Using a 405nm laser to treat acne?

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While reading about Propionibacterium acnes on Wikipedia I noticed a blurb about 405-420nm light being particularly sensitive for the bacteria due to the endogenic concentrations of coporphyrin III. However I am unable to find extended information on this compound.

I have also read about people using 650nm lasers to do this on another thread on this site.

Since I am finding benzoyl peroxide treatments to be somewhat less than satisfactory for keeping my acne in control, and I am particularly bad at remembering to apply it on a twice-a-day basis, I'm thinking about using my 405nm blu-ray laser (about 600mW) for some self-administered phototherapy.

But I definitely don't want to do this unless I can be reasonably sure that it's safe and won't give me skin cancer.

I'm not sure what I think about this lasertherapeutics.us site though. They say under the laser therapy page that "Red Light does not penetrate very effectively below the skin surface and into the tissue below" which I find to be false: if you ever shine a flashlight into your hand you notice that the spaces at the edges of your fingers glows red. In fact the reason that skin is so hard to render in computer graphics is because of the need to take into account subsurface scattering of light. The reason that skin tone looks the way it does is because of the way red light travels through flesh and comes back out!

So if 650nm light does in fact also kill acne bacteria I'd rather use that than the beastly 405 to irradiate myself. I de-focused the lens and tried it on my fingertip and it stings a good amount. I suppose it'd be quite easy to use, I'd be focusing the light onto about a half inch diameter area (less seems to be so intense that it produces pain through heat) which means it'll get good coverage (easier to use than having to sweep a 2mm x 2mm dot across your skin anyhow)

Edit: Upon further reading it seems like the red light supposedly helps skin to heal faster. I think I read somewhere that mitochondria absorbs the energy and this may be part of the mechanism. A combination of red and blue (violet) light is supposed to be highly effective.

Visible light is not known to be carcinogenic, it's only UV that *might* be carcinogenic. It seems reasonable to say that i'm more likely to suffer burns than causing cancer when exposing skin to lasers and since I am focusing them to a negative focal length (focused behind aperture) it's not gonna be easy to burn myself.

I think i'm going to start some of my own trials... I don't have anything to lose as long as I'm careful to avoid the eyes... what I want to know, though, is just how much of a dose is necessary to kill the bacteria. I don't need any exposure past that point.

Well, I don't know, but I'd say blasting yourself with 600mW is probably a bit overkill.

It looks like their devices are putting out 35mW and are using a total of 57 diodes in the array.

FDA Cleared Laser Therapy | Laser Therapeutics | Low Level Laser Therapy | Skin Care

Specifications:
Output Wavelength:
Blue: 400~430nm Red: 630~660nm
Output Power:
Blue: 35mW/cm2+20% 57 diodes
Red: 80mW/cm2+20% 117 diodes
Suitable Irradiated Distance: 1-5cm
Using Time: 5 minutes, 15 minutes
Energy Intensity: 53~157J/cm2
The clinical panel has 6 times the number of diodes however the power density is the same as the individual model.

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Cool, its nice that they provide actual scientific numbers there.

Notice it's 35mW/cm^2 of irradiance. With a 600mW dot, the irradiance varies with the distance: if I cover 100 square cm with it, it would be 6mW/cm^2 of irradiance.

If I shine my 405 on my face so it covers 1 square inch (this feels rather nice and warm, like sunlight exposure) that's 6.45 square cm. So it would be 93mW/cm^2 of irradiance. I reckon I can just hold it on an area for 5-10 seconds every few days and it would be a good enough dose.

I think more power is still better because it allows treating a greater area at once.

Anyway I think i'll just shine my 405 on my face every couple of days for a few minutes. I'm gonna leave the left side alone so it will be the "control".

This seems awesome an completely terrifying. Wear your glasses?

Mattman420 said:

This seems awesome an completely terrifying. Wear your glasses?

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Indeed. The red colored safety glasses I use to block 445 will work well with 405 also. I even have my own DIY LPM to make sure of that. This will greatly help to prevent accidental blindness.

op:

I guess I'll post pictures if results are good. I don't have terrible acne though. I'm hoping this could help me get completely clear. Either way it's gonna take a few weeks at least.

Please don't point a laser at your face because you saw that it was okay online.

If you absolutely have to test this for yourself, use something like this instead. Application would be easier, safer, and cheaper than with a laser.

I dont know about this. The terms " laser" "face" 600mw" " self administered" they all seem so dangerous to me.

Are your eyes closed? Is the laser in a mount or is it in your hand? You know glasses arent for direct hits right?

I think you should reconsiter this.

My glasses work well against 445 but not as good on 405. It produces about 30mW through the glasses which is a 20x reduction. The 445 barely registers through the glasses. I estimate it is about a 500x reduction at 445nm.

