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Lucy Gough
A professor that's on our team, Professor Paul Clayton, he was in Germany about seven years ago and he was looking at cartilage regeneration in a 62 year old man. And he was looking at the photograph of the skin on the knee that had been treated and it looked about 20 years younger than the skin on his other knee. That's when he realized that most of the in the beauty space, in the cosmetic space, especially at home, it's just centered around LED this specific technology. It's so interesting because it doesn't damage in order to stimulate collagen production. When you damage in order to stimulate collagen production, the body prioritizes the speed of healing over the quality of the collagen fibers. And the light will go all the way down to the bone. So not only will it regenerate skin, but it will also regenerate the muscle that sits beneath it. We had a man, it was a journalist, used it on half their face. He came on the camera four weeks later and he says, I look like I've had a stroke.
Dave Asprey
So half his face looked like it used to and the other half was younger. And the mismatch makes you look.
Lucy Gough
When the professor who first discovered this technology came to me and said, I think I found like the most important beauty launch in the generation.
Dave Asprey
You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Believe it or not, we're going to talk about lasers, but not the kind of lasers that cut through cars or shoot down drones, although those are kind of cool. And not the kind that they use for surgery that cut things. And not the kind that you can use to basically damage your skin to reduce wrinkles or to resurface your skin something else. And the reason that I'm doing this, this is almost 20 years ago, and the first studies came out about a certain kind of laser that you're going to hear about later, or at least a certain kind of light. One crazy entrepreneur posted in a thing called a Yahoo Group, which is basically pre Reddit, and said, I invented this light device that regrew my brain and now I'm making these for $179. And it was like this weird little pre biohacker, do it yourself biology thing. And so I ordered this dumb little pill bottle with a light inside and he said, don't use it for more than two minutes over any part in the brain and which parts of the brain to do. This was my favorite cognitive enhancing device, except maybe coffee for several years until better tech came out because I would use it and my brain would work just way better. So then I overused it over my language processing center and then I spoke in garbled words for about four hours and that was not placebo. In fact, I was scared because I made my living in my living on stage and talking and I was thinking, did I just screw up my brain forever? But that's how powerful that these things can be. But technology has gone so far down, not down technology, gone so far up since there that we can do things that you wouldn't imagine with the right frequencies of light, the right diffusion pattern. It's very precise because our biology uses light to communicate. So who should interview about this? How about Lucy Gough, who's the founder of Lima Lasers. Lima Lasers or just Lima?
Lucy Gough
Well, it's Lima, the creator of Lima Lasers. Thank you. Thank you so much for, for having me here. It's amazing to. It's amazing to be here. Welcome to London.
Dave Asprey
Thank you. Of course it's raining.
Lucy Gough
What wave? Well, it's always raining. It was snowing yesterday. What wavelength was the Device that was? 880. 880, yeah.
Dave Asprey
And we're going to go into some of the science behind what you do and why you do it. And for listeners, you can measure lasers by how much power, like how bright they are. And then you can measure them by the wavelength, which is what specific sort of color are they, even if you can't see the color. And this was kind of a dark art even 30, 40 years ago, because we couldn't really produce very many different frequencies. And you can also measure them based on how much they pulse, like blink on and off. And so when you're looking at any kind of light, I would encourage you, whether it's sunlight, LED light or something like a Lima laser. Light is a drug, it's a nutrient, just like food. In order to arrive here to have this interview, I left Austin around 7 o' clock pm. I landed at 10am and most people would get a lot of jet lag for this, but I managed my light the entire time using obviously true dark glasses and a hat. And what I did when I got off. And I don't have jet lag because light is as important as food. And like, do you want the weird snack on the airplane? No. Do I want the bright lights on the airplane in the middle of the night in London? No. So I control that. But that's just the beginning because when you get it concentrated and delivered the right way, it's sort of like, do you want to supplement with a really good delivery system or do you just want to hope there's some in the kale that has more problems than benefits? What made you want to go into this space and you're not even treating
Lucy Gough
wrinkles or maybe kind of, I mean, I guess it was only an accident that the Lima laser was discovered. So a professor that's on our team, Professor Paul Clayton, he was in Germany about seven years ago and he was looking at cartilage regeneration in a 62 year old man. And there was a whole team of doctors in the room and they were all looking at cartilage regeneration using cold laser. And all the team of doctors was at one end of the room and they were looking at the X ray of the guy that had been treated, you know, looking at the cartilage increase. And he was at the other end of the room and he was looking at the photograph of the skin on the knee that had been treated and it looked about 20 years younger than the skin on his other knee. And that's when he realized that most of the, in the beauty space, in the cosmetic space, especially at home, it's just centered around led. And LED is great for a bulb in the ceiling, but if you want it to have a biological penetration, it's not a laser, it's not as powerful as a cold laser. And if you kind of look back, if you go back in the. It was in about the 1980s, 1990s, that led first came into the scene because scientists were challenged to come up with an alternative light source to cold laser. Cause cold laser has been used since the 1960s, but it's been used in a hospital, in a clinic, in office, because you can't start taking powerful lasers into the home because it's a potentially dangerous light source. It can blind you, it can burn you and all the different things. So he suddenly had this idea. If we could re engineer this huge floor standing hospital machine into a little portable device like this at the same power, with the same size treatment lens, then that would revolutionize the beauty industry forever. Because if you look at the cosmetic space, the lasers that are available to consumers, you know, they're like non fracture lasers, fracture lasers or led. And they're all working very differently to this specific technology. This specific technology is, it's so interesting because it doesn't damage in order to stimulate collagen production. When you damage in order to stimulate collagen production, the body prioritizes the speed of healing over the quality of the collagen fibers. So that's why this is so revolutionary, because it doesn't rely on any damage. It works epigenetically within each cell to just stimulate surplus collagen production completely naturally. And the light will go all the way down to the bone. So not only will it regenerate skin, but, but it will also regenerate the muscle that sits beneath it. So especially for areas like the jowl, you get this lift because your skin is only as good as the muscle that sits beneath it. And so if your muscle's sagging, you can renew your skin, but your skin is still going to sag on top of it. So that's why this is such a game changer. You know, you can switch it on. Actually the red light that you see, that's just a red light to tell you it's switched on. But you know, it's got retina protected technology inside it. So you, you don't have to wear goggles. You can look at it, it's just, you can take it with you. But fundamentally it's a technology that has never existed in the cosmetic space until now at home.
