← What's That Rash?
What's That Rash?
Red and other light therapy — can it work?
00:19:36
If you’re into skincare, you’ve probably been advertised light therapy face masks. These high-tech hockey masks promise to plump up or heal your skin through light – often red, but sometimes yellow, green, blue or even purple. Norman and Tegan go through the rainbow to assess where there's evidence, and where there's not. References: Sweaty sauna bathing for better health - What's That Rash? Near Infrared Photoimmunotherapy: A Review of Recent Progress and Their Target Molecules for Cancer Therapy Effect of NASA Light-Emitting Diode Irradiation on Wound Healing Visible Red Light Emitting Diode Photobiomodulation for Skin Fibrosis: Key Molecular Pathways Utilization of light-emitting diodes for skin therapy: Systematic review and meta-analysis Photodynamic Therapy Using HMME for Port-Wine Stains: Clinical Effectiveness and Sonographic Appearance Effect of Blue Light on Acne Vulgaris: A Systematic Review The efficacy of violet light in the treatment of acne Featured review: What a...
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A
Pepsi Prebiotic Cola in original and cherry vanilla that Pepsi taste you love with no artificial sweeteners and 3 grams of prebiotic fiber. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola, unbelievably Pepsi ABC listen,
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podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
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A
Hello, it's Lisa Leong from this Working Life. Helping to make your work life better with advice from the world's top experts like psychotherapists Esther Perel. Many conflicts are about power. Power is when I dismiss what you're bringing up. Power is when I magnify a problem and Professor Adam Grant.
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B
We need to take our critics and our cheerleaders and turn them into coaches.
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A
Free coaching search for this Working Life on abc. Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
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C
Okay, Tegan, it's competition time.
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B
Oh, gosh. Okay. Why?
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C
How many rainbow songs do you know when you've got to sing them? So I'll start off because I've got a pretty POV collection of rainbow songs. But anyway, please go somewhere over the rainbow.
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B
Okay. All right.
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C
No, no, you can't stop me already. I'm just getting going. There's a land that I've heard of Once in a lullaby. And here's my other one. Here's my other one, which I can't do in a Louis Armstrong voice. The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky and also on the faces of people going by. I see. No, you can go on.
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B
It's barely about a rainbow. It's just sort of referencing a rainbow on its way.
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C
Yeah, it's poetic.
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B
What about.
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C
It's poetic.
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B
Okay, you asked for mine. What about I could be brown, I could be blue, I could be violet sky, I could be purple. I could be purple, I could be horse from going to the footy last night.
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C
Oh, is that part of that song?
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B
Okay, I'm definitely horse this morning. What we used to sing when at Kindies are like red and yellow and pink and green. Remind me why we were talking about rainbows again.
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C
Because we're talking about the colours of
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B
the rainbow and health on what's that Rash? The show where we answer the health questions that everyone is asking.
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C
So it's a slightly simpler question than that, but we'll get to the rainbow in a minute. What is the question this week?
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B
The question is really around can lights cure us? And I think that this question has come off the back of some pretty creepy looking masks that you can buy for a lot of money. Have you seen those? They're sort of like a. I guess they're plastic.
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C
Yeah, I think they've Got LED lights inside them, haven't they?
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B
They look so creepy and then they sort of emit this reddish glow and they're meant to sort of rejuvenate your skin. Once more, we're talking about things that are marketed heavily to women in their 30s and 40s. Then beyond that, there's all sorts of other claims around different colours of light, different light therapies. So we're just going to do it all in one hit today. The colours of the rainbow, the spectrum, the visible and slightly invisible. A couple of weeks ago we talked about mobile phone radiation and I. Incorrect. Correctly placed.
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C
Okay, so can you do year four physics here? And where on the electromagnetic spectrum colored light sits?
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B
It's just a really wiggly line. And the wiggles get littler in some parts and bigger in others, I promise. I actually studied physics all the way through to senior in school. But the visible light spectrum sits kind of well. We selfishly put it in the middle of the electron.
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C
The middle in terms of wavelength.
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B
Yeah. And so we have on the. Bear with me.
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C
Bear with me.
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B
On the little wiggle section, we've got ultraviolet light and then it moves into visible violet light through to red light and then infrared on the other end as the wavelengths get longer.
