LED light therapy is a non-invasive treatment that utilizes different wavelengths of infrared light to help treat various skin issues such as acne, fine lines, and wound healing. It was actually first developed for clinical use by NASA back in the nineties to help heal astronauts’ skin wounds — though research on the topic continues to grow, and support, its many benefits.
“Without a doubt, visible light can have powerful effects on the skin, especially in high-energy forms, such as in lasers and intense pulsed light (IPL) devices,” says Dr. Daniel, a board-certified dermatologist based in New York City. LED (which stands for light-emitting diode) is a “lower energy form,” in which the light is absorbed by the molecules in the skin, which in turn “alters the biologic activity of nearby cells.”
In slightly simpler terms, LED light therapy “uses infrared light to achieve different effects on the skin,” explains Dr. Michele, a board-certified dermatologist based in Philadelphia, PA. During a treatment, “wavelengths in the visible light spectrum penetrate the skin to varying depths to exert biologic effect.” The different wavelengths are key, because this is “what helps make this method effective, as they penetrate the skin at varying depths and stimulate different cellular targets to help repair skin,” explains Dr. Ellen, a board-certified dermatologist in New York City.
What this means is that the LED light essentially alters the activity of skin cells in order to produce a variety of agreeable outcomes, depending on the color of the light in question — of which there are multiple, and none of which are cancerous (because they do not contain UV rays).