Abstract
Global life expectancy has increased by approximately 30 years over the past century, but gains in health span have not kept pace. Many individuals now spend the final 10–20 years of life living with chronic disease, disability, and declining functional capacity. Strategies that simultaneously target multiple age-related biological pathways may offer opportunities to improve both longevity and health span. This lecture reviews the mechanistic rationale and clinical evidence supporting photobiomodulation (PBM) as a potential intervention for improving physiological factors associated with healthy ageing, longevity, and age-related disease risk.
A narrative review was conducted of published clinical studies investigating the effects of PBM on physiological markers associated with cardiovascular health, metabolic function, physical performance, recovery, autonomic regulation, sleep quality, and inflammation, drawing on randomised controlled trials and higher-quality non-randomised clinical studies involving local and whole-body PBM interventions.
Across multiple studies, PBM demonstrated beneficial effects on several recognised predictors of health span and longevity, including improvements in exercise capacity, muscular strength, physical recovery, sleep quality, and quality of life. PBM has also been associated with reductions in systemic inflammatory and oxidative stress markers, improvements in heart rate variability and resting heart rate, reductions in nocturnal hypertension, and improvements in VO₂max, a well-established predictor of all-cause mortality.
PBM should not be viewed as a treatment for ageing itself, nor as a panacea for age-related disease. However, current evidence suggests that PBM may represent a useful adjunctive intervention capable of targeting several physiological domains associated with healthy ageing. Further large-scale prospective studies are warranted to determine whether improvements in recognised surrogate markers translate into meaningful long-term reductions in morbidity, disability, and mortality.
