and even minimizing the damage caused by UV exposure.
While red light therapy is generally the choice for inflamed forms of rosacea, amber light therapy is the go-to option for redness. Combining the two can be safely done and can bring the benefits of both wavelength ranges to the user.
In fact, LED amber light therapy is safe enough that it has been used to ease the redness in the faces of patients who have undergone laser surgery for other skin conditions. In 2009, a paper was published by Dr. Tina Alster, entitled “Improvement of Postfractional Laser Erythema with Light-Emitting Diode Photomodulation”, in which she found that using LED amber light therapy immediately after laser skin resurfacing had been administered and both the severity and duration of the erythema (redness) experienced post-procedure were drastically reduced.
This was a clear demonstration of how effective this therapy can be, even on the most sensitive and reactive skin, such as following laser surgery or, indeed, among rosacea sufferers.
That said, amber light therapy is also often used for immune support due to the impact it has on the lymphatic system. As rosacea sufferers are also prone to minor infections – such as acne-like breakouts – on the surface of the skin, they can benefit from exposure to amber wavelengths to help heal from those infections and repair the damaged tissue that had been left behind so that what results is skin that is not only healthy but also improved.
Benefits of Amber Light for Rosacea Treatment
- Speeds skin healing
- Reduces erythema (redness)
- Reduces inflammation (and associated symptoms such as redness, flushing, swelling, itching, burning)
- Decreases the time required to calm a rosacea flare-up, particularly flushing
- Helps to heal skin damaged by rosacea symptoms
- Soothes irritated, inflamed, sensitized and reactive skin
- Stimulates red blood cell production for improved healing and overall skin health
- Decreases the appearance of visible blood vessels
- Heals sun damaged skin
- Painless
- 100 percent natural and non-invasive
- Drug-free with no reported long- or short-term side effects
- Safe for regular daily use for people of all skin types and ages
- Requires very little time and/or effort
- Simple to self-administer
- Easy for home use
- Does not lose effectiveness over time
- No down-time
How Does Amber Light Work for Rosacea?
It is believed that the reason amber light therapy effectively reduces the symptoms of redness (erythema) among many rosacea sufferers is that the blood vessels can reduce in size following treatment. As a result, they – and their red color – become less visible. This action makes LED amber light therapy sessions extremely safe and appropriate for all skin types, including those that are the most sensitive and reactive.
Amber light therapy also stimulates the production of red blood cells, which play a vital role in skin healing and skin cell rejuvenation. They also help to give the look of being healthier, overall.
Visible amber light can penetrate the skin to a shallow depth. This means that the cells exposed to the light are primarily those that are visible, so that the greatest impact on the skin occurs where it can actually be seen as they absorb that energy and use it as a part of natural healing processes, clearing rosacea symptoms without causing irritation or any other unwanted side effects.
Green Light Therapy for Rosacea Treatment
Many people find that green light therapy on rosacea flushes can be soothing and can reduce the redness, heat, itchiness, and overall discomfort. Some have found that green light helps reduce permanent redness over time, in addition to amber.
Blue Light Therapy for Rosacea Treatment
I was recently contacted by someone who wanted blue light for her rosacea. It came recommended by her dermatologist. She was told it would make her skin more resilient and less sensitive. She has found that it is working for her.
If you decide to try blue light as part of your treatments, please heed these warnings:
- Get a light that is around 450 nm or above. This will reduce the chance that there is any UVA in it. I have heard several reports that 415 nm blue light was irritating to rosacea prone skin. (415 nm is actually violet and is closer to UV than blue.) A lot of blue light therapy products out there will peak around 415 nm, because that is the most effective wavelength against acne bacteria. But rosacea is not fueled by acne bacteria. So the blue you need is the more soothing color of blue – look for 450 nm and above.
- Don’t over use it. When it comes to light therapy, (with any color), it’s not a “more is better” type of thing. Your skin is already sensitive and volatile. Ease into blue light therapy treatments for rosacea and see how it goes.
You can learn more about blue light therapy here.
How to Learn More
Julie (below) has produced a whole library of videos about rosacea, many of them are light therapy related, including light therapy product reviews and other rosacea home remedies.
Next: Get your questions answered >
References
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19397672 (Improvement of postfractional laser erythema with light-emitting diode photomodulation)
[2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lsm.20677/abstract (Light-emitting diode therapy in chemotherapy-induced mucositis)
[3] http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/104454701753342758 (Effect of NASA Light-Emitting Diode Irradiation on Wound Healing)
[4] https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jnms/73/2/73_2_75/_article (Light-emitting Diode Phototherapy at 630 ± 3 nm Increases Local Levels of Skin-homing T-cells in Human Subjects)
[5] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2009.04246.x/abstract (Light-emitting diodes: their role in skin rejuvenation)
[6]https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OvYSProMAiUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=660nm+wrinkles&ots=x7sZ-Msyef&sig=ToSy97_SS_PHMxQQK5VdduNBuSg#v=onepage&q&f=false (LED Low-Level Light Photomodulation for Reversal of Photoaging).
[7] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1524-4725.2005.31926/abstract (Clinical Experience with Light-Emitting Diode (LED) Photomodulation)
[8] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10103-003-0262-x (Increased fibroblast proliferation induced by light emitting diode and low power laser irradiation)
[9] https://www.google.com/patents/US6676655 (Low intensity light therapy for the manipulation of fibroblast, and fibroblast-derived mammalian cells and collagen)
[10] http://www.rosacea.org/patients/causes-of-rosacea/innate-immune-system (Causes of Rosacea: Innate Immune System)
[11] http://www.rosacea.org/patients/causes-of-rosacea/neurovascular-system (Causes of Rosacea: Neurovascular System)
[12] http://www.rosacea.org/patients/causes-of-rosacea/vascular-changes (Causes of Rosacea: Vascular Changes)
