World's Most Power Dense* Near-Infrared Red Light Therapy Device Too Powerful? Founder Interview.
Competitors fear-mongering while we keep doing arithmetic. Can less be more?
This will be a short newsletter post since a 1 hour podcast video interview just dropped. Check out the video and share it with your friends who might not know about red light therapy and need a primer.
I think it was maybe close to a year ago that I saw some posts on Facebook from some red light therapy marketing company claiming that some devices were too powerful, and that the idea of more bang-for-your-buck was actually a flawed concept, alluding to the well-known biphasic response of red, which can look something like this:
LEDs are not rocket science. These are remarkably simple products to build, and several years in, apparently rather than making better devices, companies are capitulating to having a low power, overpriced product, but trying to pretend this is a feature. There were a few recent Facebook posts with people explicitly calling out our products, which is surprising given how small we are — I guess competitors recognize, Chroma sets the standard. Joovv even decided to borrow my style of writing to do “cautionary” articles around claims of devices that are “most powerful” and the like, which is of course nonsense. Power is just the amount of electricity being consumed per unit time; the most powerful system is just the one where you buy 100 of the thing and plug them all in at the same time. The Ironforge uniquely takes a rather large amount of power, and crams it into a small package based on the simple fact that you can use a small powerful thing across your entire body, but you can’t use a big powerful thing to deliver power to a small spot where you really want to focus. It’s not that complicated. Though I suppose if you are a marketer, no matter how easy the hardware, it is easier still to simply change your marketing when you can count on customers to not run the numbers themselves.
…I’m imagining what it might be like in aerospace, where I focus: “no, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong — I know you thought you wanted better materials to withstand the thermal environment for hypersonic missiles, but we have a balsa wood missile meant to go at subsonic speeds — no one will see it coming, and they’ll just laugh until it’s too late.” Obviously, that doesn’t work with the DoD, but it seems to work in niche consumer products.
Now, aside from the fact that all devices are underpowered if you actually run the (real) numbers on dose response (INCLUDING THE IRONFORGE!!! — why do you think I want a chamber with 30 or so of them when I can afford it???), here is why the lower power concept is flawed: there is massive attenuation (i.e. reduction in power) as you enter the tissue. Yes, near-infrared light is great at penetrating tissue, but that is a relative comparison to wavelengths where basically all the light bounces right off. You are still getting a massive reduction in power density with every centimeter of depth, especially if you are looking at applications such as the brain where you have a huge dropoff when passing through the skull. This means that all the numbers you were working with (assuming you remembered to cut your power by 3 for the red/NIR relative power error on 50:50 lights compared to Ironforge being 80% deeply penetrating NIR, knocked off 10% for fans, and another 10% for silicon power supply loss, and knocked off 50% off everything for LED efficiency) are a MASSIVE overestimate of the dose for anything other than your skin. Good skin health is certainly worthwhile, but I built the Ironforge first and foremost because I had issues with connective tissue, so I need the right level of power inside my body, in my muscles, in my bones, in my finger pulleys, in my Achilles tendon, in my brain, etc… and I don’t really care if my skin has more than the “optimal” dose in getting it.
Our manufacturing partners are great… they have put up with our tiny order volumes for longer than I would have expected, but recently, we had to get a larger batch, so the Ironforge is in stock, and will be for a while. Grab one now if you don’t have one. All units use our upgraded mil-spec power cables (I went overboard on correcting a prior cable issue to make sure it would never be a problem) and these cables end up being a bit more slender in addition to being way strong. Or, you know, find someone else to sell you something more expensive with less power if that’s what you’re into.
I don’t really remember most of what we talked about in the podcast other than the critical depth attenuation concept, and honestly, I rarely ever listen to podcasts, but a lot of people seem to be into them so knock yourself out. If, however, you are more like me, I will leave you with a short, whimsical 17 second video you may enjoy on the subject of less being more from guitarist Yngwie Malmsteem:
