Ep. 190 Part 1 "Heal Your Eyes with Red Light: Miracle or Myth?" - Dr. Robert Dotson

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]For decades, medicine searched for a drug to protect the eye. The answer was never in a lab. It was in light. Dr. Robert Dodson has spent 40 years proving that specific wavelengths of red light can heal, protect, and multiply the cells that power your vision. Today, he shares everything and it changes how you think about eye care forever.

[00:00:24]>> Macular degeneration remains one of the leading causes of vision loss worldwide.

[00:00:29]And for decades, treatment has largely focused on managing damage after it occurs. But what if light itself could help protect retinal cells before vision is permanently lost? Photobiom modulation or PBM is an emerging science as one of the most exciting developments in eye care today showing promising results not only in slowing age related macular degeneration but also dryey disease post-lac healing glaucoma and ocular inflammation. Today's guest Dr. Robert Dodson has been on the forefront of this technology long before most clinicians had ever even heard the term.

[00:01:11]With more than 40 years of experience in medical device innovation, over three decades of clinical experience with opthomic laser systems and thousands of anterior segment surgeries performed during his career, opthalmologist Dr. Dodson brings a rare combination of surgeon, scientist, and innovator to this rapidly evolving field. He has also trained generations of opthalmologists and lectures internationally on the science shaping the future of vision care. And today we're going to explore a question that could change how we think about treating eye disease altogether.

[00:01:51]Can specific wavelengths of light actually rescue struggling retinal cells? And are we approaching a future where vision loss is prevented rather than treated? Dr. Dodson, welcome to the Open Your Eyes podcast with Dr. Carrie Gelp.

[00:02:06]>> Well, thank thanks for the opportunity to uh speak with you today, Carrie. I appreciate the time. Try to help where I can.

[00:02:15]>> Kind of oversold me to the public there, though.

[00:02:19]>> Well, I appreciate that, Dr. the Dodson.

[00:02:20]You have quite a resume. You've helped many, many people along the years. I want to ask you, how did you get interested in photobiomodulation or PBM with more screen usage and indoor time, myopia, also known as nearsightedness, is increasing and getting worse in children. Now, certified eye doctors can prescribe my site one day, the first and only FDA approved soft contact lens to slow myopia progression in age appropriate children. Visit coopervision.com to find a Brilliant Futures certified eye doctor near you.

[00:02:56]>> Uh I I I'm mainly a a anterior segment surgeon. I I finished um med school in 1974, University of Tennessee, and then did a residency and everything there. And I got into inoperative lenses very early. So I had the good fortune to meet all the original implant surgeons and uh designers of lenses and everything. All of whom are dead now and nobody remembers them. But but uh as I went through my practice over the next 20 years or so about 2000 I was looking for another revenue stream to add to my declining revenue uh for the practice.

[00:03:40]So I I explored cosmetic applications, you know, uh skin rejuvenation, that type of thing because it fit kind of with refractive surgery.

[00:03:52]And uh I started looking at various devices and I had a salesperson bring in a uh device called gentle waves which was manufactured by light bioscience.

[00:04:03]They're now out of business, but gentle waves was designed by dermatologist Dr. McDaniels up in Virginia. And it was a flashing a panel of flashing yellow LEDs. The treatment was 35 seconds. 35 seconds.

[00:04:18]>> Wow.

[00:04:19]>> So I thought, you know, this can't be doing anything. But I thought, okay, we'll try it. Leave this device and we'll try it. So I started uh trying on patients and uh lo and behold I had patients get excited about it because they could tell a difference in their skin tone and their relatives their you know their uh husbands or wives would be able to tell a difference after one treatment a 35 second treatment. So this caught my attention. So I thought what is going on with this light thing? So I began to explore light therapy and the history of it. And lo and behold, light therapy, color therapy, it's been around for 6,000 years or longer probably is used in ancient Indian China, 19th century on up. Uh Dr. Finson, who was a Danish um I think a general physician. He got a Nobel Prize in 1903 for using light in the treatment of tuberculosis for instance. So this has been around quite a while and basically uh discovered that certain wavelengths of light can activate various mechanisms within a cell and it has to do with activation of mitochondria basically and increasing energy or ATP production in a cell. It all kind of revolves around that, but it's much broader than that. And specific doses or wavelengths of light can up and down regulate many different genes which can increase healing times and decrease inflammation. Once I got into this, I I had some u um experimental devices built in various wavelengths and uh started using that for uh wound healing, cataract, lasic surgery and that kind of thing. If I if I could interrupt you first, how did you choose the wavelengths? How did you know which >> based on the previous research there there's a fair amount of uh research out there in that was done in the 60s and 70s and most of it really in modern times really caught on around early 60s.

