Steve Marchese, CEO of LightStim, the largest LED medical device manufacturer in the U.S., shares insights, truths, and myths about the benefits of true “light stimulation.” Steve joins Dr. Haley to discuss how “red light therapy,” as it’s commonly called, involves more than just one color—it also includes blue and infrared light, which are crucial for achieving the full benefits. Listen to the full podcast to learn more about these alternative therapies.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro Snip
00:33 Coupon Announcement for use at Lightstim.com
02:38 Introduce Steve Marchese CEO of Lightstim
04:02 Why “light therapy” should be called “light stimulation”
04:33 What is light therapy and light stimulation used for?
07:52 Do you treat just the injury with light stimulation or the whole body when there is an injury?
11:22 How can you tell if you are buying a quality light therapy device and if it does what it is supposed to do?
13:48 What is the difference between FDA Registered and FDA Cleared or FDA Approved?
15:25 How can we use multiple wavelengths at the same time without cancelling out the wavelengths?
18:00 How close should you be to the LED light source for efficacy?
20:10 What happens when you use an acrylic layer for the patient to lay on?
21:58 What is the FDA’s test for efficacy?
26:00 What did the FTC warn the health and wellness industry about red light therapy?
27:22 What did a law firm do recently regarding an FDA “EXEMPTION” in January of 2021?
28:25 What did the “FDA Exemption” actually require?
30:00 What were the 2 additional requirements to qualify for the exemption?
33:16 What is the difference between red laser treatment and red led treatments?
35:20 What makes red light the right color and wavelength?
37:17 What do the infared radiators in the sauna tent do?
40:40 Does insurance pay for light stimulation?
41:10 How does light stimulation affect blood pressure?
43:04 Where can we go to try one of the red light stimulation beds?
44:24 Us there a difference in the output between battery and corded handheld units?
46:31 Where are the LightStim products manufactured?
49:15 Where should people go for more information?
50:15 What are some of the myths of red light therapy?
52:25 What are the general principles between using red, blue, and amber?
56:40 How to use an aloe vera leaf for anti-aging
57:25 How to use a lightstim unit to improve the performance of skin products
TRANSCRIPT
Red light therapy, which everybody calls it. Now, it’s kind of the established name is a misnomer because it’s not just red light, it’s also blue. It’s also infrared,
which is invisible, basically. And amber is very important wavelength too.
Dr. Michael Haley interrupting this podcast because shortly after I ended the recording with Steve Marchese from LightStim, he had his team reach out to me. He wanted to offer
our audience a coupon code that can be used at lightstim.com So the coupon code is Dr Haley D R H A L E Y and that’s going to be good through the month of September 2025.
Get 10% off your purchase at lightstim.com Now with that I got a little confession. If you listen to the podcast, you’ll get to a point where we’re talking about the trade shows and the handheld units.
My wife purchased a handheld unit, and it was one of the cheaper ones that came from China, but it was more expensive.
It was about four times more expensive than the ones found at lightstim.com And she is on her third unit because it had failed twice already. And now the third one that she has is acting up and she’s suspecting that it’s going to fail again.
She could have purchased from lightstim.com and got a unit that was made in the United States for a lot less money, with a lot more science behind it.
So if you’re thinking about getting one of those handheld units, I’d go to lightstim.com take advantage of the coupon and get your 10% off using the coupon code “DRHALEY”, I do not have a financial relationship with them. It’s just a coupon. Enjoy the rest of the podcast.
You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.
Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.
This is the Dr Haley Show podcast I’m Dr. Michael Haley, show host. And today’s guest is Steve Marchese. Steve is the CEO of LightStim, which you can find at lightstim.com the largest LED medical device manufacturer in the United States. Steve, thank you for joining me today on the Dr. Haley Show podcast. This is an interesting topic for me because, well, red light therapy and blue lights and light therapy in general seems to have taken the health space by storm.
Any tradeshow you go to now, it’s just packed with LED lights everywhere. Hey, thanks for being here and helping me know some
more about
This new, Is it a therapy? What is it?
it’s, a dual thing. It’s not only a therapy, but it’s esthetic. And it’s kind of like what I’m calling it.
Red light therapy, which everybody calls it. Now, it’s kind of the established name is a misnomer because it’s not just red light, it’s also blue. It’s also infrared,
which is invisible, basically. And amber is very important wavelength too.
and calling it a therapy is a bit of a misnomer also because,
it’s heavily used in esthetics.
I mean, it’s been used in esthetics for 40 years before it finally is coming into the health, industry. And
the category should have been called or maybe it will be called
light stimulation, which takes in everything. And it says what it does because you’re stimulating cells to do different things with the body, different positive things for the body.
So I guess esthetically used in beauty but in health used for people with health challenges, maybe physical skin conditions, things like that, many things.
The, you know, the more known things would be, for pain, for reduction of inflammation, increased blood circulation. We have a lot of people now that have poor circulation in their legs
and that this could be a huge help.
