Red Light Therapy & Pelvic Health: What the Research Actually Says with Dr. Genevieve Newton & Liz Frey

Today we’re exploring a therapy that’s getting a lot of attention in wellness spaces, rehab clinics, and women’s health. Red light therapy, also known as photobiomodulation. But what does it actually do? Is it evidence informed? Is it safe? Where does it fit in when we’re talking about conditions like endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, postpartum healing, menopause, vaginal dryness? I mean, y’all the list is long. Tissue recovery.

pain, inflammation, and really just whole body rehab and wellness. This conversation is not about miracle claims. It’s about understanding the science, the clinical reasoning, the real world application of light therapy as a possible supportive tool in pelvic and orthopedic rehab. Because y’all, really, let’s face it, we need all the tools that we can get. So today I’m joined by two guests from Fringe.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, a scientist and educator in nutritional ⁓ science, and Liz, an orthopedic and pelvic ⁓ health physiotherapist. Together, they both bring research, the research lens, the clinical rehab perspective to help us understand where red light therapy may fit in and where we still need more evidence. Welcome back to the vocal pelvic floor, where we bring honest, science-informed, and often overlooked conversations about pelvic health.

sexual wellness, whole body healing, and medical advocacy, like right out into the open. I’m your host, Dr. Ginger Garner, and today’s episode is about red light therapy and pelvic health, specifically how photobiomodulation may support tissue healing, pain modulation, inflammation, postpartum recovery, menopausal changes, that’s a big one, and rehab outcomes. And I’m really interested in this conversation because so many people are asking me,

Patients are asking me, ⁓ when I’m out in the community, people are asking me about red light therapy right now. Patients are buying those devices. Clinicians are wondering how to use them responsibly. And in pelvic health, we need to be careful about separating meaningful adjunctive care from over-promising. So we’re gonna ask those questions today. What does the science say? What do clinicians need to know? And how can patients make informed safe choices? So welcome, welcome to the show.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (02:24)

Thanks, Ginger.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (02:25)

Thank you.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (02:26)

Yeah, I’m so glad you all are here today. As listeners, you all know I do little brags with the bio, so I’m going to do that first, and then we’re going to dig in. ⁓ Dr. Genevieve Newton, just to give you a little background on her, she is ⁓ a doctor of chiropractic medicine. She also has a PhD because apparently she has spare time ⁓ to do that. And she’s spent two decades so far.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (02:52)

Yeah.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (02:56)

as a researcher and educator in nutritional sciences before joining Fringe, a scientific director. Her role is to bring the science behind Fringe’s products and education ⁓ forward. And she’s really passionate about healing the body, mind and spirit through the gifts that our natural world can offer. I’m also joined by Liz Frey, Fringe’s Pelvic Health Medical Director.

She has an extensive background in exercise, physiology, physical therapy, manipulative therapy, pelvic health, acupuncture, and intramuscular STEM. She’s a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Manipulative Physical Therapists, which is the highest level of training in orthopedic manual therapy in Canada. ⁓ As an orthopedic and pelvic health physio, which I love, I think the combo is essential.

Liz integrates more than 15 years of clinical experience to help women navigate pregnancy, postpartum, and all of the things that we’re actually talking about today. So together, Gen and Liz are bringing us both the science and the clinical application. And that’s exactly what we need for this topic. So again, Gen and Liz, welcome to the vocal public floor.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (04:00)

Amazing. Thanks, Ginger. Great to be here.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (04:02)

Thanks for helping us.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (04:02)

Yeah,

yeah, absolutely. All right, so ⁓ let’s start out with the most basic question because that’s what I get when someone comes in and says, hey, I saw this device, or I may mention it to them. So for listeners who’ve heard the term red light therapy, but they don’t really know what it means, ⁓ what is that? What is photobiomodulation in just plain language?

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (04:25)

Okay, so super plain language. We can actually just break down the term photo bio modulation because what it means is that it’s the modulation of our biology using light. Now, more specifically though, when we’re talking about photo bio modulation with red light therapy, what we’re referring to is the use of red and or near infrared. So you’re going to see that some applications will only use red light. Some will only use near infrared light.

but oftentimes they’re used together and maybe we’ll get into a little bit more today about when you would use one versus the other. But that term red light therapy refers to the use of one or the other or the combination thereof to influence our biology. So that’s the really easy, simple definition of it. I think it’s also important always when we define red light therapy though to talk just a moment about what light is because that’s something that people, you know,

We kind of intuitively, of course, know what light is, but really we need a little bit more science on that to understand this. So for light, usually people think about in terms of visible light, what you’re seeing, but with respect to red light therapy, we’re not just talking about visible light. We’re also talking about the light that comes from the sun present naturally in our environment that we don’t see. So if you think back to, you know,

Basically, grade school, when you’ve learned about you shine the white light through the prism and you get that spectrum of light. In that spectrum of light, we have red light. So that’s a visible form of light. But the light from the sun also contains infrared light, which we can divide into near infrared and far infrared. It also has UV light. And that’s the one that is not visible, but that changes our skin color, right? Gives us a tan. So essentially, red light therapy is going to harness that.

visible red, the invisible near-infrared, which we don’t see but we can feel as a gentle warmth. And then we combine those potentially in combination or in isolation as a therapy to affect our biology. So it’s really quite basic. This ⁓ is something that is found in nature. And ⁓ if we look at the distribution of red and near-infrared light in sunlight, we actually see that these two wavelengths form almost the majority, not

quite but it’s really, they’re abundant in nature and hopefully we’re going to get into talking a little bit about the biology of how this works and it’s really exciting because we’ve realized that these have these really profound effects on us on a cellular level.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (07:00)

So when you talk about red light or near infrared light, think another question that I’ve gotten pretty common is like, well, is that heat? Like, is it energy? Is it wavelength? Like, what is it?

