Green Tea and Red Light Therapy At Home: Your Dynamic Duo for Younger-Looking Skin?

Not every beauty trend and skincare hack delivers on its promises. If you’ve spent a significant amount of money on the latest breakthrough treatment or miracle product only to be disappointed, you’re certainly not alone. Every once in a while, however, we’re blessed with skin rejuvenating treatments thatareas good as they say, with credible science to back it up. Red light therapy is one of those groundbreaking treatments. But even before red light therapy began making waves amongst dermatologists and beauty experts, there was another super treatment creating a splash:green tea.

Both red light therapy and green tea have shown extraordinary results in research on skin rejuvenation. What’s more, with the increasing accessibility ofred light therapy at home, both treatments are affordable, safe for daily use, and can be administered without the help of a professional.

These impressive stats had one group of researchers wondering: can one treatment boost the effects of the other? The answer appears to be yes. Read on to see how green tea and red light therapy at home can work together to produce amazing skin rejuvenation effects, safely and affordably.

Green tea is loaded with micronutrients called polyphenols, or more specifically, catechins. These are chemical compounds responsible for protecting plants against environmental toxins as well as repairing damage. Green tea contains a catechin called epigallocatechin gallate, a potent antioxidant that has been shown to have aprotective effect on the skin. It’s also been shown toincrease moisture and improve skin microrelief(roughness caused by natural furrows and ridges on the skin’s surface).

Green tea also containscaffeine,which is known to shrink blood vessels and reduce puffiness, and also has anti-inflammatory properties.

While there has been some controversy regarding thesafety of ingesting green tea extract, primarily in the form of weight loss supplements, recent research indicates thatcatechins like those found in green tea are safe when applied topically, and have strong antioxidant effects on the human body.

Red light therapy uses red and near-infrared wavelengths of light to penetrate deep into the skin to the mitochondria of the cell, where your body’s energy is produced in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Here, a biochemical reaction occurs, allowing the mitochondria to use oxygen more efficiently to produce ATP. This uptick in cellular energy has a cascading effect on a multitude of cell and tissue functions, including collagen production. Collagen is the main building block for firm, youthful-looking skin, and as we age, its production wanes, resulting in wrinkles, sagginess and other signs of aging.

Red light therapy is also known to increase circulation, allowing a greater amount of oxygen and nutrients to reach your cells, and allowing for more effective elimination of toxins. It’s also been found toactivate stem cells, which play a major role in tissue repair.

Not only is red light therapy proven to be effective for skin rejuvenation, it can help with a variety of other skin issues as well, includingrosacea, psoriasis, acne,stretch marks,cellulite,and many more. It’s also effective at treating a wide range of ailments affecting the body from head to toe.Read more about the growing list of red light therapy benefits here.

A2009 studyrevealed that green tea used in combination with red light therapy can accelerate skin rejuvenation results - wait for it - a whopping ten-fold! During the study, green tea-soaked cotton pads were placed on participants’ skin for twenty minutes after exposure to extreme oxidative stress (an imbalance between free radicals and antioxidants in the body, which can cause cell and tissue damage). Participants were then administered red light therapy treatment. After one month, subjects showed improvements, including reduced wrinkles and younger-looking skin, that had previously taken 10 months with red light therapy alone.

It’s important to note that while these results are extremely promising, they are from a single study which has yet to be replicated. This means we can’t entirely rely on these findings until further research has been conducted. However, given the impeccable safety record of both red light therapyandgreen tea applied topically, there is certainly no harm in adding green tea to the mix when using red light therapy at home. Especially since it’s so accessible, affordable, and as the current research points out, effective.

There are plenty of green tea extracts, serums and lotions available at your local health store that you can apply to your skin before treatment. Alternatively, if you’ve already got green tea in your pantry, you can opt to simply soak a tea bag and apply it to your face before or during treatment.