[00:06:33]A Hungarian general surgeon uh Dr. Messer M- S E R used a Ruby laser to enhance wound healing and it grew hair and he discovered all sorts of things around that. So u following that there was a cohort of you know crazy people like me that kind of saw that and began to use uh low-level lasers and LED based devices which came along in the 70s and 80s to uh deliver specific dosages if you will of different wavelengths to tissue to enhance healing time decrease inflammation that kind of thing. in the electron uh transport chain producing uh energy and ATP, >> right?

[00:07:22]>> How important is NADH in that in that chain? And do you ever recommend that people take NAD to enhance along with light?

[00:07:31]>> It it it does it it does help and um specific wavelengths of light you can enhance NAD production. So you can speed up mitochondrial function and it it actually can increase uh the number of mitochondria. It can increase the number of mitochondria within a cell. Uh but depending on the wavelength it also affects other targets within the cell from cell matrix to uh tubular microtubules to u mitochondria we talked about. But there's a whole host of things that respond to specific wavelengths and amounts of energy. We'll call it a dose just to compare it to a pharmaceutical thing, but it you know the dose revolves around the wavelength and the energy or density and the time delivered to a to a target.

[00:08:25]>> So so light has a neural protection effect.

[00:08:30]you know opthalmology and optometry we've been looking for a drug for neurop protection but light is staring us right in the face and >> absolutely absolutely and that's uh formal I I I treated a few some glaucoma patients and saw reduced pressure and improvement visual field but I I never had the time and the money to put in a formal study on glaucoma that needs to be done there's a bunch of things that should be used for. It does work for aritis, too. I used on several aritis patients over the years, and they you can get pretty prompt decrease in pain.

[00:09:08]Same thing with herpetic keratitis.

[00:09:11]Um, any type of inflammatory condition, you like a traumatic corial abrasion, those kind of things. I had a u complete corial abrasion uh in a young person and uh using a little red light got that thing reepitheialized in less than 24 hours you know that's pretty impressive when you see that. So what what wavelength of light were you using and how did you >> 670 uh initially what I had was I started using was a a a warp 10 warp warp 10 these devices were uh 660 670 wavelength LED base and Ron Ignatius with quantum devices started a company built around using LED devices because he got into it he was doing some NASA research and they were putting these devices on space shuttles and stuff to test on both uh biological cells but plant cells and that kind of thing to see healing times or growing times. And so he built a little home use type device. Uh he's I think the company still exists, but Ron died probably 15 years ago. Uh anyway, for a while you could get these devices and this is this is a custom one that they made for me that has some infrared in it. But anyway, I was using a device like this and it's about a 30 second twominute kind of treatment and uh I used one this particular device I used when I was still in practice. I treated all my cataracts pre and posttop with this device and my LASIC and uh PRK uh patients too. And would patients go home with the device?

[00:10:57]>> No.

[00:10:58]>> No, I just did it in the office because this is the crazy thing. Uh as little as one one treatment in in these situations, it can have effect for weeks. One treatment.

[00:11:09]>> And how would you do it with the IV closed? And what's the way then? That's six.

[00:11:13]>> I've done both. You can the safest thing to do was with it closed, but it that's going to knock down the energy level probably 90%. So these are safe enough though. You can do open eye, which is I used to do that.

[00:11:26]>> And that's 670.

[00:11:28]>> Yeah.

[00:11:29]>> And uh how much was something like that cost? A practitioner.

