32: Red Light Therapy featuring Dina Holzapfel

Dina Holzapfel00:00:00

Hi, I'm Dina Holzapfer, and I'm today's guest on the so Freaking Healthy podcast. I am an engineer, a neuroscientist, and an entrepreneur.And in this episode, we talk about red light therapy and mindfulness and why we started the world's first red light therapy mindfulness studio in Zurich, Switzerland, last year. It was a really fun conversation about our physical and mental health and the way that we can optimize that for our goals.

Megan McCrory00:00:27

Okay.

Dina Holzapfel00:00:29

Hey, Megan.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:00:30

I dragged over a really good friend of mine, dear, dear friend, who just started her own business, and I really wanted to interview her on the new science behind red light therapy.

Megan McCrory00:00:41

Okay, so red light therapy.

Dina Holzapfel00:00:43

You mean all those people running around.

Megan McCrory00:00:44

With masks on with red light?

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:00:47

That we'll find out today.

Megan McCrory00:00:49

You look like some futuristic sci fi Halloween mask.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:00:54

Yes, exactly. So. So red light.

Megan McCrory00:00:55

I have to admit, I know pretty much nothing about red light therapy.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:01:00

And here we are. Dina, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dina Holzapfel00:01:04

Hi. It's so fun to be here. Thanks for having me.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:01:08

I'm super excited to talk to you because you're just a fun person to talk to. You're bubbly and you're beautiful and you have stuff to say and I want the world to hear. Thank you, Dina.I would love, love, love for our audience to hear more about red light therapy. Tell me all about it. Educate me, girl.

Dina Holzapfel00:01:26

Okay, so basically at the end of the 60s, there was this Hungarian doctor that was doing experiments on mice and discovered that when these mice were exposed to these specific wavelengths of red light, their hair would grow faster and thicker. And that was the beginning of red light therapy. This was about 50 years after the first experiments were done.In the general terms of light therapy, light therapy started really using UV light and blue light on lupus vulgaris.So really treating skin conditions and recognizing that there are certain intensities of light that are part of our natural spectrum of light from the sun that can help conditions on the skin. So red light therapy started with this kind of random discovery the end of the 60s.And then basically the Soviets and the Americans did a lot of experiments with red light therapy in their race to space. Most of the research from the Soviet era has basically been dismissed. It was also largely in Russian.And when the Iron Curtain fell, that kind of all fell away. So NASA gets a lot of credit. Some people even credit NASA for inventing red light therapy, which is not correct.But they did do a lot of very interesting research on plants and on astronauts to preserve their health in space. We know that UV light, for example, stimulates our cells to release melanin. And that's the process of how our cells and that's how we get the tan.Unfortunately, that is also an aging process of the skin. The red light, in a sufficient intensity actually stimulates the mitochondria of our cells to produce more of their own energy, called ATP.So our cells are always producing energy. ATP is their kind of currency. It's the way that our cells produce energy for all cellular functions in our body to function.And as we age, this mitochondrial efficiency starts declining.So, so it turns out when we stimulate these cells with these specific wavelengths of red and near infrared light, we can stimulate them to increase the cellular energy. And we're doing this at different depths of our body. Fundamentally, every cell in our body, except for our red blood cells, have mitochondria.And they have a different amount of mitochondria depending on their energy demand. So a typical skin cell, for example, has about 1,000 mitochondria. A typical brain cell has up to 10,000 mitochondria.Our female egg cells can have up to 600,000 mitochondria.You can see how, you know, kind of makes sense that the origin of life, of human life, has the highest energy demand, whereas a skin cell that is being replaced every four weeks or so has a lower energy demand.We talk a lot about cellular energy and about ATP, because this is a fundamental way of how our body converts sugar into energy and how we can make that more efficient.And we can talk about all these things that can happen downstream of our cells functioning at their best, because when they're functioning at their best, then we have reduced inflammation, we have our processes downstream functioning better. For example, the collagen synthesis, which is what these masks are specifically targeting on our face. This is a natural process in our body.Collagen is part of the what makes our skin healthy. It's part of what makes our hair and our skin, our fingernails, healthy. It's also an integral part of our bones and our joints.And after the age of 25, unfortunately, this collagen starts degrading in all these parts of our body.The thing that we see first are the fine lines and wrinkles, because that is literally the collagen matrix collapsing with the stimulation of our cells. And the mitochondria being more efficient, more ATP being available, the collagen synthesis is more efficient again.And then over time, by regularly stimulating our cells with this light, we, we can keep the cellular energy elevated and the collagen matrix can start to Rebuild. And that's how we can start filling in the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.So red light therapy is amazing for me personally because it works on the cellular level.It is this non invasive treat for yourself that you can do regularly that provides all sorts of benefits from of course, your outer appearance to the way that it can stimulate our brain cells, how it can increase neuroplasticity, how it can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's and dementia even.There is turns out thousands and thousands of studies that have been done across red light therapy over the last decades and all sorts of different applications of our physical and mental health. I'm really fascinated by how we can use this trick basically to improve our health on a cellular level that has all these downstream benefits.Obviously there's a way to get this for free, which is going into the sun.So a sufficient amount of sunlight will give you the same benefits, especially if you are protecting yourself from an excessive amount of UV radiation, which, you know, because you don't want to simultaneously trigger the aging and rejuvenation process in your cells because you're kind of not going to get, you know, rid of your wrinkles that way.So it obviously red light therapy is a very controlled method of, you know, really picking out the parts of the, the, the light that have the most benefit. But there is a lot of research that is showing that blue light is really essential for us too.Like, the sunlight is a really important part of our human health. And in some parts of the world, you have larger or smaller amounts of that and we have easier or harder access to that.Like in Switzerland, to tell somebody to go into the sun during the winter for half an hour every morning is just not a very reasonable plan.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:06:54