Dave Asprey
So this is the equivalent of those big units you would see. And most people I know who aren't super into lasers and biology and all that, they hear laser and they think it's going to hurt. Because a lot of the stuff that you do at an esthetician, they are damaging the skin with a laser. And as you said, then it grows back. But it grows back basically with scar tissue. And it's funny. Evenly distributed scar tissue will have less wrinkles, but that doesn't mean you want to do it over and over.
Lucy Gough
It could be more rigid, though. It's got less elasticity.
Dave Asprey
Exactly.
Lucy Gough
So this has got. This will create more type 1 collagen. So it creates the collagen fibers in exactly the same ratio that's found in youthful skin. Whereas if you damage to stimulate collagen production, you'll create more type 3 collagen. So it creates, like, the perfect blend of collagen fibers that you just found, you just find in your skin before the aging process set in.
Dave Asprey
Well, your skin looks fantastic. So you're doing something right.
Lucy Gough
Thank you.
Dave Asprey
And this idea that you can get a signal into the skin is one thing about the type of collagen it makes and the other thing that's happening with the wavelength that you're using. And remind me, which one is it?
Lucy Gough
This is 808 now.
Dave Asprey
808.
Lucy Gough
Okay.
Dave Asprey
And 808 is actually very well studied.
Lucy Gough
Yeah. We use it because it's got the most evidence. Yeah.
Dave Asprey
So what 808 is going to do in order to support all this is it's going to make the mitochondria work better.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
And when mitochondria work better, it's like, hey, I've got extra energy. What should I do with it? I guess I'll make some collagen. And it's a different way of looking at blood flow and at cellular function. And the big issue has always been an infrared laser is expensive. And if you look at an infrared laser, you can't see it, but it still pokes holes in your eyes. So how did you make this safe to use at home?
Lucy Gough
So it's actually the inside of here are patented diffuse lenses. So the patent. We've got over 40 patents globally on this.
Dave Asprey
40.
Lucy Gough
Yeah. Well, because we had to. Once we realized what we'd created, what we'd engineered, we had to protect it. It's the way you start out, with a central laser beam inside of here, and it's dispersed Tens and tens of thousands of times across the treatment lens. But it's the way that the beam is never going to go directly into your retina. It's kind of angled at different ways, so it never actually hits your retina, which is why it's retina. So it's the equivalent to wearing goggles, but in a lens. So the lens is like a goggle.
Dave Asprey
And what you're doing with this honeycomb here is if you just put, say, a cloudy lens over infrared, you get chaos and it doesn't penetrate. So you're basically breaking into multiple very small sensors that aren't powerful enough to cause damage.
Lucy Gough
The interesting part to this is the light that comes out of here is still coherent in a straight line. It's polarized, which means it's in tram lines and it's monochromatic. And the science tells us that for a light source to have a biological penetration or a biological effect in deep tissue, it's got to be coherent, monochromatic and polarized. And LED is always mixed with white. It's not coherent. Even if it's. It might be a narrow bandwidth led, but it's never truly coherent and it's never polarized. It runs in slightly different directions. So we're not. The lenses inside of here are not altered. They're not kind of altering the light structure, they're just dispersing it in its original form, which is, I mean, I did not design this. I have to say, I am not a laser scientist. Some of the, you know, the team that worked on this, they're truly incredible. They're a mix of geneticists, laser professors, longevity. There's a whole team that surgeons that worked on this that are the culmination
Dave Asprey
of this device that is, it's remarkable. And when you talk about coherence in a signal, we use the same thing in neuroscience at 40 years of Zen. And all coherence really means is lined up.
Lucy Gough
It's just in a straight line. Yeah, it's column A.
Dave Asprey
And it's also like if you were to have coherence between the sound, if you have a loud sound in each ear, but the static isn't lined up or the drum beats aren't lined up, it'd be incoherent. But if you get the same peak at the same time, and so you're keeping the light coherent, whereas with LEDs or with a normal lens that wasn't yours, you basically get the light hitting at different times and the cell doesn't pick up the signal.
Lucy Gough
Do you know, it's so interesting you say that because, you know when you're in a cinema, and I don't know whether you have it in America, but you certainly have heard the Dolby thing where it goes doo doo, and they're all. All the little silver balls are dancing at the same time. And that's exactly what this does. So as each of the beams hits into your. Into your skin, right? It has, like a perfectly rippled effect where they all amplify each other and they gain a greater power. Whereas what happens with LED is that they crash against each other and they cancel each other out. So that's why in deeper tissue, this works so powerfully, is because it's all creating even more energy within the skin, in the dermis in particular.
Dave Asprey
Another way to think about this is noise canceling headphones. They make the sound that cancels out the noise outside. And you turn that on, you're like, why is it so quiet? Well, you wouldn't see this, but with an LED light source, you have some cancellation waves. You got rid of all that and produce this outside outsize effect. What I noticed when I first tried the Lima laser is I put it on my brain, and I've spent only six months of my life with electrodes on my head doing advanced meditation stuff. At 40 years is in. So I'm trained to notice subtle shifts in cognition. And after about a minute, I would say my brain felt sparkly. Like you can actually feel. Yeah, you feel the blood flow change. I'm like, wow, this is really good. It's much faster. And I've used all kinds of lasers and LEDs on my brain. I have a collection of devices, but this was really noticeably effective. And it. I think it's penetrating deeper than any other laser that you could do. Like this. How far in does it go?
Lucy Gough
Yeah, well, this has got a biological penetration of 9 centimeters.
Dave Asprey
And so in inches, that's about 3 and change.
Lucy Gough
Well, 9 centimeters is about that. Yeah.
