hey what's up guys so light therapy has been getting a ton of attention lately and even
though um sunlight therapy has been around for centuries to treat things like mood disorders and
vitamin d deficiencies there has been an explosion of popularity surrounding light therapy especially
when it comes to red light therapy however it has gained even more attention over the past
few months because of scientists like andrew huberman and talk show hosts such as tucker
carlson that have been talking about it in detail and the juve that we were using in the documentary
there's a massive amount of testicle tanning testicle tanning testicle tanning however there
appears to be several possible applications of light therapy however the main one that i am
most interested in is its possible application to improving testosterone levels so essentially
what i want to do in this video is talk about the three primary categories of light therapy
and walk through some of the research that has been performed on those categories of
light therapy and then talk about their possible applications to improving testosterone levels so
let's dive right in now before we dive into the specific research on these categories of light i
do think it is important for us to define what these types of light forms are and essentially
what we have is light forms that are divided and specified in accordance with their wavelength now
at the short end of the spectrum you have uv light which many of us are familiar with and
this specific form of light is categorized by its wavelength of 200 to 400 nanometers now within
this category you have three primary categories of uv light which are uva b and c now c mostly gets
filtered out by the earth's atmosphere so we're not going to spend a ton of time talking about
that today however when it comes to uvb light this is light that is within the spectrum of 200 to 320
nanometers and this is the light that causes the production of vitamin d when it comes into contact
with the skin whereas uva which is between 300 to 400 nanometers is the form of light that causes
the skin to tan when it comes into contact with it and this is primarily the form of light that
most tanning beds emit now beyond this you also have the visible light spectrum which is between
400 to 700 nanometers in wavelength and this includes things like purple blue green yellow
and orange as well as red and now beyond this you also have near infrared which is light that
is just beyond uh the red wavelength which is usually between 700 to a thousand nanometers
now it is worth noting here that all of these forms of light can be obtained through the sun
which is presumably why the body actually responds to it so biologically you know humans have adapted
to life on earth and obviously the sun is a major part of that and so it's no surprise
that the human body um actually does respond to these forms of light with a biological response
now when it comes to the research on these various forms of light it's going to help
us to kind of rewind all the way back to some of the first studies that were ever published
on light therapy and those date all the way back to 1939 where dr meyerson in this study
with his team set out to assess the effects of uv light on testosterone levels now in this study dr
meyerson and his team did find that exposing the participants of this study to that combination
of uv and infrared light over the course of about five days led to roughly an 120 percent
increase in testosterone levels which is pretty astounding now for those of you that
aren't statisticians this is roughly a doubling in testosterone levels which is pretty astounding
and what's more is that dr meyerson and his team found that when they specifically
exposed the participants of this study exposed their nether regions to this same lamp that
there was actually a 200 increase in testosterone levels which again is roughly a 3x in testosterone
levels however i do think it's important to note here that uh even though dr meyerson and his team
did attribute a lot of the effects of this study to specifically uv light when you look at the
experimental design you will notice that his team did use a combination lamp of uv light and
infrared light and it's also important to note here that they did not differentiate between the
use of uva and uvb now this isn't necessarily a limitation in the study however it is important
to keep in mind because we really just don't know if the results of this study are because
of the uv light or the infrared light now dr meyerson and his team did give some possible
mechanisms of action in the discussion portion of the paper that was written on this study however
it isn't exactly clear as to why this was actually happening in this specific study however one
of the obvious possible mechanisms of action here is the connection between uvb light and
vitamin d levels there is an extremely strong connection between uvb exposure and vitamin d
levels as well as an extremely strong correlation between vitamin d levels and testosterone and not
only is there an extremely strong correlation between uvb and vitamin d levels but there's
also an extremely strong connection between uvb and testosterone levels independent of vitamin d
and so this definitely appears to be one of the possible mechanisms of action that is going on
here however it doesn't appear to be the only mechanism of action now there have also been
a handful of studies that have been published on the connection between uv light and infrared light
and its connection to fertility and in this study that summarized all the findings from
