Located at 530 Main St. in Meeker, Prescriptions Salon offers many treatments you might expect from a small town salon. But, it also has something quite unique many patrons take advantage of twice a week: a whole-body red light therapy bed.
Resembling a tanning bed, but with different applications, the red light therapy bed at Prescriptions Salon in Meeker has helped users with pain relief, wound and injury healing, and skin conditions. | ADRIENNE WIX PHOTO
Prescriptions owner Jan Nye brought this bed into her salon after serious research into the treatment it could provide that was largely influenced by her own chronic back pain.
“I didn’t want to do surgery, I don’t want to be on medications, but I was struggling and I can’t express how much this has improved my pain,” Nye said. “How I came to even look into light therapy was because of my back. That led me down this lane and that lane, but I didn’t want the drugs, don’t want to have surgery, I’m scared of that, whether you should be or not I don’t know. But I came across a podcast done by Ari Whitten, then came to find Ari wrote a book about red light therapy and I ordered his book and learned more.”
Red light is one of five types of bioactive (this means it affects the function of human cells) lights that can make a difference to our bodies function. Red light stimulates the mitochondria in our cells to increase ATP (energy) production. As a majority of modern society spends more and more time indoors, diseases like depression, obesity, diabetes, insomnia and mood disorders have increased. It is thought that mal-illumination could be a significant contributor to these issues.
UV light interacts with our skin to stimulate the production of vitamin D. Blue light works on our circadian clock to regulate our 24-hour biological rhythm, hormones and neurotransmitters. Research suggests that red and near-infrared light affects not only our mitochondria’s ability to produce ATP but also calcium, nitric oxide, kappa B, RANKL, Akt/GSK3b/b-catenin, Akt/mTOR/CyclinD1, ERK/FOXM1, PPARy, RUNX2, collagen, cytokines, melatonin and more. In short, studies suggest that red light therapy can reduce muscle and nerve pain, improve brain function, accelerate injury healing, stimulate hair regrowth, and reduce skin aging and body fat.
The Prism Light Pod at Prescriptions Salon pod has six settings: sports recovery, chronic pain management, arthritis and joint pain, wound and injury healing, skin conditions and anti-aging, and weight loss. The pod itself is designed similar to a tanning bed, but with nearly the exact opposite results as its light works to rejuvenate rather than tan. If you visit the salon for this treatment you will access a private room with the disinfected pod. You will undress and lay in the pod with eye protection for 15 minutes while the setting of your choice illuminates your entire body.
I was able to try out red light therapy in preparation for this article, and I found it to be quite lovely. I choose to try the anti-aging setting because for one I feel like I’ve been looking quite peaked, but also, most of those who visit the pod use the pain management settings, and I wanted to try something different. I found that after each session I felt quite energized and dare I say, bubbly? I also noticed that the hollows I have under my eyes from poor sleep were less pronounced and my skin seemed to glow in a healthier way than is typical for me. The pod made me feel better, to put it quite simply, but don’t just take my word for it. I had the opportunity to speak with a regular patron of the Prism Light Pod, Jolene Lancaster, who has been using it for around 10 months, twice a week. Lancaster typically uses the chronic pain management setting which improves her daily knee and hip pain as well as the neuropathy she experiences in her feet. But she has also used the sports recovery setting after having a bike accident. “I healed twice as fast with my ribs and bruising than I would have had without using it. And you know it actually helps with my energy levels for the rest of the day. I’ve been trying to get my husband into it, too.”
If you are interested in more information on the benefits of the Prism Light Pod and red-light therapy you can stop by the salon to pick up some literature and speak with Jan Nye. She is currently running a New Year special of $155 for 12 sessions, a $44 discount.
BY ADRIENNE WIX – Special to the Herald Times
The term mal-illumination refers to not enough natural light and too much indoor unnatural light. The term was coined by Dr. John Ott, photobiology pioneer and the father of full-spectrum light technology.
To suggest that there are only 5 types of bioactive wavelengths is simply incorrect and does not address the full-spectrum of sunlight’s bionutrient wavelengths.