Health Optimization: Could You Be Doing More for Your Health?

With everything life throws at us these days, it’s hard to prioritize what should be the most important thing. Many people end up neglecting to take care of their mental and physical well-being. With work and obligations, it seems like there are just not enough hours in a day to ensure a healthy lifestyle. 

That is probably one of the reasons why eminent neuroscientists, such as Dr. Andrew Huberman increasingly focus on health optimization. This is what he published on his account earlier:

I am convinced that the 8 pillars of Mental & Physical Health are:
1) Sleep
2) (Sun)light
3) Exercise
4) Stress Management
5) Relationships (Incl. To Self)
6) Nutrients (Amt., Timing, Content)
7) Oral Health & Gut Microbiome
8) Spiritual Grounding
Additions? Subtractions?

— Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab) February 1, 2024

These techniques will be particularly potent in combination with red and near-infrared LED light therapy. This method uses light-emitting diodes to emit red and near-infrared light with wavelengths of 630 to 2,500 nanometers.

Meditation

Meditation is one of the oldest techniques to relieve stress and clear your mind. It dates as far back as 5,000 years BC. Some techniques involve focusing on breathing, some on repeating a mantra, and some on practicing mindfulness. The last one – mindfulness – refers to being fully present in the moment without reacting to or judging anything. 

Studies have shown that mindfulness meditation practices can positively impact your focus, and cognitive and executive functions. Meditation is the perfect time to use near-infrared light therapy (NIR). NIR can boost your energy by improving the production of adenosine triphosphate, the primary energy source for major biological functions. 

Breathing Exercises

Breathing exercises are often closely tied to meditation. When done regularly, they can make amazing improvements to your wellness:

• increase your oxygen levels
• help support correct posture
• lower or stabilize blood pressure
• promote relaxation
• and help reduce stress. 

This is also where near-infrared light therapy treatments come in handy because they can raise beta-endorphin levels in plasma. Those are hormones involved in stress relief and pain management. This property makes them a terrific supplemental treatment for mood disorders such as depression. In this way, a combination of breathing exercises and near-infrared light therapy can become even more effective in reducing symptoms of stress and anxiety. 

Exercise Preconditioning

Exercise preconditioning refers to the effects of regular exercise on your cardiovascular system. A study has determined that one to three weekly exercise sessions can induce cardiac preconditioning. This can protect against ischemic events and reduce the severity of ischemic myocardial injury. 

Red LED light therapy can also boost the effects of physical exercise since it can optimize human muscle performance. It has been proven that a combination of light therapy (specifically near-infrared light with a wavelength of 808 nanometers) and strength training can increase muscle performance compared to strength training alone.

Workout Recovery

When you start lacking oxygen while performing strenuous exercise, your body increases the production of lactate. It is also known as lactic acid – a substance that carries oxygen from your lungs to other parts of your body. This is your body’s warning to slow down before you hurt yourself.

Near-infrared light wavelengths of 830 nanometers can reduce lactate levels in your body. Consequently, it can speed up your recovery and muscle fatigue. This effect has been proven in a study of 27 healthy male soccer players. 

Supplements

The use of dietary supplements has reached an all-time high in 2019. That is when a CRN Consumer Survey found they are consumed by a whopping 77% of Americans. The use of dietary supplements is particularly prevalent among adults between the ages of 35 and 54 (81%). 

However, without a highly functioning gut microbiome, your body cannot make the most of the supplements you are using. This is again where LED light therapy can help. It can alter the gut microbiome in a potentially beneficial way for a number of different inflammatory and neurological diseases.

Better Sleep

The importance of regular quality sleep for your overall well-being cannot be overestimated. Insomnia can cause issues with a number of cognitive functions, such as memory, problem-solving, creativity, emotional processing, and judgment.

Thanks to the huge quantities of blue light emitted from our screens after dusk, we’re facing a disruption to our regular sleep patterns, leading to various sleeping and mood disorders. Fortunately, red and near-infrared light can maintain optimal hormone levels, including triggering the production of melatonin, the hormone that regulates natural sleep and wake patterns, also known as the circadian rhythm.

Good Hydration

Along with sleep, hydration is critical to the body’s ability to function at its highest levels. Proper hydration energizes cells, keeps organs working properly, lubricates joints, regulates body temperature, prevents infections, helps remove waste, improves mood and cognition, and so on. 

Hydration is also necessary to produce previously mentioned adenosine triphosphate (ATP), an organic compound that provides energy to support many processes in living cells. Near-infrared wavelengths of 830 nanometers have been found to help this process and make it more effective by increasing the production of ATP. 

Healthy Diet

Yes, this may sound obvious, but nowadays, with highly processed foods filled with salt, sugars, saturated fat, and chemicals, it’s never been more important to watch your eating habits. A healthy diet gives you the energy to sustain you throughout the day, provides you with the nutrients necessary to keep you strong and healthy, and shield you from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Near-infrared light can also improve nutrient absorption by increasing muscle glycogen synthesis, which helps link together glucose molecules to form glycogen, a major source of stored energy in the body. In this way, near-infrared light treatments can control blood glucose levels independently of physical exercise. 

These are only some of the things you could be doing to optimize your health, but combining these techniques with red and near-infrared LED light therapy will maximize your efforts in ways that these techniques alone cannot, as proven by numerous peer-reviewed studies.  

Near-infrared light penetrates beyond the skin’s surface to reach your body’s cells, muscles, joints, and bones. It is not only useful in improving the symptoms of various ailments, it is safe for short- or long-term use, has no adverse side effects, and can’t cause skin cancer, burns, or other thermal injuries. 

What’s more, with portable near-infrared LED light therapy devices such as the FlexBeam, you can improve the effects of workouts, meditation, and breathing exercises while saving time and making the most of your day.