Biohacking is the practice of making very small intentional changes with the intent to improve overall health.
Biohacking is not an exact science and it doesn’t follow one specific approach.
It blends what we know from scientific research with personal experimentation with non-invasive and often natural approaches that support the body at the cellular level.
In this article, we’ll explore the role of red light therapy for biohacking and longevity.
How Top Biohackers Use Red Light Therapy to Boost Energy and Performance
Energy and performance go hand-in-hand whether you’re an athlete looking to improve a personal record, an entrepreneur working long hours, a mom “herding” toddlers or a grandma enjoying her golden years.
Performance can mean physical and mental performance, but also emotional resilience and homeostasis: the stable state where everything in the body is working as it should.
The key to having more energy is not just nutrition and adequate sleep. It’s supporting the body in efficiently converting raw materials (food) into energy that the cells can actually use.
Once food is digested, the process of creating cellular energy happens in the mitochondria in your cells. Each cell can contain thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of mitochondria.
When everything is working properly, the mitochondria synthesize the fuel (called ATP, or adenosine triphosphate) that cells need to perform their specialized functions, repair themselves, and replicate successfully. The health of the mitochondria also influences the longevity of a cell.
However, it’s easy to disrupt this process of synthesizing energy from raw materials. Oxidative stress can cause mitochondrial dysfunction, a condition where the mitochondria simply cannot produce the energy the cell needs. One very noticeable effect is overall lethargy and a drop in performance.
A single energized or distressed cell won’t make a huge difference but the body has trillions of cells so it makes sense to heal and “activate” as many of them as possible.
Red light therapy isolates the beneficial wavelengths of light present in sunlight - and your cells love light. The process of activating the mitochondria to produce more energy is similar to how plants use photosynthesis to generate fuel for their cells.
Red wavelengths can absorb into the skin and near infrared (NIR) wavelengths can absorb even deeper into muscles, organs, and even bones. A daily dose of red light therapy can support virtually any organ or system that’s struggling, like the liver, the adrenals or digestive system.
Top biohackers use short red light sessions every day or 3-5 times a week to “nourish” their cells with light. All it takes is 3-10 minutes at a time. After a shower is the perfect time, or just before bed to help your body wind down.
The Science That Influencers Trust for Slowing Aging
Red light therapy was originally used by NASA to enhance plant growth in space and researchers quickly saw benefits for users as well. Since then, it has been widely studied as a way to improve skin health, reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, and promote cellular repair.
To date, thousands of studies have demonstrated benefits that in some cases match or even exceed the effects of drugs or invasive procedures.
This all-natural treatment excels in treating inflammatory diseases. It helps treat psoriasis, heal acne, reduce rheumatoid arthritis, and even treats allergies.
Why is this important? Because red light therapy is effective at treating inflammation. Inflammation is one of the leading causes of rapid aging.
Inflammation is the body’s response to a threat: if you get a splinter, the area around the splinter swells, gets red, and pus fills the cavity. This is a healthy response to a foreign body. Inflammation is an essential part of healing.
However, sometimes the body starts attacking its own cells or tissues by mistake. This type of inflammation is called “inflamm-aging” where chronic inflammation damages DNA and cells which causes a ripple effect of damage to the skin as well as other organs.
This is why targeting inflammation is the first step to slowing aging. All the creams, serums, chemical peels, and plastic surgeries are temporary fixes at best. Top biohackers know that unless you reduce systemic inflammation so that your mitochondria are performing at their peak, you’re not going to achieve the healthy, youthful look you want - and you certainly won’t feel young and vibrant.
Dozens of studies show the effects of red light therapy on reducing inflammation and treating signs of aging.
But aging is so much more than a radiant wrinkle-free complexion. Longevity is more than just living a long time, it’s optimizing your life. It depends on joint mobility, how strong your muscles are, how sharp you are mentally and how resilient you are emotionally. Red light therapy helps treat the joints, helps with muscle recovery from exercise, as well as reducing inflammation to improve cognition.
Skin health and longevity also depend on the health of your gut. Hippocrates said, “All disease begins in the gut.” Emerging research suggests that red light therapy may actually improve the gut microbiome.
Short regular red light therapy sessions may not be a fountain of youth, but they can support your body so that it ages gracefully instead of too rapidly.
Red Light Rituals: Daily Routines from Longevity-Focused Creators
We’ve mentioned that red light therapy sessions should be short and consistent. This is exactly the approach taken by longevity-focused creators. After all, who has time for a 30-minute red light therapy session every day?
Longer is definitely not better when it comes to red light therapy. Your cells can only absorb so much light at once so a quick daily “feeding” of just 3-10 minutes is best for anti-aging and overall health.
If you only do red light therapy a few times a month, some of your short-lived cells like those lining the intestinal epithelium (which renew every 3-5 days) and some blood cells, may miss out entirely.
Longer sessions are just fine if you’re treating a specific acute ailment like a strained hamstring, but for anti-aging and overall health, biohacking experts take the “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” approach. Just a little every day will do more for you than long, infrequent sessions.
Skin, Sleep, and Stamina: Why Influencers Swear by Red Light Panels
So how do you hack enough of your cells to make a real difference in your skin, sleep, and stamina?
We strongly recommend using an LED panel. Red light therapy masks, LED wraps, and handheld red light therapy devices are far less effective. They are underpowered and provide for limited treatment.
Red light therapy panels provide significantly more light energy output than any small device and it will often feature more wavelengths to amplify the results.
A panel is versatile and ideal for both targeted applications like crow’s feet, larger applications like hair regrowth or muscle recovery, and full-body applications that boost circulation and reduce systemic inflammation.
Today, red light therapy is a standard part of elite athletes’ training regimens. It comes down to practicality. It’s nice to be able to treat muscle aches while boosting skin health and promoting a healthy circadian rhythm. It’s convenient to treat major muscle groups before a workout to increase strength and stamina while at the same time boosting circulation and soothing inflamed nerves.
Stacking for Results: Combining Red Light Therapy with Supplements and Cold Plunges
Biohacking isn’t all about finding one thing that works. It’s about finding a number of small practices that you can actually fit into your lifestyle, and doing them consistently.
One great approach is called stacking, where you take a few approaches that work for you, and do them together so that the treatments compliment each other.
Combining red light therapy and cold plunges is one way to stack your results. Cold plunges activate proteins in the body that are essential to healing.
Both cold plunges and red light therapy improve circulation, increase metabolism, boost immune function, sharpen cognitive function, improve sleep quality, reduce inflammation, reduce muscle and joint soreness, and reduce stress and anxiety.
Check with your doctor to make sure you don’t have any underlying problems like heart disease that could make cold plunges dangerous.
You can also combine red light therapy with certain supplements to give your body the optimal raw materials including micronutrients, minerals, and other substances that your body needs to keep humming along at peak efficiency.
We also recommend consulting with a medical professional before starting any supplements to prevent getting too much of a substance your body already naturally has in abundance.
Red Light Therapy with the BIOMAX Series
Biohacking using red light therapy is easy with the BIOMAX PRO series panels. They come in four sizes so you can customize your treatments. These have the highest light energy output of any LED panel on the market, as well as an array of red, NIR, blue, and infrared wavelengths to support healing.
Curious to see how you can use red light therapy for your specific needs? Check out the Learning Center, where we share the latest research on the effects of red light therapy on a huge variety of ailments.