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (07:11)

Yes,

exactly. So it’s a few of those things. So light travels in waves, and there will be a little tiny photon of energy that is traveling in the form of a wave. So that’s going to give you a combination of energy and a wavelength. So red light will be a span of a certain span of wavelengths, and then near infrared will be a different span. So we could say that there’s a single wavelength of

red light or a single wavelength of near-infrared light, really they each span about, well, near-infrared is longer, but red spans about 130 nanometers. So that’s 10 to the minus nanometers. That’s how we measure the wavelengths of light. And the term that sometimes people also hear is radiation, electromagnetic.

radiation and that’s a confusing one. ⁓ It sounds scary and ominous because we think of radiation in terms of cancer therapy but all radiation means is energy traveling through space. So wavelengths of light are energy traveling through space so we can and they’re electromagnetic so we can also call that electromagnetic radiation. So yes lots of terminology here and I find that a lot of the things that we these terms that we use they’re ones that we have we’ve just gotten used to

talking about them, but the actual definitions when we really start thinking about, what does that mean? What is energy? What is radiation? What is light? We have very quickly realized that we don’t understand very well. So I love that you’re asking those basic questions. It is important.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (08:49)

Yeah, just because people get confused like, I might be heat intolerant or am I going to get burned or what is this a tanning bed? Like, I get a range of questions.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (08:56)

Right, so let me comment on that Ginger. So yes,

so in terms of, I forgot to comment on your question about heat. So the light from the sun that we see in that visible spectrum, that doesn’t generate heat. The heat generating part of sunlight is from the infrared. So when we break that infrared up into near infrared and far infrared, the near infrared is going to generate a gentle heat, whereas the far infrared is going to generate a much deeper, stronger heat.

So if you were to go to a far infrared sauna or an infrared sauna, typically that’s just the far infrared wavelengths. Sometimes it’ll include near infrared as well, but that’s more for the therapeutic benefit than the heat benefit. But if you’re using a device that’s going to deliver red light only, there will be very, very, very little heat generated from it. There might be a tiny bit from just the electricity aspect of it, ⁓ but the near infrared part

is expected to generate a gentle warmth that should be comfortable. If somebody is really heat sensitive, that’s something that they still want to be attentive to. And so you would look for a device under those circumstances where maybe you could reduce the intensity of the near infrared light so that the warmth is more gentle even than it would be normally. But most people, if they don’t have that sensitivity to heat, they have absolutely no problem tolerating the heat from one of those devices.

Now you also asked about, this a tanning bed? it going to give me, you if I go to one of these big beds, am I going to get a tan from it? So if we go back to what I was talking about before with the visible light and the invisible light. So on one end of the spectrum of that visible light spectrum, we’ve got red light. On the other end, we have ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet light is the one that’s going to generate the tan, the…

intense kind of energy that’s found in those wavelengths gets into our cells and has the ability to change and induct melanin synthesis. ⁓ And so if we’re looking at red and near infrared light, there’s absolutely no change related to your skin color, your tan. That’s not a component of this at all. And that’s really good for people to understand because that ultraviolet light

that does have the ability to generate a tan, we also know that it has the ability to damage our skin right? Because it’s very, very high energy. If we look at it from a wavelength perspective, ultraviolet waves are very short wavelengths, tight wavelengths. So they compress a lot more energy into them than the longer wavelength near infrared and red light do. And that’s really important from a safety perspective. You would not want to be

using light therapy, using UV light  on a daily basis, casually. There are absolutely medical applications for it, but you do need to be much more careful.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (11:55)

That’s a really good distinction. And I know the listener appreciates all the nerdiness too, because we need that. So let’s drill down a little bit more into the solid or level. Like what is actually, what’s happening with the wavelengths?

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (12:09)

Yeah, so the wavelengths are, as you said, they are acting at a cellular level. So if we look at inside of our cells, inside of our body in different areas, we have molecules that are called photoreceptors. They actually will accept light of certain wavelengths. And it’s remarkable when you study them, you see that different photoreceptors respond to different wavelengths of light. So for example,

If we use blue light, which maybe is going to be a little bit of a topic of conversation ⁓ later on if we talk about some of the applications of ⁓ light therapy in the pelvis, for example, blue light has antimicrobial action. So blue light, the receptor for a blue light is ⁓ very different than the receptor for a red light or a near infrared light. The receptors for the red and the near infrared light are in our human cells ⁓ inside the mitochondria.

And ⁓ there are some other ones, but those are the ones that we see activating the most profound and most important therapeutic effects. So what you need to look at is how deeply those wavelengths can get into the body. But regardless of if you can get them into the, you know, just a couple of millimeters in through the skin or in deeper, ultimately that target that we’re really looking for in terms of the therapeutic effect is going to be the mitochondria. And

downstream of that activation of the mitochondria for listeners that maybe remember back to their high school biology, that’s the energy producing powerhouse of the cells. And we have so many mitochondria and mitochondrial dysfunction is really at the root of a lot of chronic disease today. And it’s even, you know, pervasive in people who aren’t expressing evidence of chronic disease. We’re just, our mitochondria are under stress because of our lifestyle factors.

know, diet, lack of exercise, lack of time outside. ⁓ So the increase in energy production is really kind of that ⁓ the heaviest hitting outcome that we’re, is usually talked about when it comes to red light therapy, but there are also several things that, and I say they happen in part downstream of the increase in energy production, but there’s also some independence as well. So it gets a little bit.

It gets a little bit blurry, the lines in terms of, you know, what’s happening first and what’s happening second and what’s dependent on something else happening. And it’s really not that important. What is important is what are the outcomes that we see? So in addition to the increase in energy, we see an increase in blood flow. And this is so important, right? Because if you think about what blood is doing, well, it is bringing a combination of nutrients and oxygen to our tissues. That’s how that, you know, those,

critically important components of cellular structure, tissue structure, health, and literally respiration gets around our body. So an increase in blood flow is associated with these effects on the mitochondria. They cause a dissociation of nitric oxide. And then with the nitric oxide, you get a vasodilation. So a little bit of a widening of the blood vessels, which allows more blood to pass through. You also see a reduction in inflammation.