Yeah, right.

Dina Holzapfel00:06:55

But yeah, light. It's basically understanding how important light is to our human existence. That's basically the summary.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:07:04

Amazing.

Dina Holzapfel00:07:05

So a.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:07:06

As soon as you started talking, Megan just rejuvenated just by listening to you because you spoke all the geeky scientistic words. And she was like, okay, I'm good.

Megan McCrory00:07:18

I do, I love listening to it.

Dina Holzapfel00:07:20

Yeah.

Megan McCrory00:07:20

But There was like 15 different things now that I wrote down while you were talking. Like, okay, let's, let's start because you gave a really good summary of it.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:07:29

Bottom line, light.

Megan McCrory00:07:30

That was a great way to summarize. It's like you can't live in a cave as a human. It doesn't work.You need this for all different kinds of hormonal regulation and everything that you just mentioned. If I was to get some LED lights and have the ability to program them to the proper wavelength. Would that work?Can I DIY myself some red light or like the beds that you have and the mask, are there something special about these that are in addition to just LEDs at a certain wavelength?

Dina Holzapfel00:08:04

So LEDs at a certain wavelength, that's kind of where it is. Okay, right. You want, you need these high quality LEDs that actually are emitting specifically this wavelength. By the way.They're never just emitting like one wavelength. This is if you have to get a spectrometer that can measure this and then you'll see how it's peaking at this wavelength.So you're going to get, you know, if you're targeting to have 630nm, which is one of the effective red wavelengths, then you're also going to get a little bit of, you know, 628 and 626, but like @ smaller intensities, because it's going to peak at 630.So there are certain wavelengths that we now know are very effective for the cellular rejuvenation process, such as the 630 and 660 nanometers in the red light spectrum, which is, by the way, can only reach like max, about a centimeter into our skin. Right? It's, it's a very, can't reach very deep.And then we go into the near infrared spectrum, which is outside of our visible spectrum of light, and there we're talking like about above 700 nanometers up until about 11 to 1200 nanometers max.And that the near infrared light can actually go even deeper, can reach up to like 8cm into our skin, so into our bodies and then that can target deeper levels. So that's how we're getting the light to stimulate these mitochondria of deeper parts of our body.You know, that's how, that's what's soothing our muscles, working against the inflammation in our body, you know, loosening up these, these pains that are caused by that inflammation and also can target certain, you know, organs, including things like, for example, our reproductive organs that help us then when us, you know, women during our cycle to, you know, help, as you were saying, regulate hormones, but also to soothe things like period cramps and also to, you know, stimulate even things like our egg cells to increase the cellular energy of our oocytes if we're interested in also, you know, stimulating our, maximizing our fertility, basically.I personally am the most fascinated in my current phase of life of how I can stimulate the depths of my brain so we need the near infrared light to actually get past my skull, right? So there are different estimates of how much light can actually penetrate my skull. So the red light is not really going to do it.We have to use these specific wavelengths of a near infrared light. And there are different experiments that have done use different devices as well.Everything from like helmets that are designed for my head to full body setups, to a typical panel to even, you know, just putting, you know, like devices like the mask, you know, on my, my head and investigating which of these like, near infrared wavelengths are actually doing anything in that sense. Like.And so there are lots of interesting studies ranging from, for example, looking at brain fog in Long COVID patients to looking at Parkinson's and dementia and Alzheimer patients and monitoring the development of basically their symptoms with the over a couple of weeks of doing red light therapy or a couple of months. So that's what I think is the most fascinating. I feel like I had a boost of cognitive power from red light therapy in my journey.It's very difficult, obviously, subjectively to say these kind of things and then be like, you know, like, you could get it too, because obviously I was doing a lot of things for my mental health.I was building a new business and doing a lot of, you know, very intellectual work of reading all these papers and becoming an