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I don't know if this has been posted yet, but here it is.
I listened to a podcast a while ago about red light hosted by Ari Whitten. The guy he was interviewing mentioned that the benefit of red and infrared light is not by displacing nitric oxide, H2S and/or carbon monoxide from cytochrome c oxidase thus increasing its activity, but it was rather through another mechanism.
This study goes into detail and explains that it's actually the effect the light has on the water in the body that is so beneficial.
Mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase is not the primary acceptor for near infrared light—it is mitochondrial bound water: the principles of low-level light therapy - Sommer - Annals of Translational Medicine
Recently, the Cooper laboratory presented the absorption spectra for CCO covering the complete range 400–950 nm (17). Using the spectra for interpretation of the data presented in ref. (23)—in vitro study exploring the effect of 415, 540, 660 and 810 nm light on human adipose derived stem cells and the relationship that the absorbance is equal to the negative logarithm of the transmittance, a quick calculation shows that the transmittance of oxidized CCO for 660 and 810 nm photons is 91.7% (8.7% absorbed) and 83.8% (16.2% absorbed), respectively, but for 415 and 540 nm it is 18.0% (82.0% absorbed) and 73.3% (26.7% absorbed), respectively. The wavelengths 415 and 540 nm correlate positively with the absorption spectrum of oxidized CCO shown in ref. (17) and were found to suppress ATP synthesis and produce a strong ROS signal (23). To put it in another way, the absorbance of CCO for blue 415 nm (0.744) and green 540 nm (0.106) is around 20 and 3 times higher than that for 670 nm (0.032) respectively, where the values were extracted from ref. (17). Another CCO absorption spectrum with peaks centered at 418–420 and 598–600 nm and minimal absorption for R-NIR is presented by Malatesta et al. (25). As I recently pointed out (26) the probability that the interaction of R-NIR photons with oxidatively stressed cells occurs via the CCO route is not realistic: the absorption in the R-NIR region of the CCO spectrum is too small for being the root cause for the ATP upregulation.
Key takeaway. Red and infrared light reduces ROS, stimulates ATPase, reduces water viscosity and stabilizes cell membranes (reduces leakiness).
A stressed cell creates more ROS which increases the water loving capacity of the cell. This makes the cell swell and create more ROS and less ATP in a feed forward loop. Peat mentioned that this is what estrogen does to a cell as well.
I listened to a podcast a while ago about red light hosted by Ari Whitten. The guy he was interviewing mentioned that the benefit of red and infrared light is not by displacing nitric oxide, H2S and/or carbon monoxide from cytochrome c oxidase thus increasing its activity, but it was rather through another mechanism.
This study goes into detail and explains that it's actually the effect the light has on the water in the body that is so beneficial.
Mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase is not the primary acceptor for near infrared light—it is mitochondrial bound water: the principles of low-level light therapy - Sommer - Annals of Translational Medicine
Recently, the Cooper laboratory presented the absorption spectra for CCO covering the complete range 400–950 nm (17). Using the spectra for interpretation of the data presented in ref. (23)—in vitro study exploring the effect of 415, 540, 660 and 810 nm light on human adipose derived stem cells and the relationship that the absorbance is equal to the negative logarithm of the transmittance, a quick calculation shows that the transmittance of oxidized CCO for 660 and 810 nm photons is 91.7% (8.7% absorbed) and 83.8% (16.2% absorbed), respectively, but for 415 and 540 nm it is 18.0% (82.0% absorbed) and 73.3% (26.7% absorbed), respectively. The wavelengths 415 and 540 nm correlate positively with the absorption spectrum of oxidized CCO shown in ref. (17) and were found to suppress ATP synthesis and produce a strong ROS signal (23). To put it in another way, the absorbance of CCO for blue 415 nm (0.744) and green 540 nm (0.106) is around 20 and 3 times higher than that for 670 nm (0.032) respectively, where the values were extracted from ref. (17). Another CCO absorption spectrum with peaks centered at 418–420 and 598–600 nm and minimal absorption for R-NIR is presented by Malatesta et al. (25). As I recently pointed out (26) the probability that the interaction of R-NIR photons with oxidatively stressed cells occurs via the CCO route is not realistic: the absorption in the R-NIR region of the CCO spectrum is too small for being the root cause for the ATP upregulation.
Key takeaway. Red and infrared light reduces ROS, stimulates ATPase, reduces water viscosity and stabilizes cell membranes (reduces leakiness).
A stressed cell creates more ROS which increases the water loving capacity of the cell. This makes the cell swell and create more ROS and less ATP in a feed forward loop. Peat mentioned that this is what estrogen does to a cell as well.