A combination of LED light and green tea cream is being used by scientists in Germany to develop an alternative to Botox and cosmetic surgery.
The technique, which uses high-intensity light from LEDs together with a lotion, works ten times faster than a similar anti-wrinkle treatment using just LEDs, claim the researchers.
Researchers Andrei P Sommer and Dan Zhu say phototherapy has been used for more than 40 years to help to heal wounds and by using of the kind LEDs usually employed in automotive applications, skin wrinkles can be reduced.
However, exposure to this light can generate high levels of reactive oxygen species that can potentially damage cells, so an antioxidant found in green tea extract has been used to combat this.
Lasers are also increasingly being used in healthcare and cosmetics for applications including body shaping and hair removal, such as the recently-released Erchonia Zerona laser device which non-invasively melts fat cells.