Dave Asprey
3 or 4 inches. Yeah, it's 2.5 times. Whatever.
Lucy Gough
So that's where you'll get the. So in three minutes, you'll get the dose of 12 joules of light.
Dave Asprey
Okay.
Lucy Gough
So you've got to make sure that you use it. So you've got the actual correct dose of laser light going into your skin.
Dave Asprey
Now, in the realms of hacking our brains, and I know this does skin and it does organs and joints, and it's kind of a whole body. Anywhere that you need some extra function, you can put it there. But let's talk about brains for A minute. I've done a lot of work with running electrical current over different parts of the brain, something called TDCS. We use something called TD ACS at 40 years of Zen. And this is where you kind of need to know where to put it so that you can stimulate this part versus this part. Is there a place on the head that people like to put the Lima laser?
Lucy Gough
So, just to be clear, the Lima laser has got FDA clearance for skin.
Dave Asprey
Well, I mean, your forehead might need some skin.
Lucy Gough
So if your forehead needs some skin, I mean, I use it on my hairline for hair growth, especially if you
Dave Asprey
have ADHD or just any kind of attention issues. If we were to do a scan of your brain, say at Amen brain clinics with Dr. Amen, it would most likely show reduced blood flow in the front of your brain. And what would increase blood flow? Logically, I think infrared lasers would do that.
Lucy Gough
Well, do you know what? If you. There's a ton of evidence for this technology for autism, for Alzheimer, for dementia, for all you know, your brain is only as healthy as the amount of nutrients that you've got going into it. So if you increase the circulation and you therefore increase the oxygen, you increase everything. But why this is so brilliant is it regenerates as well as circulates, so it will regenerate at the same time. And that's the magic. Well, it's not magic, it's science. But it's incredible to me.
Dave Asprey
I mean, you couldn't go out in the sun, which I think is good for you in normal doses. You couldn't go out there and get this level of coherence or penetration. So sun is good for you. And it's got an entire set of wavelengths, and you've concentrated a very narrow window of that that sends a signal into the mitochondria and scan. It says, make more energy more easily, and therefore make more collagen. In. In terms of the brain, for just about anyone listening, your prefrontal cortex up across the entire, basically forehead area or hairline. If you want to treat your hair.
Lucy Gough
We all want to treat our hair. Yeah.
Dave Asprey
If you stimulate that, you should feel more attention and just more ease of thinking. And the left prefrontal cortex tends to be an area that people really benefit from. And if you're not sure, you could literally go to your favorite AI and say, tell me what part of the brain does what? And if you wanted more of that, you could try a minute of laser therapy over that. And you'll be treating the skin, which is allowed by claims and if the light went deeper and your brain worked better, as it does in other studies showing that wavelength is good, this is an effective tool.
Lucy Gough
So everyone that's got a Lima laser could now have an added benefit.
Dave Asprey
Yeah. Now, infrared light, which increases blood flow, there's parts in men and women where increased blood flow might be beneficial. Are there any studies of Lima or do people report using it there?
Lucy Gough
So the main demographic of people that buy Lima are people who have reached the time in their life where you can see the aging process visibly on their skin.
Dave Asprey
Okay.
Lucy Gough
Obviously that's the time when other things go wrong as well. So if you look at the published evidence, there is evidence to show that it will help as an intimate tool. So it will help strengthen your vaginal wall. And, you know, because that thins over that you can get a host of problems during the menopause. We have got, we've had anecdotal evidence, but I can't obviously claim that it's anything that we are saying that we've got men who are using it to help increase their sperm count. There's like, I think the thing is, I guess now that the science is more accessible to everybody, and now with AI, you can digest that science in a way that a layperson couldn't. You know, if you went on PubMed like 15 years ago or 20 years ago, you were not a scientist, you would not be able to understand the pie formulas that were on there or whatever.
Dave Asprey
I read all the light therapy papers, I have patents in the space, and it was so much and so hard. And like I said, it's just, it's
Lucy Gough
like decoding the formula. Nobody can do that. It's like. But now with AI, you can, you know, you can put a paper in and it will absolutely put it in very simple terms. So I think that we've seen the rise of like this self empowered, self directed health consumer that is using technologies that have been cleared as being safe. So they know that they're safe and they are kind of being more experimental with them, which is, which is quite interesting.
Dave Asprey
And it's, I mean, it's a human right to experiment on our own bodies. And I mentioned that very early. One of the first light therapy devices out there that I used on my brain, after about a year of talking about this in this little group, one day he posted the inventor of it and said, guys, I fixed my brain so much like I was a wreck before I did this, just using infrared light. I'm gonna, I'm going to medical school now. And Then he deleted all the posts and, like, tried to remove all evidence of it because he's like, I might have been selling an uncleared medical device. I still have one. So we run into this problem where, because of different countries, regulatory environments, if you make something and it has a medical study, you can only reference that for a specific product. So what I'm talking about is infrared light in general. And I can definitely say that if you're a guy and you had a Lima laser and you were to do three minutes on a recreational area in you and or your partner's body, wake up the next morning and see if there's a kickstand that's different than your normal one. You will see a difference because if you do it over the short term, you feel it, but if you do it on a regular basis, just like
Lucy Gough
three, three minutes daily is actually what you need. Three minutes over the area you want to treat and four weeks later you'll go, wow. But even, like, you know, how many men, like take men or women, you know, take up a sport at the age of 45 and they can't do it as well as they want to because of their knee pain or something like that, you know, once you've got this technology, you can use it anywhere on your, you know, you can use it anywhere.
Dave Asprey
I would imagine there's got to be a bunch of pro athletes. I know a bunch. Listen to the show and thanks, guys. Because this is so portable, you can use this on anything that's injured.
