Red Light Therapy for Back Pain: The Evidence

There is a real finding here. When researchers pooled the clinical trials of low-level laser for long-term, non-specific low back pain, people reported less pain than with a placebo. Those trials used lasers in clinics, not LED panels at home, and the doses were all over the place. Our panel is a general wellness device. It does not treat back pain, and if your back hurts, a professional comes before a light.

Does red light therapy help back pain?

In pooled trials of clinic laser therapy, people reported less pain than with a placebo.

The clearest summary is a 2015 systematic review and meta-analysis in Arthritis Research & Therapy. The authors searched the literature from 2000 to 2014 for randomised trials of low-level laser therapy against placebo in people with non-specific chronic low back pain and found seven, with 394 patients between them. After treatment, pain scores were significantly lower in the laser groups, by about 13.6 points on a 100-point scale. Disability scores and spinal range of motion did not change. Their conclusion: laser therapy relieves pain in this group. Study summary.

Seven trials and 394 people is a modest evidence base, and what it points to is less pain.

What is the catch?

The trials used lasers in clinics, at doses the researchers chose. A home LED panel is a different device, and nobody has run the same trial on one.

Three things keep us from saying the trials prove our panel works on back pain. The equipment was different: low-level lasers used in a clinical setting, where a panel floods an area with LED light from a distance. The doses were different, and varied so much between trials that there is no single proven combination of wavelength, power and time to copy. And the finding is about pain; nothing in it says anything was healed.

That pain result sits beside the muscle soreness studies, which found less soreness three and four days after hard training. Neither one amounts to treating a back condition.

When should you see a doctor instead?

Before you buy anything, if the pain is new, followed an injury, runs down a leg, comes with numbness or weakness, or has gone on for more than a few weeks.

Non-specific low back pain, the kind in those trials, is back pain with no identified cause, and the person who decides whether yours is that kind is a doctor or a physiotherapist. Pain after a fall or a heavy lift, pain travelling into a leg, tingling, weakness, any change in bladder or bowel control: none of that is something to point a light at. It needs assessing. Long-standing pain that has already been looked at, which you manage with movement and stretching, is the situation where people add a panel session on top.

How do people use a panel on the lower back?

Panel centred at hip height, six to twelve inches from bare skin, 10 to 15 minutes, goggles on. Two or three sessions a week is a sensible start, and a month is the shortest fair trial.

1. Set the panel so its centre lines up with the sore area. On a wall or a door that means lowering it; on a stand, adjusting the stand. Height for each area.
2. Stand or sit with your back to it, six inches away for one small spot or twelve to cover the whole lower back. From twelve inches the light spreads wider and the dose per square centimetre drops, so lean towards the longer session.
3. Bare skin. A shirt stops the light.
4. Goggles on, even facing away. Near-infrared is invisible and at some point you will turn round.
5. Set the timer for 10 to 15 minutes. Forget, and the Kivorla panel stops itself after 5.
6. Rate your back from one to ten before, after, and the next morning. Keep that up for four weeks before you decide anything.

What should you not expect?

A cure, or a replacement for the exercises your physiotherapist gave you.

What the trials support is a sore area feeling less sore, and that is where the claim ends. The strength work, the walking, the stretches you were given: those address the cause, and a panel session can sit alongside them without standing in for any of them.

What does the Kivorla panel bring to a lower-back session?

Near-infrared at a published dose, control over each wavelength, and enough height to cover the lower back from one position.

Near-infrared is the part of the spectrum that gets past the skin, and the panel carries four channels of it, at 810, 830, 850 and 1060 nm. At six inches it publishes at least 1200 W/m² of near-infrared, so the dose you are getting is a figure you can look up rather than guess at. Each wavelength dims independently, which for a back session means running near-infrared at full and turning the visible channels down. The panel is 640 by 230 mm, tall enough to take in the lower back and hips at once. The timer runs from 1 to 30 minutes, beeps at the halfway mark so you know when to turn for a back-then-front session, and cuts out after 5 minutes if you never set it. Goggles are in the box because, facing away or not, you will look round.

Not sure a panel is the right buy at all? Are red light therapy panels worth it is the place to start.

The Kivorla 9-Spectrum Red Light Therapy Panel page lists its wavelengths, irradiance and controls. Please read the precautions page before ordering, because returns are only accepted within 30 days while the panel is unopened with its seals intact. Standard shipping to the US, UK and Germany is free.

Kivorla devices are general wellness devices, not medical devices. They do not diagnose, treat or cure back pain or any other condition. If you have back pain, see a qualified healthcare professional.