The release of serotonin and dopamine,
for mood altering, it’s actually being used in psychiatric centers
and drug rehab places for depression. Really? Mood altering. Wow. Yeah. one of the things that you said, you mentioned, pain, you mentioned inflammation specifically, which kind of brings up an interesting situation. I’m going to use myself as it I never really have anything to talk about, when it comes to health challenges, but lately,
I’m a terrible golfer. Do you golf? I don’t, I work seven days a week. I should work more and play golf less. I haven’t played in years,
and
I went out and I literally a few times in a row, buried the club head into the dirt with my irons. I was hitting, drivers.
Great, because that’s all I ever practice at the driving range. And you’re not going to hurt yourself putting. But
on the fairway, swinging as hard as I can and just burying it into the dirt. It’s like, you know, and I did it a few times in a row and I was like, okay, gotta hang this up a few days later.
It’s almost like
a tendonitis, which tends to be a chronic thing. And the only way out of it that I’ve ever known is, well, ice and rest, overuse just keeps on dragging it out, making it a chronic condition. But if light therapy can help or light treatment. Light stimulation, if that could help with inflammation. Theoretically, even those chronic inflammatory conditions like the tendonitis, can be and bursitis.
They can actually be helped with light therapy. Yeah,
the, recovery time could be drastically reduced. So we have, we have a lot of celebrity level pro athletes on our LED bed and our LED bed
is the only one that’s ever actually been able to pass the FDA test for efficacy.
and, one of them that’s, anybody that watches sports would know.
Saquon Barkley is, one of the most famous running backs in the NFL. And two years ago, he was playing for the Giants and he suffered a high ankle sprain. And there were nine games left in the season. And they told him he was done. Done for the season. Nobody recovers from a high ankle sprain that quickly, particularly a running back.
And, the next day, I flew him
one of our lead beds to his home in new Jersey. And he did 3 to 4 hours a day on the LED bed. And instead of missing the last then, nine games, walks back on the field two weeks later and sets a personal record of 206 yards. Oh, wow.
and that’s normal
with the right LED with the right wavelengths.
With The being close enough to the body with you getting good penetration. And, you know, an extraordinary shorter recovery time is normal when you’ve got the right LEDs Now, was there a benefit to him being on the whole bed instead of just maybe wrapping the leg in LED? Yeah. Matter of fact, well, the bed comes with a panel that’s normally used for the face, but when athletes buy it, chiropractors, physical therapists, we supply it with, a panel.
That’s for pain. Really? That’s what it’s FDA cleared for. And, when he was laying on the bed on the stomach, he would have it over the back of his, area around his leg there. And when he turned over on his stomach, it would be over the front of it. So he was getting a double treatment the whole time.
but to answer your question, more specifically with the bed. So we’ve been doing this 25 years. I would say we own 75 plus percent of the
professional space. We sell to 50,000 professionals, doctors, med spas, spas, chiropractors, physical therapists, gyms. I think I’ve met one of your customers that was a fan of yours. Troy Laing with culture OC out in California.
Yeah, yeah, he’s, he’s a close mate of mine. He’s seem to have a real nice facility there. And he did a walkthrough and showed the LightStim
in culture OC
Beautiful facility. Beautiful facility. What was I telling you about? Well, in the various installations that you have it in made me think of culture oc. Oh, man.
So. So, Yeah, I was talking about the professional and of, the business, but I, I completely lost what your original question was. No, sorry to interrupt. I was asking about the, full bed therapy versus wrapping the leg in this case. And he was getting a double treatment. Completely different. So.
Yeah. So we spent,
15 years in the business, without an LED bed our LED bed. We brought out
about ten years ago.
and when somebody would have a shoulder issue or a knee issue and they would use our pain panel on that area, you’d get improvement, you’d get reduced, recovery time definitely reduced pain.
But it wasn’t like, miraculous. And it didn’t work every single time.
and then when the bed came out, it was like it worked every single time. Almost. It was just it was crazy because
you’re giving every cell in the body basically a full tank of gas, a full tank of ATP or Adenosine Triphosphate
It’s the gasoline of our cells, which we produce about 8 to 10% less every decade. We’re alive after 20 years old. So you’re giving all the cells a full tank of gas. You’re releasing. If you’re getting depth of penetration, which is super key. And I’ll explain more later. But you’re releasing trapped nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is kind of the general of your army of cells and directs the cells.
You know, who’s going to go where to fix what. And so when you’ve got the whole body energized like this, the recovery,
and healing is like just on a completely different level than a spot treatment. I guess it would be kind of like going out in the sun. And, you know, if I was only tanning my leg and I’m only making so much vitamin D versus having my whole body in the sun.
Absolutely. Great analogy. Yeah, yeah. You know, we can talk about the benefits all day long. I want to know a little bit more first about,
well, the differences in the technology and the reason why. I remember a recent trade show that I went to. There are so many appliances and panels and handheld devices out there, and you look some of them up and you see this one that’s listed online for $14,000 for treating the face.
and they’re selling it at the show for $2,000. I’m thinking, okay, something’s going on here, a little scammy. Something doesn’t seem right to me. How could it be $14,000 and they’re selling it for 2000. I’m wondering if they’re buying it from, you know, China for $100 or not. Even
What is real and what is fake? And how do we know?