Lucy Gough
Just take it, use it on a plane, take it anywhere. I mean, it's like, I guess my mum had a knee replacement and it was in 2025, she was sent home with an ice machine and you just think, like, how archaic that in today's age. She's had like a state of the art knee replacement. She sent home with an ice machine, you know, like she used two of these on her knee and literally she was just up and running way quicker than my aunt who'd had one and who, you know, who hadn't used them. And it was a very, very painful and long process. So I just think that, you know, light is a medicine, as you said, you know, light's a drug, light's a medicine. Different wavelengths have different benefits. And the benefits of near infrared wavelength, if you can get the light into the deep tissue. So half the problem is that the light, it's very difficult to get the light to push the light down with sufficient power. But if you can get the light down there with something like The Lima laser, then the. You know, it really is a science of youth.
Dave Asprey
It's kind of funny when we talk about near infrared. If you think about maybe at a fast food restaurant where they have those heat lamps over the burgers so they don't get cold, it's technically near infrared. The problem is it's not in phase. It's not coherent, it's not laser. So it warms up the skin and it doesn't penetrate, which is kind of nice if you want a sauna experience. This doesn't feel warm at all. I don't get heat from it because it's going all the way in.
Lucy Gough
It's sensationalist, you know, and actually, some people are going, you know, is it working? I can't feel it. And I always say, take a good before shot. Use it every day. Don't take another one four weeks later. Take another shot, the same area, and you'll just go, wow.
Dave Asprey
Do you ever have someone use it on just half their face for a month?
Lucy Gough
We had a man, it was a journalist, used it on half their face, and he came on the camera four weeks later, and he says, you know, I look like I've had a stroke. Because half of his face. Wow, looked. It was actually during lockdown.
Dave Asprey
And, yeah, so half his face looked like it used to, and the other half was younger. And the mismatch makes you look.
Lucy Gough
I mean, let me show you something. This is like when I first used the technology. So I have to show you this. So when the professor who first discovered this technology came to me and said, I think I found, like, the thing that the most important beauty launcher in the generation. And I was like, okay, well, let me try it. And my knees were tragic. Like, the skin on my knee looked like about 90 years old. And I was just thinking, well, let me try it not on my face, but on, like, my knees. And if it works on there, then it will do. I need. I need tough. These. I. I can't believe I'm showing you this, but these were my knees.
Dave Asprey
Yeah, you had a little bit of. A little bit of creeping action going on there.
Lucy Gough
Okay, what was I doing? This is my. Thank you, Mom. This is like my. So anyway, so I started using the laser every day. I was using. Doing 15 minutes on each of my knees. So I was doing 15 minutes. I was really kind of going for it. And after four weeks, I was thinking, it's not doing anything because I couldn't feel it. I was thinking, well, it's not doing anything. I can't See, it's doing anything. And I carried on. And 12 weeks later, I took another picture.
Dave Asprey
Okay.
Lucy Gough
And I was completely shocked. And this is how the brain can trick you to. Because you are not feeling anything, it tricks you. Nothing's happening. And these are my knees. Twelve weeks later, what that is, did
Dave Asprey
it actually tighten the skin?
Lucy Gough
Yeah, so it tightens the skin. It's something.
Dave Asprey
How much can it tighten? I have a lot of extra skin. I have a half of a bath towel of extra skin for being fat.
Lucy Gough
Well, we have, like, people. We have a lot of women after they've been pregnant and, you know, their skin stretches. We have a lot of people who are taking. Who were not, you know, it wasn't so extreme. But after fat loss, jabs, when they've lost, you know, they've lost huge mass.
Dave Asprey
After glp.
Lucy Gough
Yeah, after glp.
Dave Asprey
Because skin sagging is a major issue. And you can help with that.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
That's amazing.
Lucy Gough
And on the jowls and the neck, it's unbelievable. But this. Yeah, this was. This is how much the brain can trick you. Because I went from that and when I. When I took the picture, I went, truly incredible. I went, oh, my God, we've got to bring this to market. Because the problem was with the original Lima laser, it was £2,000 and we couldn't get it to be lower because
Dave Asprey
that's, like really heavy.
Lucy Gough
No, it's a small of a. Actually, no, because I know. Do you know what? If I was American, I would have gone, I'm so.
Dave Asprey
I'm just being a dork.
Lucy Gough
No, no, because in America, in. In the uk, we deal with kilograms.
Dave Asprey
Of course. Of course. Yeah.
Lucy Gough
Yeah. I switched into my American mode.
Dave Asprey
But. But it was. It was quite expensive. That's what, about 4,000, $3,000 or something?
Lucy Gough
About $3,000. And I was thinking even that, you know, to use really good quality laser diodes, they cost a lot of money.
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
Lucy Gough
I mean, like, these are. These are like, built to last. I was thinking, is anyone really going to buy it? You know, like 2,000 pounds, $3,000. And when I saw what it did to my knees, I was thinking, yeah, we can bring this to market. Wow.
Dave Asprey
That is one of the most profound changes that you'd think that you'd had like a skin tightening procedure.
Lucy Gough
Yeah. No, no, no.
Dave Asprey
Incredible.
Lucy Gough
Yeah. And these were published in Aesthetic Surgery Journal. So it was. They deemed it to be a credible source.
Dave Asprey
It's reminding me of another knee laser story. This is. This might have happened before I got that weird device on my Head. I got in a car accident and had really bad whiplash.
Lucy Gough
Oh, my God. What is that?
Dave Asprey
This is 20 something years ago. And it was my second time. And the first time, it took me six months to heal. Chiropractor all the time. Second time, I saw a friend, and he said, I'm going to use this laser on you. And I'm like, seriously, that's not going to do anything. I was very skeptical. And he put some early rudimentary laser thing that's not nearly as powerful as the Lima. And he put it on my upper back where there was pain. And after about three minutes, I still remember it distinctly. It was like a bolt of electricity went up my spine, and then my hands got warm because the muscles let go. And I'm like, how do I get one of those? He said, well, it's not really approved for humans, only for racehorses, because most lasers came out of racehorses in the early days. So I spent $4,000. These were pre Biden dollars. That was probably the equivalent of like a thousand now. Yeah. And it was again, one of those things where I have to have this. And I did use it on my knees, and it never affected the skin at all because it wasn't that kind of a thing. But it did make them hurt less. And the thing that stands out is a friend that just had knee surgery, and she's saying, are you serious? That laser sound, that can't work. That's stupid. She said, well, I'm gonna try it anyway. So similar to your experience, but this was just a couple sessions. And she calls me the next day and is like, I know you live an hour away. Can I drive down again? Because they stopped hurting. And this was probably 5% of the power of a Lima.
