Red Light Therapy for Pain: Does Eyes vs Skin Matter?
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Red Light and Pain: Why It Matters Whether It's on Your Skin or in Your Eyes
I've had my panel on my ankle most mornings this week. September in Drammen, the mornings have that bite to them again, and my joint knows it before I've even looked at a calendar. Old injury, arthritis, the whole familiar story. Sock on, wince, sock adjusted, wince again. You get used to the choreography of it.
My pain isn't that bad these days, I sleep on a grounding sheet and use red light therapy most mornings, so I've got a system that mostly holds. But it's still a different kind of morning to a warm July one, yes. The joint knows the season even when the system's working.
I already knew light works through the eyes, not just the skin. That's actually how I got into light therapy in the first place, years ago, for depression, understanding the eye angle before I'd even thought about putting light on tissue for pain. So when a paper on light and pain turned up on one of my research alerts a few days ago (I've got four different alerts and reminders set up trying to catch the major light research each week, that's how much of it there is), what caught me wasn't that the eyes matter. I already knew that part. What caught me was how specific, and frankly contrary, the eye effect can be when pain is what you're after.
I've always kept the same rule of thumb: if it's too bright to look at, it's too bright. Don't be an idiot and stare straight into strong light. When I want the bonus through my eyes rather than just on my skin, I make sure I'm not sat directly in front of the panel where it's too much. That's instinct built up over years, not something I could have properly explained until this paper.
A 2026 mini-review published in Frontiers in Pain Research pulls together the current evidence on light and pain, and one of the more interesting findings is this: light reaching your body through your eyes and light reaching your body through your skin travel down different pathways, and for the narrow question of pain relief specifically, they don't always point the same direction. Local red and near-infrared light applied directly to sore tissue reduces pain, working through nitric oxide release and peripheral opioid pathways at the site itself. Red light viewed through the eyes showed a modest pain-sensitivity effect in a couple of early studies, through a separate route involving a part of the brain called the ventral lateral geniculate nucleus. Worth knowing, not something to worry about, and it sits inside a much larger, well-established body of research showing red and near-infrared light reaching the eyes has real benefits for eye health generally, more on that below.
Ask yourself now, when you sit in front of your panel, are you looking at it, or is it on your skin? For the specific job of pain relief, that's the detail worth knowing.
My first reaction wasn't "the eyes matter", I'd already filed that away years ago, back when I first got into this through light and depression rather than light and pain. It was that red, the exact colour I sell the most of, showed this narrow, pain-specific split between eyes and skin. That's the actual twist. I'm not saying that to sound clever about a paper I happened to read, I'm saying it because it's the kind of detail almost nobody selling red light panels in Norway gets into, and I've been doing this since 2018. I test every device with a spectrometer before I'll stock it, and I still learned something new reading this one.
What the Eyes Are Doing That the Skin Isn't
The visual pathway runs through your retina into circadian and brainstem circuits that regulate the whole body's pain sensitivity, not just the sore spot. This is the same wiring involved in your sleep and mood, and it's why bright light exposure through the eyes, done at the right time of day, has shown real promise for conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic low back pain in clinical trials. Morning bright light, over 3,000 lux, about an hour a day, repeated over days, has an analgesic effect through this circadian route. Timing seems to matter more than anything else here, get your brightest light earlier in the day rather than late in the evening, and this circadian pathway tends to work in your favour.
Green light is the one that comes out of this review looking the most consistently useful when viewed through the eyes, particularly for migraine. Researchers have shown that migraine sufferers exposed to green light report less pain and less light sensitivity than under white or blue light, and the mechanism runs through a brainstem pathway called the dorsal raphe nucleus rather than anything to do with the skin at all. If you've read my piece on green light and migraine, this is the same finding, from a different angle.
Now, the part I want to be clear about, because I don't want anyone walking away from this thinking red light near their eyes is something to be wary of. It isn't. There's a much bigger, longer-running body of research on red and near-infrared light and the eyes that has nothing to do with pain, and it's overwhelmingly positive. Prof. Glen Jeffery's work at UCL has shown that short daily doses of longer-wavelength light can improve mitochondrial function in the retina and measurably improve colour vision in older eyes, because the retina is one of the most mitochondria-dense tissues in the body and it slows down with age like everywhere else does. You can read that paper here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32596723/. That finding stands on its own, separate from anything in this pain paper. Two different questions, two different bodies of evidence, and only one of them is about pain.
Meanwhile the pain relief people buy a panel for, joint pain, muscle soreness, arthritis, the ankle-sock negotiation I do most mornings, that's tissue-level work. A 2025 study published in Lasers in Medical Science found that a wearable 660nm red light device reduced neck pain scores in people using it daily over several weeks, working through local anti-inflammatory and nitric oxide pathways rather than anything involving the eyes. You can read the full paper here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40500538/. A separate trial using combined red and infrared LEDs on people with jaw joint pain, temporomandibular disorder, found meaningful pain reduction over a course of sessions applied directly to the area. Full paper here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12966631/.
