129: Red Light. Real Healing: Biohacking Fertility, Pelvic Pain and Hormones with Liz Frey & Genevieve Newton

in the next 10 years, we're going to see an explosion of research in this area because we have so many issues with female fertility. But this is such an easy thing to do. It's non-invasive. It's not particularly expensive and it does seem to be really effective. By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition and either yourself or others. Call your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lauren Brown. I'm a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I'm on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It's time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose. Welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Today, I'm excited because we're going to be talking about low-level laser therapy, but I'm talking to two amazing Canadian women that are working with Fringe that have products. Some of them on low-level laser therapy for pelvic health, for beautification, I'll call it. But all my patients want, they have. Our paths crossed and Liz and Genevieve sent me some cool goodies that if you see on YouTube, you can see some images of them behind, but we're going to talk about them. But really, we're going to talk about health and research around women's health using photobimodulation, low-level laser therapy. I really hope you listen to this episode. We're going to talk about it from a fertility perspective. We're going to talk about perimenopause, menopause, urinary condens, the vaginal microbiome. And things for your face and your neck, if you want to keep it looking as young and healthy as possible. So, listen to our podcast today. Our guests are Liz and Genevieve. I'm going to give you a little introduction to both of them, and then we're going to dive right in. So Liz Frey, she holds a Bachelor of Science in BPHE from Queens University. She has a Master of Science in Exercise Physiology from the University of Toronto and a Master of Science in Physiotherapy from McMaster University as well. In 2010, she went on to complete a third Master's degree from the University of Western Ontario in Clinical Science in Municipal Therapy. So, we're both alumni of UWA. And you guys, my listeners are starting to notice that I love to have people that are well educated, that credibility factor. So, you can see with Liz and Genevieve that they're fitting the mold that we have on our podcast. And Liz also has achieved a designation of Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Municipal Physical Therapy, which is a high level of training orthopedic manual therapy. Liz also completed her contemporary medical acupuncture training through McMaster University as well as the AFCI. And she's also completed her UBC's Gun Intermyscular Stimulation IMS certification as well. And the list goes on. She's, you know, just constantly studying, learning education, her clinical experience. So, we're going to dive into that and learn a little bit more about Liz as well today, and her role at Fringe. And Dr. Genevieve Newton, she's a DC PhD in atritional science. And she spent close to 20 years as a researcher and educator in the field of nutritional science before she joined Fringe as its scientific director. I really love that you guys have that medical background on your team over at Fringe. And Genevieve's job is to basically bring the science that supports their products and the education that they provide. And I've been going through their website and they've sent me lots of material to prepare for our talk today. And they're doing an excellent job at that. And she's also passionate about all the things Fringe and as a deep believer in healing, body, mind, and spirit using the gifts of the natural world. Liz and Genevieve, my fellow Canadians, welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks for having us. Mainly, I want to talk about the pelvic wand. And we're going to, I mean, I'm diving right into it, but I got to tell you, I got to just share a cute story that happened. So Fringe, this is what I love about the podcast. I get products and things sent to me. And so Fringe sent me some products. And in it was a pelvic wand and we're going to do a deep dive into that today. But also in it, if you can see in the back there, it was a face mask and also a light therapy that goes around the neck and chest. And my wife is in her 50s, Perry Menopausal. And I'm opening the box and she sees their face and literally she rides light up. Today I'm preparing to get things ready. And so I find the wand and the wrap. But I'm like, where's the face mask and the neck guard, right? The neck light therapy. She take it for herself. So I'm like, get it back. I need this still for my interview. So just so you know, I think you guys have really found a market for yourselves because you got quite a few devices. But my wife loved the face and the neck thing right away. That's the thing that she jumped out right away. So thanks for sending those my way. Oh, you're welcome. And they are, I'm sure in Liz's home and in my home too, we just have a run light therapy products everywhere and kids that are athletes and, you know, Perry Menopausal women. And we just, we do it all. I want to understand it from both of you. Kind of the fringe model, what's happened? Like how did you guys get into this area? Because it seems like you're very female oriented. And like my practice, we see women in infertility. See women with pelvic pain, frequent urination. Like we see menopausal symptoms. You guys seem to be aligned with that too. Like rather than trying to be for everybody, you really done that. So why is that? Like how did that kind of come to be that you decided to make products that are really, this seems to me from my observation, very gynecological, reproductive, obstetrical, unrelated? So for myself, I can speak for myself. I entered fringe with, I'll say, for the wand, with the wand, right? Because of my pelvic health background, because of pelvic health physiotherapist. So I don't think the original intent was to be, say, female centric. But I will say that a lot of the products women are interested in. So as you mentioned, the wand can hold up my wand for anyone that is watching. It's a red light therapy and urine for red light therapy, intrapagonal pelvic device, pelvic wand. It also has blue light therapy. So you can see it kind of turned blue here. So for myself, fringe wasn't necessarily a female centric company at all. It still serves tons of men, but the wand for me was sort of my entry point based on my pelvic health background. And it really has taken off. Like women are really interested in it. And same too with the face mask, sort of what you mentioned there about perimenopausal, menopausal women. And like they are seeking answers and they are seeking alternative therapies. And so both of those products are awesome, right? People are looking for them and really appreciating them. Somebody may be listening for the first time about, okay, we said low level laser therapy. We said photo bi modulation. Can you share a little bit then what this is and how come this could benefit female health and let's go right into the female pelvic health and all the issues that women sometimes can struggle with and how this can possibly be a way to solve those problems. Lauren, that's a big question. Very, very big question. So let's kind of take it in pieces then. So the first one, the easy one is this low level light therapy part of it. And I have to say personally, I haven't been thrilled that the scientific community centered around that term simply because it's quite confusing to a lot of people. They hear that and they don't really know what that means. So basically what happened in over the last 50 years, there's been a lot of research that's been done in the area of this light therapy. So initially the research was done with lasers and then an increasing amount of research started being done with LED lights. So we have two kind of light sources in this scientific arena. And low level laser light therapy is the term that was chosen to kind of be an umbrella term for