Infrared Radiation - LED Lights
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Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:08 pm

Found this information posted on another skin care board about infrared radiation and artificial IRA sources (i.e. LED):

www(dot)skintherapyletter(dot)com/2009/14.5/2.html

free skin care · Thu Sep 17, 2009 3:42 am

Can somebody please in simpler words explain the main conclusion in this article? English aren't my first language, and I'm not sure that I have fully understood this article correctly.. Rolling Eyes

IR saunas are not so good at all then...?
Or devices for skin treatment in the face, with IR lights..?

Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:24 am

From my understanding of the article the IRA radiation, which is in the range of 760-1440nm, has been found to:

(1)increase expression of the collagen degrading enzyme matrixmetalloproteinase-1

(2)and decrease the de novo synthesis of the collagen itself

Basically, this means that IRA radiation may induce the same damage that UV light does to the skin.

So, LED devices that use this range of IRA may be causing damage to the skin in the long term.

free skin care · Thu Sep 17, 2009 3:16 pm

This is bad news. Sounds like I'll have to return my LightStim gadgets!

free skin care · Thu Sep 17, 2009 3:21 pm

Is this hype or someone trying to sell something else? After all, some units are FDA approved. (Not that it means anything Smile

)

free skin care · Thu Sep 17, 2009 4:42 pm

leathal wrote:

After all, some units are FDA approved. (Not that it means anything )

Yeh, FDA approval really doesn't mean much when it comes to proving if a product is really effective in its claims. FDA is more for safety and to make sure that products follow certain regulations.

I did a search to see if this information was for real and there are a number of dermatology websites that have this study posted and the actual study is on pubmed and medscape.

free skin care · Thu Sep 17, 2009 5:09 pm

Ok..read the article, then went back to the Lightstim site and read the technical stuff.

The article, to me, talks about sunlight. It says that most IRA radiation load on the humans skin is of solar origin. When it says that artificial uses are on the rise, I am thinking tanning beds...mmmm..but it says theraputic use. IR radiation is in the 760-4000nm. This is the high end of the UV light. It is also talking aobut taking UV protection and using antioxidents.

For Lightstim, it contains no UV rays. It's light stimulates the body's own cells to build new protein like plants.

Ok, that is my analysis..right or wrong. I just can't convince myself they are the same thing

free skin care · Thu Sep 17, 2009 7:30 pm

leathal wrote:

Ok..read the article, then went back to the Lightstim site and read the technical stuff.

The article, to me, talks about sunlight. It says that most IRA radiation load on the humans skin is of solar origin. When it says that artificial uses are on the rise, I am thinking tanning beds...mmmm..but it says theraputic use. IR radiation is in the 760-4000nm. This is the high end of the UV light. It is also talking aobut taking UV protection and using antioxidents.

For Lightstim, it contains no UV rays. It's light stimulates the body's own cells to build new protein like plants.

Ok, that is my analysis..right or wrong. I just can't convince myself they are the same thing

Actually the Lightstim does utilize IR that falls into the IRA range (760 to 1440). The IR utilized in the Lightstim is 880.

It is correct when the study states that most of the IRA radiation on humans comes from solar origin. Just due to the fact that most humans are in some way directly or indirectly exposed to sunlight throughout the day. Since humans spend so much time in the sunlight, that will tend to be the major source for our radiation. But that still does not change the fact that certain radiation, no matter if it’s from the solar sunlight or artificial light, can be harmful.

I remember in the early 90’s when I went to the tanning beds the person that owned the place told me that the beds were completely safe and that they did not cause any harm like the sun did. Well we now know for a fact that tanning beds cause the same amount, if not more, harm as the sun does, and the tanning beds are artificial light/radiation sources. I also do not think there would be too many people who would consider tanning beds as “therapeutic” use knowing the damage they cause to the skin.

When the study refers to “therapeutic” use I would assume they mean infrared light sources/products that are used a lot for sport injuries and other muscle injuries. I know that some companies sale infrared lights that are for these therapeutic uses. There are even hospitals and doctors who utilize these therapeutic infrared sources/products for injury purposes. These therapeutic infrared light sources/products utilize the same sources of infrared light that many of the facial devices are now using.

Although these IR sources may be used for injuries, that still would not mean they are safe for use on the face for anti-aging purposes. And since this study shows that IRA may cause aging of the skin, it would probably be assumed that no matter if it is from the sun or from an artifical light source the IRA radiation would not be good either way for anti-aging purposes.

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 1:31 am

I have read so many papers - that have been in academic journals - stating that the research undertaken by NASA - and they discovered that the IR LEDS in their trials delivered some benefits related to collagen production.