expert of red light therapy.I'm also a student of neuroscience, so, you know, I am studying scientifically, then I am doing the red light therapy and we combine everything with mindfulness. So I meditate and visualize a lot. So all these things are actually very positive for my neuroplasticity.And so it's very difficult to always, you know, isolate one thing and say, like, this is the magic bullet. But, but in studies, you know, in scientific studies, you really try to do so, right? You try and neutralize every other factor.I just find it's very, very promising what is shown there. And you know, there's. There's basically two different spectrums of health at this point, right?There are the people who are suffering from certain issues that, you know, things like long Covid.We're getting a lot of long COVID patients at that are really referred from their doctors to us to try the full body red light therapy to work against inflammation and increase this, a mitochondrial efficiency that some doctors think is linked to some parts of long Covid. Long Covid manifests in so many different ways that it's not really one thing.These people have often, you know, like they've their whole lives have been really compromised by their disease. We see a lot of these kind of things from people who have severe autoimmune diseases too.And they're at a point where they are, you know, like just super open to try anything to improve the quality of their life.And then you have other people who are really trying to optimize their health in their specific outcomes, whether that is because they want to live longer, they want to live better, they want to look younger, you know, like, so they have all sorts of different types of people using red light therapy for all sorts of different types of reasons.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:13:11

Yeah. And the nice thing is that they are all getting the benefits that they could get.

Dina Holzapfel00:13:16

So if you're coming in just for your wrinkles, you're also getting a brain boost.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:13:19

Yeah, exactly.So I mean, like, that's a win, win in, in my world, I have to just comment on something that I don't know if we made clear, but as I understood from you by visiting Red, your beautiful studio is that the red light doesn't necessarily penetrate through clothing and things like that. So if I have a certain injury or a certain specific area that I want to treat with red light therapy, it needs to be directly towards the skin.

Dina Holzapfel00:13:49

Generally, yes. If you like doing red light therapy, you want to expose your skin because your skin is what is absorbing these wavelengths.If you have clothing on, you're going to get a reduced penetration. Right. Like some clothing will block it completely and some will not will allow some light to come through.So yeah, like when you're lying under our full body red light therapy beds at our studio, for example, like, I invite you to get undressed to the level that you're most comfortable with and whatever that means to you, that means to you.Like typically we see how the Scandinavian love to be in their birthday suits and people like me who have more of an American upbringing are a little bit more prude and you know, like to just feel more comfortable in their underwear. And that's just, you know, like that's totally fine.There are reasons, you know, for you to get completely naked, you know, as a woman, for example, if you've gone through breastfeeding or are still breastfeeding.I've not had children, but, you know, I hear that you get like breastfeeding is quite the journey and you get a lot of like sore breasts and nipples and stuff. So there's interesting stuff there of relieving that soreness.Also working on any kinds of like stretch marks and, you know, like getting your skin to bounce back to its, you know, state that you're kind of looking to get after having a child.For men, there's also really interesting benefits of exposing genitalia of increased testosterone production and increased sperm count and sperm quality. Lots of interesting reasons to expose different parts of your body to red light therapy. With a full body approach, you can kind of, you know, get.Capture everything in this very even kind of, you know, exposure across your whole body of these different wavelengths. But there's a whole world of optimization of red light therapy out there.And when you're talking about dosing of red light therapy, it quickly gets very complex and very complicated and you have to go back to once again being like, okay, how do I actually feel right? What am I actually seeing here? What is it that actually serves me personally? Because whatever has helped somebody else doesn't really matter.What matters is how. How it's working for me. Preach.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:15:56

Yes.

