LED Light, Ultrasound and Hair Growth

This article is long overdue and was inspired by a recent post by community member John, who reported seeing real hair regrowth using red LED light (with Truth Vitality Lux Renew) and our copper peptide hair growth serum, Truth Vitality Advanced Complex. Might the two be working synergistically, pondered John, with the red light enhancing the penetration of the copper peptides. This is actually true, but there’s also a lot more going on with LED and hair growth. Not to mention ultrasound. And there’s science to back it all up.

For me this started about a year ago when I decided to experiment with using the Truth Vitality Lux Renew ($279 in the shop) on my hairline, along with the Truth Vitality Advanced Complex ($49 in the shop).  I was curious to see if either the red light or ultrasound would make a difference. To be frank, my expectations were low. The results, however, were wonderful with my hairline looking fuller with only two sessions per week (five minutes per widow’s peak), alternating the red LED and ultrasound.

I haven’t really discussed this since I am not exactly bald and I wasn’t sure if anyone more follically-challenged would get meaningful results. So I was thrilled to see John’s post and read the testimony of someone with male pattern baldness. So, to go back to John’s question, how does this technology help hair growth? The answer is that there are three mechanisms at work.

LED and hair growth

We already know that LED regenerates skin tissue and can repair both wounds and wrinkles. Well what about hair, one of the fastest growing tissues on the body? Ironically, it was accidentally discovered that light stimulates hair growth when it was noticed that laser hair removal devices encouraged new hair around the area with unwanted hair.

Studies have shown that LLLT (low level light therapy), also known as LED, stimulated hair growth in mice. There have also been clinical trials demonstrating that LLLT stimulated hair growth in both men and women. A 2013 study concluded that LED was safe and effective for men and women, but said that the optimum wavelengths were still to be determined (source).

No one seems to know exactly how it works, but it has been hypothesized that the stimulation of epidermal stem cells in the hair follicle bulge pushes the follicles into anagen (growth) phase (source). There is also speculation that it works on the mitochondria in the cell. Or it may work by suppressing the cells that prevent the progression of follicle stem cells (source).

Ultrasound and hair growth

While LED and hair growth is well-researched, there is less data on ultrasound. I came across a patent application claiming that alopecia and, in particular, male-pattern baldness will respond to ultrasound exposure, causing cells in the hair follicle to increase in number, and/or new follicles to form or multiply. The patent is vague on how this happens, but speculates that this hair growth at the follicle level is a response to controlled damage to existing cells.

It is known that low energy pulsed ultrasound can stimulate wound healing and tissue repair (hence it is used to muscular and other injuries) and if it can regenerate skin tissue then it isn’t a stretch to assume it can regenerate hair.

Transdermal delivery

Researchers have found that LED light works more effectively if used with active ingredients such as vitamin C and it is well known that ultrasound increases transdermal delivery. Ergo using the Lux Renew’s red LED and ultrasound with our copper peptide hair growth serum will help the actives penetrate and do their thing.

While researching this article, I came across a clinic in Hungary that is using ultrasound with mesotherapy (a cocktail of nutrients) to boost hair growth.

Ultrasound seems to improve getting products into the skin by a process called cavitation – the ultrasound creates bubble that implode to produce millions of microscopic jets of liquid (the Advanced Complex in this case).

In a book on the subject of absorption of topical skin treatments, the authors (Robert Bronaugh and Howard Mabach) speculate that ultrasound’s ability to improve absorption may be due to the way ultrasound interacts with structured lipids in the stratum corneum. Read more on ultrasound and skincare actives.

Thank you John for galvanizing me to write this article and, even better, for encouraging my husband (already an Advanced Complex user) to even consider waving the Lux Renew across his pelt. I think a Father’s Day gift is calling me. 

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