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Create your free business website! www.ascpskincare.com 33 In the late 1980s, during a series of studies by NASA on how to grow plants in space, researchers unexpectedly discovered that the red LED lights they were using on the plants also prompted cell regeneration. NASA's research spawned a broad investigation into the healing effects of LEDs by other researchers and led to new uses for this technology in health and beauty. A Quick Guide to Light All light is radiation. The light that is visible to the human eye is only a very small percentage of the entire electromagnetic radiation spectrum that is emitted by the sun, which includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, visible light (which is further divided into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet wavelengths), ultraviolet waves, X-rays, and gamma rays. The longer the wavelength, the lower the frequency, and the more penetrability the radiation will have through human tissue. The range of wavelengths that humans are able to see is very narrow, between approximately 400–700 nanometers. The term nanometer is often related to the length and strength of the wave and correlates with a specific color. For instance, wavelengths of approximately 650 nanometers are visible to us as red light. White light is a combination of all the colors. When white light passes through a prism it is split into individual colors—the colors of the rainbow. Ultraviolet rays (which are further divided into UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C wavelengths) range from about 200–400 nanometers, so they are not visible to us. A certain amount of UV radiation is essential to almost all life forms on Earth, but excessive exposure can be damaging—we are all familiar with its negative effects on the skin. At the other end of the spectrum, infrared waves range from 700 to over 1,000 nanometers, meaning they are longer waves with a lower frequency and can penetrate more deeply into the skin. Infrared waves are invisible, too, but we perceive them as heat. The warmth you feel from the sun mainly comes from infrared waves. Lasers, LEDs, and Intense Pulsed Light Laser treatments and intense pulsed light (IPL) treatments use the same wavelengths of light as LEDs, but the three are very different. The most important difference is whether that light is coherent (focused) or noncoherent (scattered). Lasers create coherent waves of light—this means the light forms a narrow beam. They can be very hot, and some are ablative (able to cut or vaporize tissue). LEDs create noncoherent light, like an ordinary light bulb. They are non-ablative and cool. IPL treatments also use noncoherent light and are non-ablative, but they generate heat. (nanometers) Shorter wavelength, higher frequency Longer wavelength, lower frequency