And you can track this pathway quite nicely and actually measure changes in inflammatory molecules. And associated with that decrease in inflammation, if you have inflammatory pain, you’re also going to see a reduction in pain. Now, importantly, we don’t just see that happening with a decrease in inflammation. There’s also pain modulation that happens at the level of the nervous system. And so you kind of get this double hit on pain, which is beautiful. There’s also an effect on

oxidative stress, many people have heard about that, this is like, you know, really those antioxidants that we eat in our blueberries and you know, that’s what we’re trying to reduce. We want to consume more antioxidants so that we can decrease oxidative stress in our bodies. Well, red and near-infrared light have the ability to overall cause a reduction in oxidative stress. And then when it comes to women and our pelvic health, our skin health, we see that light therapy with red and near-infrared light,

has the ability to increase the synthesis of those proteins like collagen and elastin, tenacin, these things that help to give our tissues integrity and structure. So it’s really a pretty long list of things that red and near infrared light do. And I really do want to say that at the basic science level, which is when we go in and we try to unpack what’s happening from a mechanism perspective, this is a therapy that’s been

very, very, very well studied. There are over 6,000 studies on red and near infrared light therapy spanning a whole range of approaches. know, there are in vitro studies, there’s animal studies, there’s human clinical studies, human observational studies. We’ve mapped out really well what red and near infrared light therapy does on this cellular level. Where we’re missing some of these important ⁓ conversations

is in the human clinical research, but we have those foundations that have been very well defined. And so it’s really just a question of, ⁓ you know, in some cases filling in the gaps for the research that we have yet to do.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (17:32)

Well, I appreciate the introduction of both the evidence base that we have and also in nearly every situation we can say more research is needed. ⁓ That’s always our disclaimer statement when we’re presenting at a conference or something like that. Because I think that’s people who scrutinize these types of things will always ask, well, what are the gaps? What is missing? Where do we need more research?

because there’s such a promising connection between light therapy and as you were saying, mitochondria status, ATP production, inflammation, circulation and tissue repair. So where do you see the strengths of what is out there in the evidence space? And then where do you see some of the weaknesses? Where do you see that things are going or should go?

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (18:22)

Yeah,

yeah, definitely. as I said, there’s absolutely the foundational strength is in those mechanistic studies and really unpacking what’s happening on a molecular level. And then when we get into, you know, that animal model of literature, that’s quite strong as well. So then we have to ask ourselves, what’s the ability to translate that research into humans?

And that’s where we are at present, right? We’re in this state where a quite a bit of human research is being done. And then there are certain areas of research that are much more active in terms of their investigation than others. So for example, one of the most active areas of light therapy, red light therapy research is in oral applications, in the mouth. And it’s one that is, from most people’s perspective,

It’s not really part of their everyday. It’s not something that most people even hear about. But actually, when you look at the literature, that’s one of the most active areas of research. Another active area of research is looking at eye health and using devices that deliver light to the eyes to support things like dry eye disease. So those are really, really quite well researched. Musculoskeletal applications are also quite well researched. No question about that. We have a strong body of literature there.

Another one is skin. We have a very strong body of literature in totality for skin. But when you look at a breakdown of different skin applications, there are definitely gaps for some of them. So for example, one of them that has, I think, some of the best potential is eczema. And we have very little research on red light therapy for eczema. So that’s an unfortunate gap. A very promising and active area of research is

application of light to the head. So this is called transcranial photobiomodulation. Most of the time those applications use near infrared light only and they use a device that sits on the head and delivers light. These are for things like cognitive disorders, mood disorders, traumatic brain injury and there is an incredibly active area or field of research in there.

⁓ even things like autism and ADHD. So really a lot of interest in applying light to the head. Where I wish there was more research is in women’s pelvic health. So we are slow to the game in this one, ⁓ probably because it’s hard to, you know, it’s hard to get light into the pelvis. ⁓ Intravaginal application of light requires a different kind of research study, right? You are needing to have different ethics approval. It’s a much

It’s a much more sensitive type of ⁓ research being conducted. And so we do have a handful of studies and hopefully we’ll talk about many of those today and they span a range of different outcomes. ⁓ But what we do know at the end of the day is most of them are showing a lot of promise and ⁓ we have that mechanistic underpinning that suggests and allows us to generate hypotheses that say, okay, we can really, you we suspect that this is going to be the outcome here.

OK, so something that is really important that we kind of integrate into this discussion of the research is the way that the light is being delivered. So is it going to be being delivered using a laser or using an LED light source? And if we look at the early studies, the early studies were for decades were really exclusively using laser light. And so laser light is very high intensity. It’ll be a single wavelength. And it generally needs to be administered by a trained provider.

With the advent of LED technology, LEDs started being explored as an alternative light delivery source. So we had many studies that have been done now using LEDs. that raises the question of, ⁓ they deliver equivalent outcomes? And it seems like there was a really great review of all of the studies that have been done using lasers and LEDs, all the way back in 2018. It’s since been repeated. ⁓ But the conclusion was that,

As long as you match the dose of the light, you can generally get equivalent outcomes. There’s definitely going to be some situations in which lasers may be superior, but they also carry some negatives and some risks. So the advantages of LEDs are that they are more affordable, they can be used at home, and they’re safer. So those are really big advantages in terms of just getting this tool into people’s hands, right?

So with respect to the research that’s being done now in humans, when you’re exploring the literature, it’s always important to look at what was the light source. We still see, especially in the pelvis, that the majority of studies use a laser light source. That LED light delivery system in the pelvis is definitely a ⁓ gap that needs to be filled. But then if we were to look at an application like the skin,

The skin literature using LEDs is abundant. There’s a ton of research there. If we were to look at the musculatial skeletal system, we have a lot of LED applications. So we have a lot of LED applications in other systems of the body that are really, really positive that show more or less equivalency to the laser literature. In the pelvis, we see an abundance of, and it’s, I mean, it’s a limitation. It’s not an abundant amount of literature, but.

The majority of studies are still using laser light delivery, but we’re getting these devices that are available now for at-home use. And so that research area is starting to be explored using LEDs. And it’s, I think that especially for women who are dealing with pelvic issues like chronic pelvic pain, ⁓ potentially endometriosis, lots of different applications, there’s a real need for something that can be used at home.

⁓ for many, many reasons.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (24:31)

Yeah, the piece about women’s health and the need for research there, I think just brings up a pretty common theme that we end up addressing on the show with the vocal pelvic floor, because it’s already underserved, under-researched, under-attended, ⁓ dismissed, marginalized, and frequently, frankly, just, you know, women get medically gaslit.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (25:00)

Exactly.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (25:01)

 So there’s a whole kind of undercurrent of like a social context of funding not being there, women excluded from studies and women’s conditions not being researched to begin with. So that just, I just couldn’t let that moment pass without saying, yep, we need more research and don’t forget why. So advocacy is so important, dear listener, make sure you’re voting and make sure that you pick up the phone, send an email to your

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (25:20)

Exactly.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (25:31)

Congress member or your state legislator when things come across your radar because they do listen to you. And if we want more research in women’s health and pelvic health, we’re all going to have to do that. We’re going have to do that our part. that brings up, know, bringing Liz in from the rehab side here because we kind of live and breathe this stuff every day in pelvic health. We are working with tissues that are sensitized, ⁓ under recovered, inflamed, surgically altered, hormonally affected.

or living inside that nervous system that’s on high alert because they’ve lived in a system that’s not been listening to them, or frankly, lived in a healthcare system which really wasn’t built to attend to their needs to begin with. So it matters a lot, I think, in pelvic rehab when we’re talking about how light therapy might be useful alongside pelvic health and pelvic PT or pelvic OT. So to Liz, ⁓ from a rehab standpoint, where do you see light therapy being useful?

and fitting for, well, variety of things. I’ll just let you talk about that.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (26:35)

Yeah, from a physio or rehab perspective, I think that light therapy is an amazing adjunct therapy. And I want to start by saying that because it’s not my, here, purchase this light therapy product and don’t do anything else. And I want to make that clear. That’s not how we approach this. The light therapy, whether or not it be a wrap or a ⁓ transversal like wand, et cetera, it’s something that’s going to be an adjunct to what the therapy is that I’m already providing.

