Red Light Therapy for Fatigue: New 2026 Study

I Got back from three weeks off on Monday. Bags are still by the door, if I'm honest, I haven't touched them. And by Tuesday morning I was three tabs deep into a research paper a customer had emailed me the week before with nothing but "have you seen this one?" That's usually the moment I know I've lost an evening.

She was right this time. Three weeks of doing absolutely nothing useful, and the first thing I do back at my desk is read about mitochondria. My daughter thinks this is hilarious. She's not wrong.

A 2026 pilot study out of Frontiers in Sports and Active Living tracked ten people with chronic fatigue and ten trained athletes, all using a wearable red and near-infrared light device daily for 30 days. Both groups reported meaningfully less fatigue, and blood testing showed their mitochondria were producing energy more efficiently over the same period. The chronic fatigue group's fatigue scores dropped 37%. The athletes dropped 12%. Most of that change happened in the first two weeks, not gradually over the full month. The best thing about this study in my opinion - doesn't matter if you are athlete or a worn out parent, red light therapy helped both groups!

Why I couldn't put this one down

You know that thing where you come back from a real break and for a few days your body just feels different, lighter somehow, and then by day four you're back to scrolling your phone at 9pm wondering where it went? I had that this week. And it got me thinking about the people who message me who never get that reset at all. The ones who are tired in October, tired again in January, and by the time summer finally rolls round they're too wiped out to really enjoy it either.

Fatigue is a nightmare to measure properly. Nearly everything we know about it comes from questionnaires, which are fine as far as they go, but they're someone's guess at how tired they feel, nothing more. What made this study worth reading twice is that the researchers didn't stop at asking people how they felt. They pricked fingers, ran the blood through a validated mitochondrial test called meScreen, and looked at actual cellular energy output alongside the questionnaires. When the blood work and the self-reported tiredness move the same direction at the same time, that's worth paying attention to.

What they actually did

Ten people with chronic fatigue, ten athletes. Everyone wore a near-infrared device (800 to 850nm) six days a week for a month, four ten-minute sessions each time across the spine, chest and abdomen. Blood drawn at day 0, day 15, day 30. Fatigue tracked with the FACIT-10a for the chronic fatigue group and the MFI-20 for the athletes, because you can't really compare the two scales directly, they're measuring slightly different things.

By day 15, the chronic fatigue group's resting energy production and reserve capacity had climbed significantly. The athletes showed something else entirely, better mitochondrial efficiency and less reliance on the sloppier backup energy pathway (glycolysis), even though their baseline output barely moved. Neither group showed a rise in oxidative stress. That last bit matters more than people think, because plenty of things can push energy output up in the short term while quietly wrecking the cell to do it. You can read the full paper here: Associations of wearable photobiomodulation device use with mitochondrial bioenergetics and fatigue.

So two completely different starting points. One group climbing back to a baseline they'd lost. The other polishing something that was already working fine. Which one are you, out of those two? Actually think about it for a second before you keep reading.

The bit nobody says out loud

Most people I talk to about fatigue have already tried the standard list. Sleep more. Eat better. Manage stress. And if you've done all of that and you're still tired, at some point you start assuming it's you, that you're just not disciplined enough, or you're making excuses. I'm not saying that to have a go at anyone, I've been there myself with arthritis, where "just rest more" did precisely nothing for years. Sometimes it isn't a willpower problem. It's that the actual machinery that makes energy in your cells is running under capacity, and no amount of gritting your teeth fixes that.

This is where the light bit comes in properly, rather than being tacked on as an afterthought. Red and near-infrared light gets absorbed by an enzyme called cytochrome c oxidase, sat inside your mitochondria, right at the end of the electron transport chain, which is the actual production line that builds ATP. Under stress, nitric oxide can build up around that enzyme and more or less gum up the works. Certain wavelengths seem to help knock that nitric oxide loose again, so electron transport and ATP production pick back up. Michael Hamblin's written some of the clearest work I've come across on this, particularly his paper on mitochondrial redox signalling in photobiomodulation, and there's a good breakdown of the wider mechanism in this review of photobiomodulation's cellular targets if you want to go deeper.