Is there a way to test it?
is there a difference between little red light bulbs because the glass is red? Or does something make the right color, light or the right wavelength? How does it all work? That’s a big question. So,
I think you were actually specifically talk. We won’t say the name, but I think you were specifically talking about a company that, has several booths at every single trade show,
and operates off of that exact, scenario, price wise.
And you can find that device on alibaba.com for $34.
so
when we’re talking about full body and that’s another subject, but short of full body when you’re talking about handhelds and panels for the face and masks and that sort of thing,
first thing you want to do is take a look at the company and,
are they what I call a millennial marketing company, like guys that are great at marketing.
They grew up on the internet, you know, but they don’t really know anything about LED. And they’re just importing the devices from China. And actually, as most of the devices are made by one, there’s about five factories in China that are pumping them out, but one makes most of them.
and they’re pretty much all the same.
And,
Where are you going to go when you need a repair, like
call the company up, see if they even answer their phones. Almost nobody in the industry answers their phones. We have three people to answer our phones. And,
Are they do they talk about being FDA registered or FDA cleared?
So FDA registered is
you basically are writing the FDA a letter saying, I’m going to produce this device.
I’m going to put it on the market and I’m not going to make outrageous claims. That’s it. The FDA has never seen the device. There’s no testing. Nothing like that. FDA cleared is the same as FDA approved.
There’s safety and efficacy testing, multiple tests that you have to go through and pass
and a number of other criteria to actually get cleared or, which was just another word for approved. They approved drugs, they cleared devices. So
that’s really important. How long has the company
been around? do professionals buy the device that’s like, key like if professionals aren’t buying it, like, and I don’t mean 1 or 2
here or there
that they’re talking about on their website.
But like
go to the trade shows like you’ve been to
and see what they’re buying, you know, like. There’s a lot I get it. And you know, especially when it comes to a handheld device versus a bed that has so much more. But I am still wondering, like, about the technology itself, because what I’m hearing is maybe
these smaller handhelds probably have a benefit.
They just might not be guaranteed or backed or, you know, reliable or the benefit might not be as great. So okay.
So I’m going to differentiate some things here for you. So multiple wavelengths okay. So LightStim there are two inventors. Well
let’s go back further. Google what happens when you have an LED device that emits multiple wavelengths simultaneously?
Okay.
and it’s well proven scientific fact that when you use multiple wavelengths,
simultaneously being emitted. They have a tendency to cancel one another out, kind of like red and blue, make purple kind of like kind of like that. And purple doesn’t do anything. Let’s say okay, red does something, blue does something, but purple doesn’t do anything, let’s say
and that’s well-established scientific fact.
When the 2000 LightStim came out with really what was the first multiple wavelength device
and nobody was doing it because of that science that says you can’t do it. Our engineers, our inventors, they kind of face planted and they kind of tripped and face planted into the solution around that. And nobody else has ever found the solution around that.
so we had the first devices with multiple wavelengths and they worked like crazy compared to everybody else.
was probably the biggest reason why a family owned business that did not have deep pockets became the biggest in the industry. It was because of
word of mouth among the professionals, because
our devices just work like crazy.
Everybody saw that and then started making multiple wavelength devices except they didn’t work very well because they were canceling one another out. There was one company named Baby Quasar. They’re not around anymore
had a really good device, actually.
and their device had four wavelengths, but it used one at a time. So they would use one wavelength for like two minutes, another wavelength for two minutes another.
And they got great results. They got results close to similar,
to ours. And, but they have it took
four times as long. I’m guessing
it did take four times as long. And
that was one of the problems. Yeah.
but it was a good device
and it worked better than everything else on the market, really, other than us. Yeah. So
that’s a major thing right there. Another
major thing
when you get away from handhelds and panels, when you get to a full. So anything that the public could see as being a full body treatment, a bed, a one sided bed like ours, a tanning bed that has been converted to LED panels that hang on a wall when you’re talking about full body.
Now a whole bunch of things come into factor as to whether or not they’re going to work. Like you’ve seen these panels advertised with people exercising in front of them, usually about a foot to two feet away, usually with gym clothes on. Like there’s no possibility that there’s much happening there. Like
for one light, loses power exponentially as you leave the tip of the bulb, you get further away than three quarters of an inch.
There’s really no chance of getting depth of penetration. Now for the face, for esthetics, you don’t need depth penetration. You could be 1 to 3in away
with a good device, no problem. Okay. But for the body where you’re actually trying to produce, a wellness resort, a health related resort, you have to be able to treat a lot of cells,
with positively to actually get a measurable change.
And we learned all this from the FDA when we first went to the FDA and said, we’re going to build a bed,
and we need some engineering, heads up from you guys. We don’t want to just develop something
and then bring it to you and find out we blew it. Yeah, but I got a question before I lose it, though.
Is that why the bed only has one side then? Because you’re pressed up against it? Yeah.
when we worked with the FDA early on and they told us everything on the markets just lighting up the skin, all these devices that you see, those full body devices are just lighting up the skin.
they’re not getting any depth of penetration.
So this is why we built a one sided bed that you flip on halfway through the treatment.
and the bed tells you when to do it. And we made it so you’re a quarter inch off the tip of the bulb. And the second thing, though, that we found out that one in trying to get this penetration was that the acrylic that.