Right? So that’s a huge piece that I want to make clear. And it’s a fantastic at-home device. Gen’s already touched on the, like I’ll say, advent of using LED light therapy and the benefits. And from a pelvic rehab perspective, pelvic rehab is not accessible for everybody, whether or not it be the distance to get to your rehab provider, the cost of going to rehab, or

Any of the other sort of reasons, some people are just embarrassed. They will not present to a pelvic health physiotherapist no matter what. And so I think that having some tools that will help people in between sessions will be very, or are very helpful. So that’s where I see it fitting in. It’s an at-home tool  that women will use in between their rehab sessions. I love it in my practice because I see when I’ve

had individuals purchase light therapy and use it consistently at home. And we’ll touch on how consistency is really important. But when they do use it consistently between sessions, I feel like we can make greater gains in our sessions, right? So if someone is presenting and they have a ton of sensitivity, inflammation, pain, like just, you know, sort of in one category, let’s say.

And then I do some therapy with them. We work on breathing. We work on whatever we’re going to do. And then they also use light therapy in between the sessions when they present again in a few weeks, maybe they’ve been able to settle some of that pain and inflammation and so on. And we can progress the therapy. So I love it as an in-between session tool that women will use so that we can make better use of our time together, like in our actual sessions and sort of push the needle forward with their recovery or

whatever we’re working on. And then the last piece that I love about using light therapy when it comes to rehab is that it gives women a tool to feel, I’ll say empowered, engaged with their therapy. I’ll use an example of, have one client actually who has endometriosis. And if she’s having a day where she is feeling just really uncomfortable, ⁓ she has a walking group that she goes with.

⁓ like daily. And so she said that what she’ll do is if she is feeling really uncomfortable and like, man, I don’t think I can even go on this walk today, she’ll use her light therapy prior to the walk, generally feel better, and then be able to go on a walk and socialize with her friends and get the movement and activity that she’s looking for that day. So to me, that’s a huge win. She feels empowered and she feels like she has a tool that she can use to help with her condition at home.

So those are some of the reasons that I love to have it as part of my pelvic health practice and where I see it really fitting in, but not by any means being a instead of, not even close. Yeah.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (30:05)

Right.

Yeah, I love that distinction because I think our health care system are well, in the United States, I think that it’s often called sick care system. our sick care systems are set up to point people towards drugs and surgery and quick fixes. And so I like your distinction about it being an adjunct that it isn’t a replacement.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (30:17)

It’s the same here in Canada.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (30:34)

because I think unfortunately the social conditioning or cultural messages, you’ll go to a doctor and they’re going to give you a pill. They’re going to give you something and it’s going to fix it, which means it’s passive. Somebody’s going to do something to you and fix the problem. And ⁓ while this is an adjunct tool, it’s also ⁓ something that they can actively use as well. so I think one of questions that I have, follow-up question I have for you Liz is,

Can you list out some of the details? ⁓ Like what I would be asking for as a clinician is what’s the clinical rationale and using it between sessions? What would they actually be using it for or targeting? And I there’s more than one thing they may be targeting there.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (31:18)

I think that depends a lot on the condition that I’m treating, like what the individual is coming in with. But if we’re looking at someone who has ⁓ pelvic pain, for example, then we’re looking to help reduce inflammation, reduce like neural pain, increase blood flow to the tissues, which can also help reduce pain so that somebody can ⁓ be more active, maybe engage in their exercises more, maybe be intimate, whatever their goals are.

So that’s where I would say there’s a huge rationale for someone using it with pelvic pain in between sessions. I’ll say on the flip side, maybe if we have somebody who has stress urinary incontinence, prolapse, more ⁓ weakness or say laxity within their tissues, then I would be saying, hey, let’s use light therapy again to help increase blood flow to the tissues so that our tissues can be healthier.

And then when used in conjunction with, say, ⁓ strengthening, I’ll say Kegels, but whatever, you know, the application is that we’re doing for strengthening or core work and so on, then you can have a healthier tissue that will be able to potentially be more reactive to the exercises that you’re doing with the tissues. In addition, you’ll have more ⁓ elastin collagen production that helps with the structural integrity of the tissues.

⁓ So the list goes on, but blood for blood flow, elastin, collagen production, and then ATP or energy in the cells, that’s going to have, in my opinion, more robust cell that is going to be able to react to the other therapy that the public health physio is asking the client to do between sessions. So I’ve seen, like truly firsthand in my practice, women that will use light therapy, they come back and like, they’ve got it. Like they’re doing the exercises.

truly more effectively than women that aren’t. And I should add the device that we work with at Fringe, it’s a pelvic wand that also has a vibration ⁓ mode on it. So there’s four different levels of vibration. And I will more often than not also ask someone to use vibration. If they have pain, inflammation, ⁓ irritation, et cetera, I’ll be asking someone to use low, low levels of vibration.

to help relax and reduce hypertonicity or like increase tone in the pelvic floor muscles. And on the flip side, if someone has, I’ll say more laxity and we’re trying to work on strengthening, then I’ll be asking them to use a higher level vibration ⁓ also in the wand. So you can use different modes and that will help that brain to muscle connection. It’s not like a tens unit. It’s not ⁓ at all like uncomfortable to use.