all of those studies the researchers concluded that analysis of the scientific literature
suggests that laser therapy should be used as much as possible and the complex treatment of men with
infertility since the effectiveness of the method is not just high but often has no alternatives for
laser illumination it is best to use exclusively pulsed red light and infrared light for local
illumination alternating with a continuous wavelength of 635 nanometers and 365 nanometers
and so what's interesting about this review paper is that they concluded that not only does uvb
light have an effect on fertility and testicular function but also uva red light and infrared light
and the reason this is so interesting is that none of these wavelengths have anything to do with
vitamin d production so it definitely appears like something else is going on here now when it comes
to red light specifically i think this is one of the more interesting wavelengths simply because
the red light spectrum doesn't even penetrate the tissue like uv and infrared does which suggests
that there may actually be photoreceptors on the nether regions that are sensitive to this specific
spectrum of light that cause a cascade of events that ultimately improves testosterone production
and infertility this specific study here actually found some pretty significant effects
on testosterone levels when the nether regions of the rodents were actually exposed directly to
red light now the exact mechanism of action here i don't think is extremely clear however some
researchers are proposing that there may be some link between red light exposure and atp production
in the cells that are directly exposed to that red light however i don't think this is extremely
settled in science yet now the last form of light that we're going to talk about that appears to
have some type of direct effect on testosterone levels is just simply bright light in this study
in particular the researchers actually saw a 71 increase in testosterone levels of the
participants that were just simply exposed to a bright light box and one of the reasons i think
this is so interesting is that it was just simply a box that admitted really bright light now it's
not exactly clear as to why bright light would directly cause an increase in testosterone levels
however the the the researchers in this study were hypothesizing that it could be because of the
interaction with bright light and the pineal gland so bright light does shut down the pineal gland
which is the gland in the brain that produces melatonin and kind of induces sleep and so they
were hypothesizing that by kind of inhibiting the production of melatonin and kind of signaling to
your body that it's time to get up and do stuff and because testosterone is in large a hormone
that essentially tells your body to do difficult things that there might be some interaction here
with bright light and testosterone levels because of this specific mechanism now all in
all it does appear that pretty much all of the light spectrums that are emitted from the sun
have some um varying degree of effect on fertility and testicular function as well as testosterone
levels and so i think one of the major and first takeaways here is just to get more sunlight now
some experts recommend roughly between 15 to 45 minutes of direct sunlight exposure per day
and this largely depends on your skin tone and your ability to kind of respond biologically
to that sunlight however when it comes to directly exposing the the nether regions
to direct sunlight i would be a whole lot more careful here there is some research to suggest
uh that there may actually be some damage from over exposure of some of these light spectrums to
the the nether regions and so if you're going to be doing what's been termed testicle tanning i
would be extremely extremely safe about it however it does appear that direct light exposure to
your your under parts may actually have some positive effects on fertility testicular function
and testosterone levels through various mechanisms now when it comes to the winter months when
it is a little bit more difficult to get direct sunlight exposure i do think using some artificial
lights might be of benefit and so the first one that you kind of want to focus on getting
is a satellite which is like a seasonal affective disorder light which is essentially just a big old
bright light that exposes your retina to a lot of light and is supposed to kind of signify to
your brain that the sun is up and help kind of shut down the pineal gland from working
and producing melatonin and kind of jump start the production of testosterone but beyond that i would
also look into getting a red light and red light specifically seems to be one of the safer options
when it comes to the undergarment tanning so to speak because of its safety profile now when it
comes to uv exposure and infrared exposure because these types of light do penetrate into the tissue
i do think you have to be a lot more careful with these forms of light however a bright light and
red light seem to be extremely safe options for for eye exposure as well as under region exposure
now again infrared and uv exposure may be some good options according to some of the research
however if i were you i would do some further research to ensure that you're getting some safe
lights that aren't actually going to cause any damage at the end of the day now if you have
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this specifically feel free to leave a comment down below and i will see you guys next time