[00:11:33]>> They were uh they were fairly expensive.

[00:11:36]I want I want to say they were about 600 bucks, something like that. They don't make them anymore. You can't get these things. The closest thing we got now is And I think you you've talked with my partner uh Graham married.

[00:11:49]>> I did.

[00:11:50]>> He probably showed you one of one of those. Did >> he did?

[00:11:52]>> Did he talk to you about that?

[00:11:53]>> Uhhuh. And that and that's what like that's like $300.

[00:11:57]>> Yeah. They're they're what?

[00:11:59]>> Like $300, >> I think. So $300 to $400. Yeah. Out of Canada.

[00:12:04]>> So I have to ask you this question. This this is $670. Someone could use it at home uh for about $400, $3.99 or whatever it cost. Now the Valadia device that Alcon is selling is $80,000. And I know that's that has three wavelengths in it, >> right? But it these the prices are this there something as low as $400 and Valadia is is is 80,000. So it's confusing what the practitioner what we could what I >> I think it's uh the Vala is probably more effective and that's why u Graham and I had patents based around using multiple wavelengths because it it's got three different wavelengths in it and each of those wavelengths targets a specific spot in the cell.

[00:12:51]So um that approach to it I think you get a better response than just the plain red but red red light by itself will do a lot and all our work though was done with multiple wavelengths. Uh Graham pursued building this uh based on just the red wavelength mainly because of the patent issues with the latest device but I think this has great application. It would be an adjunct to a validated device and uh people can treat themselves at home. I I use mine two or three times a week as I'm hoping that some of those photons are getting to my brain up here. So >> So we want to in what what the red light does it increases mitochondria. So by increasing mitochondria uh it helps with ATP, >> increases cell damage, increases nitric oxide, >> downregulates inflammation uh and something that's very interesting, it downregulates pro apotic proteins.

[00:13:55]>> Yes.

[00:13:56]>> Can you talk about that in form as far as macular degeneration? So the the cells are starting to die in macular degeneration and this actually prevents the cells from dying decreasing apoptosis.

[00:14:08]>> Right? I I basically think about this as just uh charging a battery. You're putting energy into a cell and the thing that mainstream medicine kind of has gone down a different path than alipathic medicine anyway. But every cell in our body is is uh has the uh firmware that enables it to heal itself and fight off infections and rejuvenate itself and rebuild things. So if you can activate those mechanisms so the cell repairs itself then that's how I look at this. This is a mechanism you can use to trigger a cell to uh activate its own repair mechanisms. So with uh downregulating uh apotic genes and stuff you may and we I think it does delay deterioration from aging but also it enables uh growth of new cells.

[00:15:10]So um this is why you can see like I was talking about earlier in epithelial cells you see a tremendous enhancement of uh epithelial replication to cover a a defect.

[00:15:22]>> If we look at uh one of the things it does is it it it causes angioenesis promotion. So do we have to worry about that as somebody's going from dry macular generation to wet that it would increase ang interest interesting it does not appear to in you worry about this with cancer too it does not appear to affect cancer cells like it does normal cells so they don't respond there's something wrong with the mechanism of cancer cells so it doesn't really respond to the light like the others we use le a yellow wavelength in the VA device and that actually seems to suppress neovascularization.

[00:16:08]It it decreases ve that's why we put that in there. So we have not seen increase in in endothelial in vascular neovascularization in any of the treatments that we've done over the past 15 years.

[00:16:28]So it doesn't seem to affect that. Now having said that it does it can be helpful for like uh you do want vascularization like in a transplant like in a kidney transplant or some organ transplant and it may be that it's helpful for that by using more energy and you can kind of drive the response based on a dose curve just like a pharmaceutical. If you get too little you don't get anything. If you get too much you get an opposite effect. There's a lot of evidence for that. So part of the problem with this is determining what optimal treatment ranges are for a particular application because no nobody's done that work until and that's why we did dry macular degeneration.