it’s still a fairly low level vibration on the whole scheme of or like the whole continuum of vibration. But it does really help women identify the muscles that they are trying to work. Right. So often I will use like manual stimulation within my practice and say, okay, these are these are the muscles we’re trying to target. And one will say, okay, great, great. And they’ll get them within the session. But without repeated practice between sessions with

vibration therapy being a really amazing adjunct to that, ⁓ then they do come back saying like, are these the muscles? Have I got this? Like, you know, there’s a little bit of uncertainty. So if we add light therapy for all of the energy and blood flow and so on, and then a higher level vibration therapy, I do find that women will return and they will understand the exercises and be really using the correct muscles. So that’s a huge benefit on two different sort of populations, your pain sort of

population, ⁓ discomfort, inflammation, and then on the opposite where there’s more like say laxity and strength that needs to be developed. So those are sort of two examples.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (35:17)

Right. You know, and would also add, our season’s been very focused on sexual health and wellness this season is with the research that does exist on using vibration, not just for proprioceptive input. So for the listener, proprioceptive input is just where am I in space? You know, if I raise one arm up and close my eyes, can I match the position of the other arm to it? And,

know, pelvic health being essentially orthopedics in a cave, orthopedics in the dark. ⁓ It makes it very hard for patients to understand where things are in space. And when it comes to sexual health, that’s incredibly important because if we don’t, if you can’t identify where the muscles are, then you’re less likely to have the desire you want, have the arousal you want, reach ⁓ orgasm like you want. If A, the muscles are weak,

Well, and you be, don’t know where they are. ⁓ And so I’ve found that using vibration as a tool towards helping people achieve their sexual goals is just ⁓ really important because sexual health and wellbeing is really on that Maslow’s base hierarchy of needs, right? Food, housing, shelter, sex, et cetera, ⁓ the basics. And so I find it as a really, ⁓ to be really beneficial tool that I think

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (36:31)

Yes, I love that.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (36:43)

can oftentimes people don’t think about it. They don’t think about, they come into the pelvic health physio, PT or OT and are like, I have pain or I’m leaking. And they think about it in those terms, right? But the whole sexual health and wellness kind of revolution that needs to happen, particularly in women’s health is kind of points toward these things too. With the tissues being more robust, more responsive, stronger, et cetera, it lives. You look like you’re on the edge of your seat. What is it? What is it?

Liz Frey, MSCPT (37:11)

I I was gonna

add, I was gonna add, for menopausal women or postpartum women, we do see a lot of tissue fragility and dryness, and that does impact ⁓ sexual wellness, sexual health. And so I specifically tell my women that are feeling dry or fragile, usually because of reduced estrogen, but if they use the pelvic wand prior to intimacy,

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (37:13)

Tell me.

Yeah, totally.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (37:40)

That can be a huge game changer. So not only do we have the vibration, as you mentioned, ⁓ but we can also use light therapy to help increase blood flow, which we’ve already mentioned, which helps increase secretions, right? So it helps with like, I’ll say lubrication, natural lubrication. So I’ll have women use the pelvic wand for 10 minutes prior to intimacy. And that has been a huge, I’ll say game changer, like a big help.

to women ⁓ for intimacy. So a really great application.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (38:13)

Yeah,

yeah, definitely. mean, and you know, also for listeners consider like you may be fine right now. Maybe you’re 48 or whatever, whatever the age is, 45, 48, 50, whatever. And you’re like, I’m good, I’m good. I don’t want my patients to wake up one day and go, I’m not good. This is not good. Now I’m bleeding, you know, after sex, the tissues are dry, they’re fragile. I don’t want anyone to get to that point where they have to experience those things. And I…

I definitely get on my soapbox about it because our current system is set up to allow them to do that, to allow them to fall off the wagon, get run over by it, get up and go, what just happened? And then someone might say, well, that’s perimenopause. Well, they could have prevented that entire snowball issue of things falling apart with just a little bit of preemptive care. So just had to throw that in there. Don’t, ladies, you’re listening. Don’t wait until.

there’s vaginal dryness and fragility and bleeding and pain with sex, that kind of thing. Get out in front of it because it does not hurt to start doing that now. It also changes ⁓ just the input ⁓ in terms of vibration ⁓ and proprioception changes sensitivity. Sex is a use it or lose it thing. When you start to lose sensitivity, I often have patients come in, sit down and go,

I just, just, I just not feeling it, just not feeling that anymore. So sensation is a big deal. ⁓ So that’s another one. But you talked about endometriosis Liz, and I really want to dig into that because that is a major, major focus of the show in general is pelvic pain. And with endo being now at least one in nine women, that’s really common. That’s more common than diabetes. And we know how much

money and attention and research goes into diabetes, right? So I want to give a spotlight to endometriosis for a second, because women are desperate for relief. They’re also vulnerable to over-promising. what does the, Gen, what does the research say about light therapy for endo? Is there human data? are we talking about, you know, how are we talking about light therapy being able to be used in an efficacious way with endo?

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (40:27)

Mm-hmm.

Yes, okay. So first thing I will say is I’m very excited about the potential for the use of light therapy and endometriosis. The second thing I would say is that we are sorely lacking in human studies in this area. In 2022 though, there was this wonderful abstract that was published at a conference. there was a, this is an industry specific study. this, the makers of the

product did the research. And it’s the only one that we have that ⁓ was endometriosis patient specific. So it was a group of endometriosis patients that ⁓ were given ⁓ photobiomodulation therapy. Now the tool was using a laser light delivery, but as we know, we can generally match the dose. And just for listeners, how we match the dose is it’s really a simple calculation based on time and the intensity of the product.

⁓ the device that’s being used. So let’s say you had a laser that you use for 45 seconds. If you had a lower and a moderate intensity LED device, you might be using that for 10 minutes. So it’s definitely comparable in terms of the ultimate dose, but very different with respect to the time that the device is being used for. So in this study, they administered the therapy was done over the course of eight weeks, a couple of times a week.

And there was a very significant reduction in the number of people who were reporting having moderate to severe pain. So overall that pain intensity really decreased. And it was approximately 50 % of the population that showed this decrease from moderate to severe down to a much less severe pain rating. So a super exciting study, but unfortunately there was no follow-up publication with that.