everything. So when you hear that, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a laser light source. It can be an LED light source as well. But the difference is going to be even if it is a laser, it's a lower intensity laser. It's not going to be thermally heating the tissue. So you don't have to worry about it doing damage. That would be different from some of these laser treatments that women are getting for their face, for example, where you go in and you get a treatment done that actually causes, you know, a thermal heating that people can feel the intensity of the heat. And then they have that tissue sort of damage that then stimulates healing as a result. But it was just a good point you mentioned. I want to highlight that because they're low level, not high intensity. They're not the ones because you're right. Women often will say, is it going to hurt because they think of hearing removal? Is it sculpting? Isn't so comfortable? You know, when they do for sculpting or the physician's coming to what you're going to cut me like a laser. And so this is safe and low powered. So I'm going to ask it a different way then. Okay. And then we're going to jump because you're right. It wasn't a fair question. It's asking to do a two hour lecture and like a 30 minutes on here, not fair. Not fair. So let's talk about pelvic health then and then tie into how photo by modulation low level laser therapy, cold laser, red laser, look for everybody. That's just the terms that are out there. Scientific communities calls it photo by modulation. And your website has tons of information on what that means. But like therapy, photons going into a certain area, pelvic health. When I look at things for pelvic health, the things on your website, you talk about tissue rejuvenation, you talk about reduced inflammation pain, increased blood flow. So we're going to talk about those mechanisms. But what are some of the things that women are looking for solutions for? Can you go through kind of like when you think about your one, for example, can you kind of share like here's an issue some women have and there's all these different ways to treat and here's where photo by modulation and like your pelvic one can help. Is that a fair question? Yeah, and I can like draw on my pelvic practice for sure. So I would say the majority of women that will say present in my practice are coming in with a situation, a condition, an issue and the top ones that I see would be incontinence and pelvic pain. So I'll speak to those separately. When we look at incontinence and how the wand might help with therapy that I'm already providing, some women will come in with incontinence that is a result of weakness of the pelvic floor muscles. So let's look at that. If we're looking to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles and have better control of them, then what we want to do is we want to supply more energy to the actual tissues to the muscles. So the wand by way of the red light and urine for red light therapy can be helpful because that increases mitochondrial activity and ATP or energy production for the cells. So if we have a healthier cells, healthier muscles and then we combine that with strengthening protocols and so on, that is going to just be more beneficial, essentially, and have better outcomes. So it would be one way the red and urine for red light is helping. In addition, we know that it increases blood flow and angiogenesis. So if our tissues have greater blood flow, greater circulation, they are going to be healthier and be able to strengthen better, presumably, than if they weren't. So those would be like the blood flow, the ATP or energy production. Then the third way that the wand would be helpful by way of the light therapy would be the elastin and collagen production. So that helps with the actual integrity of the tissues. So if I were to have someone come into the practice that has pelvic floor weakness, presenting with incontinence, then I would say, okay, great. Let's look at working on the pelvic floor muscles and strengthening them and developing a connection with them, but let's also light therapy so that we can have a better result. So women seem to be quite, quite interested in being active in the therapy, not just going home and doing exercises, but then adding a home therapy device like a pelvic wand to help with their outcomes. So that would be one condition, I see, and how light therapy would be helpful. And that incontinence, so you just said, weak muscles, have you seen it for women like postpartum that start to have that incontinence? Yeah, the two demographics that I see in my practice most often would be your pre-or postpartum, depending on when they seek treatment, individual, and then my perimenopausal menopausal population. So at both times we're seeing a reduction in estrogen, potentially with birth, there's been some trauma, et cetera, but they're both times in a woman's life where extra energy, extra blood flow, reducing inflammation, all these things would be beneficial. I want to jump right into the fertility aspect, what you guys are seeing, because that's where I'm really curious and want to know if this is something I can share with my patients. And full transparency, the time recording, I just got these this week, so I just been looking at your literature. And patients know that we do a lot of work around, photobimodulation, reproductive health. I'm curious what you're seeing, what you're thinking, and how this could support somebody who's looking to improve egg quality. Yeah, Lord, why don't I speak to some of the research that's been done on this, because it's really interesting. And we have probably, it's about 16 years of kind of not well controlled, but very relevant research has come out of Japan. And I have an enormous amount of respect for the doctors that have been doing this work there. They've been using primarily near infrared light from a laser, and they developed a technique that they call the proximal priority technique. And we can talk about that in a little bit more detail. But over the course of this 16 year period, they worked with about 700 women and found, you know, quite a noticeable improvement in the rate of pregnancy as well as the rate of live birth. And so there are some researchers that have kind of copied that, and that's sort of been the model so far. But there's also some cool animal stuff that's been coming out, which has shown that we don't necessarily have to just use lasers. And we don't necessarily only get benefit when we use near infrared light. And I think this is an important piece of the conversation that we kind of always need to have when we come to talking about light therapy is we can get really caught up in these nuances and talk about, well, what intensity did they use? What light source, what wavelengths, what have you? And the main point really seems to be that we need to get light to the tissues. And we can get light to the tissues in different ways. And we don't necessarily need to follow a specific order of getting light to the tissues. But when we look at this body of research that's been done in females, whether they be human females or these animal models that we can use of reproductive health, you see a number of different outcomes like improvements in basically the quality of the eggs that are produced. You see a decrease in the rate of reproductive aging in different models of endometriosis, which we know can be a big problem for fertility. We see improvements in the endometrial adhesions and some stuff that's been done in a cell culture model. We have to reproduce this in human still. But it looks like the light when it's applied to the endometrium improves the receptivity of that endometrium to implantation. So we're seeing really exciting stuff coming out in the literature, but there's not a lot yet. And I suspect if I had a, you know, a crystal ball, I would say that in the next 10 years, we're going to see an explosion of research in this area because we have so many issues with female fertility, as well as male fertility. We can even talk about that research if you want to as well. It's non-invasive. So I'm