Lucy Gough
No, this. Honestly, I know somebody who had knee pain. Very skeptical. It's like I said, look, just use it. Put it on for 15 minutes. Put it on your knee for 15 minutes. Tell me how you feel. The next day, like, oh, my God, you're not going to believe it. I woke up and the pain's gone. It's these type of things. You know, we're trained to think that something as simple as light, if it's engine, you know, light in its original form probably doesn't do much in a lot of cases because it can't get past various places. But if it's engineered to push itself into the body and to penetrate through the body, it can it. There's like a ton of published evidence as to what it can do.
Dave Asprey
It's Funny, before we had lasers, there was a form of light therapy. And it's something that the Queen of England has been.
Lucy Gough
I like the way we're quoting the queen now. You've gone from pounds to the Queen of England.
Dave Asprey
As long as we've had queens. If you look at the crown, the jewels are mounted so the back of the jewel is open. So the jewel is taking light, filtering it, making it coherent, and putting it right into one of the most powerful points on the floor.
Lucy Gough
I never thought of that.
Dave Asprey
And you look at the way old jewelry is made, the rings, where there's also acupuncture meridians here. The jewels are always cut so that they're focusing light onto the skin.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
And this was all we could do for light therapy because we didn't have lasers. But now that we have lasers, you can do Lima. This is ten or a hundred thousand times more powerful. But we had some ancient knowledge about light.
Lucy Gough
You should go to the Tower of London while you're here.
Dave Asprey
Oh, I've been there.
Lucy Gough
I love the Tower of London. See all the jewels? See how they made themselves cleverer with the light?
Dave Asprey
It's funny, and some people are saying this can't be real, but there's the ancient use of light. And then there's also. I have a series of textbooks from the late 1800s and early 1900s at home about just using colored light in hospital settings. These are full on big hospitals with big names. And they were treating people for things like tuberculosis and other diseases using different colors of light and getting clinically relevant results. And then this guy named Rockefeller came around and said, if it's not made out of petroleum, I'm going to kill it. So he created the American Medical association to basically destroy all forms of healing that weren't based on drugs made out of his oil.
Lucy Gough
Well, maybe they're now going to bring it back.
Dave Asprey
Well, I think that that monopoly has slipped. And part of it is just technology. You couldn't buy a laser diode like this 10 years ago for any amount of money.
Lucy Gough
Well, you couldn't buy it, this laser diode, but you also, this tech, this. It's. The laser is only as good in the body as the diffused lens that it goes through. And this lens is the cleverest lens on the market.
Dave Asprey
Wow.
Lucy Gough
This is. This is the genius of the Lima laser. It's all in the lens. And, you know, even with that, like you were talking about those caps, you know, you were talking about, like, you know, the laser caps, but they're using individual diodes so they. I don't know, 300, 500, however, amount of diodes that they're using. But it means that the light is only penetrating in, you know, less than a hair, less than a width of a hair, because a laser diode is so small. Whereas this technology spreads evenly throughout the entire treatment lens. So it means for the first time, you can treat larger areas of your body, but with, like, a very, very deep intensity.
Dave Asprey
This is a technical question, and it's okay if it's. You have to ask an engineer. When you get a laser, it's in a perfect beam, and it doesn't spread out over time. And if you get an LED and you turn it on, there's something called a beam width, which is. Does it spray a little cone or a big cone?
Lucy Gough
Yeah. So you either get like a narrow bandwidth or a big. Yeah, right.
Dave Asprey
Like a floodlight versus a spotlight. With the lens you're using, how much does it spread out? So if I put it on my forehead, by the time it gets to the middle of my brain, is it a little bit bigger or a lot bigger?
Lucy Gough
So I can tell you. So if you were running. So if this was a grid and say you had three diodes. So if it was like that and it was a grid of nine diodes.
Dave Asprey
Okay.
Lucy Gough
Then the light would go in a square. So if it was three diodes, here is. I only know this because I've seen a diagram of it.
Dave Asprey
Right.
Lucy Gough
I'm not scientist, but it basically. If it was this circle, this size of circle, it would go across this square. So it has. It has kind of like maybe. Yeah, okay. About three times.
Dave Asprey
So it spreads out about three times the size of the lens.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
By the time it's at 9 centimeters.
Lucy Gough
Yes.
Dave Asprey
Okay. So that means that if you're doing it here, you get more concentrated towards the skin, and it spreads out to get more muscle underneath.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
Which would explain some of the deeper tissue healing.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
In the longevity space, one of the things that does matter is how does your skin look? And your skin's actually an organization that you want to keep healthy like anything else. And I've done entire episodes on Sirtuin 1. And we think about supplements, we're thinking about resveratrol, we're thinking about fasting and all the polyphenols, all the things. What is the connection between light therapy and infrared and Sirtuin one?
Lucy Gough
So it's really interesting you say this, because especially in the cosmetic space, everyone's talking about longevity or epigenetics or senolytics or any of these words, any of these phrases. And very few people have actually tested it at a genetic level. So we decided two years ago to do a world first clinical looking at gene expression in the dermis using this technology.
Dave Asprey
Oh wow.
Lucy Gough
So we had. This was in human skin.
Dave Asprey
That's a really unusual study.
Lucy Gough
It was an unusual study. So we looked at human skin gene expression in the dermis using the Lima laser. And then we had Imperial College in London build an identical Lima laser but using an LED as a light source, not a laser.
Dave Asprey
So you compared the two and then
Lucy Gough
we compared the two in the. And the study's been published in Aesthetic Surgery Journal last year. So in the Lima laser skin there were 45 genes that were expressed and one of the ones that we were most excited about was there was a six fold increase on SRT1.
Dave Asprey
What? That's profound. Profoundly anti aging for the whole system, not just the skin.