So it was published as a conference abstract and the full text publication, which would have gone through peer review, give us all the details of the methods that study has yet to be published.  There could be many reasons for that, right? The people who conducted the study may just have gotten onto other products. They didn’t have the time. They didn’t have the interest, or maybe it wasn’t a really well designed study and it didn’t, you they didn’t think it was going to get through peer review. We just don’t know. But what we do know is that there are

a small handful of other studies on chronic pelvic pain that have used a mixed population that included endometriosis patients. And in those studies, there have been, as I said, there have been a few of them, they would find about 65 % of the population would respond with a dramatic pain reduction. So what I would say is there’s pretty, there’s pretty good preliminary evidence that that pain component of endo

can be reduced. ⁓ Do we need well-designed studies and many of them? Absolutely, we really do. What we don’t know is, is it going to be acting at the level of the lesions? What’s going to be happening on that cellular level? If we can look to some of the in vitro studies and the animal studies that

have looked at either endometrial cells in vitro or the endometrium function in an animal model. And there is evidence to show us that those cells are responsive to light therapy. So again, there’s this like hypothesis generating mechanism that suggests that there may be a benefit. ⁓ One that’s kind of interesting is an area that has been relatively well researched is dysmenorrhea or painful menstruation.

So we know that application of light, typically that’s done to the outer abdomen. It’s not done intra-vaginally, but you can apply light on the outer abdominal surface using something like a wrap. And we see that there is a decrease in pain, but there’s also that’s been mapped to a decrease in the uterine prostaglandin synthesis. So again, molecular mechanisms, lots of potential, probably quite clearly a reduction in actual pain and inflammation, but…

question marks as to what’s going to be happening at the level of those lesions. So that’s the answer for you at this point.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (44:50)

Yeah, which is important because we want to be careful not to make claims when discussing red light therapy in endo. So I think that you made that distinction really well. I think Liz is someone who sees endo patients and that is a vast majority of who I see. ⁓ How do you see it being beneficial? Like, okay, so someone’s had excision surgery.

or some kind of reconstruction, right? Oftentimes a vaginal reconstruction or lysis of adhesions or other kind of complex pelvic surgery.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (45:30)

So for sure with anyone that I see will sort of will start very gradual, very slow, make sure that the client feels that they are ⁓ monitoring symptoms and very much in control of what we’re doing when it comes to light therapy. I nine out of 10 times start with external light therapy. So using something like a wrap over the abdominal area. It’s a fantastic sort of introduction to light therapy.

I will generally start with 10 to 20 minutes of light therapy over the lower abdominal area. And then as the woman feels more comfortable, potentially feels benefits from light therapy. Usually the benefits that women will report are that they feel more mobile, their tissues feel softer, they feel like they can breathe into the sort of like lower rib cage abdominal area better. These are the things that

that women feel and also just more relaxed with using like external light therapy. So I’d say those are the, that’s what people report to me. So then when the woman feels comfortable, ⁓ then I will introduce using light therapy, like vaginally. So I would say with most of my endo patients, I will use ⁓ a wand or recommend using a wand externally along with the vulva area before we would even entertain anything internal, right?

These are really highly sensitive tissues, I mean, as you know. And so when it comes to using ⁓ vaginal light therapy, I’ll claw back and I will start with five minutes. And our wand actually has a ⁓ mode where you can use 50 % of the light intensity. So I will start with that. So I will start so, so gradually because I want people to have a positive experience and feel comfortable using the light therapy.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (47:16)

you

Liz Frey, MSCPT (47:25)

And then we will increase by a minute, we will increase to full intensity and then even use the wand at the entrance, like the vaginal entrance. And then ultimately the goal for many women would be to use it ⁓ internally. So I will work with dilators if the woman isn’t ⁓ comfortable ⁓ introducing ⁓ anything vaginally that is the size of the wand.

and allow for tissue stretch while still using the wand externally, right? Because we want to get the benefits of the wand, the low level vibration, increased energy, increased blood flow, all these beautiful things for the tissues, for their health, and then using it ⁓ internally. So that would be like my, I’ll say my progression that I use with women when I’m working with light therapy. And I would say every woman progresses at a different rate.

and I would never want it to feel rushed. I always want to work with women even prior to introducing light therapy on breath work, on relaxation, opening positions of the pelvis, like movement. I mean, there’s so many other things as a pelvic health physio that we layer with this. This isn’t just a, ⁓ you’ve had surgery, let’s use light therapy. No, this is gonna be one of the things that we add. And it’s usually…

Nine times out of 10, it’s not the first thing I add. It’s something that I’ll layer into the treatment, right? Yeah.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (48:55)

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what I’m hearing is endometriosis is probably one of the most involved conditions that we can see that are wrapped up in a whole lot of other conditions. So I would love to hear Gen, your perspective on research from chronic pelvic pain, because see, endo falls under that. Perimenopause, menopause, well, that’s a season of life that people with endometriosis are going to go through. Postpartum, again, if they have endometriosis, you know, that’s…

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (49:14)

Okay.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (49:26)

all of those conditions can kind of be compounded for the person with endo. So what are some of the research highlights for those other conditions? So just to hit on them again, chronic pelvic pain, menopause, perimenopause, and postpartum.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (49:42)

Yeah, so if we’re looking at that chronic pelvic pain, I did mention that there’s this handful of studies and they’ve been again, industry sponsored.  They were observational, not well controlled. So we have to take the results with a grain of salt. ⁓ But we do find that typically, the administration protocol will be around two times a week for four weeks. So a total of eight treatment sessions and ⁓ consistently across

the three studies that I’m thinking of particularly, there’s been almost uniformly a decrease or a response rate of about 65%. So about 65 % of people are responding with a drop in a pain rating scale of at least two points. So that’s quite significant. There is definitely a noticeable decrease in pain.

I think if we look at this from the perspective of what the mechanisms are, and we look at all the other pain literature, right? Mitochondria in a knee joint is really the same as mitochondria in the pelvis. Like we don’t, we wouldn’t expect necessarily, there’s no reason to think that there’s going to be tissue specific, you know, unique responses. So we’ve got that body of literature and that mechanism. And so ⁓ seeing that consistency in the pain response across these studies,

really does suggest that yes, this is very real, but certainly does need to be replicated in a more of a controlled placebo controlled study. So you talked about menopause and menopause is one of the ones that I hate. It’s so frustrating for Liz and I because we see so much potential here and we talk about this all the time that there is an unfortunate lack of research. Now where we are starting to see a little bit come out,

is the vaginal dryness and actually looking at that vaginal atrophy and seeing what those tissues look like. Preliminary, of starting to see some evidence that yes, there is the potential for benefit there. And then when we’re talking about menopause and perimenopause though, we’ve got obviously all of these pelvic health applications for red light therapy, which we’re dealing with this limitation of research, but we do have other things that

are so common to menopause and perimenopause that we do know red light therapy can be quite helpful for. So things like ⁓ your aging effects on the skin, things like cognition, applying the light to the head, ⁓ mood benefits. Even when we’re talking about the experience of stress and the lack of sleep that can sometimes manifest during this period, we know that application of light, especially across the body, can help us to shift into a more parasympathetic

tone, which ⁓ reduces that sympathetic stress that is so common. Even things like hair loss, which is common during menopause, light therapy, specifically red light therapy applied to the hair follicles is beneficial. we’ve got, you if we’re talking about that menopause and perimenopause population, there’s so many different applications, including the pelvic health.