excited about that. Liz, do you want to speak clinically to what you've seen with respect to fertility? Yeah. I would say earlier on in my practice, when someone would come to me with primary or secondary infertility, I would do manual therapy, no light therapy because I didn't know about it at the time. And a lot of mobility work in the abdominal area, thinking, okay, I'm breaking down any adhesions or mobilizing scar tissue. I'm increasing blood flow, diaphragmatic work, breathing, tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system and hoping to relax the individual. And then internal manual work as well to make sure that there wasn't a lot of tension within the pelvic floor, pelvic floor muscles so that the woman would be able to reach orgasm which would help with conception, etc. But only recently, really in the last year or so after joining fringe and working with light therapy, have I really started to explore, hey, wait a minute, this light therapy and the pelvic wand, of course, could be super useful and I've been recommending it to any of my clients that do come in with fertility issues. I've had a few really positive results, which is for me within like the last six months, let's say, where I've had a handful of women that have purchased the wand, purchased, I can show you here, like the wrap that we have as well for, say, over the lower back or abdominal area. And three of the women, I'm so excited. But three of the women that I've looked at and I've done therapy on and so on have become pregnant. So, like super encouraging, I mean, I'm not doing any research on it or anything, but just super encouraging results, combining both the manual therapy, reducing stress and then light therapy. Yeah, that reminds me of Emory Jensen, who's a physio in Denmark that does laser therapy with the manual work and same thing, she seems to help break up adhesions and it really seems to help. Jindy, we can get out a bit too on the science here and I'll share you why I'm excited to have our patients try the pelvic wand is, first of all, so the Japanese, that's Dr. O's Shiro, right? And the proximal priority technique, which he realized what his intention always was to increase blood flow, right? That's what that was. Exactly. Engages the parasympathetic and it was an accident. He was treating a woman who wasn't cycling any men of pause. And he was treating her back pain, but he first would do this approach that was nowhere near her back up near her neck that wouldn't cause blood flow head to toe. And then he would go and treat the back and lo and behold, her back pain went away, but her also her cycle came back and it happened twice to two different women. And that's how they started doing that research where you said there was over 700 women. Funny story because I'm a little nuts this way. I really wanted to talk to a Shiro. So I wrote a letter, put it through Google Translate and sent it to all the clinics in Japan that I could find that had no Shiro in it. And unfortunately he did not respond, but somebody heard what I was doing reached out to me that's bilingual and hooked me up with somebody in Japan that had 10 years of data use in low-level laser therapy in an IVF setting. And they had shown that when they did three to six months of they combined the acupuncture with a low-level laser therapy, they were doubling blastocyst rates. I was just, you can't get to visit their clinic. I went to see their-- Oh, what a great story. That's a great story. And you know what? It makes me think, Lauren, a comment that I want to make about this. And I think it's really something that makes a lot of sense to people, no matter whether we're dealing with menopausal issues or reproductive fertility stuff, is that light therapy is a really easy to integrate part of a toolbox, right? When we're talking about any of these issues, we're not just coming at it from one perspective. And we often have women say, well, can I use this with my vaginal estrogen? Can I do this while I'm taking reproductive hormones, et cetera? I mean, there's no interaction that we need to be concerned about. They work complementarily. They're adjunct therapies. And I find that this part of your toolbox-- you've got your lifestyle part, which is everybody has to get those lifestyle factors, right? And then you've got your pharmacological interventions, which are where-- or surgical, which is where you generally get pushed when you're in the medical system. But then that middle part, where it's not lifestyle, but it's not pharmacological, we don't have a lot in there. And so, red light therapy fits. That's where it fits. It's safe, and it's effective. And in many cases, depending on the intensity of the device that you're using-- and we can talk about that at some point-- but it can be done at home. So as long as you're using a relatively lower intensity device, it's something that people can do in the comfort of their own home. And when we're talking about pelvic health, that's really important, because a lot of people have a lack of comfort around going into a clinic and having these procedures done. Understandable. If you're comfortable, I don't think-- if you had a choice, do it at home by yourself. We'll have somebody else do for you in a clinic. I think most people would prefer the privacy of their home. Here's where I'm very interested in the pelvic one, and what it can possibly do. So you got to hear this story, because I think it'll excite you guys over at Fringe. I went to Australia to talk about laser therapy for fertility. And we talked about the mechanism, which I want to unpack more about regulating inflammation, the microbiome, blood flow, ATP, the mitochondrial ATP's key. I mean, you said the tissue has to receive it to get the benefit, right? It's not just-- so the ovaries have to receive it. I kept on saying, in the talk, I said, we can help with blood flow. We can help with inflammation, because all the things we do, we have a great systemic effect. I'm not convinced when we do it over the abdomen stuff, if enough photons can reach the ovaries. Maybe some, but can we get a therapeutic approach? That's where I don't know. But there's so many other things that it's doing. It's still great to do. And if you could get to the ovaries, great. And so a person stands up who's a reproductive endocrinologist in the talk. And he says, well, why don't you just put a light therapy on the end of a probe like we do when we do ultrasounds or retrievals and just point it at the ovaries, because he goes, the vaginal walls, then, and you can just point it at the ovary, you'll probably get more light that way than trying to go through the muscles, the intestines, everything. The acupuncture is-- The pump starts to burn. We can't-- we don't do pelvic work, our naturopaths can. But there's no device. And that's why when I saw your device, I was like, huh? So let's talk about that thinking that now we're because Roberta-- who's also in Australia when I visited her clinic, just for our audience, she's a medical doctor, training acupuncture, training, photobimodulation. She did the research on photobimodulation for neck pain in the lancet. So she's well-respected on researcher. When I asked her and visited her clinic, she shared how she's seen anecdotally-- because she hadn't done research on this yet-- how it helped with pain with endometriosis. And a lot of those women who had infatility and endometriosis went on to conceive naturally. And her approach was you want to get a lot of photons into the pelvis, mole. That's it. You just want to get a lot into the pelvic bowl. I think your wand has the potential to get a lot of photons into the pelvic bowl. So can you talk a little bit about that, then, like the intensity, your power, your using? Why do you have blue light? You have red and red, blue. Can you share-- because your wand isn't just a red light. It has red. It has near and for red and it has blue. And it has vibration. And I thought the vibration, by the way, I learned later there's more therapeutic value, but I thought it was for pleasure. I'll leave. [LAUGHTER] You know, I prefer adrenaline. [INTERPOSING VOICES] So the way they're