[00:17:10]There's really no other therapy outside of maybe some vitamin supplements and lifestyle change kind of things that have minimal effect. So, uh, that's why we kind of early decided if we're going to spend our few bucks and time and stuff on anything, we'll look at dry macular degeneration. And we did demonstrate that you can not only decrease the rate of deterioration, but actually improve vision some. And um, the effect is longlasting.

[00:17:43]Now with VEGF, it can increase expression and or andor decrease expression depending on I guess as it works the way it could work with the body to in the correct way. Is is am I looking at that? Am I looking at that right?

[00:17:59]>> Well, you do you do want increased vascularization like for healing um like an organ transplant again or a surgical incision. Uh so there's a fine line there, but we have that's one reason we think the yellow suppresses indothelial growth, but we haven't seen it with red either in the in the eye. Okay. So, >> and how about going out in the sun? You know, just being out in the sun in the morning. Uh you know, I guess about 50% of the sun is infrared and uh >> right and the sun, of course, you know, the earth's rotating. So depending on the distance through the atmosphere early morning and evening so you get a red shift. So you get a lot of uh red leaning light in the middle of the day and high noon you're looking at more UV light blue wings which are more damaging especially the UV wavelengths are damaging to uh cell structures DNA that kind of thing. So that's why you you get sunburn and you end up getting cancer in some situations and that kind of thing.

[00:19:04]But um there's a tradition in u multiple religions ancient religions like Hinduism where people have a tradition of going out in the morning and greeting the sun and and staring at the sun you know openeyed and stuff and there's some u physiologic benefit probably to that >> and some of the dermatologists are changing their opinion on being being out in the sun you know because a lot of the typical dermatologist ologist say no sun at all and now some of them are are coming around and saying well safe sun is good and I was wondering your opinion on that >> ba basically the dermatology went down the path of uh blaming everything on too much sun and uh it's all tied a lot of it's tied to revenue enhancement without going further into that but when you block the sun from people and that's an issue now anyway because everybody's inside glued to these stupid computers.

[00:20:05]Uh, vitamin D production is just collapses. So, I moved here from Seattle. It's horrible up there. Well, it's just as bad here in Florida because nobody nobody's outside really. They're all glued to the I mean, maybe they're out running around the golf course periodically, but they're all inside in the air conditioning and glu glued to the computer screen. So vitamin D production is just it's a problem and that's key as you know to so many of so much of our immune system function.

[00:20:38]Finally, I think dermatology is finally realizing that slathering on sunscreen, most of which is loaded with all sorts of toxic chemicals anyway, is uh blocking needed sunlight for D production. So that's finally, you know, the light bulbs going going on in mainstream medicine a little bit.

[00:20:58]>> And what do you think of looking at the computers and wearing glasses that filter out the some of the blue light? Of course, we're not getting any red from the computer. It's only blue, but what do you think about filtering out the blue looking at the computer? I >> I think it's good. I think there's some validity to uh limiting blue light uh exposure where you can.

[00:21:20]Part of the problem though is all of these LED devices almost all of them have high amounts of blue in the spectrum. And so you I think it is advisable like at nighttime, you know, shut down the computer and the TV screen an hour or so before bed because that that messes up the circadian rhythm with the blue light. Uh wearing blue blockers. I mine have a little yellow filter in there. I've had cataract surgery so I did get this. I'm not sure it does does much, but most of the blue wavelengths don't really penetrate um that deeply because of the wavelength, unlike a red light.

[00:22:00]And what do you think about uh you talked about LEDs, you know, the the United States had pretty much switched over to LEDs to save energy, but what do you think about people using incandescent or bulbs to get more of a wider spectrum in their house, especially in some of the rooms where their bedrooms or where, you know, where they want to improve? I think I think there's merit to using like a a broader spectrum device that would mimic, if you will, sunlight. You know, I uh do are you familiar with John OTT?

[00:22:35]>> Sure.

[00:22:35]>> Hot lights. Okay. Well, you know, he really demonstrated uh the benefits of basically broadspectctrum kind of sunbalance, sun duplicating lighting in various uh biologic organisms, plants and animals and that kind of thing. So there was he created a whole line of lights which mimic you know the wavelengths of the sun output.