that I think is very exciting. And I do know from looking at, you know, the registration of clinical trials and conversations that we’re having about some of the research studies that we want to do at Fringe, this research is going to be forthcoming within the next decade. It’s just ⁓ something that ⁓ we don’t have a lot at this point. So kind of circling back to that pelvic health, we know that there’s going to be the benefit with respect to pain and then that

tissue ⁓ mobility, the integrity of the extracellular matrix proteins, the lubrication, there’s a lot of potential there. And then of course, the sexual support. So one of the things, Ginger, I forgot to mention when ⁓ you were talking about sort of that nerve response and women feeling potentially numb and not really being able to connect there, that’s absolutely also something that we have a reasonable body of literature for ⁓ in other areas. So for example, we’ve got

studies on nerve regeneration, where you’ve got an animal model and you have a nerve injury and you apply red light therapy to it, there’s a very noticeable significant increase in the regeneration of nerves that have been damaged. We have a big body of literature with respect to peripheral neuropathy. So we know that the nerves are very responsive and I certainly expect that the nerves in the pelvis are also going to be responsive. So any pelvic health condition

you know, in menopause, for example, in ⁓ any kind of wound healing as well, we have that potential for benefit with that application.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (54:29)

That’s ⁓ really encouraging. And it made me think of one thing because ⁓ I also do men’s pelvic health. ⁓ Really out of necessity that if we talk about women’s pelvic health being available, then men’s health, pelvic health accessibility, it seems to be even more compromised because a lot of women will go into pelvic health, but then don’t do the men’s health portion of that. And so I ended up seeing men’s health because they’re

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (54:43)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (54:57)

Well, there was nobody else to do it. ⁓ So I do see those cases and I see cases of  painful ejaculation, premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, ⁓ whether or not it’s associated with a vascular issue or a testosterone or hormonal driven issue, just like with women, right? And so we have, I know you guys have the product of the amazing. ⁓

intravaginal wind, but what about for external use, know, for men’s pelvic health? Like, what’s the product that would best fit, you know, that situation?

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (55:35)

Liz, have you used, in the same way that Ginger has, have you used it with any male populations?

Liz Frey, MSCPT (55:41)

I have, so I actually do treat men as well. Ginger, exactly for the same reason as you mentioned, men presented at my clinic and said, like, you know, do you treat men? I need help. And ⁓ often it is for incontinence that I see men for ⁓ post-prostectomy or like surgeries or what have you. And then also for erectile dysfunction. I’d say that those would be the two.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (55:51)

Yeah, where do I go?

Liz Frey, MSCPT (56:08)

populations that I see, I say I see most, I don’t see that many men because they truly don’t present for pelvic health therapy, which I think there has to be more advocacy for. So I’ll just sort of say do a shout out for that where I think, yeah, I think that will be something that is going to gain momentum in the coming years. And so yes, I have recommended using the pelvic wand rectally, and I consulted with a male pelvic health physio.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (56:19)

Yeah.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (56:36)

along the journey of developing the wand and gave the dimensions and said, like, what do you think? Would this be  an okay size, et cetera? And the response was, yes, this is a completely safe size and it can be recommended. So I have recommended it to men to use rectally with success. So that’s definitely something that I’ve used.

And I’ve also used our wrap in that lower abdominal region. So for like different conditions, but ⁓ both of them I’ve used in practice successfully.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (57:16)

Is it safe to say that you could also use the wrap because for the superficial pelvic floor, for the bolus spongesus, et cetera, that they could just use the abdominal wrap, you know, over the penis as well? Yeah.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (57:24)

Yes, 100%.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (57:26)

Yeah.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (57:28)

Yep, I’ve done that too.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (57:30)

Yeah, it just seems like a really practical application and there’s just so much chronic pelvic pain surrounding that. And they end up getting ⁓ much like women do kind of bumped around from, urologists will say, it’s clear, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s all in your head. And then they might actually get gaslight, you know, inadvertently by pelvic PT’s who just say, it’s just central sensitization. You just need to relax. You just need to do some deep breathing. It’ll be fine, you know. ⁓

Liz Frey, MSCPT (57:57)

I’ve had people

come into my practice, like men that have come in and said, well, the surgeon said everything went well. The surgeon said, I just need to wait. In time, everything will come back. In time, my discomfort will go away or my leakage will resolve. And we know that yes, time is one variable, fine. But if we’re not doing something about it, then time can continue on and someone can continue to have their symptoms, right? We actually have to be proactive and actually manage.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (58:04)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (58:27)

the symptoms.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (58:28)

Yeah. And I think that’s important too, for the listener to realize ⁓ that again, to go back to what you said Liz, about it being an adjunct, that you’re pairing it with pelvic PT, with orthopedic rehab, you’re doing breath work, you’re doing the lifestyle medicine pieces, the sleep, the physical activity, know, environmental disruptors, working on mobility, it’s all the things. There’s so many variables. Like we could just list and list and list how

the two things could end up going together. I think one of the questions as we kind of shore things up here is that people would commonly ask that I’ve heard is, can you use it too much? Like, how can you do this wrong? Is there some way that you can mess this up?

Liz Frey, MSCPT (59:17)

Yeah, that’s a really, that’s a very valid good question. So we recommend using light therapy three to five times a week. And so that would be, you can use up to seven times, you can use it daily, but three to five times seems to be a sweet spot. ⁓ And depending on the device, like whether it be a wrap or the wand or a face mask, what have you, ⁓ different amounts of time, because there’s different tissue sensitivity.