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C
And we only see a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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B
Yeah. And so that comes to us in the form of white light, which anyone who's played with a little piece of glass or a crystal near a window knows that it can be split into the rainbow as we know it, red
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C
through to violet, and they are divided up by their wavelength too. So within the visible spectrum, the different colours have different wavelengths, hence the discussion about different coloured lights and the effects in the body.
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B
So I think what would be useful today and kind of fun, is to move through the rainbow, because there are different health claims that are around different colours. And given that we did start talking about those creepy face masks, I think we start with infrared and the red end of the spectrum.
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C
Yeah. I mean, infrared radiation is perceived by our bodies as heat. It warms up the mole, it gets the molecules moving faster and you feel that as heat.
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B
Yeah. And that's how infrared saunas work. So a traditional sauna. And we did talk about saunas on WhatsApp rash. So go back and listen to that. I actually did a traditional sauna and it was really, really hot. Who knew? Anyway, but infrared sauna doesn't use steam to create the heat, it uses the light and they're sort of dry and it just makes you feel really hot.
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C
Yeah. And I would refer. What's that? Rashers. To go back to our episode on Saunas where you can find out about the therapeutic effects or not of saunas.
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B
Sauna.
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C
We'll have that in our show notes.
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B
And it kind of lands similar claims to what you get from infrared saunas. There's also a part of the spectrum called near infrared that's used in cancer treatment.
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C
Yeah, it's experimental at the moment, but you get a chemical that's activated by near infrared light, you attach an antibody to it, and that antibody is specific to the tumour you're trying to attack, but it's relatively inactive until it's exposed to near infrared light. So you inject the drug into the body, you then expose the person to near infrared light, it gets activated, goes to the tumour and helps to destroy the tumour.
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B
Oh, that is so cool. And that's not widely used at the moment.
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C
It's still experimental. Some people believe that some tumours are more susceptible to others. But it's also a good way to treat tumours that are relatively inaccessible either to surgery or to other forms of chemotherapy, because sometimes chemotherapy is quite hard to penetrate a tumor. And this is a way to try and add to that.
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B
That is awesome. We might have to come back to that in more detail one day. But to move through the rainbow a little bit more, I hear a lot about LED therapy. So, like light emitting diodes, you can make them be different colours. And there has been some research. There's also been a lot of claims around different colours of light doing different things. And one of the studies that caught my eye was. Well, it was an observation from NASA scientists working in space where they were growing potato plants in zero gravity. And to help the potato plants to grow, they exposed the plants to red and blue light, because that's part of the spectrum of light that doesn't get reflected by the leaves. That's why leaves look green to us, is because they're reflecting the green light. And so the scientists were working with their hands on these potato plants and they seem to notice that any cuts on their hands healed faster when they were under the light. And so now there's sort of claims around red and blue light being healing to your skin.
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C
Yes, that's right. And that's where the mask comes in. So there's a belief that red light gets under the skin and stimulates fibroblasts. Now, to understand fibroblasts better, I refer people back to our collagen episode of
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B
what's happening that Catalog is rich, rich. A seam to mine.
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C
It is rich and networked, like connective tissue in the body.
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B
It's like collagen fibers. Exactly.
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C
So fibroblasts produce collagen. And the idea here is red light stimulates fibroblasts to do their job. And therefore, if you wear a mask with red light, then you are. It's like plumping up the skin with collagen. The evidence is thin. Theoretically, it could work, but there have been very few randomized trials. So before you remortgage your house to get one of these therapies, maybe hang on a little bit and refer to our collagen episode to see what might be cheaper ways to stimulate your collagen production.
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B
But Norman Nasser. I know, but NASA.
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C
I know, but, you know, the halo
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B
effect is so strong.
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C
So, you know, something happens in a spaceship. Has to be true.
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B
Exactly, exactly. So, okay, we're moving through the rainbow. We've talked about red. It's yellow time. Now. There's claims around yellow light being good for something that when I'm reading it out, I know it's not arrhythmia.
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C
No, it's erythema. Erythema, which is inflammation and skin redness. That's right. So it's supposed to be good for that, which again, is about its effect on the immune system or a direct effect on the skin.
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B
But, like, that's just a cosmetic thing. Right? Like, is erythema bad for you in any other way or is it a symptom of something that could be bad for you?
