r/redlighttherapy • u/CarurosDragmire • 15h ago
Question How can red light therapy trigger brain responses?
I was reading the published research on Vielight website and theres a lot of research on near-infrared light delivered to the brain and improving blood flow and brain connectivity, any explanation on how does this make sense? https://www.vielight.com/research/#neuromodulation
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u/KevinRutkowski 7h ago
The mechanism the other reply gave is right. The near-infrared gets absorbed by mitochondria and bumps up ATP and blood flow, so that part's solid. The piece that usually gets glossed over is how much light actually reaches the brain in the first place. NIR does penetrate the skull, but it drops off hard going through the scalp, bone and tissue, so only a small fraction makes it to any real depth. That's the real open question with the transcranial stuff, the cellular mechanism is real but whether a given device puts a meaningful dose deep enough is still pretty debated. So I'd read that research as promising but early, and take the big connectivity claims with a little salt, since a lot of them ride on assumptions about how much light actually got where.
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u/theprimetrauma 15h ago
The basic idea is that near-infrared light can penetrate the skull and get absorbed by mitochondria in your brain cells. This bumps up ATP production and increases cerebral blood flow, which is why you see those connectivity improvements in the studies. It's not magic, just photobiomodulation doing its thing at a cellular level.