>Also, do you have any expertise on LED therapy? It might improve active acne or Rosacea but not the depth of any scars.
Lots of people claim it did nothing for their pores. Example:
https://http://www.smartskincare.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4006 I cannot comment on the efficacy of LEDs, I will just write some information to help you make a choice.
Low-power laser therapy and also LED (light-emitting diode) therapy has been used with various success to relieve certain kind of musculoskeletal pain, chronic inflammation and to speed up the healing of soft tissue or ischemic injuries.
Concerning the skin, there are claims that light treatment with LEDs can modulate fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis.
The mechanism of its biological effects is not fully understood.
It is believed that a primary effect is the stimulation of mitochondrial oxidative cell metabolism and thus accelerating cell- and tissue repair.
The most common outcomes in successful cases are the reduction of redness, improved skin tone and enhanced skin smoothness.
Blue LEDs supposedly negatively affect acne bacteria (if the claims are true, perhaps because blue light is close to the sterilizing UV-A) but they do not affect the depth of acne scars. Sunlight should have the same or even better effect as blue LEDs.
Red LEDs reduce redness such as from inflammation. Red light displays anti-inflammatory properties by influencing cytokine release from macrophages. Sometimes it is used to hasten the reduction of redness for example, after treatment with IPL (intense pulse light), acid peels or Fraxel Laser. Again, this effect can simply be due to the fact that red light is close to infrared, which is heat. So again, ordinary sunlight may yield an even better result.
How to choose a LED device: Assuming you buy into the hype. If you plan to use it on large skin areas such as the whole face etc, buy a device that has many LEDs and covers a large area of skin in one go. This will significantly shorten the time necessary for treating large areas.
Frequently used wavelengths: Blue light between 400 nm to 412 nm is most commonly used to treat acne, sometimes in combination with infrared (wavelengths of 830 nm to 880 nm).
Red light at around 633 nm - 660 nm for inflammation reduction and skin smoothness.
Yellow light: The GentleWaves device emits a 590 nm wavelength. They are spending a fortune in TV advertizing to claim "NASA technology" but we do not know of any clinical evidencethat it does anything.
Lots of devices use the combination of blue and red/infrared LEDs.
Hold the LED device very close to the skin. The closer the better. A LED (light emitting diode) does not emit much heat (except for a little infrared). Clean your skin prior to treatment. Eye protection is not necessary, because even though Laser LEDs do exist, LED skin therapy is done with "ordinary light" LEDs, meaning the same effect (if there really is any) can theoretically be achieved with an ordinary light bulb with a colored filter.
You should administer a dose of at least 4 Joules per cm2 of skin per treatment in order to achieve the smallest of effects.
Example:
A LED device has these specifications:
Red (wavelength 633 nm). Power output 8.4 mW/cm2. A mW is a milliWatt, or a thousandth of a Watt.
The light output is 8.4 mW per cm2 and your goal is 4 Joules per cm2 per treatment. One Joule is defined as one Watt per second, so in order to achieve that, you should know that J = W x S (Joule is Watt x Seconds)
In our case, we want to know how many seconds, so our equation becomes S = J / W. We just said 4 Joules is the target energy to be delivered to a square centimeter of skin, and the output of LED devices is stated in mW, so the formula to use is: Seconds of treatment per cm2 of skin = 4000 mJ / milliWatt per cm2 of skin.
4000 mJ divided by 8.4 = 476 seconds.
So each time you use the device, you should apply it for 476 seconds (8 minutes) on a skin surface area with the same size as the light emitting surface area as the device. This means that if you want to treat a skin area that is four times larger than the light emitting part of the LED device, that you need to move it over the skin for 4 x 8 = 32 minutes in total.
If the output per cm2 is not specified, look for the total output of the device and divide the total output by the total area of the panels with LEDs. This will give the Wattage per cm2. Example: Output area is 10 cm2, total Wattage is 50 mW. Wattage per cm2 is 50 divided by 10 = 5 mW.
A bare minimum of 4 Joules per cm2 per treatment is required to attain any kind of biological effect. To give you an idea how many doses were used during studies:
Blue and Red Light Combination LED Phototherapy for Acne Vulgaris in Patients with Skin Phototype IV
The blue light comprised of five panels containing 260 LEDs each.
The red light consisted of four panels containing 420 LEDs each.
The treatment heads delivered wavelengths:
415.5 nm for the blue light and 633.6 nm for the red light.
The irradiance was 40 mW / cm2 for the blue light and 80 mW / cm2 for the red light at a distance of 1–10 cm from the light source.
The radiant fluences, or doses, during a single treatment for 20 minutes were 48 and 96 J/cm2 for the blue and red treatment heads, respectively alternating blue (415 nm) and red (633 nm) light.
The treatment was performed twice a week for four weeks:
https://http://www.huidzaak.nl/publicaties/acne/127%20Lee%20et%20al-Blue%20and%20red%20light%20combination%20LED%20phototherapy%20for%20acne%20vulgaris%20in%20patients%20with%20skin%20phototype%20IV.pdf Combination blue (415 nm) and red (633 nm) LED phototherapy in the treatment of mild to severe acne vulgaris
Subjects were treated in eight sessions, two per week, 3 days apart, alternating between 415 nm blue light (20 minutes per session, 48 J/cm2) and 633 nm red light (20 minutes per session, 96 J/cm2) from a light-emitting diode (LED)-based therapy system.
https://http://www.skinandlasers.com/asp/UpLoad/publication/Combination%20Blue%20and%20Red%20LED%20phototherapy%20in%20the%20treatment%20o.pdf A study to determine the efficacy of combination LED light therapy (633 nm and 830 nm) in facial skin rejuvenation:
https://http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16414908 The treatments combined wavelengths of 633 nm and 830 nm with fluences of 126 J/cm2 and 66 J/cm2.
As you see, the small "home" treatment devices have an output that is really much to small to achieve the results they speak of in clinical trials. Unless there emerges evidence that those devices work better than for example equivalent bursts of sun exposure, I would stick to micro-needling.
Topic: LED skin treatment (Read 14311 times)
