Red light therapy and green tea – A powerful combination? Could you boost your photobiomodulation skin rejuvenation with the use of green tea.?
Red light therapy has been around for thousands of years, specific red light and infrared light therapy in the form of photobiomodulation therapy (PBMT) has been around since the 70’s. Green tea has also been around thousands of years, has anyone ever combined them?
The answer is yes.
The answer is a powerful yes, and seemingly to good effect.
A paper in 2009 (1) combined 670nm at 4J with green tea soaked cotton pads once per day with terrific effects:
Results “ Rejuvenated skin, reduced wrinkle levels, and juvenile complexion, previously realized in 10 months of light treatment alone were realized in 1 month”
The method was simple Soak cotton pads in green tea and place them on the areas of skin you are going to use light therapy on for 20 minutes prior to using a light therapy session.
Image reference: 1
Just how did green tea manage to improve the already impressive skin rejuvenation capacity of red light therapy 10 fold? By improving the free radical scavenging ability of the antioxidants in the green tea and endogenously.
Now, before we go "full in" on free radicals, we must understand that free radical formation is part of life, literally! The formation of ATP (which gives you the energy to live and breathe) produces free radicals. The trouble is that when are we are stressed, eat poorly, don’t get enough light etc, our production of these free radicals increases and ability to scavange them decreases. Think of it like most things – a little is very good for us and allows us to function, a lot is not good! This prolonged oxidative stress without adequate scavenging eventually leads to aging through cell damage and eventually cell death.
This is a very complex issue to do with things like reactive oxygen species, oxidative stress, free radicals, antioxidants, scavangers. When the body works well, the body keeps these things in balance very well. However, the body needs light, sleep, the right diet and movement to function well. Most of us are not providing enough of one element in that list.
The first thing we can do is to make sure we get enough light and dark (outside light and darkness for bedtime), we can move and train, and we can eat better. Outside of that we can add certain things in to help our body perform better when some aspects are lacking. For example; here in Norway it is -15 and slightly cloudy, so the chances of me getting enough light on a large enough portion of my body today are low. So I can add some beneficial wavelengths of light with a full body panel and provide my mitochondria and other parts of my body with certain elements that will allow them to thrive naturally.
If I then add green tea, a powerful antioxidant used from the outside in, and combine it with red light therapy which has beneficial effects on antioxidants from the inside (plus improvements in mitochondrial health), the research suggests I can improve various aspects of cellular health.
I would therefore be protecting my cellular health, but also help prevent skin damage and premature skin aging.
Is it time you USE LIGHT TO FEEL GOOD AND LOOK GOOD TOO?
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19817517/
- https://www.intechopen.com/books/reactive-oxygen-species-ros-in-living-cells/reactive-oxygen-species-the-good-and-the-bad
Image reference:
1. Andrei P. Sommer and Dan Zhu.Photomedicine and Laser Surgery.Dec 2009.969-971.