Red light therapy

Photobiomodulation has well over a thousand trials and reviews behind it, and the pooled results are reasonably encouraging for musculoskeletal pain, tendinopathy and oral mucositis. Almost all of that work uses clinical low-level laser devices at specified wavelengths and doses, delivered to a specific tissue. Consumer red light panels and masks are sold on the same research while differing in wavelength, power and how long anyone actually stands in front of them, and the skin, sleep and mitochondrial claims are far weaker than the pain literature.

Reviewed 2026-09-20

Official sources

How this list was built

We searched Europe PMC for English-language papers published since 2012 whose title contains “photobiomodulation” or “red light therapy” or “low-level laser”, kept meta-analyses, systematic reviews and randomised trials, then ranked them by study design first, then recency and citations. Retracted papers are removed.

Open a paper to read its abstract and ask for an AI brief of what it found.