Our Story

My name is Helmut Uhlmann and I created Red Light Hero after learning about red light therapy in 2023 from a Bryan Johnson video.

I was curious to try it, but when I looked online I was confronted with a wall of marketing jargon, unsupported health claims, and specifications I had no way of understanding or checking.

• Surely you just want the highest irradiance number possible... right?

• 5W bulbs must be better than 3W bulbs... right?

• 660nm and 850nm are the best wavelengths, that’s why they’re used everywhere... right?

• Dual lens LEDs give a more uniform treatment... right?

These are just a few examples of widely propagated misinformation I found. Amidst this confusion, the devices also seemed unduly expensive and I could not wrap my head around why. The more I researched, the less confident I felt about buying.

So I stopped shopping and dove deeper into the red light therapy literature, who makes these devices, and the engineering behind how they work.

Through this process I realised I can’t be alone in desiring transparency, clarity, and research-informed specifications - not marketing-led ones!

And that is how Red Light Hero was born.

I wanted to have and share red light therapy products which reflect academic literature and have their budgets dedicated to features likely to improve outcomes and not just look good on a landing page.

Much of what this industry publishes is wrong. Not just exaggerated but wrong. A ubiquitous example is the widespread claim that 5W LEDs deliver more power than 3W LEDs. They don’t, and the reason is straightforward once you look at it.

Our Industry Deep Dive page covers more examples.

Much of what’s sold as features does nothing for you. App connectivity. Dimming that only reduces your dose. Pulsing, which is mostly used in laser studies as a means of heat modulation and also unnecessarily reduces dose in photobiomodulation. Strip those away and what remains is what actually helps your panel work for you: irradiance, safety, LED lifespan and build quality.

What it means in practice:

We measure our own devices using spectrometers, solar meters and EMF readers both before we add items to our store, and periodically afterwards to maintain quality standards.

We visit the factories building our products, posting about it to take you on the journey.

We cite real research and provide direct links so you can verify it for yourself.

And we built a Dosage Estimator to help you get a similar amount of energy to that used in studies. Red light follows a biphasic dose response: too little and too much both reduce - and eventually completely negate - efficacy. Most brands never mention this. Our Estimator calculates your session length (not medical advice, of course!³) from published J/cm² targets so you can get similar dosages.

Red Light Hero is about providing quality research-informed red light therapy solutions, whether you’re just starting out, a seasoned biohacker, or a business with wellness and recovery needs.

Explore the range · Read the research