So we would order our LEDs for that somewhere between 15 and 45 or 50 degrees
light being emitted from the LED for penetration to get wider than that, LED loses intensity too much. Well, what we didn’t expect to run into was when this hit the acrylic it went like that.
it dispersed out to 180 degrees. Didn’t matter.
We were a quarter inch away. Didn’t matter that we were emitting light in the right angle like no penetration at all. So then we started investigating acrylics, and we actually first bought every device on the market, and every device had this problem.
and you know, if you’ve been listening carefully for the last few minutes, you might.
well, you guys been around for 25 years.
Why did you know that? Well, we didn’t know that because actually our handhelds and our face panels, which was all we made before the bed, are the only ones in the world that don’t have an acrylic over them. So they actually have the LED bulbs. And the FDA instructions say to touch the bulbs to the skin on the like.
The handheld, the face, interesting face panels 1 to 3in away. So glass doesn’t have the problem that acrylic does. No, it doesn’t no.
and I’ll tell you a story about that in a minute,
but, so we
started working with the four largest manufacturers of acrylics in the United States for two years before one of them came up with an acrylic for us that let the light through without dispersing it.
and
that was a huge step forward in the engineering of a bed that actually worked. But we still couldn’t pass the FDA test for efficacy. So the FDA test for efficacy on a full body device is that you have to bring the tissue temperature up to between 40 and 44°C, for the treatment.
and that was because
well,
that equates to 104 to 111 degrees and
you might go, wow. Well that’s hot. Well it’s hot outside, but for a skin temperature, that’s what you would describe as a soothing, gentle, relaxing warmth that you fall asleep to.
And,
they had determined that that’s where the most benefits happen.
not that the benefits don’t happen below that or above that, but this is where they mostly occur. And so that was
their basic test for efficacy before you anything else you got to pass that test. Well nobody had ever passed that test before. And the reason is, is when you lay your body on a sheet or a layer of LEDs
or stand in front of them
or whatever.
Best case scenario, best case scenario is you might be able to heat the torso up to that because the torso has a lot of mass
and it’ll hold the heat to as compared to your legs and arms, which have way less mass and just dissipate the heat almost as fast as
you’re feeding it to them.
and this,
was the problem that nobody had ever solved. And the legs and arms are according to Google, are between 58 and 68% of your total body mass. So more than half of the body you’re not treating and the public thinks you’re treating it. That’s fraud. Actually, that’s the FTC calls that fraud. And I’ll tell you about the FTC in a minute.
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so
we spent three of the six years we spent engineering the bed working with the FDA. Three of those years were spent on developing a technology to solve that problem. And if you look at our bed, any picture of our bed on the internet, you’ll see that it’s not a sheet of LEDs, but you’ll actually see 30 separate modules of LEDs each modules maybe 6 or 7in wide and nine inches tall, and there’s 30 of them.
And if you look really close,
you’ll see in the center in person, that’s easy to see. But on the internet it’s a little though in the center of each of those modules is a sensor. It’s about an inch and a half long. And we designed and developed this sensor. And what it does is when you lay your body on the bed in about three seconds, it figures out whatever body parts touching it, what the temperature is of it, and what it’s going to take for that one module to bring that body part up to and hold that temperature.
And so it’s, you know,
some of the modules is actually lowering the temperature on them. Some of them it’s raising. And a computer program runs that whole thing. And we patented it.
and we’re still the only full body LED device that’s ever passed that test for the FDA.
so, I was going to tell you something about the Federal Trade Commission that if you if you’re.
Yeah. So, so and in April of 2023, Federal Trade Commission put out a warning letter
and it was a warning letter to the health and wellness industry.
and they basically said in this letter and I could give you a copy of this, you guys are duping the public with unsubstantiated claims, and we’re coming after you.
And we’re not only coming after you, we’ve already started to come after you. And as of that date of that letter,
they had already identified, investigated and penalized 670 companies. Wow. You can be. And when they penalize depends on maybe how many products you put out on the market and how big the company is.
I remember the, FTC find a
fitness company back about ten years ago, you know, gyms, somewhere like 10 or $14 million for telling people that,
their tanning bed with red tubes was red light therapy,
so they’re on the warpath right now. And who noticed they’re on the warpath was class action lawsuit firms.
So we’re seeing class action lawsuits in the industry now because of unsubstantiated claims. And,
on top of that, what’s happened is about six months ago, a law firm named King and Spalding, put out a white paper slash, opinion letter, and they took a look at something that the FDA did about four and a half years ago called the exemption.
So four and half years ago, the assistant director of the FDA noticed that they had a bottleneck and they had a bottleneck in their Department of devices being cleared because all
these devices were coming over from China and trying to get FDA clearance. And it was preventing the reviewers of these applications from working on something where maybe there a clinical study was going on and people were being harmed or dying or something like that, and they’re wasting all their time on these, basically, as zero risk device led.
and so
they designed and came up with he and his team designed and came up with something called the exemption. And the exemption hit in January about four and a half years ago. And everybody in the industry thought that. It said, you know, if you’re making an LED device, just don’t make wild claims. And you could put it on the market
but nobody read it.
And I say nobody read it because I would rather say nobody read it than that everybody’s a criminal. And, and because I don’t believe that and I believe nobody read it because we didn’t even read it
we were like, disappointed because we do everything right
You know, everything goes through the FDA.
