DERMATOLOGIST REVIEWS LED MASKS

what's up everyone dr maxfield dr shaw and welcome back to our channel dr lee and today we got a great topic we got a lot of requests for this so what are we talking about are led masks worth the hype so i just got to say this because i am highly skeptical of almost everything that comes out in skincare but also particularly devices particularly devices i find that most devices over promise and under deliver if you go back and watch my microcurrent device video i kind of eviscerated the technology on it it wasn't to say that these don't work and that people haven't had positive experiences with them but there just was no research on these devices i mean there are so many devices that they're marketing heavily you'll see ads for them all the time you'll see influencers talking about them but there really was no science behind him when i did the literature review on those particular topics but for us like when we're putting together videos i think that people come to our channel not to say this felt really cool on the skin for us but to look at the science behind it and see if it's actually worth it and has proven studies behind it so that's the kind of value we try to bring to you guys however right and that's why it took us so long to get this out to you i mean there was study after study after study just on different diseases conditions that this has been used in at the actual devices themselves the light wavelengths themselves so for me it gave me an opportunity to geek out nerd out and i just i love that side of it in complete opposition to what i found with microcurrent this is a completely different topic we're dealing with something that actually has a lot of research and now we have to decide if there's a lot of research is it good research and is it actually going to do what these devices say they're going to do so we're going to find out here we go here we go so the idea of using light to treat different skin conditions is definitely not a novel concept we've been using light and dermatology to treat things like psoriasis skin cancer vitiligo and a plethora of skin conditions for a very long time now these new led devices have been shown to be beneficial in things like rosacea psoriasis atopic dermatitis wound healing acne anti-aging but and even hair loss honestly so this will definitely be in our hair loss video so we'll talk about it then but in this video we're going to focus on anti-aging and the anti-acne benefits of these devices so let's set the stage here a little bit because you know when you hear light you're thinking okay well light can cause skin cancer and aging so we have to kind of differentiate that there's a spectrum of light here so when you start with uv radiation that has a lower or shorter wavelength and that's going to be uvb which is going to be 290 to 320 and uvb radiation is going to be the one with the most significant damage to your dna and the one that's going to lead to skin cancer the most and then from 320 to 400 that's your uva radiation that one causes a significant amount of aging it has a longer wavelength than the uvb radiation and it gets deeper into the skin to sort of damage those collagen bundles and then beyond that we step into something called visible light spectrum and so we talk about this sometimes when we're talking about sunblock but this visible light is where you get the colors so visible light encompasses all the colors it goes anywhere from blue to red and that's kind of the two ends and then infrared thereafter and we'll focus it on those two ends blue and red because that's we're gonna get a lot of the benefits from the led masks and it's actually quite interesting because depending on what the wavelength is the benefits on the skin are much different and that's because they penetrate deeper they target what we call different chromophores chromophore is basically something that absorbs light at a certain wavelength and so it's actually very specific based on light so it's really kind of a fascinating concept that really depending on the color of the light the effects on the skin and skin conditions is completely different this is one of the things we just keep coming back to and it's being deliberate thoughtful and knowing what you're treating and why you're treating it so this is again you can't just pick a color and hope it's going to treat everything on your skin everything has a function and a purpose and a role and we're going to help guide you to know which color is going to help what condition all right so let's talk about blue light so blue light is on the shorter wavelength of visible light spectrum because it's shorter it does not penetrate as deep into the skin and so it's most useful for the conditions that will sit towards the top right so if we think about being deliberate again the conditions that sit on the top of the skin are going to be things like your acne conditions your pigmentary conditions because those are all very high up in the epidermis and then things that are a little bit deeper down in the at the dermis layer of the skin where all your collagen and hyaluronic acid is it's not going to have as much of an effect on those areas just because it doesn't penetrate sd and then we have red light on the other end of the spectrum this one has the longer wavelength and so it penetrates deeper this can affect things like collagen fibroblasts and really help with some of the anti-aging benefits that a lot of people are looking for with these devices interestingly the oil glands that we're targeting in acne seem to sit both ways they both have these lights have a different effect on the oil glands in different