Staring at a deep red light once a week can boost your eyesight

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

Staring at a deep red light in the morning once a week boosts eyesight, according to new research.

The therapy lasts only three minutes - and involves an LED torch costing just $16 (£12).

It 'switches on' energy producing mitochondria cells in the retina that send visual information to the brain.

There was an average 17 percent improvement in distinguishing different shades - with older participants benefitting by up to a fifth.

The effects lasted for at least a week. It only worked when carried out in the morning.

It opens the door to a cheap home-based long wave red light therapy, explained lead author professor Glen Jeffery.

"One single exposure to long wave deep red light in the morning can significantly improve declining vision, which is a major health and wellbeing issue, affecting millions of people globally," said the ophthalmologist from University College London.

"This simple intervention applied at the population level would significantly impact on quality of life as people age and would likely result in reduced social costs that arise from problems associated with reduced vision."

The retina is at the back of the eye where images are focused. It ages faster than other organs with a lifetime 70 percent efficiency reduction.

Once you reach 40, it tends not to function as well as mitochondria, the power stations of cells, begin to slow up.

Light receptors in the retina come in two types - cones which detect color contrast and rods which give peripheral and dim light vision.

The study in the journal Scientific Reports found short bursts of red light helped "reboot" them.

All 20 volunteers, aged between 34 and 70, completed a questionnaire regarding eye health prior to testing, and had normal color vision.

This was assessed using a 'Chroma Test' - identifying colored letters that had very low contrast and appeared increasingly blurred.

Using a provided LED device, the 13 women and seven men were exposed to three minutes of long wave deep red light (670 nanometres) in the morning between 8am and 9am.

Their vision was then tested again three hours post exposure and 10 of the participants were also tested one week post exposure.

On average there was a "significant" 17% improvement in color vision, which lasted a week - rising to 20 percent in some older participants.

A few months later, ensuring any positive effects had been 'washed out', six of the participants underwent the same technique in the afternoon, between noon and 1 PM. When their vision was tested, it showed zero improvement.

"Using a simple LED device once a week, recharges the energy system that has declined in the retina cells, rather like re-charging a battery," Jeffery said.

"And morning exposure is absolutely key to achieving improvements in declining vision: as we have previously seen in flies, mitochondria have shifting work patterns and do not respond in the same way to light in the afternoon – this study confirms this."

The researchers built on previous findings in mice, bumblebees and fruit flies which all found big improvements in photoreceptors when their eyes were exposed to long wavelength deep red light.

"Mitochondria have specific sensitivities to long wavelength light influencing their performance: longer wavelengths spanning 650 to 900nm (nanometres) improve mitochondrial performance to increase energy production," said Jeffery.

For this study the light energy emitted by the torch was just 8mW/cm2 rather than 40mW/cm2 used in an equally successful earlier trial.

This has the effect of dimming the light but does not affect the wavelength.

While both energy levels are perfectly safe for the human eye, reducing the energy further is an additional benefit.

The retina contains millions of rods and cones and other nerve cells that receive and organise visual information - sending it to your brain through the optic nerve.

Jeffery has been working with Planet Lighting UK in Wales and others with the aim of producing 670nm infra-red eye ware at an affordable cost.

Some other LED devices designed to improve vision are available in the US for over $20,000.

"The technology is simple and very safe; the energy delivered by 670nm long wave light is not that much greater than that found in natural environmental light," Jeffery said.

"Given its simplicity, I am confident an easy-to-use device can be made available at an affordable cost to the general public.

"In the near future, a once a week three-minute exposure to deep red light could be done while making a coffee, or on the commute listening to a podcast, and such a simple addition could transform eye care and vision around the world."