beautiful. I figured, if we're going to do this, you might as well make it more fun. But anyway, it's way too-- [LAUGHTER] No, you're absolutely right, me. So the wand has red, near and for red, and blue light. And each one of those has some different properties. So when we look at red and near and for red light, they behave very differently in the body in terms of how the cells respond to them. So if you think back to your grade 11, probably grade 11, biology class, when you learned about the electron transport chain, that electron transport chain is the part of our cell in the mitochondria, which are in our cells, that generate ATP, which is our energy currency of our cell. And the more we learn about mitochondria, the more we realize that they're basically at the center of everything. Because if you don't have enough cellular energy, you don't have health. So in every pathological condition that we've been looking at over the last 20 years when this has started to become a real focus, we realize that this mitochondria, if we can improve the health of the mitochondria, usually whatever tissue that we're dealing with, whether it be the brain or your muscles or your reproductive organs, they're going to function better. So red and nearing for red light, both of them act on that electron transport chain. There's a part, one member of it that is a photo receptor. And when it accepts that light, that actually increases the production of ATP. So we know that. We also know that when that electron transport chain receives the light, it also increases the production of nitric oxide. And that's something that has a lot of really amazing benefits. And it's important for the pelvis, especially in our menopausal, perimenopausal women where we're dealing with nitric oxide levels going down because of estrogen going down. So that's what we're talking about in terms of that mechanism of red and nearing for red is the kind of central piece. But how those two are different is the depth of their penetration into the body. So if we're talking about red light, it's generally going in about 2 millimeters in terms of its depth of penetration. So it's a really great tool to use for your superficial tissues. So if you're dealing with your face mask, it's going to be really great for your outer-- you know, you're epidermis, you're dermis of your skin. If you're talking about in the pelvis, it will be really good for that vaginal epithelium. But that nearing for red light penetrates more deeply. And the longer the wavelength of nearing for red light gets the more deeply it penetrates. So we don't have the same wavelength of nearing for red light in all of our products. In our head wrap, which is targeting brain health, we have two wavelengths of nearing for red, one of which is longer than the other, because we've got to get through the brain and the skull into the brain. Can you share the wavelengths of each just as you do? If you know them, if not-- Oh, so if 1050 is our long one for the head wrap, and then-- I think it's 810, it's either 810 or 850 for the shorter one. And that shorter wavelength is the one that's used in virtually all of the red light therapy products. Now, I want to qualify for the listeners. When you hear the term red light therapy, it's a bit-- again, we have a bit of a misleading term here, because it's not just red light. Usually it's red and/or nearing for red light. So when you hear that term, just know that it can apply to both. 810 is not red. It can be both. It can be one. Yes, exactly, exactly. So that's terminology that we need to clarify. So that longer wavelength, we don't have it in the pelvic wand, because I don't think we need it. We think we're probably at a safer level going with the shorter, because there's an increased generation of heat with the longer wavelength. And we have such sensitive tissues in the pelvis that we want to be careful to keep that heat at a minimum. The blue light-- blue light is interesting. Blue light has mainly been researched for its antimicrobial effects. And so when we're talking about the female pelvis, of course, we know that we have issues with potentially bacterial vaginosis, our candidiasis, HPV infections, dysregulation of the microflora. And so blue light can be helpful with those active infections. It can also be helpful with preventing prophylactic treatment in that capacity. And then when you've got your red light and your blue light, red and your infrared and blue light together, we know that that can be supportive of also improving the vaginal microbiome, as well as dealing with those pathogenic microbes. So that's why we have all three of those in the wand. We want to be able to deal with the deeper penetration, but the wand does allow you to only use the red light. So if you are somebody who's very sensitive to heat, then you could choose to turn the near infrared off and only use red because red doesn't generate heat. The near infrared does, or you can use the blue light mode, or you can use the combination of red and near infrared. So that's that. And then the vibration. Vibration is in this wand because vibration therapy is a modality that works really well synergistically with light therapy. So vibration therapy is everybody's done it before. right? You put one of those vibrating wands on a muscle that's sore and it just helps it to relax. So so many of our pelvic issues involve tight muscles. And so that wand with the lower intensity vibration can help just to dissipate some of that tension. And then if we use the vibration on the higher settings, it's not actually for pleasure. It's to help with stimulating the contraction of muscles, especially when you look at the literature, it's incredible how many women are not even able to voluntarily contract their pelvic floor muscles. They need some help. And so the light therapy can help with providing energy, cellular energy to that tissue, whereas the vibration therapy can actually help with the nervous impulse that can help with the muscle contracting. So there is a there is a nice synergy between the two of them. That's a great combination. And you know, I was half jokingly about the pleasure part and I can share with my audience that I have on my acupuncture tables, their sound tables. So when I play with the frequencies to affect the nervous system to engage the vagus parasympathetic because when they're engaged, you get more blood flow and when you're in parasympathetic you heal. And same thing with the pelvis, you said like through women with endometriosis or pelvic pain in general or fertility issues, if it's tight, there's a circulation issue potentially and we want to bring back the circulation. So this is really interesting that you brought two modalities into this device, light therapy, photobimodulation and the vibration. So the microbiome, I'd love to unpack that a bit for audience too because and I have an idea for you guys, we do a test in our clinic, the IVF clinics will do a uterine biopsy because the uterine microbiome can impact implantation and our naturopathic docs often say, you know, we look at the gut microbiome and we're looking at the vaginal because we realize how it's systemic and it can affect health, like your skin, your gut, your mood, your brain, and it can affect inequality. Like because the systemic is not isolated into little parts. And so the IVF clinics will do biopsy sometimes to see if you have an imbalance in the microbiome. We use a test of vaginal microbiome test to see if it's off. And the reason I think this is interesting is because we do our modalities, herbal and supplements and sometimes even medications, prescription drugs to to deal with this. But now we have the we'll have the fringe pelvic want to recommend and we have a way to test to see if it's changed. Right. But the microbiome just the audience, it is something that can impact the health of reproduction and you talked about some of the infections you get where just uncomfortable. You can have uncomfortable, which is an obvious infection, but a lot of women are not aware that they have an imbalance in this vaginal and utermicrobiome that's impacting their fertility. And so this is