Dina Holzapfel00:16:21

Back then still regularly visit one of my best friends in Dusseldorf and we would go out on Saturday nights and then on Sundays, you know, maybe two, three times a winter, we would go to the solarium just to warm up. And actually that those experiences really influenced how we designed red.Because I remember being under these solarium beds and desperately trying to find a radio channel that would play like, like a tune that I could pretend to be at the beach because as you were describing, and it gets really warm and you're getting sweaty and you put on the ventilation and you like I was trying to pretend somewhere deep, mid February in northern Europe that I was at the beach. And I remember that these radios never worked properly or you just got advertisement and the static like never worked properly.And we're talking a while ago now. So, like There were no AirPods and I definitely was not going to take my like iPhone4 under this radiating machine. Right.When we thought about this idea of having like a solarium for red light therapy, for me, it was really important to think about what, like a very, like a full body, mind, soul experience that you're seeking when you're kind of subjecting yourself to these light machines.And that's why we incorporated this audio experience and then evolved that even with the mindfulness part of incorporating a guided meditation, you do get warm. That was your other question. Like, do you sweat a lot? Like in a solarium?In the first couple minutes you're probably going to be surprised that, you know, like you would expect to be warmer than you are. Because in the first couple of minutes you actually like, don't really feel much.You start, you know, like, the light is bright, but you're kind of like, okay. And then you start feeling how the warmth builds and then it kind of like, it kind of feels like it's building from within.So there are very few people who come out and are like, wow, I was really sweating a lot. There is also a ventilation in, you know, like the 35 degree summer. You obviously are just heated at a different level.And also if you're spending a lot of time outdoors, you don't necessarily need the longer red light therapy experiences.I'd say across the thousands and thousands of sessions I've seen this year, there's been one person where I was like, yeah, we really should have a shower for you right now, like who's really sweat a lot and everybody else has, you know, even if they're warm, they're not like sweating excessively that you feel the need to shower. Whereas in the solarium like I remember like really like dripping sweat from, from those machines. So.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:18:48

Okay, I've never been so I'm so happy because I have, I have an issue with what I mean it is really a whole experience coming to your studio. I mean the whole environment there is very relaxing, very clean and, and minimalistic and beautiful.And I have to say I've been going, you know, kind of weekly with, with my, one of my best friends and we just chill there for a while. We probably are overstaying our welcome.

Dina Holzapfel00:19:13

No, not at all. You're very welcome to, but, but it.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:19:17

Really is very nice. So I mean what you offer at your studio is either an 11 minute experience kind of meditation and red light therapy experience or a 22 minute one.I have to say from again, first time I went I was like, oh no, I'm not going to survive 22 minutes. Let's take the 11 minutes. And it felt like five minutes at most. I was genuinely surprised at how relaxed I got, how comfortable I was.Yes, I had the door prompt a little bit more with my arm. Just, just a little, just to know that I'm in control as you said. But, but I felt very relaxed afterwards.I'm also, you know, using this other stronger machine that you have for very targeted local kind of therapy and treatment for my neck and shoulders where I always had an issue with. And honestly this week I did not show up unfortunately and I feel it more so again I'm just kind of sharing my own experience.But I think it's a, a really nice.Because it's a really nice wholesome experience because with the solariums again, never been, but it always looks like It's a deserted place that you just go and put coins in kind of thing. It's not, there's no personal touch to it where coming to you.

Dina Holzapfel00:20:33

It's.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:20:33

I feel, it's like you just feel very welcomed and very kind of like calm and it's a really beautiful experience.

