How to Make Your Skin Anti-Aging Routine More Effective (4 Steps)

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 4 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 on skin. In this video, I'm going to cover four of these strategies, and I'll outline a protocol that you can use at home. As a disclaimer, this protocol isn't the most fundamental thing you should do for your skin anti-aging. These strategies that I talk about here, they're not as effective as things like retinol or protecting your skin against UV damage from the sun, but they can be unique ways to give you better results if you're already doing the basics. The first thing that's going to enhance the effectiveness of red light on your skin is copper peptide GHK. GHK supercharges collagen production when paired with red LED light. In human skin cells, copper DHK plus red LA lights increased collagen synthesis by 70%, procolagen by 30% and stimulated growth factors by 230%. But not just with red light. 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 effects on skin and aging. and it 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 the skin and then do red light therapy for the best effects. The second component that enhances skin rejuvenation is green tea. In this 2009 study, they placed green tea filled cotton pads on people's faces 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 photobiomidation for 10 minutes at 630 to 660 nanome with 10 to 12 jewels per square cm. Now, this green tea study isn't the most powerful and most well-controlled study, but the purpose of this video is to specifically scheme together this kind of ultimate protocol using all the levers in the box to come up with the best results. Next, we have a powerful piece of the puzzle, and that's micro needling. Micro needling has been seen to increase collagen and elastin in the skin by 400% after 6 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 dermapin treatment for six sessions. The results showed the statistical improvement in skin wrinkles, fine lines, and crows feet. Both men and women as well as both smokers and non-smokers saw benefits. You can use micro needling for wound healing, acne scars, general scars, fine lines, and regular wrinkles. is going to make the skin thicker and stronger. And the reason for that is because micro needles cause micro trauma that triggers collagen synthesis in the skin. But what about combining it with red light therapy? In this 2010 study, doing micro needling on the face before treatment with red light therapy was seen to enhance the effects of aminoic acid for treating actinic keratossis. As you can see from the pictures, after 6 months of treatment, the people's faces were significantly less pigmented and they had less wrinkles. While micro needling causes micro trauma to the skin that triggers collagen synthesis, the photobiomodulation with radar therapy stimulates wound healing by directing more blood flow to the skin and by also triggering collagen synthesis on its own. So basically radiotherapy helps to heal the micro trauma caused by micro needling. Microning 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 micro needling. That's why this specific protocol doesn't utilize retinol, but you can use retinoids on the other days that you're not doing microning. The last piece of the puzzle is oral collagen supplements. You can use topical collagen and hyaluronic acid after micronaling to a great effect, but taking collagen before micronaling could also enhance the effectiveness of micronaling. For the record, this is just a theory, but there are studies showing that taking collagen before exercise stimulates more collagen synthesis in the joints. In this 2017 study, taking 15 grams of gelatin with 48 milligs of vitamin C 1 hour before exercise was seen to result in greater collagen synthesis in the joints compared to placebo. And exercise alone, a dose of 5 g before exercise resulted in higher collagen synthesis than placebo, but 15 g was more effective. Basically, exercise alone will stimulate collagen synthesis in the joints. But as you saw from this study, taking 15 grams of gelatin one hour before exercise resulted in greater collagen synthesis in the joints. Gelatin is just a cheap form of collagen peptides. And arguably, collagen peptides could 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 micro needling, it might be that if you take collagen peptides one hour before you do micro needling, you'll support greater collagen synthesis in the skin because as I just said, micronading causes micro trauma to the skin, similar to the impact you get from exercise on joints. So the collagen that you take before micro needling would be more likely to be utilized for skin healing. Now, this is just a theory because there's no study specifically looking at this, but I'm connecting the dots between the effects of micron and the effects that we saw in the study where taking collagen before exercise stimulated more collagen synthesis in the joints. Even if collagen intake didn't enhance the effectiveness of microning, 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 micronaling. All right, let me wrap it up and give you a full protocol you can try at home. 1 hour before micronaling ingest 10 to 15 g of collagen peptides. Make sure that it also has vitamin C at least 50 milligs. Two, do micronaling on the face. It takes only 5 minutes. Three, apply green tea cotton pads on the face for 20 minutes. After microning, the topical solution is going to penetrate the skin much deeper and the polyphenols in green tea will be more effective. Number four, apply copper peptide GHK on the face as a topical serum or cream. And lastly, do red light and infrared light photobiodulation with a face mask or a red light panel at 630 to 660 nanome for the red light and up to 1,000 nanome for the infrared light for a total of 10 minutes. You shouldn't do micro needling every day because your skin needs time to heal. It's generally recommended to not do migrating more often than once a week. But you can take collagen peptides every day. You can take copper serum every day. You can take copper peptide every day. You can do the green tea every day. And you can do red light therapy on the face every day. Now, each of these components alone has been seen to benefit skin anti-aging and skin wrinkles as I just shared the studies. But these studies also suggest that combining them together will give you better results than each thing alone. Now, you don't have to do all of them. You don't have to do the green tea. You don't have to do the copper peptide and the red light therapy and all those things at once, but the combination of these therapies appears to work synergistically. I've seen a lot of effects from taking collagen peptides. I've been taking them for over 3 years and they've worked noticeably for me. Check out my video where I share my results.