So for our wrap, we recommend a 20 minute ⁓ session using light therapy, whereas for the wand, we have it set for 10 minutes. And there is a timer on all of our devices. So that really does help make this easy for a client to administer and to use. So three to five times a week for 10 or 20, depending on what device you’re using. And yeah, too much of a good thing.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (59:56)

Yeah.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (1:00:11)

isn’t a good thing, right? There are very few, ⁓ I’ll say contraindications or negative side effects of using it too much, but you might not be getting any increase in gains by using it more. That’s how I describe it to my clients. Gen, you might wanna chime in.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (1:00:28)

Yeah, for sure. So, we generally say as a rule of thumb, no more than one application of light per body part per 24 hours. And this has to do with this very clearly mapped out cellular response to light therapy, which shows that over the course of about 12 to even sometimes as far as 48 hours, but typically it’s about 24 hours, the effects will be cumulative. So it’s not like when you take

you know, a medication and then it wears off in six hours. It’s somewhat similar to that in that you can stack the light therapy on top of each other if you do it repeatedly in that short window of time that’s responsive. It will build up and when we look at the cellular responses, we can sort of say it’s like a Goldilocks effect. Too little is going to do nothing. There’s this nice middle range where you’re going to see

benefits and then we also have this range where you can stack up so much on there that your cell doesn’t actually respond beneficially anymore and under even more stress or even more provision of light therapy you could induce oxidative stress and not have in fact have a somewhat negative response. If you’re using a device that is powered or intensity at a low to moderate level

It’s very difficult to get to that state where you’re actually inducing the stress. But if you have a more intense device, or if you’re using a laser, which is very ⁓ high intensity, then you can have those adverse events where you see the increase in oxidative stress and even thermal injury if you’re looking at, ⁓ for example, using a near-infrared laser, you can have that happen.

For the most part, that recommendation of three to five times a week is very, very solid across the board, across the indications that we’re talking about today. Recognizing that it’s safe to do it once per day, we recommend not doing it more than once per day because of this cumulative effect. And doing it once per day doesn’t necessarily yield better results than doing it three times a week or four times a week. That’s what the research shows.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:02:47)

That’s a good distinction to make. Yeah, yeah, Liz.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (1:02:50)

And I’ll just chime in with some like say contraindications or ⁓ like sort of yellow flag situations. ⁓ Because I don’t want to end without mentioning those. But one reason to not use light therapy would be over an active cancer site. So some women are looking at using light therapy like for pelvic conditions associated with cancers. If you have an active cancer, we’re not looking to increase the energy to those cells, right?

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (1:02:53)

Hmm.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:02:54)

Mm-hmm.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (1:03:19)

So please don’t use light therapy for that situation. You might also be taking a medication or using some sort of a topical cream that makes you ⁓ sensitive to light. And so I would say proceed with extreme caution there. And that’s where our devices have a mode where you can put 50 % light intensity on and you can obviously reduce the time. So it’s not a contraindication, but it is a definite, hey, let’s proceed with caution.

let’s monitor your skin response, et cetera. Pregnancy is another one. I sort of smile saying that because I think pregnancy is sort of this unchartered territory where we just say, don’t do it. We don’t know what the effects are. There isn’t research looking at light therapy on pregnant women. And so ⁓ for an abundance of caution, we just say, don’t. Don’t do it if you’re pregnant. I think that those are my big ones.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:04:15)

Those are the big

ones.

Liz Frey, MSCPT (1:04:16)

against anything because there aren’t really very many contraindications. It’s a super, super safe ⁓ adjunct therapy to be using. Yeah.

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (1:04:17)

Now.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:04:26)

This has been such a helpful conversation because red light therapy is a hot topic, no pun intended, even though it doesn’t generate that much heat, right, from what we’ve learned today. But the curiosity is high. ⁓ The noise out there in the market, it’s really loud. People need that grounded information. And what I think listeners are taking away or that we can take away is that photobiomodulation. ⁓

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (1:04:33)

Thank you.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:04:53)

may have a role in supporting that cellular energy, inflammation, modulation, pain, tissue recovery, and rehab. ⁓ we need to frame it honestly. Nothing is a magic wand. We wish we had that. And it’s not a replacement for skilled pelvic health care or medical diagnoses or surgical management when needed or hormone therapy when indicated or comprehensive rehab plan.

But it is like, you know, like you mentioned Liz, it can be a really wonderful adjunct and it’s one more tool to support healing. And when you’re working with something like complex pelvic pain, endometriosis, that could be layered on top of postpartum recovery, menopause, surgical healing. can, that sounds like it just has so much potential. ⁓ So for listeners who wanna learn more about fringe products, education,

Can you tell us a little bit more about that where they can find y’all?

Dr. Genevieve Newton, DC, PhD (1:05:56)

Yeah, we have our website is fringeheals.com and I write a lot in an education capacity for our customers. So if you want information on red light therapy for a wide range of applications, including a number of pelvic health conditions, you can go to our website, go to the blogs and learn tab or the learn tab and then the blogs and research tab. We also have ⁓ an email list that we send out emails. 

We don’t overdo it ⁓ once a week and then once a month we’ll send out a link to a new blog that comes out. So you can sign up for our email list on our website. We’re also on Instagram and TikTok. ⁓ And then for people who are really interested in learning more about red light therapy, including red light therapy for pelvic health.

We do have a one hour course that’s free to anybody. And then we also have a course that is a four hour course that has some continuing education credits associated with it. So ⁓ we have an affiliated website called fringe-u.com. That’s Fringe University where we have our more structured formal continuing education and people are welcome to go there. And there are some free videos as I said there as well. Liz, do you have anything to add about that?

Liz Frey, MSCPT (1:07:13)

No, that covers it. If people have questions, we get so many questions from practitioners, from potential customers, and the email for our customer service, which usually gets forwarded to Gen and I if it’s a pelvic question, is  at hi@fringeheals.com. also feel free to reach out with any questions. We don’t obviously offer specific medical advice, but we are happy to answer questions as to how Red Light may ⁓

potentially be beneficial or affect your condition.

Dr. Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:07:47)

Thank you so much, Gen and Liz, for joining me today, for helping us look at red light therapy through both the science and the rehab lens. ⁓ That’s ⁓ just a special thing that we could grab both you guys today to do that. And to the listener, as always, this podcast is about education, it’s about empowerment. We’re not substituting that for individualized medical care.

If you’re dealing with pelvic pain, if you’re dealing with endometriosis, postpartum symptoms, menopause related changes, or complex health concerns, ⁓ reach out. There are multiple pelvic health lists across ⁓ the world and North America and the United States ⁓ to find pelvic health therapists who can help you understand what’s appropriate for your body. until next time, keep asking those questions, keep advocating for your care. And remember, your pelvic health deserves a voice.