The photophobia research is worth mentioning too, not because it's about pain relief, but because it shows how strong this eyes pathway really is. A 2016 study in Brain found that even blind migraine patients with no image-forming vision could still feel light-triggered pain through a small subset of light-sensitive retinal cells, which tells you this circuit runs deeper than simply "seeing" light. You can read that one here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27190022/.
Where This Leaves You With Your Panel
Practically, nothing changes about how I use mine, and it never really needed to. Skin on the joint, eyes closed or looking away, that's been my approach since I started doing this in 2018, long before this paper existed, because the tissue-level effect on pain and inflammation is where the actual evidence has always sat. My eleven-year-old asked me the other day why I always close my eyes when I use the panel, and I could tell her straight, it's not because looking at it is something to be scared of, it's simply that the pain relief itself comes from the light on the joint, not the light in your eyes, and this new paper just laid that out in more detail than I'd seen written down before.
None of this is settled science yet. The review itself is upfront that a lot of the human trials are small, and dosing protocols vary a good deal between studies, which matters given how light in general shows a biphasic dose response, more isn't automatically better and can sometimes undo the benefit. This is an emerging, adjunct area of research, not a replacement for whatever your doctor or physio has you doing already.
If you want to get into protocol specifics for your own pain, whatever it is, message me, that's what I'm actually here for. And if arthritis specifically is what's driving you to read this, I've written more on the clinical evidence for red light and joint pain here, and on the day to day symptom side here.
Have a look at our red light panels if you're weighing one up for pain or recovery, and if migraine and light sensitivity is more your situation, the green light piece I mentioned above is worth your five minutes too.
This post is for educational purposes and doesn't replace advice from your doctor or physiotherapist, especially if you're managing a chronic pain condition or migraine.
Does red light therapy help with arthritis pain?
Early clinical evidence suggests local red and near-infrared light applied to the joint can reduce pain and stiffness for some people with arthritis, likely through effects on inflammation and cellular energy production at the tissue. It's an adjunct, not a cure, and results vary person to person. I've used mine on my ankle through several autumns now and the pattern holds for me, less stiffness, not none.
Is it safe to look at a red light therapy panel?
Yes. Red and near-infrared light is generally considered safe for the eyes, and there's a large, well-established body of research showing real benefits, including for retinal mitochondrial function and colour vision as we age. The newer, narrower finding from pain-specific research is simply that the actual pain relief comes from the light on your skin and tissue, not from staring into the panel. My own rule of thumb has always been simple, if it's too bright to look at comfortably, don't stare at it, same as with any strong light source. Most red light devices, including ours, are designed to be used with eyes closed or looking away, which fits with where the pain-relief evidence sits.
Does the timing of light exposure affect pain relief?
Yes, and that's useful to know because it means you have some control over it. Morning bright light, over about 3,000 lux for roughly an hour, repeated daily, has shown a real analgesic effect in trials for conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic low back pain, working through the same circadian pathways that regulate your sleep. Getting your brightest light earlier in the day, rather than late in the evening, is where the benefit really sits, so it's less about avoiding light and more about timing it well.
What colour light is best for migraine?
Green light viewed through the eyes has the most consistent evidence for reducing migraine pain and light sensitivity among the colours studied so far, with several trials showing real symptom reduction. Read more in our dedicated piece on green light and migraine.
Er det trygt å se på et rødlyspanel?
Ja. Rødt og nær-infrarødt lys regnes som trygt for øynene, og det finnes mye solid forskning på fordelene, blant annet for mitokondriefunksjonen i netthinnen og fargesyn med alderen. Den nyere, smertespesifikke forskningen viser bare at selve smertelindringen kommer fra lyset på huden og vevet, ikke fra å se rett inn i lyset. Mitt eget prinsipp har alltid vært enkelt: er det for sterkt til å se komfortabelt på, ikke stirr på det, akkurat som med enhver sterk lyskilde.
References:
- Noseda R, et al. Neural mechanism for photophobia. Brain, 2016. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27190022/
- Jiang et al. Wearable 660nm red light therapy for neck pain. Lasers in Medical Science, 2025. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40500538/
- LED photobiomodulation for pain reduction in temporomandibular disorder: a randomized, controlled, blinded clinical trial. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12966631/
- Gonzalez-Menendez et al. Optically improved mitochondrial function redeems aged human visual decline. Journals of Gerontology, 2020. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32596723/
- Ren et al. Photobiomodulation and pain: a mini review. Frontiers in Pain Research, 2026. DOI 10.3389/fpain.2026.1920821