Everything’s got clinical studies,
but, we didn’t read it,
and these guys at King and Spalding, I guess, read it.
and they,
dissected what it said, and basically what it said was that you didn’t you didn’t have to do a, what’s called a 510 K. This is an application for FDA clearance of your device, which includes clinical studies.
And that’s in all kinds of other safety testing. You didn’t have to submit any of that paperwork. Well, the FDA has a language. And when they say
you don’t have to submit. That says a whole lot. It doesn’t just say you don’t have to submit. That actually means you have to do it, and you have to put it in a file and hold it in a folder so that when the FDA or the FTC walks in your door some day, you can go, look, I’m 100% legal.
I did not have FDA clearance, but I’m adhering to
the exemption policy. And this is what I was supposed to do. And I did it. And we passed all these tests. Additionally, there’s two other requirements to qualify
for the exemption. One is that
you have to make the same claims and nothing more
than a similar device a full.
This is all full body devices. We’re talking about
This doesn’t affect a handheld or a face panel. Only full body
and then as it you have to make the same claims and nothing more as a device that actually has FDA clearance
like LightStim got
and that one’s easy.
Everybody that’s making wild claims. And there are really wild claims being made,
they could change their marketing tomorrow. It’s all digital and be completely legal. No problem. But the second thing that you had to have to qualify it is really near impossible or maybe impossible. And that is you have to have this the basically, fundamentally same scientific technology.
So the FDA think is if you have the same scientific technology, then you should be able to pass all the tests that the company that got the FDA clearance passed. And they can kind of feel comfortable that they’ve allowed a device to go on the market that does actually work and is actually safe. So nobody has that technology.
It’s patented. And,
our patent attorney was the ex judge at the patent office for 20 years. So he wrote a pretty, foolproof patent for anybody to get around. And, and so the problem is, is that none of these devices can pass the FDA test,
basic test for efficacy
and they’re all using an acrylic
that’s killing depth of penetration.
So what does that mean? Well, on the surface, if you’re only lighting up the surface, you know, one by one inch by one inch, square, you’re treating about 19 million cells that almost exclusively have the job of dealing with the skin. If you can go down, like three quarters of an inch to an inch and have a cube, one inch cube.
now you’re trading between 400 and 600 million cells that have a wide variety of jobs
in the body, and you’re fixing them all up and you’re giving them, additional ATP, the gasoline for, you know, give them a full tank of gas. And it’s a huge difference. So depth of penetration is so, so important.
and not only in acrylic but also, distance has everything to do with if a device ever is going to be able to get any penetration. They’re not lasers. Lasers you can pull away, you know, pretty far. And some of them are actually, engineered to be far away from the body so they don’t do too much damage, just the amount of damage that the dermatologist wants to do.
Basically. You know, since you brought up lasers, because I know that people have red lasers that they’re using to help people with pain and all kinds of other problems where they, you know, wave the laser over the well, in my case, tendinitis of my elbow. Is there a big difference in the effects of the red laser versus the LED?
So it’s low level laser actually, that you’re talking about? Mostly used in,
physical therapy and chiropractic and,
it helps because it’s the right wavelength. You know, it’s usually it’s in, between 630 and 660 red.
but it’s not, it’s not enough time for the cell to absorb enough energy to get a full tank of gas.
It penetrates much easier
and much deeper than an LED would at the same distance. Much, much deeper and much easier.
But it’s not there long enough.
I mean, typically, it doesn’t even matter how much energy you’re putting out. Typically it’s going to take about 20 minutes for a cell to absorb enough energy that it’s mitochondria, converts it to a full tank of ATP.
And that’s kind of just like a generally accepted length of time for the last 35 years, that companies that have been around a long time. So if you lay on a bed, you’re on the bed for at least 20 minutes, then 20 minutes on each side. Yeah. Okay. Well for, for,
the most effective treatment,
but you can do ten minutes aside and maybe not get the whole benefit, but maybe
you have a time,
constraint where you can do ten minutes a side, seven days a week, but you can only do 20 minutes a side, like once or twice a week.
I’ll take the seven days a week at ten minutes. I got it, I got it, I got it. Yeah. And I’m understanding because with the laser, because you’re not going to hold it there for 20 minutes. And if you did you’re, you’re hitting a target that’s, you know, the size of a pen tip.
Or a marker had maybe magic marker had it. Okay. What makes the proper wavelength? Is it the electricity that’s going into the LED? Is that the color of the LED as far as the glass goes? Right behind me, actually lighting up my wall. I have an LED panel, and I can turn a dial on it, and the color changes.
I don’t know how it I don’t know what does that I mean, could I potentially turn it to the right number and have the right color and actually have a, potentially therapeutic benefit, or is there something that’s specifically built into the LED? So, so the LED is actually a computer chip, and typically encased in glass
and looks like a little bulb.
But in all these flexible devices that are on the market now, usually not a bulb, usually a, surface mount LED, which is basically just the computer chip
so you can program a computer chip to be variable and put out different wavelengths.
