Q&A: "Does Red Light Therapy For Fertility Work?"
You've seen the red light therapy fertility success stories online — but does it work? Let's break down whether to try it or skip it.
There isn't great evidence for red light therapy and there are open questions about the safety of long-term exposure.
Plus, when we looked into the red light research on fertility and the online buzz, we discovered it's largely being pushed by the industry profiting from its use. We'd skip this one!
Red light therapy, also known as low-level laser therapy (LLLT) or Photobiomodulation (PBM), has made lots of waves for its potential fertility benefits. The reason, in theory, is that red light can help with "intracellular metabolism" and "reduce free radicals." What this means is that proponents think it can essentially reduce oxidative stress which we know can harm fertility potential.
But when we look at the science, unfortunately, there isn't great evidence for red light therapy and there are open questions about the safety of long-term exposure. There are extremely few studies on female fertility, probably because it's harder to expose eggs directly to red light (as is sometimes done with sperm) and there isn't great reason to believe sitting next to a red light might impact eggs inside the body.
The one 2012 study that's cited by many blogs and influencers who are advocating for red light therapy should not be considered high-quality research. It has poor methods, simply stating their clinic's pregnancy rates without comparing these outcomes to a control group of patients not in the study. We therefore cannot conclude that fertility outcomes are better than if they hadn’t used red light. And yet, the study goes on to make this overstated claim: "[the] excellent results being achieved by the Japanese author and others using his technique at different institutions further confirms the validity of this pain-free, easily applied and side-effect free approach." In other words (as stated in the conflict of interest portion of this paper), the author runs a medical laser laboratory and the paper shows (unsurprisingly) that the services he is paid for work — which is a pretty strong conflict of interest. Unfortunately, conflict of interests run rampant in the existing research. This study also advocating for the use of red light therapy for men is authored by people affiliated with a company that makes light-based treatments. This is a good reminder that not everything on PubMed is high-quality evidence.
The conflict of interest story continues when we look at site pushing this kind of therapy. For example, this fertility blog overviews the "science" (with no links) and then links you to her favorite red light products, but if you look closely, all are affiliate links which means she is receiving a commission if you purchase.
All in all, there are much better, clinically established ways to tackle oxidative stress and improve fertility (which we'll help you do!), and we'd recommend sticking to those until better research points to its efficacy and safety.