Lucy Gough
So nobody has ever published anything in the dermis that affected the gene like that. In the LED Swatch only activated one gene. So that gene wasn't. Wasn't activated in the dermis.
Dave Asprey
So you just proved with genetics that lasers stomp on LEDs.
Lucy Gough
Well, laser American way to think. Laser stomp. Can Mr. Elephant think of stomp and the elephant? But no, I think it was just, you know, we wanted to put some proper credible longevity science associated with this. We've actually trademarked the Lima laser as a longevity laser now because that's what it is. And that's the differentiation between this technology and all other laser technology out there. Because they are not a longevity laser. They are, they might be an anti aging laser or you know, they do create more collagen, but they don't do it via longevity.
Dave Asprey
That is maybe more profound than most people would think about. When I wrote Superhuman, it's a New York Times best selling how I'm going to live to 180 and you can too, kind of a book. And it kind of set the tone for some of the things that we're still hearing in the longevity space. And I'm grateful if you purchased the book and read it at some point. And there's a lot of nuggets in there. And I went deep on Sirtuin 1 and David Sinclair has been on the show a couple times, well known for NAD and Sirtuin 1 research. And even coffee has effects on it.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
But all of these effects, even fasting, they're relatively small compared to six times.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
And this would be the most potent Sirtuin activating Thing I've ever heard of. There might be some I don't know about.
Lucy Gough
There was a radio frequency device that had an eight times increase a couple of decades ago, I think like a rife machine. I don't know which machine it was, but that was in a, in a dish. When they tried to. Every time they tried to replicate it in human skin, it didn't have any effect on that gene at all. So the fact that we've had this effect on the longevity, on the main longevity gene, I mean, there were 45 other genes as well. But the main longevity gene was accelerated six times, which we were like blown away about.
Dave Asprey
Now. You only measured skin in that study, right?
Lucy Gough
Only skin, but in the dermis.
Dave Asprey
So there is no study for this, but we can forecast results using mechanistic biology. I would argue that if you were willing to shine this on any other part of the body, whether it's muscle or organ, given how low level sirtuin is in cell function, organ function, that it's going to have those longevity effects systemically at least on that organ and maybe even throughout the body. Because mitochondria vote with each other. It's called quorum sensing. And they're sort of saying, well, what's the state of things? And if one group over here, like say you're shining it on your sternum and all the mitochondria, they're going, it's a party, we're so happy. And then the ones in your shoulder are saying, we're not so happy, then they have to vote with each other, but they're basically sharing state. So when you cause a dramatic upgrade in one group of mitochondria, it kind of percolates out. And if you were to move the laser around when using your Lima just to the places that hurt that have the most mitochondrial stress, you should see a whole body shift.
Lucy Gough
Well, there are actually ways of. We've started to do some tests looking at nasal radiation. So you're actually radiating the very thin membrane at the top of your nose.
Dave Asprey
Through the nose?
Lucy Gough
Yeah. There's a pipe that you kind of put up. You know, sounds a nozzle, not a pipe.
Dave Asprey
Does Victoria's Secret make a model? Okay, I do have LEDs that I stick on my nose, so. But. So you have a little fiber optic thing.
Lucy Gough
Yes, it's a little nozzle that you put up there and. Because if you keep it up there for three minutes, so the blood's done a couple of circuits. There are some really interesting things that it actually does to blood as well, we've done so many incredible tests with this that. I mean, the irony is I failed biology at school, so I'm really not even. I'm not the best student. But I've managed to learn so much through the incredible group of scientists that we work with about this technology. That was a completely accidental discovery.
Dave Asprey
I fly internationally probably 25 times a year and God knows how many times beyond that. I'm on the road sometimes 80, 90%. It's not particularly good for having a social life in one place or having a relationship or something, but it's also terrible.
Lucy Gough
There's always an upside. Yeah, let's focus on the upsides.
Dave Asprey
From a longevity perspective. It's terrible because you're getting radiation and you're getting a reduction in blood flow. High risk of clotting. Most people have heard about compression socks and things like that. But what's happening when you're at that high altitude, you're exposed to all these stressors, you have hypoxia, is your blood gets stickier. And there are multiple studies that show that infrared wavelengths make the blood less sticky. So if you wanted to reduce your risk when you're flying, having some infrared light would be great. Since LED lights on airplanes have zero infrared and sunlight's full of it, your only choice is to bring some with you. So on my return flight, I will be using the Lima during the flight to keep my blood more flowing more easily. And what I have used in the past is an LED red and infrared combo, which is moderately effective if you get it in the right spot. But this is going to be way more effective because it'll be.
Lucy Gough
Is really good on the very surface. So, like, if you, you know, if you want to stimulate the mitochondria on the very surface of your skin, then obviously it doesn't have to penetrate you. Not relying on that.
Dave Asprey
I want my blood and heart to work better on airplanes and to not get clots in my legs. And I think infrared is a good strategy for that, that.
Lucy Gough
Well, use this on the way back.
Dave Asprey
I absolutely will. Can I overuse it?
Lucy Gough
You. It's very. You'd have to use it for longer than the battery could stay powered. So it's actually interesting because for the FDA clearance, we had to test that and we put the device on somebody for a long period of time.
Dave Asprey
This was someone you didn't like.
Lucy Gough
I don't know who it was actually. Sorry for whoever it was. But it was quite interesting cause it was strapped onto somebody's leg. And at the point of the Leg where the laser went on. He had thread veins. And the laser was, like, put on there for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. And when the test was over, we took the laser off, and the area that the laser had gone on, the thread veins totally disappeared.
Dave Asprey
After one treatment, or this was over.
Lucy Gough
Well, this was over many hours. No, it was. He was sat down. It was a. It was a treatment whereby he was
Dave Asprey
sat down, like, for eight hours or so.
Lucy Gough
It was. I can't remember how many hours. It was a long time, so. Because we're seeing if, you know, just checking that there was no damage, no burning, no, you know, nothing and no. So the interesting part is, after a certain number of hours, you don't get any more benefit. And then after, like, an incredible amount of hours, like, you would have to be either kidnapped. Let's leave that off. Let's not put kidnapped on there.
