Light therapy
Singapore 14th May 2011
I am not superstitious and the fact that yesterday was Friday the 13th was not the reason I stayed out of blogging, just had a busy day and late night. With a relaxed weekend ahead I now have all the time to write my blog 🙂
A subject that seems to be worlds apart yet very close to our job as lighting designer is light therapy. We focus day in day out on placing our lights in space with the aim to improve the environment we live in, but some people specialise day in day out in the treatment of our human body with light, fighting diseases and rejuvenating our body. I happened to catch a program on TV on light therapy. It basically spoke about how LED technology has made progress in this area with skin treatments focussing on LED lighting rejuvenating the collagen in our body. Collagen is a type of protein, fibrous in nature that is a sort of “glue” in your body connecting and supporting things like the skin, bone, ligaments, muscles, etc. (I googled this…). So it is easy to understand that “healthy” collagen is imperative for a healthy body!
And there is where LED lighting technology is making its entry. By radiating red LED light (apparently in the 630+ nm range) on the body it penetrates the skin to a certain depth and the collagen is regenerated. When applied to the face it apparently does wonders and is sold as a revolutionary anti-aging treatment! The regeneration seems to firm and tighten the skin resulting in a reduction of lines and wrinkles. Not surprising it is popular for facial treatment. While red light seems to rejuvenate collagen, blue light (in the low 420+ nm range) has a photosensitive impact to acne.
In a broader way, it supports the view that we need to be exposed to the full spectrum daylight daily. Daylight has all these colours and giving your body a daily dose of (full spectrum) daylight can only be good. Designing our lighting environments with maximum daylight and full spectrum artificial lighting has to be one of our key considerations always.
In Light Watch today some LED light therapy products that you can find in the market. They range from small handheld devices to large scale panels.
Light Watch 90: LED light therapy products
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