Pages

Ads 468x60px

Friday, June 26, 2015

Understanding Red Light Therapy For Wrinkles

By Elaine Guthrie


Anyone can buy a boatload of anti-aging beauty and skincare products to fill an entire vanity or medicine closet with lotions, liquids and creams. There's also no dearth of surgical procedures to make aging symptoms like wrinkles vanish for the moment. But red light therapy for wrinkles is a rather innovative technique that is increasingly popular these days.

It is an established science that phototherapy, also known as heliotherapy, is able to help patients suffering from a range of disorders. This includes skin problems like acne and eczema, healing of open wounds, and even cancer. It's also been effectively used for helping people suffering from stress, depression or sleep disorders.

Phototherapies typically come under one of two broad categories. The non-targeted type is where the patient is asked to get more and regular exposure to sunlight, which can be direct or through a lightbox that reflects sunlight. On the other hand, targeted types of therapies focus intense rays of light from sources such as lamps, LEDs and lasers on a particular patch of skin.

Red light therapy comes under the latter category, where wrinkles below the eyes are targeted with visible rays. Note that this is different from infrared rays, which are not directly visible to the human eye. A study published a few years ago by researchers at the University of Ulm in Germany showed how it works.

The whole thing hinges on the well-being of elastin. This is the protein that makes skin elastic by producing collagen as required. As a person ages, the fibers start breaking down, and the skin therefore starts producing less collagen. It starts losing its elasticity and ends up looking more and more stretched and baggy. That's what causes wrinkled skin.

The core cause of this dysfunction is because of water layers around the elastin fibers. Subjecting such affected areas of the skin with light rays at a high intensity leads to a sudden spurt in blood circulation, in the process freeing up the elastin to resume their work. Collagen starts being produced like before, and the skin starts regaining its earlier healthiness.

It's a simple and non-invasive technique that is entirely painless. If there are problems like wrinkles or a wound on that patch of skin, it will start healing and look more normal. If there was nothing wrong in the first place, the skin will get a more healthy sheen because of the excess collagen.

Beauty salons and skincare clinics today have FDA-approved devices for phototherapy treatments. It's also possible to buy devices that can help people do the same thing at home. This will be a headgear unit that subjects the area around the eyes to the rays, along with goggles that keep the eyes safe.

Note that it needs to be used with caution and for a limited duration only. The intense rays of red light therapy may get rid of wrinkles, but overuse will be harmful for that part of the skin. The suggested usage is for no more than a minute for around 3-4 times a day at most. In any case, people with other medical conditions or a history of skin-related disorders should consult a dermatologist before opting for any kind of skincare or healing treatment.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment

 
Blogger Templates