Light Therapy For Eyes: Is it harmful?

Updated on October 27, 2021

Light therapy has quickly gained traction in healthcare. Read on to know if it is safe for your eyes or not.

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Light therapy and especially the use of red light therapy has been proven to be safe for the eyes and it has also been touted as offering the potential to safeguard a person’s vision and also help with healing for people who may have some form of damage in their eyes. 

The following write up will give you a gist of the clinical research that has been done on red light therapy and also on eye health. The added focus of this article is its espoused benefits on age-related eye complications such as glaucoma, degradation of the eyes muscles and other types of eye damage. 

Red Light Therapy as a preventative measure

Muscular degradation of the muscles in the eyes due to age related problems affects an estimated 200 million people throughout the world. This is not at all an uncommon scenario as proved by the numbers. This common condition takes place as the muscles of the eyes age and some of the main energy production capacities of the eyes decreases. The decline in the ocular cells has a number of consequences. It can easily cause inflammation, degeneration of the cells and eventually leads to an overall decline in the affected person’s vision and result in not being able to function properly when navigating day-to day tasks. No cure currently exists for this type of muscle degradation of the eyes. 

The main benefit of red light therapy is the fact that natural light causes the mitochondria in our cells to get stimulated and as a result of which the cells will produce more ATP energy. If you use red light therapy as a preventative measure, you are doing the absolute right thing. This type of therapy fights the root causes of degradation of the muscles in the eyes. It can work as a regulatory measure of the cells in your eyes by helping them work much more efficiently and keep on producing energy, although you are aging. 

How exactly does Red Light Therapy work?

Just on the off chance that you are not aware of red light therapy, this article will help you cover your bases in knowing all that you need to know about it. It will give you a  pretty decent overview of what it actually is and how it actually works. A high quality red light therapy device will provide a safe and focused wavelengths of light to your cells and skin. When it does this it significantly reduces the amount of oxidative stress present in the body of the patient and it helps the cells to get stimulated in order to help with energy production. There is a lot of research available about the science behind this type of therapy device and how it operates. Some of that scientific literature is present in this article although it is just a basic overview of much broader and dense text. Red light therapy has the very real potential of helping your body use its energy much more efficiently. This in return will provide you with a host of other health benefits. 

Use of Red Light Therapy To Fight Off Age Related Conditions Of The Eye

Recently a lot more has been learned about the scope of treatments that red light therapy is suited for when it comes to the eyes. A 2018 study published some definite conclusions after researching 33 patients for around 5 years. The median age of the study participants were about 67 years with their results being monitored for about five years. The patients that had been using red light therapy reported a number of positive health outcomes for their eyes. These are as follows: 

  • A significant improvement in their visual acuity, which is the sharpness of the vision that is measured by the participant’s ability to accurately understand letters and numbers that were at a distance.
  • Much fewer cases of hemorrhage and edema. This basically results in much less vision that is distorted and also no ruptured blood vessels.
  • Zero negative side effects. This has pretty much uniformly been the case for just about every major study concerning red light.

Lab studies conducted suggest that red light therapy can protect vision and the eyes in mammals in two significant ways.

Much less Inflammation: Inflammation in the eyes has direct correlation with the stress of the individual being monitored. It can also be the result of an injury. Red light therapy has been proven to reduce ocular inflammation. Inflammation in the eyes, if left untreated will lead to a decrease in ATP energy production levels. This will eventually lead to a loss of vision. The clinical data that has thus been collected prove that red light therapy is an effective tool in fighting this type of inflammation. 

Red light therapy isn’t only effective in reducing inflammation in the eyes but instead it can lower inflammation in a number of other parts of the body as well. This has been proven by hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. 

Increased ATP energy: Every cell in the body uses ATP energy almost all of the time to power up the body. This type of energy is necessary for all of these cells to survive and function and it is especially true for the cells that determine your vision. As suggested by a number of studies, red light therapy for the eyes increases ATP production in the eyes. It also helps with using the energy that has been produced to be used in a much more efficient way. 

Just the fact that red light therapy is known to reduce inflammation and the fact that it is super effective in boosting ATP energy production should make it enter the list of anyone wanting to take care of their eyes properly. It helps in combating age-related complications in the eyes and protects the patiently from prematurely contracting unwarranted complications in the eyes.

The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.