Article: Burst of light speeds up healing by turbocharging our cells

"It sounds too good to be true. Shining red light on skin or cells in a dish gives an instant energy boost that could help heal wounds, relieve pain and perhaps help male infertility and other medical conditions.

"The curious healing effect has been known for decades – researchers have been investigating its use in eye injuries since 2002 – but why it works has been a mystery. It turns out the explanation could be simple and yet strange: the red light seems to alter the physical properties of water, which turbocharges the chemical reactions that provide a cell’s energy.

"The revelation has come from work led by Andrei Sommer of the University of Ulm in Germany.

“The effect on cells of near-infrared light, which has a wavelength of 670 nanometres, was first reported 40 years ago. The light causes mitochondria, the cell’s powerhouses, to produce more ATP, a compound that provides the cell’s energy.”

“Burst of light speeds up healing by turbocharging our cells”

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Kind of reminds of an experiment we did in college biology. We used various colored filters on plants and found that letting only red light in produced more oxygen than if we only let blue or green light reach the plant.

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