Why the Norwegian autumn makes all this worse

You know that day, usually somewhere around the third week of September, when you drive home from work and it's already properly dark by half four (that's my English speak, you Norwegians would call "halv fem"), headlights on, wipers going, and you walk in the door and you're just done. Not tired from anything specific. Just done. I get more messages around then than any other time of year, people whose energy has quietly fallen off a cliff with no obvious reason. No illness, nothing's changed, they've just stopped having anything left by three in the afternoon.

Part of that is daylight dropping fast. Part of it, and this is the bit almost nobody mentions, is that the light most of us sit under all winter, office lighting, LED downlights at home, none of it contains the red and near-infrared wavelengths your mitochondria are actually built to use. You're getting plenty of brightness and almost none of the specific light your cells are asking for.

What to actually do about it

If your fatigue is the persistent kind, not a rough week but something that's followed you around for months, the protocol from the study (four short sessions over the spine, chest and stomach, most days of the week) maps closely onto what a full-body red light therapy panel can do at home in about twenty minutes rather than four separate placements. If it's more the athlete pattern, training hard and never quite bouncing back the way you used to, a portable device you can hold directly against the muscle group you've just trained is usually more practical, which is exactly why we sell portable red light devices alongside the panels.

One thing I tell everyone who messages me about dosing: more light isn't automatically better. Photobiomodulation has what's called a biphasic dose response, meaning too much can switch off the exact effect you're chasing. Almost nobody selling panels in Norway talks about this, and I think that's a genuine gap, because it's the difference between a protocol that actually does something and one that just looks good on a spec sheet. If you want help working out timing and distance for your own situation, message me. That's actually what I'm here for, not just to sell you a box.

What I'd push back on, if I were you

This was ten people per group, no placebo, funded by the device manufacturer, though to their credit the blood work was done blind by an independent lab. The researchers themselves call it hypothesis-generating, not proof, and I'd take that at face value. What it does well is connect an objective biological marker to how people actually felt, and show both moving in the same direction over time, which is more than most fatigue research manages. It's an early, real, interesting signal. It isn't the final word, and I wouldn't want you walking away thinking it is.

If you want the wider picture of what's been published this year, I rounded up the standout papers in my mid-year photobiomodulation research review, and if you're training and wondering about timing around your workouts specifically, I covered that in red light therapy before or after your workout.

This post discusses published research for educational purposes. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace a conversation with your doctor, especially if your fatigue is severe, sudden, or you can't explain it. Always check with a qualified healthcare provider before starting a new protocol.

Frequently asked questions

Can red light therapy actually help with fatigue?
Early research, including the 2026 pilot study above, links daily red and near-infrared light use to better mitochondrial function and less perceived fatigue over 30 days. It's promising, but the evidence is still early, built on small uncontrolled studies rather than large randomised trials, so I'd treat it as a supportive tool, not a guaranteed fix.

How long before I'd notice a difference in my energy levels?
In this study, around 60 to 65% of the total improvement, both in the bloodwork and the fatigue scores, showed up in the first 15 days, with smaller gains through to day 30. Most people I talk to see a similar early pattern, though it depends a lot on your starting point and how consistent you are with sessions.

Does red light therapy work differently for athletes versus people with chronic fatigue?
Yes, based on this study anyway. People with chronic fatigue showed recovery type changes, their resting energy production climbing back toward normal. Athletes showed efficiency changes instead, less waste through the glycolytic pathway without needing more total output. Same light, two very different starting points, two different useful results.

Kan rødlysterapi hjelpe mot kronisk utmattelse?
Tidlig forskning, blant annet pilotstudien fra 2026 nevnt over, kobler daglig bruk av rødt og nær-infrarødt lys til bedre mitokondriefunksjon og mindre opplevd utmattelse over 30 dager. Studien var liten og ukontrollert, så jeg vil kalle resultatene lovende, ikke bevist. Snakk alltid med legen din hvis utmattelsen er alvorlig eller du ikke finner noen forklaring.

References

1. Valeyeva-Frost Z, Eckel G. Associations of wearable photobiomodulation device use with mitochondrial bioenergetics and fatigue in athletes and individuals with chronic fatigue. Front Sports Act Living. 2026. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42465967/
2. Hamblin MR. Mechanisms and Mitochondrial Redox Signaling in Photobiomodulation. Photochem Photobiol. 2018. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29164625/
3. Mechanisms and applications of the anti-inflammatory effects of photobiomodulation. PMC. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5523874/