another reason where I'm interested in what you guys have created having the blue light there. Yeah. And so just to kind of jump in about what light we're talking about because we have this conversation between, you know, our medical team a lot because we get we get asked about the microbiome and and should you use blue and should you use red near infrared. And so I would just kind of start off by speaking to the scientific literature and say that the the scientific literature on the vaginal microbiome and on the microbiome in general is generally focused on red and near infrared. But of course, clinically, we know that if you have an imbalance in your microbiome, well, then you're more vulnerable to pathogenic microbes infecting that area. And so that's when you really start to see a need for blue light to come in with the red and the near infrared. But then the question always comes up, okay, so if blue light affects microbes and the way that it does that is that the bacteria micro actually has a photo receptor in it for blue light. So it's a blue light receiver. And so the question is, of course, well, what's that going to do to our normal flora? Is that is that a bad thing? And that's a really important question. And from a research perspective, we have one study only that looked at using blue light in the vagina to see if it had an adverse effect on the micro flora. It did not, but it wasn't a strong study. It was a single dose administration. So we know with a pelvic wand, we're talking about, you know, women using this potentially for years and years and years and years. And so I think that you have to err on the side of caution with the blue light. Blue light is powerful in the sense that if you overdo it, you're going to have more adverse effects than if you overdo red and near infrared light red and near infrared light at lower intensities, you're really not going to see any harm. You just won't see as many benefits. Blue light has the ability to kind of increase that oxidative stress a little bit more, not at the intensity of a device such as the French one, but at the intensity of some other devices. But I do suspect that if you use it too frequently, you could potentially have an adverse effect on the normal micro flora. So what we recommend is that for the health of the microbiome, that you if you don't have any issues with with infections that you really stay focused on the near infrared and the red light. And then if you're somebody that does have a tendency towards BV or yeast infections, then you introduce that blue light prophylactically once or twice a week for about five minutes at a time. And if you're treating an active infection, then you're going to be using that more frequently three to five times a week for about 10 minutes. Excellent information. And again, I'm packing this red and infrared on the microbiome. If you're support because that's what the most of the research is on, I love the one on the Parkinson's study, right, where they used it on the got microbiome to impact Parkinson's. Again, that was near infrared light. If you're building up the good stuff, it will counterbalance the bad stuff, right? So it's nice to just keep giving the cells what they need. And then it will outcrowd the bad bacteria. And if you have symptoms, then it's something that you can use once in a while. I think that's that's a really good information that you shared. So from the fertility perspective, reproductive health, the photons when they reach the old reads, they have the potential to improve my decondrial function. You've shared it can lower oxidative stress, which is in great for fertility. You want that lower oxidative stress is not good. We want to lower it, improve nitric oxide. You mentioned paramanopause and menopause, but a lot of the women we see are in their 40s. And so their paramanopause because they're in their 40s. So this would benefit this potentially could benefit them as well. It can regulate inflammation. It increases blood flow. So lots of things. It's just the mechanism is like this is a good thing for for health in general, because so much potential. We talked with the paramanopause. If there's anything else you wanted to share about the pelvic one, but I wanted to ask you about the face screen because the face does red does it do blue as well, because I'm thinking of some of the saw recently that has acne in her in her mid to late 40s. Still and I was thinking, oh, this may be a device that she would really like, by the way, I'm going to hold it up here. I have to say, I don't know who does the design and packaging over there, but somebody must have worked over at Apple because the unpacking of this was like when I unpacked my first iPhone, you know how Apple just packs their stuff. High quality packing. It's just it's an experience to open your boxes. I have to tell you it's an experience like and it's so packed nicely. And then I have seen mass before the benefit of having a podcast people send me their devices, but some of them are like the old goalie mass, like they're like hard and hard plastic. This is silicon. This is soft. And then they had little things that clip in for the eyes. Like I was like, holy cow, this is an impressive little wellness device because it's pretty cool. This is the one by the way, everybody. If you can see that my wife took away, but I pulled it back. She, she, she, it wasn't my office and then it was in my office. So funny. You mentioned your wife stealing it because I'd love to say, Oh, here's mine. Mine. It's in my daughter's room because she has acne. And essentially, if I wanted to use it, I have to go dig it out and find it out of like this teenager's room. So you'd ask about the acne. And yes, she 100% uses it for like with the blue light for her for her acne. And it's amazing. So I have a question for you, Jeanine, on the blue light and on the acne. But I also want to can you bring up because I've seen a lot of vices for the face that are off the face. And when I was trained, if the if the photon, if the diodes are on your skin, is more beneficial than if the diodes are off your skin. So can you talk of on the face versus off the face? And then because we talked about pelvic health, blue light, say not doing it so often, what if somebody has a cystic, deep, painful acne? What's the frequency of using the blue and the red? And does it do it at the same time? Or is it either red or blue on the face? Yeah, okay. So yeah, so it's red, it's red, it's red, red and near and for red or blue. Those are your three modes. And what we always recommend for people, if they're treating acne, that's active. Yes, you can do that three to five times a week. But it's interesting. I've reviewed, I've just finished reviewing all the skin literature on all the different topics for a course that we're putting together. And what fascinates me is that there's really a huge range in the research in terms of frequency of use. It'll range from one time a week to daily. And so it's, I think in a very, very important consideration with light therapy, that people realize that more is not necessarily better. So it's not something that you do more than once a day. And the reason for this is because the effects in the cell actually last 24 to 48 hours. And they are cumulative. So if you were to do this, let's say three times in one day, you can't over do it. We're not talking about a treatment that's just a very simple topical. We're actually getting in and we're doing something. We're inducing changes on a cellular level. That's one question there. Remind me, remind me, Lauren, where am I going to next? I'm going to get, and so the frequency is, and we notice that in our clinic and our training as well, because some people I want to come every day, I use the analogy of you can drink out of a hose or you could fire hose, right? In our training, the way you said it less can be more, but there's a goalie lock amount. You can do little and you have no benefit. So if the system is power, the power enough, you're not really, and most of the systems I see on Amazon, it's like standing in front of a Christmas tree. Yes, you are getting light at your skin, but