Dave Asprey
Oh, why not? It happens all the time. Some people enjoy it.
Lucy Gough
Yeah, well, kidnapped by somebody you really like in a really fun setting and. Yeah. So basically, after a huge amount of time, you would start to see it would have a slight negative impact. But, you know, you would never be holding it for that long.
Dave Asprey
I still want to know what happened with those thread veins.
Lucy Gough
I've got the picture. I can show you that. We've still got the picture of the man.
Dave Asprey
This was one exceptionally long treatment in one spot. He didn't do it for multiple days.
Lucy Gough
No, no. It was literally just strapped to the leg in that point. And we didn't even. Nobody'd even figured that he had. It was irrelevant, the fact he had thread veins. It was just when we took it off. So I'm gonna circle.
Dave Asprey
I'm gonna do a. I've done it on thread. I'm gonna do a test. So I'm wearing boots, so I can't show it off. When I was 16. 16. I actually started before that. When I was 10. I woke up with a vampire bat feeding on my neck.
Lucy Gough
Oh, my God.
Dave Asprey
This wasn't a dream.
Lucy Gough
How did that even happen to you?
Dave Asprey
I was in the US where they don't live. I guess I'm just delicious. And we caught it and took it to the hospital. This is all verified.
Lucy Gough
And you're not allowed to. You gotta protect a bat. I just, you know, because my sister had a bat enter her house. Oh, those were not allowed. They were not allowed to do anything.
Dave Asprey
Oh, we. We killed this one. Okay, short story, you'll laugh. We took the bat into the hospital. This was, like, in the 80s or something they woke up all the bat experts in the US and like, that's not possible. But they described it and they said, okay, just euthanize the bat and we'll look for rabies later and just put it in the freezer. So they said, pour ether in it. So they have a plastic pitcher with a little half wounded bat from when I caught it. And they pour ether in. Ether dissolves plastic. So there's a half dead bat, drugged out, covered in plastic, flopping around on the floor. And the nurses are running around screaming, getting up on beds, and I'm sitting there with a little snoopy band aid on my neck going, what is happening here? There was no rabies, but I did get the rabies vaccine because that's what they thought was a good thing. But what I did get almost certainly was Bartonella, which is, it's a common Lyme disease co infection. It's a slow growing bacteria that eats your collagen, especially the lining of your, of your veins. So I started getting little spider veins at around 14, 15, 16. By the time I was 16, I had these little spider veins. And I'm like, what is going on? And a lot of other health challenges from that. And I did kill the Bartonella. But a lot of listeners, if they're in the mold Lyme chronic, what the heck is wrong with me? Space Bartonella is in there. I'm going to test and see whether
Lucy Gough
the linear laser to hold it on. So I've done a test. I've done a test on the thread vein. I've got thread veins. My legs are not good. Well, my knees, my knees are good now.
Dave Asprey
But your knees are incredible.
Lucy Gough
No, my knees are very good now. Thank you, Lima. So if you've got thread veins, many people have just like me. Use the Lima laser. Put the Lima laser over the thread vein for 10 minutes daily for two weeks and it will be gone.
Dave Asprey
That's incredible. Okay. I am so excited. I'm going to try this. Just 10 minutes. Can I just turn it on and duct tape it to my leg and just wake up in the morning?
Lucy Gough
You. You could, but the battery only lasts an hour, so. I know.
Dave Asprey
All right, let's talk about aging spots. Does the Lima laser with this frequency do anything? Some people are going to get them burned off, but you're not doing anything that's healing.
Lucy Gough
So. Yeah. Pigmentation. The Lima laser is amazing for obviously, if it's hormonal pigmentation, that's different. But if it's kind of from the sun, which most sunspots are. It's brilliant. And the way it works is it disperses the pigment in the dermis, so you just can't see it anymore. And it's brilliant. The Lima laser is brilliant for before you go into the sun. If you use it before you go into the sun, you just will not get pigmentation. So it helps prevent it.
Dave Asprey
Oh, wow. Okay, now I have a personal question. I'm interested. I'm interested in reducing scarring because a couple years ago, just having lost £100, that means I have extra skin on my body. About the size of half of a large bath towel.
Lucy Gough
Wow.
Dave Asprey
And unfortunately, it mostly is in the back here. So I have really good abs.
Lucy Gough
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
But there's some in my low back and I've done various things to reduce it. But on my face, I had basically the size of a passport cover on each side of my face of extra skin. So I did a procedure that I call a facial circumcision.
Lucy Gough
Not yourself.
Dave Asprey
Some people would say it's a facelift, and it's a similar procedure, but it was taking out a lot more skin than you would use in a normal facelift. Because I just had so much. There's nothing that I just say a
Lucy Gough
joke, but I won't say exactly.
Dave Asprey
Right. I mean, that's why I call it a facial circumcision, because I'm so self conscious. Right.
Lucy Gough
No, that's true. I could name the. That's what it is really, isn't it?
Dave Asprey
Totally get rid of the extra skin. So I have some scarring behind my ears. And if you guys, if you want to see that episode or. Yeah, there's a link. Davasbury.com RMI has a link to that if you, if you're looking for that stuff. But I would just say try the Lima laser first. Because if you don't have the kind of problem I had, which came from just severe obesity, you might not even need to do something like that. But what can I do with scarring if I use the Lima laser?
Lucy Gough
So the Lima laser works on old scars and new scars. So if you've got. If you've got an old scar, it will rebuild the skin from the base layer up.
Dave Asprey
Oh, interesting.
Lucy Gough
So it will really, really help to smooth it out. That is even on a keloid scar. So we've done a couple of tests on keloid and hypertrophic scars and it takes a lot longer.
Dave Asprey
So how much time per scar do I need every day with a Lima laser?
Lucy Gough
So three minutes, twice daily.
Dave Asprey
For how long?
Lucy Gough
You just hold it over hold the Lima laser. Well, on a normal scar, you. It should flatten in between about three or four months.