[00:23:03]>> Is that something people could could get now or they have? I think I think so. I think that you could search it online, but I'm pretty sure I had a u when I had my practice up in Tennessee, I I actually replaced all the fluorescent tubes in there with um hot light bulbs.

[00:23:19]And I think they still make those. In fact, here here I've got a little this right here. I I don't know. I can't get it around there to show you, but I had this little little light here. I've got I've got a little light off to the side.

[00:23:31]I can't get it in the camera here, but it's an it's an odd light. Oh, really?

[00:23:36]And >> you it's it's fluorescent. I'm not a fan of fluorescent tubes, but it's it's that balance spectrum like like you would see with sunlight, >> you know, and and the new windows they're putting in now, infrared isn't getting through, which it's just the uh blue light that's getting through. And uh what do you think about the way they're making the windows now, not allowing the in any of the infrared to get through?

[00:24:00]>> That's a problem. I didn't know they were doing that. I wonder what the what's is that for heat? I guess that's to prevent heat. Is that what that's called?

[00:24:06]>> Yeah. To prevent heat.

[00:24:07]>> Okay.

[00:24:09]>> So, >> and I've seen uh they are I have seen experimentation with uh electrically um modulated pains where you can change the wavelength, you know, depending on the time of day, that kind of thing. But I don't know how widely available those things are yet.

[00:24:26]>> So, let's switch your attention a little bit to to LASIK. We mentioned it a little bit before. talk to me about uh LASIC versus epilasic and using photobiomodulation to help. First tell us the difference between LASIC and epilasic.

[00:24:41]>> Well uh LASIC uh laser assisted in situ keratomis um basically relies on either a a keratone with a blade in it or a laserbased keratome to make a lamelar section or flap in the cornea.

[00:25:01]The flap is turned back and then a laser, an eximer laser is used to shape the cornea to correct for a refractive air and then that surface layer is put back. The advantage to that is the healing time is much faster.

[00:25:15]The disadvantage is there's more surgical manipulation and intervention to do that. uh epilasic or PRK basically the epithelial layer only is moved out of the way and then the ecimer laser is used to shape the cornea and then the epithelium is allowed to grow back.

[00:25:34]Epileacic theoretically you try to maintain that epithelial layer so you can just lay it back like a little blanket and it may or may not heal quicker but PBM photobi modulation can speed up the recovery time both with LASIC and it'll decrease inflammation and make the healing faster even on on the on the flap or epileic PRK it can help that epithelial growth happen faster. Sir, >> so explain to me how that was done. So the late the epil seek is done or the PRK is done and it so is the PBM done in the office still or are you giving take home? And well it would be. Yeah. Now I don't I don't know anybody does it routinely. I did it on I had devices. So I would literally on the table of a LASIC patient or PRK patient epilasic patient I would treat the patient immediately before surgery on the table and then when I was done uh in the in the waiting room before sending them home and then the next day.

[00:26:38]>> And how many seconds were you doing? Was the eye open or closed?

[00:26:42]>> Uh it was open. open >> and that was 670 that the way back.

[00:26:48]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:49]>> That one that you showed me before >> that was about a few hundred dollars that >> Yeah. And this was um I want to say the I forgotten the treatment time on it.

[00:26:59]Maybe 90 seconds or two minutes. It's very it's longer on on this thing.

[00:27:06]It wasn't you know it didn't interfere with surgical time and treatment time and all that you know. And in your hands you found out that the uh healing time was about 50% better.

[00:27:18]>> Correct. Correct.

[00:27:19]>> And how about the pain that that you know people are pay and pain we put a contact lens on them and you know they they were in some pain. How did it help with the pain and the and it it helps uh quite a bit you know again at least 50%.

[00:27:33]So um of course everybody's different the rate we heal and stuff but I kept using this throughout my practice.