you're not having a therapeutic thing. And you can overdo it like you said. And so often, it is like I always say, give the body a chance to really digest metabolize this light in the sense that if somebody has an acute stuff, we may go five days in a row for pain and then we start to cut it back. That once a week is like maintenance, but at the beginning, most people are doing something four to five times a week, but not more than once a day. That's a nutrient. Yeah, you can think of it like a nutrient. And you mentioned that about metabolism. And yes, your second question, you were asking about on the face versus off the face. And so that's again, I don't think we're going to that we want to necessarily say one is better than the other because it's all about the dose of the light. So what you are pointing to though is the fact that the dose of light, the amount of light that gets in when the device is away from the skin is less than when it's against the skin. So if you were to, if you were to kind of visualize light coming from a source above the face and hitting the skin up to 60% of it is going to be reflected. It's not going to be absorbed. Whereas when you have that direct skin contact, you have upwards of a hundred percent absorption. So what we've done at fringes, we've identified a range of intensity that is essentially the amount of light that your skin is getting per square centimeter or your tissue is getting per square centimeter. And we know that that's the target range that we want to have. That's what we feel based on looking at all the scientific literature is optimal. And it turns out that that is technically approximately the same intensity of the sun. So it's a sun-like intensity, which is considered low to moderate. It's not a high intensity. We don't have to worry about increasing oxidative stress or doing any kind of thermal damage, but it's not so low that it's not going to do anything. So that's the range that we're aiming for. So we do sell a red light therapy panel and we also sell many devices that are direct contact. And so the way that we've designed them is that panel is actually going to be powered differently so that if your six inches away from it and it's getting your skin, it's delivering the same intensity of light as our wraps that are against it. So that's what we've been able to kind of control internally with our with our devices because we're intentional about it. But certainly if you're an individual and you're looking for, you know, a device and you don't know anything about this, you definitely can understand that if it's going against your skin, you're going to be getting a greater absorption of that light energy. I personally, I love all of the different wraps, but I also use a red light therapy panel quite often. I use it most almost every morning. And there is something that we haven't talked about so far with respect to red light therapy or low level laser light therapy. And that's that there is another pathway that our light can get into our body and that's through our eyes and getting to our brain. And this is also very relevant, I think, for women who are dealing with menopause and perimenopause and also fertility because that light to brain pathway is one that we know has an effect on our mood. It has an effect on our circadian rhythm. And it does also seem to have an effect on our hormones. Everything that's going on at the level of the brain, right? The hypothalamus, the tuturia, the, those important axes there. So personally, I think if we were to have a sort of optimal red light therapy regimen, there would be some level of exposure to the light in the eyes. And you can very simply use your red light therapy route to do this as well. So for example, if I've got my wrap here and turn it on, all I have to do is just sit, you know, like that for a 10 minute period and I've got a good exposure at that point. So we do tend to focus, especially in the research on that cellular kind of targeting and the effects on energy production. But I did want to kind of put that in there that there is another root of exposure and benefits and get up early and get sunlight because that's what that's doing exactly. Exactly. But if you're looking for like you want to heal an injury, or you got stuff on your skin on your face or your ovaries, then you want that ideally contact. But I agree, like the giga laser system we have, it's off the body, but it is so many diodes and it's powered that we're getting photons at a therapeutic level. We're hoping, right? So that's why we see the, the value of that. So many of them systems have the, it's off the skin. So if you're going to get 60% off, it's like you didn't get it, right? And so then it needs to be that much more powered, which they all have power. I just like how you've done it. And like you said, you have all different systems. I think of the people I see. So fertility, you know, the pelvic wine is excellent for the fertility, looking at the microbiome, looking at regulating inflammation locally, blood flow locally, all that stuff. So so so important, so beneficial, our mental pausal, paramedic pausal women. So for the vaginal atrophy and just dryness. So for becoming more blood flow there, we really haven't talked about that, but also like how is it working then for for women menopausal that want to address that that's the pelvic wine I'm thinking again, right? For tissue regeneration. Do you want to discuss a little bit about the science on that on collagen and other things, the last thing that gets affected? There's research on that, I believe. Oh, there's the yes, there's definitely there is research specific to pelvic health. And then of course, we have research in other areas as well. Let us just look at, you know, general effects on collagen synthesis, those extracellular matrix proteins or what we call them. Most of that research has been on the face because we have our beauty industry, of course, that's very interested in this in this area. But it's pretty amazing. And this is one research study that I want to tell you about, which I think shed some light. I don't mean to I started saying that and then realized that I'm talking about like their free shed some light on exactly how this is is working kind of big picture. And it was an in vitro study looking at effects on the expression of collagen related proteins. So able to map out really from the exposure to the light all the way to the synthesis of the protein and could see that it was affecting it at the level of gene expression. So literally at the level of the nucleus. And this is also another reason why we know you don't necessarily do this in 10 minutes later your effect is over, right? This is why we see the cellular effects lasting 24 or 48 hours. So collagen is is really our primary structural protein in our body. And then of course, we've got a last in which is what gives us our really nice stretchiness. And that's really important in our face. And it's really important in the pelvis. And you know, other organs like their bladder. And so exposure to both the red and the near infrared light, we know that even just a single exposure can increase the synthesis of those collagen proteins, the last in proteins. Of course, it's more likely that this is a this is what we consider a longer term effect. So you know, women will often ask us if we start using this wand, how long is it going to take for us to see benefits? What are you going to see sort of in the short term versus the long term? In the short term, what we really see are those effects related to blood flow. And so that increase in blood flow, which can happen also with the vibration therapy, vibration therapy for as little as 10 minutes will increase blood flow as well. So increase blood flow, it's just going to cause an increase in lubrication. That's often noticed immediately. Sometimes an increase in nerve sensitivity can be observed in a very short term basis. And then longer term over the course of weeks to months, that's where we see that tissue regenerating, taking place. Yeah, this. I was just going to add in in terms of vaginal dryness. So what I will ask women, men and