Let me say this. Up to now, it’s been far from optimal, though, because
when you have a specific wavelength that has all the perimeters built into it for that one wavelength, you know, it might be plus or minus five, it might have x amount of irradiance.
you’re going to get a better result than with something that you just dial in
into that, that wavelength
and typically you don’t see that
in many, LED devices.
I think
that the technology is changing and
that they’re going to do a better job of that in the future.
Yeah. Yeah. You were really careful not to mention any brand names. Oh no. Earlier. Yeah I asked you about the. So same thing in this one. There is a tent and, I guess they’re not heaters, but they’re radiators that emit a far infrared, a tent, you say? Yes, a tent, and you put your feet on top of some what are being called radiators.
And apparently as you’re sitting in this tent, you’re getting apparently a full body exposure to infrared light, I guess, which I don’t know how that comes out of the units. And if light is going in one direction, I don’t know how it goes everywhere. Does that. Is that something you’ve heard of? Or so, different? What would it be similar, similar kind of thing with, infrared sauna, is that.
Well, yeah, I guess it’s. I guess it would be considered, infrared sauna.
so here’s the thing. An infrared sauna,
if you’re in business, it’s the best kind of sauna to have because you don’t have to deal
with moisture
and mold and that sort of thing.
but your clients need to realize that you’re using infrared
to heat up
the tissue of the body and make you sweat out the drugs and toxins that you’ve accumulated over a lifetime
that are stuck in the fatty tissue of the body, and you’re trying to make it sweat out.
That’s the sole benefit
of an infrared sauna. There’s no infrared actual infrared value, though. When I say actual infrared value, I mean infrared will reduce inflammation.
if you’re getting penetration and you’ve got the right combination, you could strip the body of inflammation, which is the start of everything. You know,
all your degenerative diseases and that sort of thing.
but an infrared sauna,
there’s no I mean, it’s like, so far away from the body. It’s not it’s all it’s going to do is make you sweat.
there’s not going to be you’re not going to reduce any inflammation. And now you’re seeing some of this saunas put in, some red light in their corner.
You know, they could do both things at one time. Again, it’s like they’re not doing anything. It’s distance.
Just like I understand the distance thing too, because as a chiropractor, someone who takes X-rays, which is using electromagnetic wavelengths in the X-ray range, we know that if you, I think in them. How does it work? If you double the distance, you quarter the dose.
So,
if just by moving, you know, if you’re at five feet and you go to ten feet, now you’re only getting a quarter of that radiation that you would have. I think that’s the exponential. Yes. So it does make sense as you get a little bit further away from the LEDs that you’re not going to get and
That’s why I never understood how the infrared radiators worked if they were at your feet. And if it’s just warming things, that’s that is definitely different. Yeah. I don’t know
if it’s got infrared
and you’re actually putting your feet right on it,
there’s no distance. There.
I would imagine that
you’re getting some infrared benefit and. Yeah, well, your feet are on like a floorboard, and I don’t know if the radiators, I think the radiators are either pointed forwards or backwards. I’m not even sure now. And the whole tent does warm up a little bit. I haven’t seen that. Because insurance pay for red light treatments.
It will. But,
at present, it pays so little that it’s not worth having a clerical person do all the work that it takes to get the payment
but
that will change.
and we’re going to change it, because, we did some clinical studies for the FDA with our LED bed, for reducing high blood pressure.
and we reduced high blood pressure about 2 to 4 times more than drugs do with no side effects.
and we’ve been working with the FDA for three years. They want us to do one more study, which we will do.
and,
we also qualify for, I think they call it a groundbreaking device is like 52 different line items or something like that that you have to adhere to to become a groundbreaking device.
But from what I understand, when you get, approved, you’re automatically accepted by the insurance companies for the next four years.
so we’ll, we’ll see.
we’ve got an at least we got another year to go, probably with working with the FDA on this at least. So it sounds like there’s AMA billing codes that are, probably what they specific to light therapy or light treatment or.
Yeah. But they’re just right now
they’re worthless. They’re I mean, it’s just not worth the time to you. Okay. I know it’s a quite a feat just getting the AMA to create a code. Yeah. So you have to have some substance to what you’re doing to make all that happen.
As a thank you for tuning in to the Dr. Haley Show podcast, I have a special coupon code that can be used throughout the month of September 2025. Get $20 off your purchase of $200 or more at Haleynutrition.com. The coupon code is xxxxxx. That’s xxxxxx And as usual, you can even use this coupon with on sale and already discounted
The most people aren’t going to go to your website and buy a red light bed, especially if they’d never tried it.
I’m wondering, do you have a list or locations where people can go to where your beds are installed, where they’d be able to get the service, pay for the service?
they could call us. And, because
the website is being modified right now to have everybody, but there’s 50,000, locations that LightStim is in.
So, my wife is standing in line at the Sphere in Vegas, last week, and somehow the subject came up
and the girls that she was talking to learned that she was, the owner of LightStim and
one of the girls was a, was, some of the incubates companies and blows them up and she goes, I know all about LightStim
And
she goes, you guys have street cred. She goes,
I won’t ever go to get a facial.
if they don’t have LightStim in their location. Street cred street cred. Interesting. Oh, something they might purchase from your site at this point is the handhelds. I know that you have them made for the face and the other thing I noticed is yours have a cord.