This is one paper discussing the negative effects IR, I think we obviously have to be careful, and read more, but this paper has be treated as an individual's - one research aspect on this topic.

I would like to see more peer reviewed articles supporting this argument with evidence and testing. I think then we could send this to the suppliers who produce IR based anti aging equipment for home use and ask them to comment.

We need more facts with comments from suppliers before we panic.

Thoughts?

PQ

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 1:55 am

Thank you PQ. Seems like the age-old, it's good for you/bad for you conundrum!

I love using my AALS and think it makes my skin look good, so I'd be loathe to throw it away, unless there was no doubt IR was damaging my already-damaged skin.

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 1:59 am

ljk wrote:

Thank you PQ. Seems like the age-old, it's good for you/bad for you conundrum!

I love using my AALS and think it makes my skin look good, so I'd be loathe to throw it away, unless there was no doubt IR was damaging my already-damaged skin.

I agree!

I don't think we can ignore this paper and then in 5 years know the reason why our skin looks older than it should be and knowing we could have brought this to suppliers' attention.

I am concerned but in the meantime with carry on using IR until we have some more concrete evidence as stated in my previous post.

Let's stick together on this one and see if we can make sure that we are all safe and not damaging our precious skin.

PQ

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 9:23 am

These particular researchers seem to have published a few papers on the damage created by LEDs, but (from what I could discern from very quick research) even the papers that cite their research don't have similar conclusions. And there is plenty of other research touting the benefits of IR LEDs.

The earliest publication date I could find was 2003. So this information has been out there for at least 6 years, and not a lot of scientists have jumped on board.

No one really knows, is my impression. There seem to be causal relationships but the exact mechanism is not well understood. And we are the guinea pigs!

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 10:01 am

photoqueen wrote:

ljk wrote:

Thank you PQ. Seems like the age-old, it's good for you/bad for you conundrum!

I love using my AALS and think it makes my skin look good, so I'd be loathe to throw it away, unless there was no doubt IR was damaging my already-damaged skin.

I agree!

I don't think we can ignore this paper and then in 5 years know the reason why our skin looks older than it should be and knowing we could have brought this to suppliers' attention.

I am concerned but in the meantime with carry on using IR until we have some more concrete evidence as stated in my previous post.

Let's stick together on this one and see if we can make sure that we are all safe and not damaging our precious skin.

PQ

It does seem like there is substantial information/studies dating back as far as 1982 about IR radiation.

Kligman LH. Intensification of ultraviolet-induced dermal damage by infrared radiation. Arch Dermatol Res 272(3-4):229-38 (1982).

Dover JS, Phillips TJ, Arndt KA. Cutaneous effects and therapeutic uses of heat with emphasis on infrared radiation. J Am Acad Dermatol 20(2 Pt 1):278-86 (1989 Feb).

Danno K, Mori N, Toda K, et al. Near infrared irradiation stimulates cutaneous wound repair: laboratory experiments on possible mechanisms. Photodermatol Photoimmunol Photomed 17(6):261-5 (2001 Dec).

Schieke S, Stege H, Kürten V, et al. Infrared-A radiation-induced matrix metalloproteinase 1 expression is mediated through extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 activation in human dermal fibroblasts. J Invest Dermatol 119(6):1323-9 (2002 Dec).

Frank S, Oliver L, Lebreton-De Coster C, et al. Infrared radiation affects the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis in human fibroblasts. J Invest Dermatol 123(5):823-31 (2004 Nov).

Kim HH, Lee MJ, Lee SR, et al. Augmentation of UV-induced skin wrinkling by infrared irradiation in hairless mice. Mech Ageing Dev 126(11):1170-7 (2005 Nov).

Kim MS, Kim YK, Cho KH, et al. Regulation of type I procollagen and MMP-1 expression after single or repeated exposure to infrared radiation in human skin. Mech Ageing Dev 127(12):875-82 (2006 Dec).

Schroeder P, Pohl C, Calles C, et al. Cellular response to infrared radiation involves retrograde mitochondrial signaling. Free Radic Biol Med 43(1):128-35 (2007 Jul 1).

Buechner N, Schroeder P, Jakob S, et al. Changes of MMP-1 and collagen type Ialpha1 by UVA, UVB and IRA are differentially regulated by Trx-1. Exp Gerontol 43(7):633-7 (2008 Jul).

Schroeder P, Lademann J, Darvin ME, et al.. Infrared radiation-induced matrix metalloproteinase in human skin: implications for protection. J Invest Dermatol 128(10):2491-7 (2008 Oct).

