Looking for a quick fix for your red light therapy needs? There's a phone app that only costs $1. Is this all we need for red light therapy treatments?
The app is called RedMed, and it's available for $1 in the Apple Store. It's marketed as a red light therapy app. The bio reads: "RedMed allows you to generate therapeutic red light on your device's screen."
Sounds pretty neat, right? Why buy an expensive panel or lug around a bulky handheld device when you can do it all on your phone?
The concept is intriguing. Who wouldn't want to harness the power of red light therapy conveniently on their phone?
The app features pulsing up to 30 Hertz on an iPhone or 120 HZ on an iPad Pro. You can also use it for blue or green light.
This sounds so amazing. I can hear folks saying, "What a great deal! Take my money! I want it now!"
But hold up because this all sounds too good to be true.
The proof is in the pudding. So, armed with my trusty $3,000 spectrometer, I delved into the world of RedMed to test how much therapeutic light is being emitted from this thing.
What did I find? Let's just say, it's not exactly a shining beacon of therapeutic light. In fact, it's more like a dim flicker.
The numbers are simply ridiculous! You have to see this!
Let me explain: I used my $3,000 spectrometer. This professionally calibrated device measures light output, wavelengths, and the amount of light energy in a particular wavelength. This is known as 'irradiance' or simply the power output.
The published literature on red light therapy gives us a pretty good idea of how much light and power is needed to get a therapeutic treatment, so let me offer you an example.
This tabletop red light therapy device emits about 40mW of therapeutic red light a couple of inches from the panel. 10 joules of light is needed to experience surface level wound healing benefit.
That means you would need about 4 minutes in front of this panel to get the therapeutic benefit.
Alternatively, this battery powered handheld red light therapy device emits around 20 MW of red light that means about an 8 minute treatment time.
Now, here's where things get spicy: the MedLight app on full brightness has a power figure of 0.063 milliwatts. That's 300 times less than the handheld device.
To treat a part of your body the size of your phone, the treatment time would equal one day and 3 hours!
That's 27 total hours to get a therapeutic dosage of red light if you're using this app. It's ludicrous! I wouldn't even use this app if it was free.
The handheld device has 20mW/cm².
Your phone's flashlight has 1mW/cm².
MedRed app has 0.063mW/cm².
So, let's cut to the chase, using the RedMed app on your phone doesn't have the necessary power levels to deliver enough therapeutic red light to make a bit of difference.
Effectively, what you're getting is an app that creates a red screen or a flashing red screen. You don't even need to pay a dollar to achieve what RedMed is selling.
Check this out. Just Google the word "red," pull up an image, and voila—you've got yourself a makeshift RedMed look alike app without parting with your dollar bill. I tested it, and you will get the exact same power output as the app offers.
Better Options Available
While doing this experiment, I thought of a way to get a little bit more red light therapy from your phone, and it's free. So please do not buy this app. It's a joke!
In fact, it's sad that it's even on the App Store. If it was on there for free, we could dismiss it as a laugh.
The fact that you have to pay money to get it feels like a scam to me. I'm still glad I wasted my dollar to share the data with you guys so that you can save your pocket-change money and more importantly, save your time as 27 hours per treatment is inconceivable!
Wavelength
Oddly enough, the red light being emitted from this app is around 620 nanometers. Typically we see 630–660nm in light therapy devices.
Just to show how silly this app is, I need to show you how much power is coming out of the flashlight on your iPhone. I used my spectrometer to test my iPhone's flashlight.
Yes, I know this isn't red light. It is white light obviously. Yet white light includes red light.
As you can see in this screenshot from my spectrometer, the most intense light coming from my phone's white LED flashlight is blue light.
However, when we look at the red, we see nearly 1mW of light, which is 15 times more light than the MedRed light therapy app.
This figure, the measly 1mW of red light in your phone's flashlight, is still extremely low. You would need about 3 hours of treatment time at this power irradiance to get any benefits at this dose strength, but 3 hours is still better than 27 hours!
Stay away from this app. Save your money. You deserve better than some app peddling promises it can't keep.
Let me help you find the best value tabletop red light panel that will put out a decent amount of therapeutic light at the correct wavelength. Best of all, you only need to use a panel for a handful of minutes to experience the benefits.
When it comes to your health and wellness, red light therapy is a scientifically proven tool, but it's all about finding the real deal backed by hard data.
I'm here to be your guiding light towards the best red light products that will have you basking in their therapeutic glow and soaking up all the benefits.
This Article's Products:
The RedMed Apple iPhone app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/redmed/...
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