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C
Well, it's a symptom of burning. So when you get sunburned, that's erythema. Radiation damage causes erythema and some underlying inflammatory processes in the body come out as redness in the skin. So, yeah, it's more a reflection of either burning, excessive radiation from other sources, or. Or a reflection of other illnesses, but mostly through burning.
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B
Right. So maybe it's treating a symptom of something else that might be going on,
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C
calming it all down, if indeed it works at all.
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B
Okay, next colour is green. The claims around green light seem to be about port wine stains, specifically those really quite striking birthmarks that some people have.
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C
Yeah. And this tends to be higher energy light. So lasers produce colored light and lasers are heavily used in medicine. And different colored lasers have different levels of energy and also they interact actually with the colors of blood and blood vessels and so on. So port wine stains, it's similar to using lasers to get rid of tattoos, is you use certain colored lasers to interact with the color of the tattoo and you neutralize the color. That's thought to be one of the ways it works on port wine stains. But also color lasers are used in surgery. For example, there's a green laser that's used in urological surgery for enlarged prostates, which is quite high powered, which is partly related to the colour, and carves out the prostate and some would argue much better than a knife, so the surgeon could do the operation faster with less blood loss. So we're not going to talk a lot about lasers today, but lasers do employ this idea that colors are different, penetrate differently in your skin and have different energy levels.
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B
So we're moving through the rainbow. We've done red, yellow, green, and now we're at blue. Blue light for acne.
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C
It's one of the main focal points. And there's been a lot of work done on blue light for acne. One is that it might sterilise the skin because acne lesions are often infected with a particular bug and that bug, in theory, could be knocked off by blue light. It may settle down the inflammation of acne. When you look at the sum total of the evidence in this area, you could see that, on balance, it does have an effect on acne, but it's a small effect. So the effect size is small and the effect size of existing therapies is larger. So if you wanted to add to it, maybe, but not by itself.
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B
And purple light and acne as well, Is it the same sort of story in terms of the evidence?
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C
Yeah. And they've also tried ultraviolet light for acne. In other words, effectively exposing yourself to the sun.
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B
So this was the question I was going to ask, is if a lot of the claims around different coloured light and skin health and looking good and killing germs and that sort of thing, it sort of seems like the whole spectrum can be doing something. Should people just be going outside? Like, the combination of all these colors of light is white light, and white
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C
light does have definite therapeutic effects.
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B
Okay.
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C
So white light is a bit different. If you're getting white light from an LED or a light source, you know, here I am in a television studio, recording or YouTube, which you can, by the way, get on ABC Science, YouTube channel, seamless plug.
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B
I love it.
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C
So I'm getting white light now that's different from sunlight because sunlight's got ultraviolet light in it, uva, uvb. And that's not on the visible spectrum. Sure. And you're not getting much from just a standard light that I'm sitting Here. But white light on its own, without UVA and UVB can have a therapeutic effect. So one therapeutic effect is treatment of depression or seasonal affective disorder.
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B
Yeah. Okay, so we're moving out of cosmetic treatments to something that's very much psychological. Talk me through what the reasoning is behind why light would be useful for something like depression.
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C
Well, let's start with seasonal affective disorder. So seasonal affective disorder usually comes on in people who are susceptible to it in winter, supposedly worse the further away you get from the equator. But there is. People do get seasonal affective disorder in Australia. It's usually in winter. Some people can get it in other seasons reasons as well. And what light therapy does there is readjusts the circadian rhythm and in a sense extends the day. And it's usually exposure to bright white light in the morning. And this can be through a light box which comes on and simulates the dawn. There's different ways of doing this. And sometimes it's used to prevent seasonal affective disorder, which is essentially depression and low mood. And some people have tried using it for depression and some people have tried it to improve insomnia. Because sometimes insomnia is a problem of shifted phase where you can't get to sleep during the normal hours that people sleep. And exposure to bright light resets your melatonin and your body clock.
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B
Refer back to our melatonin episode.
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C
Exactly. And there's evidence, there is some evidence that bright white light can help seasonal affective disorder. The problem with the research in this area is it's all over the shop and not been terribly well done. But if you sum up all the research, there's probably a small effect to prevent seasonal affective disorder. And it's controversial whether it helps depression at all. If it does help depression, it's in association with other treatments such as drugs or psychotherapy.