Do they all have cords or some battery powered and is there a difference in the output? So so for ten years we have been following battery technology because,
all the devices that we have ever tested in 25 years that were battery operated, basically put out full power for somewhere between 5 and 7 minutes and then didn’t put out full power, but the user has no idea of that.
and the technology has just kind of turned the corner recently where they’re making the batteries in, a smaller configuration that would last,
a long time. And probably by the time, this when will this air or any idea when this will air about four weeks. Yeah. So
we will have released a,
new device
that we don’t have yet on the market
that will be battery technology and a run for between an hour and a half and two hours without needing a charge.
That is going to be chiropractors are going to be particularly interested in this device, actually. Oh, interesting. The other thing I noticed about your handheld is, you know, it’s a quarter the price of a lot of them that I’ve seen at the trade shows. Yeah. That’s all I can say, is there is every one of those devices that you’ve seen at trade shows because
we go to all the trade shows.
There are none that I know of that aren’t being made in China. There are none that I know of that aren’t being sold by basically what a marketing company that doesn’t know anything about LED wouldn’t know how to repair device if they had to.
and almost without exception, does not even answer their phones.
They don’t want that connection. They don’t, you know, like they don’t want to hear that complaint that. Yeah. Steve, where yours is being manufactured
in Irvine, California, we have a 30,000 square foot facility that, we tell
our, potential bed buyers, that they can show up unannounced and we will give them a tour of our facility, and they’ll see all of our devices
being manufactured there
in a facility that you literally can eat off the floor.
Everybody has special, little, like an anklet that with a little trail that hangs down the touches the floor. The floor
is, grounded, like, with these big steel girders that go, like, 20ft down into the ground so that when they walk up to a device and touch it or, you know, a printed circuit board and touch it, they don’t, have some static electricity that that ruins all the parts on the device.
And we’re highly automated.
we’re not on QVC anymore, but we used to be on QVC many years ago, and we produce 30,000 handheld devices for them in ten days. And that included the shipping time to to get them back to Pennsylvania. So really highly automated. And we were able to do that all with very few employees.
You know, I’m also still smiling now from the hearing of a thing, the anklet that drags on the floor and does grounding. I’ve never heard of that before, but I’m thinking, hey, that’s pretty cool technology. They’re pretty simple. And yeah, it would make complete sense and very effective. Yeah. It’s one of the things that we have to have that we’re required to have by the we get all these annual inspections for our, ISO and our FDA, inspections and actually health California too.
Yeah. You know, I’ve talked about red light therapy before, and recently I even asked the person that edits my videos. I said, you know, are you learning a lot because we talk about so many different health topics. But the one thing she replied back is, I want red light. I want my own red lights. You know, because, you know, the story is that we’re hearing about the benefits and the miracles being done.
Just amazing. So exciting. Exciting. Send me. Send me an address. I’ll send her one. Send you one? I should have done that earlier right there. Well, she’s going to hear this out and hold you to it. The call to action might be different for a health care professional versus, someone that’s listening to this and wants red light therapy for their own, benefit.
But maybe the answer is the same. Go to the site.
where would you lead people as, next step, if they’re interested in finding out more, definitely go to the site. But
if you’re a professional,
you can’t get to the back end of the site, which is our professional line, and see that there’s different pricing for professionals.
And
call up,
call LightStim (949)Â 502-4088 and you’ll be put in touch with, representative. That’s from your area, who has been with us many years. All of our employees have been with us many, many years. I mean, I’m talking like 8 to 17 years as our average employee has been with us. And, and they’ll answer all their questions and they’ll give you that wholesale pricing and,
and if
you’re interested in our bed, you’ll get to talk to somebody that’s in the department that I run that only deals with the LED bed.
Actually. Well that’s fantastic. Is there anything you wish I had asked you about? I know we talked more about the technical myths aspect of things. Myths? Yeah, I got I would like to take a couple of quick myths that are perpetuated on the internet that are completely not true. One LED is not going to increase your testosterone.
there’s no studies to back that up. Darn it No.
and two green LED is something that’s like
all the marketing is being manufactured by the Chinese. Green LED is not going to get rid of your,
vitiligo or, or any other,
Pigmentation issues. Yeah.
it’s not going to handle pigmentation issues any differently than amber or red or infrared. Will.
and that is it works on one person. Then it doesn’t work on the next ten, then it works on the next three, and it doesn’t work on the next 20. There’s no rhyme or reason for it.
Green is completely worthless. No clinical studies to back up anything. The Chinese are just trying to sell some green LEDs and
energy output. Okay, this is not a horsepower race. Like, not at all.
and it has everything to do with what I explained earlier. Depth of penetration. I mean, if it ever was horsepower, that’s joules is what they usually use
milliwatts.
But, you know, if, if let’s say it was joules, like, would you rather treat
the surface cells with,
four joules, let’s say, and only the surface, or would you rather go down in an inch and treat all those cells with 1 or 2 joules, like, much less joules, much less amount of energy?
but you just leave it there long enough that they get a full treatment, and they have everything to do with everything that’s going on in your body, not just the skin.