Jantschitsch C, Majewski S, Maeda A, et al. Infrared radiation confers resistance to UV-induced apoptosis via reduction of DNA damage and upregulation of antiapoptotic proteins. J Invest Dermatol 129(5):1271-9 (2009 May).

I understand that many have had wonderful results from the AALS, but an important question to ask is how much of those results are really from the red and/or amber lights?

I remmber a lot of friends going to the tanning beds because it helped with their acne and because they thought that the darker skin color made their skin look healthier and made the wrinkles less noticeable, but in the long run they were only causing more damage. Is this a similar situation where IRA does produce some nice results in the short term but ultimately hurts in the long term?

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 7:23 pm

I would like to make sure that we're comparing apples with apples. So I'm asking again - is infrared the same as near-infrared?

Anyone come up with anything on this?

Fri Sep 18, 2009 8:12 pm

Keliu wrote:

I would like to make sure that we're comparing apples with apples. So I'm asking again - is infrared the same as near-infrared?

Anyone come up with anything on this?

A lot will depend on the specific person's definition of near IR and IR.

IR is usually the LED light that cannot be seen by the naked eye. So IR LED bulbs will not show light when they are.

Near IR is considered by some manufacturers of LED devices to be the red lights since they are near the IR wavelength.

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 8:59 pm

Well the reason I ask this question is because most of the LED devices use near infrared - but they also cannot be seen with the human eye.

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 10:20 pm

Infrared (IR) is the broad term used for radiation whose wavelength is longer than visible light. 47% of sunlight is infrared; it is most closely associated with warmth/heat, and is invisible.

Visible light (think of colours) ranges from approximately 400nm to 700nm (some sources site 750 or 760 as the upper limit). Red (visible) light has a wavelength of 620 nm to 750nm or so.

According to the International Commission on Illumination, near-infrared (NIR or IR-A) has a wavelength of 700nm to 1400 nm. It is closest to the red spectrum of visible light (see above).

Infrared light (the broad category) ranges from 700nm to 1 mm. HTH

free skin care · Fri Sep 18, 2009 10:56 pm

Ricayhermosa posted the following on the Lightstim thread - it's most interesting.

Steve Marchese, President of LightStim International, Inc., asked me to post his reply on the forum. I hope it answers all your questions and dispells all you doubts.

Be warned: it's very long, so I divided it in two parts.

Hello ladies, gentlemen and manufacturers of the EDS forum. I am joining in on this thread to just give you a couple of the many things wrong with this study. I have included the full study and the MACHINE that was used in the study for your comparison to your LED devices, regardless of what manufacturer you bought from or are thinking about buying from. My statements will have nothing to do with LightStim, as LightStim is not the issue.

These articles and the study were designed as an outright attack on LED Lights using the 833nm or 850nm wavelength Infrared LEDs, which are used in consumer devices. You will see more studies of this type on other wavelengths as time goes on. This study was about going to an extreme, never even envisioned by any of the LED Light Manufacturers, to show some possibility of a negative reaction. The next paragraph will show you just how far they were willing to go.

All LEDs lights that are sold to the public have 1 or 2 SPECIFIC wavelengths, not the FULL RANGE OF 700 to 1440nm all at once. All LED's lights that are sold to the public put out less than 10 watts and less than 12 joules. All LED lights sold to the public have a per location treatment time of 1 to 10 minutes, except Omnilux at 20 minutes. The study used a water cooled MACHINE, it is not a device- it is a machine, and it puts out 360 to 720 Joules and 520 watts!!!! And according to the study they applied it for 57 to 114 minutes and they applied ALL of the wavelengths from 760 to 1440nm. No manufacturer I know of uses above 980nm in a device sold to the public. With that many Joules and Watts I'm surprised nobody was hurt!

This is so irresponsible that a one paragraph totally misleading article was put on the internet. When you look at the above statistics and you look at the machine they used in the test, this would be likened to this: A number of manufacturers put out similarly effective sleeping pills that has a dosage of 1 pill per night and is taken by 5 million people over a 20 year period with not a single instance of someone being harmed.

Then a study summary comes out on the internet and states nothing more than in a test done in Germany they have concluded that some people may die from taking such a sleeping pill. Everybody gets upset. When you finally get to see the whole study, which you have to pay for by the way, you find that the study consisted of giving people 500 sleeping pills in one night! That is how irresponsible PubMed is for putting up this paragraph. It was done to sell the full article and I'm sure they were successful. Why else would they not put up this gross discrepancy and make people think that there consumer LED light might have anything to do with this crazy powerful machine that the FDA would never allow into your hands?

