Red light therapy is an effective and non-invasive way to treat skin issues, promote pain relief, and accelerate muscle recovery. Now, portable red-light therapy devices are available that you can buy and use at home, making it easy to reap the benefits this treatment method offers.
Because red light therapy mainly targets skin-related issues, many people wonder whether or not it fades tattoos. Generally speaking, red and near-infrared light therapy doesn’t have the power to affect the ink particles of tattoos.
That’s why experts suggest that you should cover your tattooed skin area before undergoing red light therapy. However, it can be a bad or good thing depending on what you want. Let’s discuss the topic in detail.
Red Light Therapy and Tattoo Removing Laser
To understand whether or not red-light therapy fades tattoos, it’s important to understand how the traditional tattoo removal process works.
Traditionally, laser devices that emit UV rays are used to fade tattoo color from the skin. These devices shoot nano-second-long intervals of UV light to create a powerful effect, allowing the device to produce enough light energy to break down the ink particles of tattoos.
These broken-down particles are then absorbed by the body. Whereas, red light therapy uses LED lights that emit a constant and steady bright light with a different wavelength from the laser device that we use to remove tattoos.
While the long-term effects of red and near-infrared light on tattoos are not fully understood, it seems that red LED light therapy doesn’t generate enough power to break down ink particles of tattoos.
How to Use Red Light Therapy without Affecting Tattoos
If you like your tattoos, then you don’t want red light therapy to affect them. While it’s possible to undergo red light treatment without damaging your tattoos, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Therefore, we recommend you cover the area of your body that has tattoos with a piece of cloth before you start red light therapy. Keep in mind that powerful red light therapy devices create heat.
Although we still don’t have scientific studies showing the effects of that heat on tattoos, you don’t want to take the risk of damaging them.
How to Use Red Light Therapy After Tattoo Removal
If you have just gotten your tattoos removed from your skin, you’d already know that it can cause pain and needs sometimes to heal properly. As mentioned earlier, red light therapy emits thermal energy, it can affect the sensitive skin area that’s recovering after tattoo removal.
While many laser tattoo removal clinics and spas use red light therapy to facilitate healing and decrease pain, it can be counterproductive. According to the National Library of Medicine, using low-level light therapy right after tattoo removal can lead to blistering of the skin.
Therefore, you should wait for at least two weeks before using red light therapy on the skin area where you used to have a tattoo. After that, red light therapy can be used to minimize scarring and inflammation.
Final Words
The long-term effects of red-light therapy on tattoos are still not understood well. We still don’t have enough scientific studies explaining whether or not red-light therapy fades tattoos.
If you want to protect your tattoos, we recommend you cover your tattooed skin area before using red light therapy to be on the safer side. If you have just gotten your tattoos removed, then wait for a couple of weeks to start using red light therapy to prevent blistering of the skin.
