Infrared Light: How much is too much?

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed, I decided to try it.

I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote,

My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm.

I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a little soreness first thing in the morning in my right achilles, it's healed. The pain in my chest that made it hard to reach with my left arm is completely gone; the pain in my lower left back comes and goes.

A coworker tried my device and had so much relief he bought one himself.

Dreaming of a cubicle. AI generated. Source: Pixabay.

If a little infrared light is good, more must be better, right? I increased the time and intensity and put the pad on my stomach...and started getting stomach aches. I moved my desk by the windows (old ones with no infrared light blockage). Lately the sun has gotten lower in the sky but the weather has stayed hot, and I found myself tired on days I worked from home. A few days ago when it was 90 degrees and sunny, I asked Grok if too much sun could make you tired. Yes, it said, the heat, glare, dehydration and circadian disruption could lead to fatigue. The excessive exposure could even send your vitamin D level too high, though it said that's rare. (My last reading was 79, higher than it's ever been.) I moved my desk away from the window last night and spent a much more pleasant day working from home, even though today was hot and sunny, too.

Despite all the sunlight I took in, it didn't have the same effect as the infrared device. Even though my desk was by the window for months, and I sat there four days a week, I still needed to use the light therapy pad on my ankle and back (which weren't exposed to direct sunlight). I know studies suggest it doesn't matter where you're exposed to infrared light, but that hasn't been my experience.

My sensitivity to light exposure might be genetic. My ancestors were all from northern Europe--same latitudes as from Calgary northward. But here in Indianapolis, I'm at the same latitude as southern Spain, Turkey, or the arch in the boot of Italy. Mankind may have been from Africa, but there must have been adaptations for people who lived for millennia in cooler, cloudier places.

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Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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