Complaints & connections · borters.ch
Red light around 650 nanometres, every other day over months — the effect is measured, but smaller than a standard treatment’s, and it ends with the use.
Also known as: low-level laser therapy · LLLT · laser comb · laser cap · laser helmet · photobiomodulation
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
Comb, cap or helmet send red light with a wavelength of roughly 630 to 680 nanometres onto the scalp. The power is low — it does not warm and nothing is removed. The presumed effect runs through a protein in the cell’s power plants that absorbs light of this wavelength; hence the second name, photobiomodulation.
There is a series of sham-controlled studies over sixteen to twenty-six weeks, and they show more hairs per square centimetre than under the sham device. Two things belong with that: the difference is smaller than under a standard treatment, and most of the work is funded by the device makers. The clearance used in advertising often means only that a device is similar enough to one already cleared — it is not proof of effect.
The usual regime is ten to twenty-five minutes, three to seven times a week, for at least four to six months. As with everything in this field: it holds while it is used. On safety there is little to report — a feeling of warmth, occasionally a dry or itchy scalp. The one hard point is the eye: do not look into the beam, and a device that does not switch off when opened is not for children’s hands. What weighs is the price: several hundred to over a thousand francs for a device whose effect ends when it is put away.
630 to 680 nanometres, ten to twenty-five minutes per use, three to seven times a week, judged at the earliest after four to six months. Before that there is nothing to see, because the hair cycle takes that long.
Most of the work on these devices comes from the makers. That does not make it wrong, but it belongs said — and it is why the numbers differ so widely between studies.
An iron deficiency or an underactive thyroid does not improve under red light. Tackling both at once leaves it unclear which one worked.
Many of these devices reach the market through a route that only checks similarity to an already permitted device. That is different from approval based on efficacy studies — in advertising the two look alike.
More hair than under the sham device, less than under a standard treatment. Replacing a treatment with it swaps the stronger for the weaker — adding it is a different matter.
The one point where something can happen. Devices that switch off when opened are preferable, and none of them belongs in children’s hands.
Not a one-off change but an ongoing use. Three to seven times a week over months — without keeping it up, one has an expensive device and no effect.