Dina Holzapfel00:20:39

I don't know if that had a service. We really wanted to make sure that we designed a customer experience that was very luxurious and taken care of.Like we want you to feel like you are taking care of yourself and you are being taken care of when you are at Red.This is I think really important as part of the overall journey that our members, so the people that our customers who come regularly get at redd, you know that you are taking care of yourself. You're putting in this effort for yourself, but you're also being taken care of back. So like we do all the cleaning and the disinfecting for you.That's not something you have to worry about. With every visit you get a drink from our health bar.And we work with the one and only kombucha company in the country that has live probiotic kombucha. And we created two drinks together with them that are exclusive to Red, including the only matcha latte on tap you can get in this country.Possibly the only matcha latte on tap of this kind in the world. Because the only other examples are cafes that kind of make it on the spot every morning.The whole, the whole purpose of Red is to really connect with yourself, to optimize your own well being and to really step into what is the best version of me that I can continuously evolve into. And so the mindfulness aspect is really what I bring to the table to Red.This is really what I have become very, very interested in as I've gotten older. Like my. Even throughout my last company, which was Smickel, right.A cookie company, had very different, you know, kind of like a lot of people are like wait, what a minute? You know, like she went from food to wellness. You know, like how did this happen? And red light therapy is actually quite new to me.I kind of ignored the entire category, including all these face masks for a long time.Really just thought this was another one of these, you know, kind of beauty trends and kind of put it in the same bucket where I put all these like, you know, beauty serums into. You know, like there's value in there for some people, but it's just not my world. Yeah.And I only started getting interested in red light therapy after I began my second MSc in Psychology and neuroscience and started understanding the benefits of red light therapy in other contexts such as longevity.And then when I understood its impact on my brain in terms of not only neuroplasticity, but working against the symptoms of anxiety and depression, I was really interested. And then I was like, okay, I need to get myself a device and you know, try this.And that's basically when I wrote to Tanya, my co founder, and told her like, manifesting that one of us has a full body red light therapy setup at home.And then this whole idea began because she had had the idea the day before to have a solarium for red light therapy, as you just have a lot of like ideas randomly through your mind, right? And then sometimes you can actually act upon one. So that was my personal fascination.That was only about a year and a half ago, but I've done a lot of. I've been going deeper and deeper into the, the mindfulness world for myself.It was one of the reasons why we also ended up evolving, you know, from, with my previous co founder, love of my life, Murat, from running this cookie business together into selling that cookie business and moving on. There are various different reasons why various different people are interested.But like at red, people tell us that the red light therapy allows them to absorb this mindfulness experience in a way that surprises them.That people who have been not very interested in meditating or hesitant to meditate or believe that they didn't have the focus to meditate, they often go in and are surprised that like you, that like it was so short or felt so short, time is relative, but also like along their journeys that they start really getting value out of this time for their mental health that they're giving themselves.We also do a lot of other things, like a lot of other mindfulness events for members, including our full moon ceremonies, which sound really woo, but it's really kind of based on a lot of interesting neuroscientific principles of mine.And I set it under the energy of the full moon and take inspiration of the theme of the full moon because I think it's really cool to remember that we are human and we are connected to nature. And there's a lot of ancient wisdom in these traditions connected to nature in all religions of the world.And we can honor that ancient wisdom and recognize this different part of ourselves. So every full moon has a different theme every month and it's very aligned to the cycle.So like the last full moon was called the harvest moon, for example.And you know, we've spent, you know, like, the whole year from the winter, like, thinking about the seeds that we'll be planting and then, you know, early springs of actually planting them and then visualizing the growth below ground and then seeing the, you know, first plants sprout and then seeing them blossom and leaning into all these different parts of us that, of course, are very symbolic for our intentions and our plans and our dreams and the way that we are working on ourselves.So I find it really fascinating, and I really find it really, really interesting when I'm leading these workshops, how a lot of these themes that we talk about, you know, like, even when we talk about things like money, for example, every one of us has a relationship to money.And I think, you know, those of us who feel like their relationship with money is particularly hard feel like other people have it really easy when it comes to money.And it's really interesting when I lead these live groups and come together how people who, from the outside would be like, you think, belong to this category of, oh, they have it really easy with money. Right. Have their own insecurities, have their own journeys, and have the exact same feelings that you have as well when it comes to money.Whether you are broke, a billionaire, or, you know, like, just, you know, like, grew up in financial abundance and never needed to budget, I think it unites our humanity.This is my little, like, making my little dent in the universe of trying to be my best self and support everybody else to lean into their best selves.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:27:08

You are doing a beautiful job of it, I have to admit.

Megan McCrory00:27:11

Well, thanks, Dina.

Dina Holzapfel00:27:12

Thanks for having me. This was really a fun chat.

Megan McCrory00:27:15

Thanks.

Dina Holzapfel00:27:16

And I'm excited to tell you everything you now know about red light therapy. Megan.

Megan McCrory00:27:21

Well, now I have.

Dina Holzapfel00:27:22

You're gonna have to experience it for yourself and come to Zurich. I will.

Megan McCrory00:27:25

And oftentimes I just talk to people and I'm like, oh, this topic comes up. I'm like, oh, we have an episode about that. So I'm really happy that now we can say, oh, we have an episode about red light therapy.Because we're always trying to find something new and interesting that we haven't discussed. And so thank you very much for spending time with us today.

Dina Holzapfel00:27:44

Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:27:45

Thanks.

Dina Holzapfel00:27:45

Love.