We already told you about it a little over a year ago, a team from University College London (United Kingdom) had discovered that staring at a long-wave deep red light for three minutes could slow down the deterioration of vision. Now, the same team of researchers has refined the study, finding that this positive effect only occurs if the exposure takes place in the morning.
Study participants had a 17% improvement in their vision after three minutes of deep red light between 8 and 9 a.m., and showed no benefit from midday exposure
The research, which in this case has been published in the journal Scientifics Reports, has been carried out in the same way as the previous test but with slight variations in terms of the energy levels used and in order to know the effects it would have. this type of red light in the vision depending on whether it was exposed in the morning or in the afternoon.
The tests were conducted on people between the ages of 34 and 70 without eye disease or vision problems. All were exposed to an LED device to three minutes of long-wave deep red light – that is, 670 nanometers – in the morning, between 8 and 9, and after three hours their vision was evaluated and half were also analyzed after one week.
A 17% improvement in vision thanks to deep red light
Results indicated that long-wave deep red light showed an average 17% improvement in participants’ color contrast vision when exposed for about three minutes in the morning; these effects lasted for at least a week. Some of the participants even had a 20% improvement. Months after this first test, six of the previous 20 participants were subjected to the same tests but in the afternoon, between 12 noon and one o’clock. In this case no improvement in vision was found.
“We show that a single exposure to long-wave deep red light in the morning can significantly improve declining vision, which is a major health and wellness issue affecting millions of people globally,” said Glen Jeffery, lead author of the research.
To understand it better, we must bear in mind that in humans from the age of 40, the cells found in the retina begin an aging process, which will vary in part in rhythm depending on the aging of the mitochondria of the cells, whose main task is to generate energy. For this reason, the retina tends to age faster than other organs, since it is an area that requires high amounts of energy, which causes the mitochondria to decline faster.
The retina tends to age faster than other organs, since it is an area that requires high amounts of energy
“Mitochondria have specific sensitivities to long-wavelength light that influence their performance: longer wavelengths spanning 650 to 900nm enhance mitochondrial performance to increase energy production,” explains Jeffery. Therefore, with deep red light, which has these wavelengths, the performance of the mitochondria and the generation of energy could be improved.
These results could be encouraging in the face of the scarcity of affordable eye therapies, which is why the researchers believe that long-wave deep red light would be the solution to improve the population’s vision at an affordable cost and safely, since according to Jeffery indicates “the technology is simple and very secure; the energy delivered by 670nm longwave light is not much greater than that found in natural ambient light.”
.
