A number of products have emerged that claim to use light to treat your acne. Usually, it is blue light, and sometimes, they also claim that it will help you to fight wrinkles and other common skin problems, even reducing scars. Light treatments can be extremely expensive, even costing hundreds! And when you use light treatments, you get the benefit of not using any messy washes, lotions, or other external treatments. But do they work?

Data from clinical studies has shown that blue light therapy has certain effects. It provides a narrow band, high intensity blue light therapy that can help you to treat acne. It has been shown that blue light can work to kill off potentially harmful bacteria. And it can help you to get results without using UV rays that may cause skin damage, skin cancer, and other potentially serious problems. It has been associated with killing the bacteria that kills acne. But it has not been associated with promoting collagen and elastin or otherwise showing certain results or benefits. There are multiple clinical studies over patients using this for nodular acne that have shown various things. Actually, one study concluded that the lesions with nodulistic acne tend to worsen when using blue light therapy. Another showed that when compared to clindamycin, after 4 weeks those with blue light therapy achieved 10% better results. But you will also find that after 8 weeks, clindamycin was better. The results of other treatments tend to last longer. The studies on blue light therapy are inconsistent and questionable at best. And one can never really be sure of what it is that you are going to get.

On the other hand, while you do not generally see this, when you use LHE therapy or pulsed light and heat energy therapy, you will find that one study using 19 patients saw significant reductions in inflammation and acne over 8 weeks. But this study has not yet been repeated.

Certain laser treatments used in salons have been shown to be potentially effective. When you use these, you can actually eliminate bacteria, and they have been quite successful in a number of other approaches. But you will find that light therapy as a whole has not actually been as proven as one might think. There have been some studies that have shown results. But there have been just as many that have shown that it doesn’t work or even makes acne worse!