Reverse Skin Aging with This 5 Step Protocol

Red light therapy has human evidence that it helps with skin anti-aging. In a 2023 clinical trial, 137 healthy volunteers saw a 30% reduction in wrinkle volume after just four weeks. What's interesting is that they did a split face experiment, which means that only one side of the face was receiving the red and amber light treatment. Exposure to red and infrared light stimulates the production of collagen and elastin. That's because red and infrared light are able to penetrate much deeper into the skin than blue or green light. However, there are some unique ways to enhance the effectiveness of red light therapy on your skin health. In this video, I'm going to cover four of them and I'll outline an exact protocol that you can follow at home. The first thing that's going to enhance the effectiveness of red light therapy on your skin is copper peptide GHK. GHK supercharges collagen production when paired with red LED light. In human skin cells, copper GHK plus red LED lights increased collagen synthesis by about 70%, pro-collagen by 30% and stimulated growth factors by 230%. Copper peptide GHK has been seen to have skin anti-aging benefits alone as well. In a 1998 study, copper peptide GHK improved collagen synthesis in the most amount of women compared to vitamin C and retinoic acid. 70% of women using GHK versus 50% for vitamin C and 40% for retinoic acid. In a 2016 study, copper peptide GHK as a topical serum reduced wrinkle volume by 55.8% and wrinkle depth by 32.8%, more than the placebo control serum. That's quite an impressive result. So copper peptide GHK has benefits for the skin and it also appears to enhance the effectiveness of red light therapy on your skin health, specifically the aging of the skin. You can apply copper peptide GHK topically on your face and then do red light therapy for the best effects. The second component that enhances skin rejuvenation with red light is green tea. In this 2009 study, they placed green tea filled cotton pads on their face once a day for 20 minutes and then treated the skin with red light LEDs. After one month of the protocol, they saw a 30% decrease in wrinkle volume and 38% decrease in crow's feet wrinkle depth. So you apply topical green tea cotton pads on your face or the areas you want to improve like your forehead or the eyes for 10 to 20 minutes and then you do red light photobiomodulation for 10 minutes at 630 to 660 nanometers with 10 to 12 joules per square centimeter. Next, we have a powerful piece of the puzzle and that's microneedling. Microneedling has been seen to increase collagen and elastin in the skin by 400% after six months as shown by this 2022 review. In a 2018 study, they took 40 people between the ages of 33 and 60 with aged skin from either smoking or general aging. They gave them a dermapen treatment for six sessions. The results showed a statistical improvement in skin wrinkles, fine lines, and crow's feet. Both men and women as well as both smokers and non-smokers saw benefits. You can use microneedling for wound healing, acne scars, general scars, fine lines, crow's feet, and to make your skin generally thicker and stronger. But what about using it with red light therapy? In this 2010 study, doing microneedling on the face before treatment with red light therapy was seen to enhance the effects of aminolevulinic acid for treating actinic keratosis. As you can see from the pictures, after six months of treatment, the people's faces were significantly less pigmented and they had less wrinkles. The mechanistic theory is that while microneedling causes minor trauma to the skin that triggers collagen synthesis, photobiomodulation with red and infrared light stimulates wound healing, directs more blood flow to these areas to support the wound healing and repair, and it also stimulates collagen synthesis alone. Microneedling also enables topical agents to penetrate deeper into the skin, such as copper peptides and other serums. One very powerful skin anti-aging agent that's effective and cheap is retinol, but retinol can be too harsh after microneedling. That's why this specific protocol doesn't utilize retinol, although you could use retinoids on the other days that you're not doing microneedling for even greater benefits, but I wouldn't recommend using them after you've done microneedling. The last piece of the puzzle is oral collagen supplements. You can use topical collagen and hyaluronic acid after microneedling to a great effect, but taking collagen before microneedling could also enhance the effectiveness. For the record, this is just a theory, but it is supported for joint health by stimulating joint collagen synthesis. In this 2017 study, taking 15 grams of gelatin with 48 milligrams of vitamin C one hour before exercise was seen to result in greater collagen synthesis in the joints compared to placebo and exercise alone. A dose of 5 grams before exercise resulted in higher collagen synthesis than placebo, but 15 grams was more effective. Basically, exercise alone will trigger collagen synthesis in the joints, but as you saw in this study, taking 15 grams of gelatin one hour before the exercise results in greater collagen synthesis in the joints compared to exercise alone. Gelatin is just a cheap form of collagen peptides, and arguably collagen peptides would be even more effective. It might be that the force impact of exercise on joints signals the collagen to travel specifically to the joints and stimulate collagen synthesis there. In the context of microneedling, it might also be that if you take collagen peptides one hour before you do microneedling, you'll support greater collagen synthesis in the skin and you'll support faster recovery from the microneedling in the skin because the microneedling causes microtrauma to the skin, similar to exercise. Now, it's just a theory, there are no clinical trials testing this, but it sounds quite plausible, at least in my mind. Even if collagen intake didn't enhance the effectiveness of microneedling, taking collagen peptides at any time of the day has been seen to increase skin elasticity by up to 25% and reduce skin wrinkles in many clinical trials. So it might be worth it to try it out, and you have nothing to lose because taking collagen will help with skin wrinkles and elasticity even if you don't do microneedling. Alright, now it's time for a full protocol that you can do at home. One hour before microneedling, ingest 10 to 15 grams of collagen peptides. Make sure that it also has vitamin C, at least 50 milligrams. Do microneedling on the face, it takes only 5 minutes. Apply green tea cotton pads on the face for 20 minutes. After microneedling, the topical solution is going to penetrate the skin much deeper and the polyphenols in green tea will be even more effective. Apply copper peptide GHK on the face as a topical serum or cream. And lastly, do red light and infrared light photobiomodulation with a face mask or a red light panel at 630 to 660 nanometers for the red light and up to 1000 nanometers for the infrared light for a total of 10 minutes. You shouldn't do microneedling every day, your skin needs time to recover and it's generally recommended to do microneedling only once per week. But you can take collagen every day, you can do the cotton pads with green tea every day, you can do copper peptides every day, and you can do red light pretty much every day. Now each of these components alone has already been shown to enhance skin anti-aging to reverse wrinkles and improve the overall texture and elasticity of the skin. So you don't have to do all of them, you don't have to do the red light with the cotton pads with the GHK and with the collagen. If you just do one of them, like just take collagen or just do red light, based on the clinical evidence you will see improvements in your skin. But combining them together, doing copper peptides with red light or the green tea with red light will have greater benefits than one alone. I have seen a lot of effects from taking collagen peptides. I've been taking them for over three years and they've worked noticeably for me. Check out my review of collagen peptides next.