ways despite being in different lengths so now we're going to move on from the light spectrum and we're going to talk about the individual conditions that it can treat so the first one is acne right so acne it's going to sit up higher in those pillow sebaceous units or your pores essentially and that's where the acne bacteria lives now blue light actually causes a chemical reaction with something that's produced called porphyrins now when light hits these porphyrins in the skin it causes a chemical reaction that can actually kill the sea acne's bacteria so if we look back at our video that we did on acne acne is caused by a couple of things so there's bacteria there's inflammation and there's oil production and they all contribute to the formation of acne now interestingly this blue light can have multiple effects on the causes of acne so blue light directly kills the bacteria that he was talking about it also decreases the oil gland proliferation so it stops them from maturing and growing and then it also can decrease inflammation elsewhere except for the inflammation it's causing in the bacteria so it's going to have a trifecta on this and then if you look at red light red light is actually going to decrease oil production so for all of you that are looking for things that can decrease oil production red light has actually been found to decrease oil production so it's taken out multiple forms of what causes acne but the key here is that most of the studies found that it's best for the inflammatory form of acne in fact it's like only effective for the inflammatory form of acne i can't overstate that because it's not going to help the open and closed chromodomes that aren't in flames right for so if you have little bumps on the skin that aren't inflamed they're not red they don't have pus forming this is definitely not the best treatment for that for those i prefer your retinoids your salicylic acid because i always have to mention those but for those inflammatory lesions this is actually shown in i guess in 12-week study almost 80 percent decrease in lesion count so i really believe for the treatment of acne this is a good adjunct treatment absolutely complements everything that you're already doing for your foundational treatments so it's not a substitute for for all the other treatments but it's actually something you can use in addition and it's actually not going to interfere with your other treatments in fact using your other treatments may make this more effective so using retinoids which end up thinning out that very top layer of the skin called the stratum corneum may help this light penetrate a little bit better and be a little bit more effective for treating your acne this is crap this is total crap he doesn't know this but i so i had a hack hat coming your way totally original so one of the studies did this thing they did microdermabrasion before doing light therapy and i was like oh brilliant you know we just did an exfoliant video so here's my hag still original so you exfoliate and then you can actually after exfoliating introduce this light therapy that'd be a perfect time to enhance that light penetration and increase its effectiveness that's definitely a good hack so the key here is actually what's interesting about it is that if you understand sort of the mechanism of how these things work and what you're trying to target you can almost come up with your own hacks that exactly even without scientific evidence you probably know that they're going to work based on what the mechanism is yeah and that's why we love just giving you data and information because you know we want you to be empowered to make these critical decisions on your own and like think about these things deliberately and have fun with it so that was the first i guess dr maxfield original hack i know i said before in the past he's never had any original ideas activated every now and then he has an original thought so you know maybe i was wrong so since both colors work it's kind of a question of which one to use and then some studies and a lot of studies have shown that if you use both it's going to be more effective than using one alone so they do complement each other when using it for acne so these devices definitely have benefits in the treatment of acne so let's talk about anti-aging and i got to say this i am extremely skeptical of anything anti-aging because i feel like a lot of people spend a lot of money for anti-aging benefits and have very minimal results so anything touted as anti-aging be a skeptic about those things so what do we think about the anti-aging effects of these devices when i think about aging i think primarily of wrinkles and this pigmentation so wrinkles is where these devices are gonna have most of their benefits so that red light penetrates deeper into the skin it's gonna stimulate fiberglass to produce collagen collagen is gonna give your dermis volume and it's gonna help get rid of wrinkles now there's a lot of different ways that different products and devices and procedures can stimulate collagen some do it by causing little micro trauma to the skin that ends up stimulating wound healing factors so that's how a lot of these radio frequency devices work this is how a lot of these ultrasound devices work this is how micro needling works it's actually kind of interesting because red light doesn't do that it does something called photobiomodulation where it actually just stimulates your fibroblasts to produce collagen and this is the ideal technique if you can leave that top layer of the skin alone and just directly activate that deep layer of the skin to build that volume that's a really nice concept and there's definitely some evidence that this can do that so no thermal injury it's not producing heat it's actually just stimulating these things to produce collagen which is amazing it's it's pretty exceptional actually and the studies that have been done on red light actually having this effect have actually been really good studies so not only have they done studies in what we call in vitro studies where they're looking at just things in a lab they've actually done in vivo studies where you're actually looking at humans and seeing if these actually work on the skin so it's really great studies that have been done on these so it's not just you know theoretical at this point they've actually shown results in human subjects that red light does have a benefit on anti-aging in my favorite study this is one where they had a group of people and they actually did a split face so you treated this side of the face you did not treat this side of the face you get to see the results see how well it worked and then the other part is they actually biopsied it so volunteers in the study let them take samples of their skin look at another microscope and then we get to enjoy the benefits of this knowledge so it showed that it increased collagen the collagen bundles were thicker more compact and well organized and it also increased elastic fibers and this is exactly correlating to what you see on the skin when we're treating wrinkles just replacing that volume not only showed biopsy proven results that showed increased collagen that was tightly packed well organized increased elastic fiber but also they showed clinical results that show that the actual wrinkles did decrease in these patients this is the study that i wanted them to do for microcurrent which is why i was so critical of those devices because these studies have been done for led devices they can be done they're not that expensive especially for companies that are promising things with 400 devices now bear in mind the devices in microcurrent and these devices are about the same price and so if led has the studies behind them then we should challenge all companies to produce similar results if you're going to spend your hard earned money on them and then the other side of aging is this dispigmentation and that's where we begin to question like is this the device for you so this is where we get a little bit into cautions so cautions are always one of the most important things to me when i talk about anything that we put on the skin or any device that we use so there's mounting evidence that particularly blue light so blue light can stimulate your melanocytes which are those pigment producing cells of the skin to actually produce more pigment and so we're finding more and more that blue light from the sun and from maybe from our devices so that's sort of up in the air we're not 100 sure about that but we do know that blue light at least in studies is increasing melanin production so if you have a pigmentary disorder like hyperpigmentation or dark spots or melasma or you're somebody who has a darker skin type that is more prone to dark spots then you definitely want to be cautious when using blue light so they've actually done very particular studies on these different wavelengths of light and they did find that blue light does stimulate pigment production particularly in people with darker skin tones it forms a particular complex that seems to be more common in people with darker skin tones that can lead to hyperpigmentation whereas red light in multiple studies has not shown to have that effect and so when i am counseling people on whether or not they should be using these led devices particularly blue light i would say talk to your dermatologist if you're getting blue light treatment at the office but i would definitely exercise extreme caution when using blue light devices at home if you are prone to hyperpigmentation and this may change as more studies come out but because of this because of people that are already prone to this and because of how difficult it is to treat hyperpigmentation if you have hyperpigmentation caution with blue light red light seems to be safe and then let's extrapolate on that just a little bit more just light devices in general if you're someone with a photosensitive condition like polymorph slide eruption like porphyrias especially we know that those are aggravated by the visible light spectrum so people with those conditions you should just stay away from these devices altogether right so that would be probably one of the only contraindications these devices have actually shown a lot of safety data so overall they are particularly safe devices unless you have a photosensitive disorder like one of the ones he listed so now a fun part we've been trying different products out for a period of time actually it's been a while since we started this little journey we have a couple that we want to discuss and share with you all right on to the fun stuff all right so we're going to be talking about the dr dennis gross spectralite faceware pro mask led long name here so first of all not not sponsored by dr dennis gross here so this is just a really cool device um they were sent they were gifted to us a lot of stuff is gifted to us the microcard devices were gifted to me i still was not i was not kind to them so at the end of the day uh you know we'll always give you guys unbiased reviews regardless of how we acquire the devices so my favorite part of the box is actually the back of the box the first thing i noticed when i saw this oh man a study i love it when i see a study on something and i know you can put together a really small study or a crap study and just throw it on a box but it gets me excited because it lets me know that the company is at least invested in proving that their product works so some of the claims on this device are that it smooths full face fine lines and wrinkles it firms the skin it reduces the appearance of sun spots age spots and discoloration and even skin tone and texture it clears mild to moderate acne prevents acne flares up calms redness and reduces inflammation and increases skin density so first of all it comes out of the box like this the straps are a little bit kind of difficult these straps are like very off for the quality of the actual device itself like the straps really just don't play well with the rest of it right so the straps were a little bit once you get them figured out they're fine but it was a little bit clunky at first for me to figure out really cool looking device um i actually they have a black one all black limited edition right now that's pretty cool so it looks great looks awesome please send us that one i'm just kidding so one click and it gets you to the red setting the second click gets you to the blue setting and then the third click gets you to that sort of mix blue and red light setting they have very specific changes so you can either do both at the same time you can do one or the other yeah red blue or red and blue but because we went over what the different benefits are with acne you could probably use both and see a benefit if you're looking particularly for anti-aging i would go with just the red light setting and if you have hyperpigmentation darker skin tones that are prone to hyperpigmentation i would go with just the red light setting so then we kind of get into the practicality of using these things so this one touts like a three-minute treatment for acne and that's obviously a very small commitment for your time using the masks just in a daily basis seems kind of cumbersome but this one and i'll put this on for you guys because i want you to see that you actually do have a little bit of a visual feel like you can interact with life you can look at your phone you can talk to people if you're comfortable talking to people with this on your face but you can actually live life and do things while you're using this this is kind of a nice design because then you can compare it to some other devices that have you know similar functionality they have the same light spectrum and you know there's a reason they have these glasses in here and we'll talk about that too but we just have like very little attention span and i can't it's actually kind of difficult to sit here for five minutes ten minutes or however long you're going to use this and just quietly reflect on your life decisions right so this is actually i think a pretty well designed mask it looks pretty cool it definitely has that sort of instagram worthy appeal to it um i was like outside walking the other day and i had the mask on so you know it's not something that really gets in your way you know sometimes i like to create a scene you know at the end of the day but uh but yeah so it's pretty good you can do a lot while it's on like i'm talking to you i can still see the camera and um it didn't it wasn't cumbersome to me so a lot of you guys know i talk a lot about this on clubhouse is how i really will not do things that i feel like are really inconvenient for me so my skincare routine always takes less than five minutes i find that if some of these devices they have led devices that you have to pass over your entire skin and it takes a while and you're not going to get that three minutes of fully focused led those kind of things are just something i personally would not use led masks on the other hand ones that you can actually see and do other things or you can just lay down and kind of meditate or whatever you want to do this actually was not very cumbersome for me and it's coming from somebody straps and this is coming from somebody who has a very simple skincare routine so for me i didn't find this to be too cumbersome and i actually think if you're committed to using it you will see benefits with it so now i have to reset the straps again yeah it didn't break it's just it's just very easy to like pull it out and stretch it out and you're like you're doing it wrong no i guarantee we've got this locked in right through the strap here they would have used like a velcro or something like that i feel like we would have been better off yeah cloth anything probably but i'm just saying that's okay yeah a little bit a little bit cumbersome with that but so so the key thing we liked actually so obviously the eye feature here where you can see out interact with life and like i said there's a reason they have this here these are like really obtrusive very very cumbersome and but why do we have the eye protection why did they have that here and does that mask provide enough so i think you do actually end up getting a little bit of this light in your eyes sort of regardless of how you position this but with both of these now i do think these glasses do protect a little bit more than this does um there still seems to be some reflection now it's up in the air whether or not these uh red lighter is going to cause issues the visible light is going to cause issues with the eyes if you if it was me i would probably just close my eyes during the treatment i think that's probably going to be the safest way to do it um because it is up in the air um but i think at the end of the day both of them have some visibility on the eyes so this one holds a charge for about 20 minutes or 30 minutes or something like that so you could probably get three four uses five uses out of this before you have to charge it whereas this one actually needs to be plugged in to use it so you actually need to be close to an outlet to pull it off so a little bit more cumbersome to use but this one is a hundred dollars and this one is more than four hundred dollars so there's definitely a huge price difference right so you're kind of paying for convenience um and i guess you could say you're paying for the look too i don't know how necessary that is since you're going to be doing this for a few minutes at your house but um you know both will probably give you some functionality both will give you or the anticipated results but there is a pretty significant difference in the way that they feel and are used in my opinion and we'll put some links below to other devices that we're not reviewing here that are good and i think would have similar benefits so the question is are these led devices worth it okay so i did a quick poll on my instagram so i do this every now and then where i pull the audience and the poll was do you think led devices are backed by science now the polls not over yet however 64 of you said no and then 36 percent of you said yes that's like 13 000 votes or something like that people saying that they don't think these are backed by science which is interesting because they do have some scientific evidence for them so the key here is that they do have scientific evidence but you do have to set realistic expectations of what you expect to see first in the studies they were used for at least 12 weeks consistently so you have to use them consistently to see results your expectations should be a mild improvement in your wrinkles fine lines and for your acne i would say for mild to moderate acne you should see some improvement in acne when used with other acne treatments and i love what he said about the time frame with this yeah 12 weeks is actually an appropriate trial period for pretty much any treatment we talked about that in our last video too so 12-week trial test this out make sure it works now for our overall impressions of this for me i actually love it i think it's functional i think the data is there i think it complements what i'm already doing well so this is actually something i'm probably gonna consistently and who knows maybe permanently incorporate into my skincare routine yeah i completely agree with that so final opinion low risk high efficacy treatment the only downside is maybe a little bit of the cost related to this but i do actually think these are worth it so i'm very anti-device and i would say that if i was gonna buy pretty much any device and incorporate it into my skincare routine i think that the led devices have the most evidence for them right now yeah for at home devices yeah i think that pretty much of all the at-home devices is probably the most effective one so definitely worth it in my opinion um so we didn't hate it so when we talk about this compared to the in-office devices you know in-office devices definitely have a lot more studies behind them they have a lot more efficacy behind them as well and there's a huge spectrum ranging from photodynamic therapy to actually laser therapy where you use very very select targeted high-powered light to treat similar conditions so always keep that in mind you know talk to your dermatologist about what is the best thing for you and if there's more that you could be doing right so a lot of these studies that we're talking about have been done on the ones that are available at your dermatologist or your aesthetician's office those light therapies so they do have a little bit more power or fluence but these at-home devices will have benefit even if they are a little bit less power so they probably have a little bit less benefit but they're also a little bit lower risk as well and a little bit safer to use at home all right so doctorly approved thank you guys so much for tuning in please like comment subscribe let us know what you guys want us to review next and thank you guys so much yeah thank you so much for the feedback this is something you all requested and we had a lot of fun and put a lot of work into reviewing this and digging in um thanks for your patience waiting for it i mean we actually do have work and real jobs we do throughout the entire week as well and this is something we really are invested in and put a lot of time into behind the scenes all right stay tuned [Music] [Music] and we're trying to utilize the shorts function and we're trying to figure out what the best way to do that is so whether it's reposting stuff from tiktok instagram you know i'm very active on or potentially actually answering questions throughout the week so we're going to trial something where we're going to answer questions in short video format throughout the week and we're going to put those into shorts for you and let us know if you guys like that format at all and if you do we'll continue doing it yeah there's actually a lot of questions out there you know just can't dedicate a whole video to some of the things you all bring up so i love the idea that shorts could be a way to interact with y'all and kind of communicate and answer some questions throughout the week as you wait for the longer videos too psoriasis psoriasis dang your fingers where was i

Channel: Doctorly

Views: 300,435

Rating: 4.9557691 out of 5

Keywords: dermatologist, skincare, skin care, retinol, led masks, red light, blue light, acne, anti-aging, anti aging, wrinkles, dr. dennis gross, dennis gross, faceware pro, spectralite, currentbody

Id: VJeiG8r6CyM

Length: 23min 40sec (1420 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 21 2021