Depth of penetration is everything. Energy output really only changes
the length of time typically that it’s going to take to get a proper treatment. Okay. And I now, you know, I asked you if there was anything I left out but and you saying that you brought up another question. Oh good. As we talk about the different colors, what are the general principles, you know, between red, blue and something new that I learned was Amber.
You mentioned the Amber. So,
Mostly they have to do with depth of penetration where blue stays on the surface,
red and amber get into the,
dermis layer and infrared can get down. But every all this is monitored by distance basically though. And the acrylic infrared can get down into muscles and joints and organs and the amber.
So,
our, LightStim for wrinkles, which is probably the most popular handheld in the world for the last 20 years. Used to have two wavelengths of red, 630 and 660 and two wavelengths of infrared, 850 and 940. And we did some testing around about, 2009 with Amber. And we found that amber was producing collagen and elastin, or increasing collagen and elastin much faster than red was.
And so we at that time, we then dropped the 940 infrared out of the device, because it didn’t really need to go that deep when you’re working on the skin. And we inserted A605 amber
and
that was a major stepping stone in LightStim future like
our benefits just started killing everybody else’s like we so we did a clinical study for the FDA for Perry Orbital because that’s all they allowed.
You couldn’t do it for any other wrinkles on the face. But when you’re doing a clinical study and you got 80 women, mostly women, we had men too,
but mostly women like. And you give them this device and you go, if you use this 5 to 7 days a week during this clinical study that lasts for eight weeks, you’re going to see a reduction in your wrinkles, not going to be all gone, but you’re going to see the start of the reducing of wrinkles in your face.
Is she going to only do here? No way. She’s going to do her whole face. She’s going to do our neck and the decollete. I want to do mine too. We turn the pictures in to the FDA to get Perry orbital approval. And they came back to us and they said, why does all the rest of the face look so much better?
And we said, well, obviously, I mean, how are you going to stop them from using it on their whole face when they know that they’re doing this test, this clinical study for wrinkles and,
they said, well, if you do another one of these studies will consider giving you clearance for full face, because the FDA in 35 years had never given anything other than Perry Orbital.
That’s the easy area to do. And,
we went well, why do we have to do another study? You came to us and notice the difference in the pictures. Why don’t we just use that study? They went, no, no, no, I’ll do another study. So we had to do another study. Three. You know, a plastic surgeon. There’s more, you know, different areas of the country, that sort of thing.
and in 2012 we were granted the first time ever,
clearance for the treatment of wrinkles on the entire face. So this stuff up here and here and here, you know, and, all the all that. That’s fantastic. I know that
there’s a lot of commercials showing the creams that you put on, but that washes away.
It does wash away.
Those same guys that were trying to sell that device for $2,000 that you saw was supposed to be listed for 14,000. That’s their gimmick. They stand in the middle of the island and pull people in and go, look what I. And that’s what they start with before they hit you with the $2000 device. That is true. That is definitely true.
They, you know, I they wanted to do my face and stuff and I said, oh, well, let’s do it on one side here with the cream. And then, you know, let me see what the light does. And then it, it all dries up and flakes up about an hour later. Right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s fun in my business.
I have an aloe vera business. And one of the things that I like doing along those lines is, is showing people, you know, just take an aloe leaf, cut it, and put the gel on your skin because this has some anti-aging benefits. And when it dries and yes, it’ll flake off and it’ll wash off too. But when it dries it kind of tightens up everything.
Only it’s completely natural. It’s a plant that actually does have some, you know, it will absorb a little and have some, has some anti-aging benefits. If you want a temporary facelift with some lasting benefits from a plant, try the aloe plant. It’s pretty cool. So when I when I send you that, I’m going to send you LightStim for wrinkles.
I want you to apply that aloe and then use the light on it, and you actually touch it to the skin. So wait till it dries, the aloe dries. And what’s what it’s going to do is it’s going to make the product penetrate more. And it’s going to increase the efficacy of all the little ingredients, basically
that are in there.
And you’re going to get a better result and
a longer lasting result. That’s why that’s why they use it in esthetics. That’s the only reason they use it is that other than getting rid of some inflammation that they may have caused during a facial, I’ll have to try it with our aloe cream too then. You know, I was recommending the plant as far as the tightening effect, so that the aloe creams definitely are something you want to absorb and have that anti-aging benefit.
We’ll have to send you some of the aloe cream. Okay. We’d love to try it.
we’ll test it out. About six, eight employees. They’ll they’ll love it. And it’s going to be the same thing, you know. Oh, I’m, I’m testing it here. But you know. You just tend to use it everywhere. Good stuff. I really enjoyed this, and especially because this topic has brought so many not so well intentioned players into this space.
There’s a lot of people that are in it, from the money for the money and
there are some cheap products, and I’ve been into the Alibaba.com and those kinds of websites where you see these panels and you’re thinking, okay, what is this? Now you could buy those panels for 150 bucks on them. I’d rather. Yeah, well, I enjoyed it.
I really appreciate you. We’re going to have links to Steve’s website below. The video. In the podcast description, on the blog page, we’ll have all kinds of ways to get in contact with Steve Marchese from lightstim.com Thank you for having me, Michael. I really appreciate it.
I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on drhaley.com. If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley on other radical health topics.
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