So these goggles are not a satisfactory solution... I will need to come up with a better solution than the one I have now to continue. These safety concerns are definitely legitimate.

However I think that a de-collimated beam should not cause damage when using appropriate goggles.

My sister tried this for a little while. I set her up with relatively a low power PHR, about 80mw. She suffers from rather bad cystic acne, and she said she did notice an improvement. However, she lost interest after a while and eventually quit

I've used a 405 to lase small localized infections in cuts and boils and such. Seems to help, but I haven't been very scientific about it. I started after I read an article here about light in the deep blue/violet part of the spectrum being able to destroy MRSA bacteria. I thought it was pretty exciting, given how difficult that stuff is to kill by conventional means.

proud2deviate said:

My sister tried this for a little while. I set her up with relatively a low power PHR, about 80mw. She suffers from rather bad cystic acne, and she said she did notice an improvement. However, she lost interest after a while and eventually quit

I've used a 405 to lase small localized infections in cuts and boils and such. Seems to help, but I haven't been very scientific about it. I started after I read an article here about light in the deep blue/violet part of the spectrum being able to destroy MRSA bacteria. I thought it was pretty exciting, given how difficult that stuff is to kill by conventional means.

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About the quote in your sig... ">500mW will decompose organic materials on contact" That's when that energy is focused, right? I find that when I focus my ~600mW 405 to a point to burn something with it, it will heat it so that it glows white hot. At several thousand kelvins you bet it'll destroy organic tissues... A 650nm single mode is also able to achieve this on dark plastic or paper or similar materials but I think the difference is that for instance if you tried to burn your skin using a focused 650nm laser the light will tend to diffuse rather than immediately get absorbed, due to it being a lower energy wavelength that also happens to pass through (at least human skin) easily.

From what I have read so far, I think 650 or 635nm light is actually capable of directly helping to heal skin from damage. The blue wavelengths are effective for killing bacteria. Best results from using both! I never could have imagined lasers had (potentially) every-day medical uses! It's gonna be hard for me to verify results, but the next time I sustain a minor injury I'll be sure to put my lasers to good use. Maybe I'll cut myself in the name of science!

It is encouraging to hear that improvements were noticeable. I'm seeing that when people go for blue light therapy with their doctors that its a session once a month or something like that, and the effects last for a very long time (much longer, anyhow, than topical treatments with chemicals). This seems to indicate that the bacteria killing power can be formidable when done right.

Yep, I imagine the quote in my sig is rather dependent on focus, and it doesn't take >500mw once you get it tight, either. I snagged that quote in the earlier days of cheap(er) 445 diodes, when most everyone could suddenly afford a class 4 laser. I wanted to temper the excitement of the moment with the reality that these suddenly quite available lasers could ding you hard if you should forget to respect them.

You're right about red lasers tending to diffuse in skin (at least my own Caucasian skin ) My LOC build is putting out at least 230mw depending on optics, but even focused to a pinpoint, it will only sting bare skin (until you get it on a freckle.) Smoke would roll with blue or violet.

I also read an article or post about red lasers speeding healing, but the claim was that it had to be pulsed at a specific frequency to achieve results. I honestly can't imagine what difference it might make, but that's why I prefer physics over biology; cells are all messy and unpredictable-like. If I were forced to hazard a guess, I'd say the claims were made by the manufacturers of high-priced medical lasers, in order to deceive us into thinking the equipment was beyond the reach of the average person. If you can't monopolize it via prescription, do so via ignorance.

But anyway, that's just paranoid little me.

On a lighter and slightly more disgusting but related note, I have noticed that my sebum (sebaceous fluid, the gunk in blackheads,) fluoresces hot pink under 405nm.

[mantra]Those are called sebaceous filaments, everyone has them, your face is not as filthy as you think.[/mantra]

Hmmm this is very unique. I personally wouldn't do it simply because whoever does do it, is a trained specialist, with an equipment designed for that task.
Then again, skin is pretty tough and unless you do it for years (to develop cancer),at the most you give yourself a sunburn lol.

All things being said, you have to take into account it will be hard to apply it with a laser beam. Perhaps there are other ways, as Cyparagon suggested, with uncollimated light.

proud2deviate said:

Smoke would roll with blue or violet.

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Wow I could never bring myself to ever test something like this. Can't imagine how much that would hurt!!!

proud2deviate said:

On a lighter and slightly more disgusting but related note, I have noticed that my sebum (sebaceous fluid, the gunk in blackheads,) fluoresces hot pink under 405nm.

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I noticed hundreds of these on my nose with the 405! What's strange is the blackheads on my nose never get acne-infested.

I'm so glad I already finished my lunch...