The Quick and Simple Guide to Infrared and Red Light Therapy

What you need to know and the gear you need to get the infrared and red light you need

I use red and infrared light therapy in my practice every single day. Here is a quick summary of what I recommend to patients.

• Phototherapy patches from LifeWave. You can purchase yours here. Start with the X39 patch.

• I use red and infrared light devices from EMR-Tek and BioLight daily. I start with 5 minutes and increase to 20.

• I also use sauna - more on that in this blog post.

Red and Infrared Light Therapy

Infrared and red light therapy - technically known as photobiomodulation - is a vital habit for good health and longevity. If you don’t have a solid habit of getting infrared and red light everyday, year-round, then this post is for you. My professional opinion is that this is a vital habit, so make it yours today one way or another.

The optimal source of infrared and red light is sunlight. Over forty percent of sunlight is infrared light. Much of the visible light within sunlight is red light. This means that over fifty percent of the sunlight that reaches earth is red or infrared. Red and infrared light have healing properties, but unfortunately they have been edited out of modern life. Why? Because bright blue and green hues keep us awake and engaged, and this means more dollars for Big Tech. This is why all of the major social media websites and apps use bright, white backgrounds and blue hues in their logos and interfaces. Blue and green light are their gold mine.

Red and infrared light are vital to life. Your mitochondria produce red and infrared light when they burn carbohydrates, fats, and proteins for fuel. They produce so much infrared light that it heats them locally to over body-temperature.

Red and infrared light come at a cost. Infrared light heats up the environment, and this means that cost and environment-conscious consumers have quickly adopted (and light bulb manufacturers have been quick to advertise) bulbs with less and less infrared light. The result is that our modern, indoor light environments are loaded with blue and green light and, relative to sunlight, are deficient in infrared and red light. To make matters worse, we are getting less physical activity and time outside than ever before in history. The result is that modern humans are grossly deficient in red and infrared light.

Red and infrared light are key frequencies for longevity and healing. They are as vital as vitamins. Vitamins is an amalgamation of the words "vital" and "amines." Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (who discovered vitamin C and won a Nobel prize for it) wrote, "A vitamin is a substance that makes you ill if you don't eat it." He lived in a time when the only electrical lights were incandescent bulbs that mimicked the light spectrum of the sun quite closely. Those days are long gone. Infrared and red light are, as far as I am concerned, essential to life. Now, a cold, high-temperature (see this article to understand what that means) light bulb may emit zero infrared light and very little, if any, red light. The excess blue light they emit is causing excessive lipid peroxidation in your skin and eyes, whether you know it or not.

I recommend my patients to maximize their red and infrared light exposure. Few, if any of them, live outdoor lives. They are stuck in indoor jobs with low-infrared and red lighting. The result is that many of them suffer from skin and eye diseases. Introducing infrared and red light can be life-changing for them, as it helps to heal these vital organs.

How do we bring red and infrared light back into our lives? I have three solutions. My favorite is patches, which you can learn more about here. These are by far the most accessible and convenient, and give me my most profound testimonials. I also recommend red and infrared light therapy panels. Last, but not least, is sauna therapy, which I wrote about here. Today, we'll talk about red and infrared light patches and panels.

Why should we use red and infrared light patches or panels?

First, the patches. I started using these patches about 18 months ago now (as of October, 2024) and have never looked back. They are convenient, they are affordable, and they give us such good results that we use them in every single case in my medical practice. They are a game-changer. I recommend the patches first, especially to driven, successful people, because they are by far the most convenient.

I also recommend panels. Red and infrared light panels can deliver more red and infrared light in moments than the average indoor-worker gets in weeks. Five minutes a day can go a long way toward making up what you're not getting from natural sun exposure. I use the EMR-Tek inferno or Firestorm every day for this reason.

How do I use these panels? I keep the EMR-Tek Inferno next to my Sperti vitamin D lamp and I use both at the same time. Any day that I don't get a healthy (30 minutes to an hour) of intense sunlight (UV-index over four or five), I spend at least five minutes in front of my Inferno and my Sperti D. This keeps my vitamin D levels and my melatonin levels healthy.

How much infrared and red light do you need? Find me a study showing that red or infrared light led to an increase in mortality. That study does not exist. The only studies close to it are those documenting that the more sun you get, the longer you live. Over forty percent of sunlight is infrared and another ten or so is red light. This is a big part of why sunlight is so powerful as a healing force.

If the least you can get is five minutes a day of infrared and red light, then that is far, far better than none at all. How big of a deal is this? The sun puts out over a hundred thousand lux of visible light on a bright, sunny day. My EMR-Tek Inferno and Firestorm put out fifty thousand or more - rain or shine. The results for me are palpable improvements in energy, recovery, sleep, and mood. If you get ten lux of red light for sixteen hours a day, you get a total of 4,800 lux in total in a month. This would be a typical dose for the average modern person. If you get 50,000 lux of red light for just six minutes a day, you get a total of 150,000 lux of red light in a month. I get 30 times as much red light as an office worker with a brightly lit office. The BioLight Shine, which fits in the palm of my hand, puts out about 20,000 lux at two inches. The EMR-Tek Firewave puts out more than that at five or six inches. These measurements vary greatly with small variations in distance from the light (the intensity declines exponentially with distance). Regardless, the dose of red and infrared light (infrared light is not measured in lux and I can't quantify it with my equipment currently) from these devices dwarfs what most modern people get with the cold, LED or compact fluorescent bulbs that have become the norm for indoor lighting.

I consider red and infrared light to be as important as vitamins. As far as I am concerned, you cannot overdose on them, but under-dosing them is, in my opinion, is disastrous.

There is one more paradigm for light therapy to talk about, which we will cover next. That is sauna therapy, which you can read more about here.

Until then, be well.

Dr. Stillman

p.s. this post contains affiliate links. Your purchases help me keep this content free!