The study itself is completely flawed in that they are treating the whole range of 740 to 1440nm. No machine in our industry does such a thing. Every manufacturer either uses 833nm or 850nm, including LightStim, in their anti-aging devices. Who would even think doing a test like this unless they wanted negative results that they could then use to sell a skin care product? The skin care industry is freaked out that you will all stop buying their products because of the cost and effectiveness of LED. Why would anyone do a study and subject people to 360 joules and 520 watts?

LED's have been being used for 30 years with no side effects. Newborns have been put under them to treat Jaundice for over 20 years with no side effects. Dermatologists have used them for over 15 years to treat acne with no side effects.

All of you on this forum should be proud that you have chosen these safe and effect devices, no matter what company you bought from. They are all good devices. Some might be better than others and some manufacturers might embellish their claims more than others, but they all work to one degree or another and as long as they aren't made in China you won't hear me saying anything bad about any of them. That's would be in poor taste.

You know, I did a similar study on myself. If any of you have ever met me in person you have seen this. From when I was 25 years old on, I never did anything for my skin. No moisturizers, I ate poorly (until I married my wife), I layed in the sun most days and I subjected by face to the radiation of old style computer monitors for about 10 years. Then, at 57 years old, I used my LightStim Anti-Aging Light on the left side of my face on my smile line. I picked the left side because it was much worse than the right. Both sides were deeply creased to where if you run your finger along my cheek, it gets stuck in the fold or crease. I used the Light for about 9 or 10 weeks, everyday and many times for more than the recommended 3 minutes (I'm just being totally honest here). At the end I had reduced that deeply creased fold or wrinkle by about 80% and there was only a line, no crease, left. At trade shows estheticians jaws drop when they spot it. Anyways, then I did not use the light for 6 months and I saw no change, no worsening. I decided to continue and see how long it would go. At 8 months, my wrinkle start to get worse again. So at that point I started using my Light again 2 times per week. The wrinkle went back to the 80% improvement again and I've held it there with 2 applications per week. So I almost totally reversed 32 years of abuse in 10 weeks and then again abused it by not using a maintenance program to hold it there. That was my long term study on myself.

I could have explained this to you in another way, similar to what they have done in this study. I could have said that I used the Light and reduced the wrinkles, but as time went on, particularly in the 7th and 8th month, I noticed some aging in my skin and so conclude that LED use MAY cause aging of the skin (similar wording to what they used in the study). Of course, unless you saw the whole study, you would think my study concludes there may be a problem.

You will find other studies in the future and just remember that LED's have been being used for medical purposes for over 30 years. It did not start with NASA. Most medically oriented devices use Red and Infrared together. To date, there are no side effects.

The question you have to ask yourselves is who would benefit from funding a study that was designed specifically to discredit LED Light Therapy? Nobody in this day and age can afford to fund a study to discredit a technology which has worked for over 30 years with no side effects unless it benefits themselves in some way.

Below it the MACHINE they used in the study. Below that is the whole study.

Best wishes to you all,

Steve Marchese, President, LightStim International, Inc.

http://www.hydrosun.de/en/content/view/9/27/

Click on the following link to see the picture of the machine:

http://www.hydrosun.de/en/content/view/44/78/

hydrosun 500

Technical information for hydrosun® Irradiator
Radiation emitted: filtered infrared-A(wIRA®), no UV-radiation
Irradiation field: up to 25 cm (9.8") diameter (tube by choice) (wahlweise mit Tubus)
Rated voltage: 230 V, 50 – 60 Hz,
Power input: 520 W
Dimensions: length:30 cm (11.8"),width: 27,5 cm (10.8"), height: 23 cm (9")
Irradiance: E = 310 mW/cm² to 400 mW/cm2 (in the optical axis)
Safety switch: automatically, self repositioning after cooling down of the irradiator
Weight: about 4,5 kg (9.9 lbs) net
CE-certification: in compliance with directive 93/42/EWG, EN 60601-1
Classification: active medical device IIa

free skin care · Sat Sep 19, 2009 11:03 am

Bump up

free skin care · Sat Sep 19, 2009 6:32 pm

Here is a very interesting article on LED lights and...get this...chickens hatching.

http://www.warp-heals.com/pdf/670nm.pdf

free skin care · Sun Sep 20, 2009 3:08 am

Interesting article on the chickens hatching. I wonder though, could temperature have anything to do with the difference in results? I would think the chicks that got LED light treatment were warmer during the test period.
Very sad that their little heads were chopped off.... Crying or Very sad

free skin care · Sun Sep 20, 2009 7:49 am

I think the interesting fact is that the lights advanced there growth and strength.

I missed the head chopping...ewwww

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