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B
So we did talk about infrared before we started talking about the visible light spectrum. So it feels only fair that we should also talk about ultraviolet, which is the other side. Invisible.
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C
That's right. And higher energy. Therefore it's got the potential to burn.
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B
Yeah. So this is the thing that I wanted to ask about because there are health claims around using UV light. And I think most of the health messages that we receive about UV light are avoid it. It'll give you skin cancer. So how do you use it for benefit without increasing your risk of skin cancer?
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C
That is a key question. It's mostly used for the treatment of psoriasis. So psoriasis can be a very difficult. It's an autoimmune skin condition. There are drugs which can treat it, but they're very expensive and they are down the line a bit. So it's been long observed that people with psoriasis get better, a lot better, in summer. So using ultraviolet light. So they sit you under an ultraviolet lamp, and they'll often give you one of these drugs that I was mentioning earlier, which are activated by ultraviolet light. Well, in that case, it was infrared. But there's also a drug that can be activated. It's called Soralin, and they give you Soralin and it enhances the effect of ultraviolet light on your skin because it's activated by the light. It's called Puva is the treatment. Now, the limitation in PUVA is the risk of skin cancer goes up with Puva. It's one of the complications of ultraviolet light in psoriasis. So there's a limit to how much you can have it. So it's a fine balance there between people who are getting the benefits of puva, which people often like, because you get a bit of a suntan skin, but you're also getting a bit of sun damage as well.
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B
And so what I've been interested to know about this whole spectrum, as we've been just speaking about, is that we encourage people to wear sunscreen every day because it helps protect you against skin cancer. If you're wearing sunscreen, are you stopping the other parts of light or just the UV part?
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C
It's mainly the UV part.
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B
Okay.
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C
And people often say then, well, what about vitamin D?
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B
Well, we have an episode on vitamin D, which, again, the Recommendations for other WhatsApp rashes are coming through thick and fast today.
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C
So if you. If you were absolutely religious and slip, slop, slapped your whole body and changed and redid it every two hours, and that's what you did, and you never got exposed to sunlight, you might have a problem with vitamin D. The reality is none of us do it perfectly. And the experts in this area say, do it as well as you can, but because you do it a bit imperfectly, you are getting vitamin D from the sun. And before we leave today's episode, there is one other really important use of light as therapy, and that's in newborn babies.
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B
Ah, for jaundice, of course.
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C
That's right. One of the problems of neonates is that they gather bilirubin in the scheme.
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B
Billy Rubin. It's a good name, I reckon. I'm gonna write a book that's gonna be the main character.
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C
Billy.
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B
Billy Rubin, Yeah.
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C
Or Ruben his brother Billy Rubin, our
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B
mate, is basically a byproduct of red blood cells breaking down, and your body hasn't been able to clear them. And so it shows up as yellowness in the skin and the whites of the eyes.
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C
That's right. And the problem in neonates is that if it accumulates in the brain, it can cause brain damage called kernicteris, which is a really nasty brain condition. So you want to keep the bilirubin levels down. And the revolution in the care of the newborn baby with high levels of bilirubin is light therapy, because when you shine light from specially designed lamps, but it can also be sunlight. You can put the baby out in the sun, it breaks down the bilirubin in the skin.
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B
And they also look like they're having a little suntan, like they're in their little crib. They've got the little patch over their eyes. They're kind of a bit yellow, so they look a little bit tanned and they're just chilling out.
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C
Yeah, it can be very cute, but with nasty undertones. But what it does is it turns the bilirubin Reuben from being stuck in the skin to being able to be flushed out in the kidneys and has saved a lot of kids from brain damage.
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B
Why do you say neonates when I know that you could say we bearns.
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C
Wee babies.
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B
Wee babies. So have we answered the question here? The question in a sentence is, can lights cure us? I kind of feel like maybe a little bit.
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C
Yeah, that's right. But not necessarily magically, with huge effects.
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B
Fair enough.
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C
Choose your colour carefully.
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B
Choose your colour carefully. Well, thank you so much to everyone who sends in questions to us. You can send your questions in to thatrashbc.net au and for all the physicists
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C
in the audience, I encourage you to ask difficult questions about the electromagnetic spectrum, which we'll get Tegan to answer.
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B
Please know no more questions about the electromagnetic spectrum. See you next week.
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C
See ya.