appausal women who are looking to engage in intercourse and wanting to have the like kind of a, they'll say the best of X, I'll ask them to use their wand just prior to intercourse because we do see a change, also immediately with blood flow and blood flow of course is what helps with secretion and lubrication. But then they will use it say 10 minutes prior to intercourse, but then also intermittently say throughout the week, right? If we're trying to make that long term change. So clinically, we actually recommend and see change consistent with what the research is showing really. Can I do some rapid fire questions for as we get ready to close? You guys good for some more. Clinically or research. So those looking to support the reproductive health of fertility, you're talking about frequency, you know, less is more. How often are you recommending they do it a week? I heard once a day, so don't do it more than once a day, but how how many times? Don't do it more than once a day. Yeah. And how many times a week? You know, generally three to five is what we recommend, but certainly some people, some people do change. choose to do seven and that's okay, but there's also research that has used a frequency of twice a week and there's been benefit. There's been research that's used a frequency of one to be benefits on some outcomes. I don't think necessarily for reproduction or men opposed that that's ideal. You know, there's there's going to be like a good better best scenario and that three to five times a week is probably a hard task. Seven, I know in your mind you think going if it's good, I'll do more. I'll be better. I know, three to five, the face. So if somebody has acne, I see now in your booklet, you can do a red and infrared combined as one and you can do blue on its own. So you can do two. If you have acne, you can do two sessions. One is red and red and then followed by blue or would you prefer blue followed by other way. Blue, blue followed by red and red. Be becomes before red. Be before everybody there, you'll remember it. So and that's how often is that one. Would you recommend same same frequency three to five times a week? Three to five times a week. Yeah. Yeah. If somebody is dealing with acne that's really quite bothersome, certainly trying doing it at a frequency of once a day for a period of maybe a week or two weeks. It should be okay, but ideally that three that three to five times a week is still a better target. I like because Jenny, you said about the how it accumulates. So just reminding people like you just said, well, you could do it daily for a week or two. But then you got to cut back to that three to five times a week because you you've kind of saturated you're at a point that doing it seven days a week for the rest of your life probably would not have the benefit you're looking for. I'd be more concerned with that. So the cumulative benefits will or will will not last beyond 48 hours. So if you were to stop it and reduce your frequency after two weeks, you could quite quickly can get yourself back down in terms of what's happening on a cellular level. But where I would start to get concerned with the blue light are adverse effects on the skin microbiome because at this point we're airing on the side of caution. There isn't a lot of research. There are no research other than that one single study on the vaginal microbiome. There are a couple of studies on the skin microbiome and they have shown some changes to the normal flora with blue light exposure. So we know we know that there is some susceptibility there. So it's going to be it's a matter of really finding that balance and getting the benefits but yet not doing any harm to the good books, you know, get those bad ones and and help the good ones. Now your ones has vibrations. So you have two medallys there. I think your rap has vibration because the face vibrator is only like no, no, there are some there are some products that have vibration, but not all of them correct. So technically anything you want to add scientifically anything you want to share that I have not been able to ask or draw out of you guys. So the one is really awesome like therapeutic for postpartum, not just for vaginal dryness or trying to increase circulation for muscles, strengthening or so on, but also someone's had an ekesyautomy or someone's had tearing or even post surgically not necessarily with postpartum population delivery. So the one and the red light therapy can be so beneficial for wound wound healing and the pain related to that all of that all of it. Yeah, with the same mechanisms that we've already discussed for all the other conditions, but to kind of highlight wound healing is I mean fantastic with light therapy. I was going to mention is also I think very clinically relevant to a lot of women because we know hypothyroidism is a big problem for a lot of women and it can also affect fertility and it's a big issue in in Perry menopause and menopause. I personally have experience with using the the neck and chest wrap for hypothyroidism it fits beautifully over the thyroid gland and it's so effective that there it's actually contraindicated for people with hyperthyroidism to use red light therapy directly over the thyroid gland because it is so stimulatory. And I was able to reverse a case of hypothyroidism without medication and just using red light therapy. I want to get out a bit about that so put that back on your neck so we'll get a vision there. This is the one that my wife took back to. Yeah, so it goes right around right around the neck tightly and then you put it on put it on the chest and then of course the benefit to in here. Before we move over to learn is that you also have all of these lymphatics and the thymus gland. So if you're if you're not feeling well, you're a little bit under the weather you're fighting a cold. This is a great place to get red light too is just in this neck and chest area to get that stimulation for your for your immune system. All right, in theory, I'm going to tell you why this may be really good for for till the other things because the Oshiro technique was on the crotted you were on you talked about the length. Approximal yep, yep, but you're on the crotted right. Yep, he also on inadvertently as I mentioned, but you're over the Vegas. We're now using light therapy to stimulate the Vegas, which is totally great for him. And then some people use it over the ocipit, which looks like it wraps a bit so you're getting it does it goes all the way to the mouth. Yep. And then this is a great product. The sternum has been shown for stem cell proliferation if you can get the dosage into the sternum either people use it to be out or the sternum because it's easy to access those bones. I'm not treating my practice. I have probes and I'm probing the Vegas the crotted the static ganglia, which you're over right and the sternum for blood flow, parasympathetic response stem cell proliferation. So there is that that's awesome. Yeah, so just wanted to highlight that. Yeah, and any like all of these wraps too. I mean this doesn't you know it has an unusual shape, but it's actually a great shape to go right over the lower abdomen as well. So it's a device that you can easily use on a couple of different body parts. Just because you guys say, you're already technical in one, right? Yeah, because you say chest doesn't mean you can't as long as you get light on the body to put on your back. Your knee doesn't matter. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's for my knee. I go just get the diodes. The other thing I want to get out with you. I want to this is whether we'll keep it in or not because this is just interest the thyroid. So you had mentioned that it's hypothyroid. You were able to support yourself with this, but not hyperthyroid. So here's what I know so far. So I will ask you this question in the textbooks. Oh, that reminds me. Public wand. I didn't ask this question, but do they do it after ovulation if they've been trying to conceive before before ovulation. So you don't use the wand after ovulation if the suspect said to my clients, but that's just based on the research that I've been reading and was it Marie Jensen. Some of the work that she had done. So that's that's what I've mentioned to my clients. The only reason they they all say don't do it over the sacred or the lorabdemon. Yeah. They don't want you to do it. Just so you know, when I've talked to Michael Hamlin in person, like if I've been at conferences together. The only reason it's there because we don't know. So we say don't do it. And pregnancies go poorly sometimes and then you'll get blamed, but they can't understand anything from the scientific understanding of the mechanism that would be bad. But because we don't know we say no and because if something goes bad, you could get sued. So that's why they do it. We tell people don't do it if they are trying to conceive after ovulation back to the thyroid. So the textbooks say don't do it over the thyroid. You know, because they're afraid that you would over stimulate more and more, they're saying that the light therapy is regulatory. So exactly. Yeah, just like inflammation it down regulates the bad inflammatory cytokines and up regulates the good ones. There was that study out of Brazil where they had Hashimoto's where people are either going hyper hyper and it regulated. It doesn't actually take a normal thyroid and make it hyper. And make it hyper. And I think so I was going to say that that contraindication is really just like what you were talking about with the light in the sacrum. It's a cover your ass kind of thing. All right, it's just this is we don't want to see this happen. But and I think what this ultimately speaks to is is the fact that this is a modality that is related to the body's natural wisdom essentially. It's not like a drug that we're putting in that's going to keep cranking up if you take a higher dose it's going to do more and more and more and more and more and more. Right. If we put an appropriate amount of light in. It's not necessarily going to just cause the same outcome in the cells. It's not like you said it's not just going to turn them up or turn them down. It's going to help it to regulate. It's going to help it to do what it's programmed based on its function. But it's trying to achieve homeostasis right. Yeah, similar to acupuncture. It could regulate regulate. Let's see. And we see that with acupuncture blood pressure. The points can if you're a blood pressure is low, it will bring it to normal. If your blood pressure was high, it would bring it to normal. Same points. If your blood pressure was normal, it did nothing. Right. It's regulating. And we know when there's a deep injury. So the skin has no damage. There's a bone or deep injury and we do the photo by modulation over it. The healthy tissue on the surface. Do not get damage from all the photons that are going deeper to the damage tissue. And this may be ultimately what we end up discovering about, you know, the blue light. It may be that we realize what we don't need to worry that much about adverse effects of the blue light on on normal microbes. That that's not where we are right now in terms of our our knowledge and so we just have to err on the side of caution with that one. But I agree. I would say this learned that if I had hyperthyroidism. I would still use my light therapy. - Yeah, when we start using it on people with Hashimoto's, because our naturopaths can order tests, we would order tests twice a week over several weeks just to see what was happening to see for the ongoing hyper, which we didn't see happen. But we did, we were able to, you've got to be managed. So we're not saying, oh, go ahead and use it. If you have hyperthyroid, I want to be clear. We're not giving medical information here anyhow. You need to talk to your health professional. And if you have anything, you want to be monitored and have somebody follow you. 'Cause again, this is a wellness device and speaking of wellness devices. It's fringesheals.com is the website. They have been generous to this debuting of having a podcast, you get a coupon. And I'm looking at my coupon, it's Lauren, my name 10, I guess they gave us. My team just sent me a little slack. Lauren, 10, L-O-R-N-E's how I spell my name though. So you do have to spell my name correctly for the coupon to work against in the code. Where else can they, there's the fringesheals.com, anything else that we can, they can find you guys. You got lots of information on your website. - For sure, a lot of people will DM us on Instagram. So it's @fringheals, that's our handle. And then the DM will get directed to say for myself, if it's a public health question or another one of the team members, if it's something else. And if anyone wants to contact me with a public health, like kind of related question or anything related to the wand, I'm Liz at fringesheals.com. - We do also do a lot of continuing education stuff for healthcare providers in different backgrounds. So we have a kind of a affiliate website called french.u.com, it's short for fringe university. And we do have on that website a free 30 minute video on red light therapy if anybody is interested in kind of diving a bit deeper into the basics. And then if you were really interested in going deep, we have a six hour course on red light therapy for purchase there, but that's not for everyone. - We also have, and we also have the one hour complimentary course on just the actual fringe website. So if someone wants to go into that, if you go under, sorry, if you go under continuing education or continuing learning, then you can click on another course there. - You know, in my clinical practice, my plan is, we have really nice professional systems. And I see people that travel from far that can't come, even sometimes once a week. Some people come from far and spend a stay in a hotel for four or five days to get treated daily. I want to be able to use our professional systems, and then they have this as well to use, right? 'Cause then I think they're gonna, 'cause they're seeing me sometimes once, maybe twice a week. And ideally, be great if they had three or four times. And this is something that they can use this. We can still do what we do with our acupuncture tools and add the laser when I see them. But now the home systems are getting so good. I've been doing this for 25 years, photobuy modulation since 2008 in my practice. Back in 2008, there were so expensive only the professionals had them. But now, when we're recording this in the late 2025, there are a lot of home systems that are like Christmas trees. They really don't do anything, unfortunately. Not what you're hoping them to do. - Yeah. - But there are systems now, like what you guys are putting out, that are now in a price range, that you can buy, and it makes sense to have these at your home. So thank you for the clinician Liz and the scientists, Genevieve, for coming together on Fringe and connecting with me. So I could let the public know that you exist, because I hope my patients will use this between visits so they can continue with their own health. This is something that I think women will benefit greatly from. - Thanks so much for having us. This was great. - Yeah. - Thanks, Lauren. It's wonderful talking to you. - You guys too. - Hi, Dr. Lauren Brown. I'm the host of the Conscious Fatality Podcast. And if you like this episode, we invite you to post comments, like, subscribe, 'cause it's our understanding, it helps other people find this episode as well. - If you're looking for support to grow your family, contact Accubalance Wellness Center. At Accubalance, they help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach, using low-level laser therapy, fertility acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Accubalance fertility diet and Dr. Brown's video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to Accubalance.ca, that's acubalance.ca. - Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Conscious Fatility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lauren Brown official, that's Instagram Lauren Brown official, or you can visit my websites, LaurenBrown.com and Accubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, ring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.