The argument in one line.
Red light appears to improve vision by speeding up mitochondrial energy production in the eye's high-demand cells, but institutional science is structurally slow to accept it because research funding rewards confirming existing consensus, not challenging it.
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READ IF YOU ARE…
- You're over 45 and dealing with early presbyopia or macular degeneration and want to know what the actual evidence for red light therapy looks like before buying equipment.
- You're curious about mitochondrial health as a framework for aging and want a plain-language entry point.
- You follow longevity or biohacking conversations and want the skeptical counter-argument alongside the anecdote.
SKIP IF…
- You want peer-reviewed clinical trial data — this is a personal anecdote plus a research pointer, not a study readout.
- You're looking for dosage or device-buying guidance — the clip doesn't name a specific product or protocol beyond '3x/week, 20 minutes'.
The full version, fast.
A guest on the Joe Rogan Experience describes reversing his own macular degeneration and quitting reading glasses after two years of whole-body red light bed sessions three times a week, eyes open, no goggles. He credits UCL optometry researcher Glenn Jeffery's work showing red light boosts mitochondrial function in the eye's unusually energy-hungry photoreceptor cells. The conversation pivots into why dermatologists and mainstream medicine haven't engaged with this research: institutional caution, siloed specialties that avoid trespassing into other fields, and a grant-funding system that rewards confirming what funders already believe over testing ideas that go against the grain. The takeaway is a caution against dismissing an emerging mechanism just because the institutions built to evaluate it are structurally slow to move.
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00:00guestRowan Jacobsen
00:00hostJoe Rogan
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A guest reports two years of red light bed use, three sessions a week at twenty minutes, stopped and then reversed his macular degeneration to the point he no longer needs reading glasses.
- The claimed benefit showed up within about a month of starting red light sessions, according to the guest's account.
- Some red light exposure protocols are done with eyes open and no protective goggles, unlike UV tanning-bed setups which require eye protection.
- UCL optometry researcher Glenn Jeffery has published work across multiple animal species, including humans, showing red light improves mitochondrial function and vision.
- Eye cells reportedly burn through energy faster than almost any other cell type in the body, which is the proposed reason they respond strongly to red light's mitochondrial effects.
- Dermatologists already use red light therapy clinically but for a different reason: red wavelengths carry effectively no skin cancer risk, unlike UV and to a lesser extent blue light.
- The physicist quote 'science advances one funeral at a time,' attributed to Max Planck, is invoked to explain why entrenched specialists resist new mechanisms until a new generation of researchers takes over.
- Scientific research funding is grant-based and controlled by a small number of gatekeeping entities, which structurally biases funded studies toward confirming existing beliefs rather than testing contrarian ones.
- Specialists are described as increasingly reluctant to engage with adjacent fields' research (e.g., dermatologists ignoring immunology or cardiology data on light), even when that data bears directly on their own domain.
One man's anecdote outran the institutions built to test it.
WHAT TO LEARN
A personal red light protocol reportedly reversed age-related vision loss years before the medical field that should study it showed any interest.
- Eye cells are unusually energy-hungry, so mechanisms that improve mitochondrial efficiency may show up first and most visibly in vision before other parts of the body.
- A claimed benefit appearing within a month of starting a new intervention is a signal worth investigating, but personal anecdote is not the same evidence tier as a controlled trial.
- Medical specialties increasingly avoid engaging with research from adjacent fields, which can leave directly relevant evidence unexamined by the practitioners best positioned to apply it.
- Research funding structures can create a feedback loop where only ideas that already match funders' existing beliefs get tested, slowing the adoption of contrarian but well-evidenced mechanisms.
- Distinguishing a treatment's known safety profile (e.g., red light carrying no UV skin cancer risk) from its efficacy evidence is a useful way to separate two different institutional objections that get conflated in public debate.
Terms worth knowing.