[00:27:42]Then I did LASIC from let's see LASIC and I did ALK first and then went to LASIC when we got a laser and then PRK epilasic and so I started LASIC in 95 and uh did that until I closed my practice in 2012. So >> now if the surgeon wanted to be able to do this just like you did it, what device would they use? Could they get those glasses that that Dr. >> Yeah. right now. This is the only thing I know that has a that I know that it's similar to this because it was made basically to duplicate an old warp tin and and uh if somebody if a surgeon was going to use it in, you know, they would put it on, they would put the that that 670 on right after before the surgery after the surgery for about three minutes and maybe the next day, right?

[00:28:36]>> That's what they wanted they wanted to wanted to use.

[00:28:39]and and uh and say the name of it again.

[00:28:45]>> This is an Arunolite.

[00:28:47]>> Arunolite, right?

[00:28:48]>> Yeah. This uh and they're they're they're made up in Canada.

[00:28:53]>> Surgeons could buy that in the United States if they want.

[00:28:55]>> They they they'll ship it into the into the States. I'm not sure. You'll just have to you go to arunalite.com and it's got contact information on there and it's got Graham Mary's pictures on there and he worked with an optometrist up there and I've forgotten his name but anyway it has their faces on there and tells some about the history of it and everything. And how is it for people that play sports like a baseball player or a tennis player to increase the uh to decrease inflammation in the eye increase the mitochondria increase energy? Do you see any value for it helping uh somebody who plays sports?

[00:29:36]uh theoretically I I haven't done any studies or anything but anything you can do to enhance u retinal cell oper uh metabolism should be an asset to somebody that had that's really um focus that needs um enhanced kind of uh discrimination contrast sensitivity and ability to track things fine vision that kind of thing. And if you were going to do a study for people in sports, how would you do it? Would would you have them wear the the kid that plays sports or the adult who plays sports that is playing baseball or tennis, something that's high velocity? Would you have them wear it every day? Would you have them wear it every other day? Would you have them wear it once a week?

[00:30:18]>> I I I think uh two or three times a week is fine. Uh and maybe even once a week is enough. The the thing is one one treatment can last weeks. it can last weeks. So now everybody's different the way they respond to things but um for instance when we were studying drive acular degeneration we saw enhanced visual acuity and um >> you did that great visual color vision I know Dr. Mary did. I don't know if you were involved in that study as well.

[00:30:49]>> Yes.

[00:30:49]>> And it improved color vision by 20%. The elderly people >> because, you know, of course, as people get older, >> they have, you know, it's it's easier for them to build up cells and ATP because they have less already where younger people already have more, >> right? I think I think it's just like uh running out of testosterone. I think it just recharges the cells and allows them to be more normal, if you will. The other thing it it does is increases the metabolic rate some so they can clear toxins better. So that enhances the function of the cell. So basically you're just energizing individual cells to be their optimal state. That that's kind of what you're trying to do.

[00:31:34]>> And you guys used it for cataract surgery pre and postc cataract surgery, right? that help with meiosis and and and making the eye more quiet after the surgery. Correct. A little bit of what you found your personal experience with that >> and trying to prevent CME and I just I just didn't have any CME. Now having said all that, CME is I think it's a le lesser problem today than it was say 20 years ago because the surgery is a lot less traumatic now than it was 20 30 years ago. I mean intracapsular surgery and then early extra capsular surgery there was a lot of uh inflammation induced from the trauma and you know some of the procedures would take 30 minutes and today we're down to you know 5 10 minutes in the hands of a skilled surgeon.

[00:32:26]So I think that's probably dropped some of the CME numbers a little bit but I think by doing this you block inflammation. mentioning CME and I want to ask you about this when my surgeon started doing uh FMTO we were getting a lot of CME and then it's kind of stopped I don't know if they turned down the energy but we were actually getting a lot where we were telling patients don't get phento because they were getting so much CME cystoid macular edema so do you think that they just kind of got better at doing it or they were using too much energy at the beginning >> probably both probably With more screen usage and indoor time, myopia, also known as nearsightedness, is increasing and getting worse in children. Now certified eye doctors can prescribe my sight one day, the first and only FDA approved soft contact lens to slow myopia progression in age appropriate children. Visit coopervision.com to find a brilliant futures certified eye doctor near