Dave Asprey
Wow.
Lucy Gough
But obviously, for a hypertrophic or a keloid scar, that's a lot longer. Yeah.
Dave Asprey
What about for, like a C section scar? So many of my women friends are
Lucy Gough
saying, I just have C sect. I've had two of them.
Dave Asprey
Okay.
Lucy Gough
So, you know, and I can tell you I actually did for my second child, I did half with the Lima laser and half not. And it was insane, actually. You don't realise how bad the scar is in the first place, because, remember, for a C section, it's not done by plastic surgeon.
Dave Asprey
No.
Lucy Gough
So it's like not the. And, you know, the likelihood is you want to be able to go through that incision if you have another child as well. So for C sections, the Lima laser is absolutely brilliant because it heals all the muscle tissue that sits beneath the skin as well. So if you use the Lima laser after a C section, by the time, I don't know, 18 months later, two years, three years, four years later, you have your next child. If you have another child, it means that it's a healthier process for the area that is affected. So, yeah, Lima. And also for hysterectomies as well.
Dave Asprey
This is really important because there's something called a current of injury that happens. And Dr. Jerry Tennant, who's been on the show, has done a lot of research and written several books about it. And there's a normal flow of electrons over the surface of your skin, and the fascia underneath the skin is carrying information. It's one of its jobs. So when you disrupt the fascia and you disrupt the electron flow on the skin, then you have a signaling problem in the body. And unfortunately, if you get one of those horizontal scars that are cutting the central channel of information in the fascia, there are energetic disturbances in the control system in the body. Well, if you can repair the fascia, which is what the limo laser is doing, by causing more collagen to grow in there, you're restoring the flow of electricity and information inside the body as well as I would guess, I know that, that lasers. I know which frequency will restore the current of injury. So I tell anyone who's had surgery, you need to laser your scars to restore proper electron flow. But what you're doing is different with Lima because you're actually fixing the underlying tissues so they're not all gummed up with scars. This is really profound. I think every pro athlete who's doing surgery, recovery is going to be like, wait, you mean I can travel with this?
Lucy Gough
Yeah, you can travel with it.
Dave Asprey
I'm going to go. If I ever had a procedure and there's a lot of those. Amazing. Well, I want to thank you for coming on the show and just doing pioneering work because there's a lot of lasers out there and there's so many different categories. This is something I haven't seen before and it's really interesting. I know that Lima doesn't offer discounts never. But I think my team kind of strong armed your team like bullets. So for. So in order to try out a Lima laser, you can go to Lima L y m a dot life just in any web browser, use code Dave10 and they're going to give you a discount that isn't something they do. So if you're interested in a high powered, high quality, unique laser that can do all the things we just talked about, I am, I am a true believer in this in it. It's also travel size portable and I appreciate that very much because I travel a lot. So this will be in my bag and if you guys don't believe me, if you see me at an airport, ask me if I have the Lima with me and I'll show it to you.
Lucy Gough
And if he doesn't have it on him, we'll give you a laser for free. Whoa. No, no. We're okay.
Dave Asprey
As long as I'm carrying my bags with me in the airport, there's a chance. But if I have my luggage, it'll be in there and I'm serious about that. Because when I travel, if I have the tools that provide more resilience, more recovery, even though I have an inhuman travel schedule, I'm handling Life pretty well. And it's.
Lucy Gough
You're nailing life, Dave can tell you that.
Dave Asprey
Well, thank you so much for just creating all this coolness and for being on the show and sharing some incredible stories and your knees are still blowing me away.
Lucy Gough
Well, thank you so much for having me, Dave, and welcome to London. Thank you for coming to London in
Dave Asprey
order to get these benefits just for your skin. Not to mention all the other things we talked about to have younger looking skin. Go to Lima Life, L y m a Life and use code DAVE10. And you get the discount that nobody else gets. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.
Podcast Disclaimer Narrator
A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully, read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.
Podcast Summary: The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey
Episode 1421: The Home Laser That Reverses Skin Age By 20 Years
Guest: Lucy Gough, Creator of LYMA Laser
Date: February 24, 2026
This episode dives deep into the cutting-edge technology of at-home laser therapy for skin rejuvenation, featuring Lucy Gough, the founder of LYMA Laser. Host Dave Asprey explores the science and real-world effects of cold laser technology, highlighting its potential to reverse skin aging by up to 20 years, improve muscle regeneration, and support overall cellular health far beyond what current LED or hospital lasers offer for consumers. The discussion spans from the device’s origin and science to personal stories and practical applications, placing it firmly at the intersection of biohacking, longevity, and performance optimization.
Notable Quote:
“This specific technology is, it's so interesting because it doesn't damage in order to stimulate collagen production. … the body prioritizes the speed of healing over the quality of the collagen fibers.”
— Lucy Gough (01:43, 06:50)
Notable Quote:
“Light is a drug, it's a nutrient, just like food ... Light is as important as food.”
— Dave Asprey (05:24)
Notable Quote:
“So in the Lima laser skin there were 45 genes that were expressed and … there was a six-fold increase on SRT1.”
— Lucy Gough (39:00)
Notable Quotes:
“If you've got thread veins…use the Lima laser over the thread vein for 10 minutes daily for two weeks and it will be gone.”
— Lucy Gough (50:22)
“That is one of the most profound changes that you'd think that you'd had like a skin tightening procedure.”
— Dave Asprey (30:36)
Memorable Anecdotes:
Lucy Gough:
Dave Asprey:
Asprey’s trademark playful, witty, and data-driven tone guides a rich, engaging conversation full of personal anecdotes and scientifically grounded facts. Lucy Gough’s passionate explanations and real-life case studies ground the technological innovation in practical reality. Both highlight a future where tech-enabled consumers can dramatically influence the aging process, skin health, and recovery via precise at-home interventions.
Best For:
Bottom Line:
The LYMA Laser isn't just promising skin deep—clinical evidence and user experiences both point to a device that upgrades cellular health, triggers longevity genes, and makes the possibility of “turning back the clock” at home more real than ever.