- Mitochondrial function
- How efficiently a cell's mitochondria convert nutrients into usable energy; when this process runs poorly, energy-hungry cells like eye photoreceptors are thought to age or degrade faster.
- Macular degeneration
- A progressive eye condition that damages the macula, the part of the retina responsible for sharp central vision, commonly associated with aging.
- Grant-based funding
- The system where scientists must apply to a limited pool of funding bodies to finance a study, which can bias which research questions ever get tested.
Things they pointed at.
01:24channelGary Brecka
01:53toolGlenn Jeffery / University College London optometry research
02:43bookRowan Jacobsen's book on light therapy
Lines you could clip.
01:08
“I've essentially completely stopped my macular degeneration with red light therapy... Not just stopped it, but reversed it. Like, I don't need reading glasses anymore.”
03:25
“Science advances one funeral at a time.”
06:31
“It's this kinda crazy system where the only way you can get money to do a study is if you're already telling them what they know.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 00:33steadyDermatology's resistance to red light research
00:33 – 01:55densePersonal red light bed protocol and vision reversal
01:55 – 02:58denseMitochondrial mechanism in the eye
02:58 – 05:00steadyWhy institutions resist new evidence (Max Planck, siloed specialties)
05:00 – 07:13denseGrant funding as a structural bias against contrarian research
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analogystory
00:00So have you had any conversations with these dermatologists that are denouncing you?
00:05No. But I'd like to, actually. I think Are they willing, or is have they avoided them?
00:10They they have so far really avoided. Like, they they they just say, you know, we're not ready to look at any of that research. God.
00:18That's so weird. I think it's gonna change. I think, actually like like I said, I think light medicine is actually gonna become very important in the next ten, twenty years.
00:28And dermatologists are kinda positioned to be, like, the leaders on that stuff because, like, skin is the primary, like, interface with light for our bodies.
00:38And, you know, they should be experts on all this. You know you know, red light therapy is a big thing now. Mhmm.
00:43And dermatologists are doing that even though the evidence isn't great for that. But I think there's probably something there.
00:50But they should basically, I think they need to be thinking more about all of these different wavelengths of light as healing modalities and how to, you know, work them into,
01:01like, regular, like, programs. I've talked about this before, so I apologize to anybody listening. But I've essentially completely stopped my macular degeneration with red light therapy.
01:12Wow. Yeah. Not just stopped it, but reversed it.
01:15Like, I don't need reading glasses anymore. I've been using a red light bed for about two years now. And from the time I started using it within about a month, I started seeing benefits.
01:25And so Gary Brecko was on the podcast and explained it to me. And so I I went out and bought one of these really expensive it's like a tanning bed. This is the thing you lie in, and I do it three times a week for twenty minutes.
01:35So all over? Yep. Naked.
01:37Just lie down in there, and I keep my eyes open. And they you know, I went to a tanning bed once not a tanning bed, a red light bed once at a health clinic, and they were like, gotta wear these goggles and make sure you close your eyes before the light goes on. I was like, okay.
01:50I did all that. And, apparently, there's some benefit that even when blindfolded,
01:55it increases your vision. Yeah. For sure.
01:57It's and I think, again, I think mitochondria are part of that answer. There's a guy at University College London, Glenn Jeffrey, who this is his whole field, optometry and red light.
02:08And he has shown in multiple different animals, including humans, that red light improves mitochondrial function and and and improves vision.
02:19Yeah. I mean, I'm 58. And for me to be 56 and saying I'm fucked, I I I had these fucking things everywhere.
02:28I had these all these reading glasses. I had them all over my house. I'd gotten up to three x.
02:34These are the cheap Amazon ones. I had a nice pair, but I keep losing them. So I just I went and bought cheap ones.
02:39They seem to work. And it was just fine for looking at a computer, you know, reading my emails, reading my phone, and I needed them to read my phone. I don't need them anymore, like, at all.
02:49Yeah. Don't use them anymore. My my vision's not perfect.
02:52It's not as good as it was when I was 20, but it's way better than it was when I was 56.
02:58And I yeah. I think so the the the eye the mitochondria in the eyes have to fire faster than any mitochondria anywhere else in the body.
03:08The eyes burn through energy like like no other cells because it's like, you know, it's kind of the toughest task.
03:15It's like they gotta go super fast. So they yeah. They those mitochondria need to be on top of their game, and it seems like red light benefits that in particular.
03:26What seems so closed minded
03:29that these dermatologists aren't willing to say, maybe we're looking at just insufficient amount of data.
03:37Maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe the whole thing is much more nuanced, and maybe there's benefits if done correctly.
03:43I just don't understand why they're not if there's all this data, which clearly you show in your book that there's a tremendous amount of data. Why?
03:51You know, like so there's this, like, saying attributed to Max Planck, who's this, like, physicist. Science advances one funeral at a time.
04:00Right? So I think we gotta let the old guard, like, die off a little bit, but I I guarantee there's a young generation coming in who's gonna be really interested in light and how they can use it. Oh, certainly.
04:11Well, I think there's so many conversations available online now from actual researchers and people that have put in the time and put in the work and explored
04:20things from this position that, like, hey. Maybe the old guard are not correct, and the data seems to show that that's true.
04:28Yeah. And it's fun. I mean, playing with light, it's super fun.
04:32So, like, this is a way you can you can, like, make your world a little bit richer is starting to think about this stuff. Well, it's also like, don't you wanna be informed?
04:41And if there's if we do understand that it has an effect on mitochondria and there is all this evidence that red light seems to have some benefits, like, wouldn't I just don't understand how someone could be an expert in skin
04:53and ignore that. Well, I think that and they'll be they won't object to the red. There just some of them are using red light therapy because there's no risk of skin cancer for red.
05:01It's only the UV Right. And maybe a little bit of the blue that contributes to skin cancer. So that it's the UV where where they get a little wigged out.
05:11Yeah. But but even that, it seems like there's a true like, in your book, you show there's a tremendous amount of data.
05:18There's health benefits to it. So I just don't understand. And that data is a lot of it's coming from all different other fields, like Right.
05:25Immunology,
05:26cardiology. So and, like, scientists are sort of increasingly, like, hesitant to trespass on their other other domains.
05:35Right. You know? Like, they're not gonna walk across campus to the the other building Mhmm.
05:40Anymore.
05:41Yeah. That But that needs to change. You know?
05:43Yeah. We've had those discussions too with scientists that are super frustrated, especially when they try to get interdisciplinary groups together to study one particular thing.
05:52And Yeah. Everyone's resisting because they have their own work that they're working on. They don't wanna get involved.
05:57And it's like, guys, this is what you're here for. There's not a lot of scientists.
06:03You gotta do your job because, like, you're the only ones that are doing it. There's without you guys, we're fucked.
06:09And if you're out there relying on old insufficient data or, you know, you you have this very small dataset that shows that there's negative outcomes to sunlight.
06:22And so you just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like, you're doing the whole field a massive disservice. And the other part of it is that
06:30science it's it's sort of very self reinforcing. It's all it's all grant based, essentially. Like, if you're a scientist, you wanna do a study, you have to apply for a grant to get the money to do the study.
06:39Right. Right. And there's generally a handful of entities that are handing out the grant money.
06:43Mhmm. And it's the old guys waiting to die who are gonna approve what they think is the truth.
06:50They're they're gonna fund the study that fits with what they already know about the world. So it's this kinda crazy system where the only way you can get money to do a study is if you're already telling them what they know. Right.
07:02Right? So it's very difficult to get funded to do something that goes against the grain, increasingly so. That's a problem.
07:07And so much of it is dependent upon the ego of the people there at the top of the organization.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A guest tells Joe Rogan he stopped wearing reading glasses after two years in a red light bed — and the conversation turns into a pointed argument about why the medical establishment is the last to know.
