June 24, 2026

Holistic Therapies for ASD: What the Research Says

Dr. Genevieve Newton is joined by Rita Mastrangelo, a certified functional nutrition health coach, FDN practitioner, and founder of Purely Functional Nutrition — and a mom who navigated her son Jordan's autism diagnosis at age 2.5. Rita shares how functional lab testing (organic acids, stool, total toxin panels, mineral analysis) revealed the root-cause picture that conventional care missed: candida and mold colonization, gut dysbiosis, mitochondrial dysfunction, and a SOD2 genetic variant driving oxidative stress. This is a deeply practical episode about what functional investigation of ASD can look like. The second half of the conversation turns to red light therapy and its emerging role in autism support. Dr. Gen reviews four published studies including a controlled trial showing measurable EEG changes and reduced autism severity scores following photobiomodulation. Rita describes implementing a protocol with Jordan — starting at 5 minutes, 50% intensity, and gradually working up to 20 minutes — alternating sessions between the head wrap and abdominal application to address both neurological and gut-related symptoms. The gut-brain axis is central to everything here: heal the gut, and the brain often responds. The episode covers the Fringe transcranial head wrap (combining red, 850nm NIR, and 1050nm NIR light), the rationale for alternating head and gut protocol days, LED versus laser considerations, and how to approach this work as a complement to — not a replacement for — other evidence-based interventions. For families navigating ASD, this episode offers both hope and a framework.   Listen on the go — The Fringe podcast is available on Spotify and YouTube. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.   Transcript Genevieve: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Fringe podcast. I am Dr. Genevieve Newton, Scientific Director at Fringe. Today I'm here with Rita Mastrangelo from Purely Functional Nutrition. We're here to talk about holistic therapies for autism. I'll be coming at things from the perspective of red light therapy. Rita will share her extensive knowledge about autism as it relates to functional nutritional medicine. She comes at this personally — she's the mum to a 15-year-old son named Jordan, who was diagnosed with autism at age two and a half. Through some very challenging experiences, she was led to explore this entire complex world of functional nutrition. Rita has become a certified functional nutrition health coach and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. She started Purely Functional Nutrition, which helps families who have children with autism using nutritional and functional lab testing to expose those hidden stressors — the things that are really the root of autism. She works with clients using lifestyle, nutrition, and supplements to improve health. Rita, thank you for being here. When you have a new family come in to see you, can you talk us through the diagnostic process? What are you looking for and how do you find it? Rita: My practice is virtual. When I speak with families — typically moms — it's over Zoom. The world of autism is very complex. I'm not looking at the diagnosis because many children diagnosed with autism have behavioral issues that contribute to their autism diagnosis at a purely behavioral level. The first thing I focus on is really understanding what the child is going through. I look at patterns. What is the child currently eating? Is the child a picky eater? How is their digestion? Are they constipated? What does their poop look like? How are they sleeping? Do they sleep through the night? Do they wake up in the middle of the night? How are they behaving at home? All of those behaviors are really going to tell me where the body is struggling. From there, we start with the foundations: nutrition. Many children are picky eaters so we start building food variety — I call it stealth nutrition. I look at what the child is currently eating and see how I can incorporate nutrient-dense foods into those foods, without compromising taste or smell. Then lifestyle. Then I rely on functional lab tests, which give me a clear picture of what might be contributing to the dysfunction and imbalances going on in the body. Nothing can really replace lab testing — no intake form, no checklist provides the accurate information that functional lab tests do. With a child who has a complex diagnosis, there's going to be a lot of elevations, but it doesn't leave me guessing as to where the dysfunction is. Understanding their nutrition, their lifestyle, and getting those markers allows me to provide an individualized roadmap. There's not one protocol that's for every child. Genevieve: It sounds like there are layers — you're seeing what's going on at the lifestyle and nutritional level, and then using functional lab testing to validate what you already suspect. What are some of the tests you run, and what sort of results do you typically see? Rita: There isn't just one functional lab test that will give you all the information. I run four: an organic acid test, a stool test, a total toxin test, and a mineral test. Each test gives me great information but I need the others to complement them. I don't treat the paper — I connect the dots and correlate with the behaviors of the child. But every child's lab results have imbalances. I would say 99% of the children have mold colonization in their gut, Candida overgrowth, bacterial imbalances, mitochondrial dysfunction, methylation issues, neurotransmitter issues. When it comes to gut health: many have low bacterial diversity, poor digestion, overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria because they're not eating a nutrient-dense, fiber-rich diet. These children are picky eaters — they're not eating those foundational foods that support optimal gut health at a cellular level. I often see the body under stress, which shows up as nutrient imbalances and oxidative stress. Because of that imbalanced gut, it impacts the gut-brain connection. If you have inflammation, that information isn't going to get to the brain efficiently. What happens in the gut doesn't stay in the gut. The resilience of the gut really influences how the brain functions — that's when we see the behavior, mood, and dysregulation. I also see a lot of environmental contributors: where there's mold, there are mycotoxins. There's also a lot of heavy metals. Our body has no use for heavy metals, but they cause a lot of neural inflammation. The organic acid test is one of my favorites — it's a urine test that looks at metabolites. I explain it as: we're not looking at the fire, we're looking at the smoke. There are a lot of patterns on the organic acid test that suggest mitochondrial strain or mitochondrial dysfunction. That helps me understand how well the body is producing energy at a cellular level. Genevieve: Could you give an example using Jordan of a test result you would see that you could map onto a specific behavior? Rita: Arabinose is a marker on the organic acid test — it's a metabolite of Candida overgrowth. We all have Candida; it's when it becomes opportunistic that it causes a lot of behaviors. Children with Candida overgrowth will often show signs of aggression, inappropriate behavior, giddiness, even pressing on their genital area — not because of pleasure but because of that deep pressure the body is seeking. There are also the mitochondrial markers, the Krebs cycle metabolites, that tell me the body is going through some type of stress. With Jordan, he always had two markers that were elevated — methylglutaric and hydroxyglutaric — which is indicative of mitochondrial stress. Jordan always ate well, but it was like: why are these markers always elevated? Why is he always rigid and stressed even when he speaks? Genevieve: So there's a dysfunction at the level of the mitochondria that's most likely happening at a genetic level. With the Candida, I'm also thinking you'd see a craving for sugar — a positive reinforcement cycle where they crave more sugar, eat more sugar, the Candida gets worse, and the behavior worsens as well. Rita: Yes, absolutely. Candida thrives off of sugar. A lot of families are always told to kill the Candida. Either they kill it and the behavior subsides but comes back, or the Candida marker is no longer elevated but their child still experiences the behavior. Candida is not the problem — it's a result of the problem. It's become opportunistic because of something else. As an FDN, we're taught to always dig deeper. What can be contributing to Candida overgrowth? Dysbiosis, gut issues, heavy metals, parasites, H. pylori, low copper, not eating a balanced diet — we always have to understand what's causing the environment to be opportunistic. It's never one thing. It's never about killing. It's always about healing opportunities. Even if a child has significant amounts of opportunistic bacteria on their stool test, it's not a matter of killing the opportunistic bacteria but rather increasing the commensal bacteria. Genevieve: It sounds like you have to keep digging deeper and deeper. What you described with Jordan's markers is different — you're essentially uncovering something at the most foundational level of mitochondrial function. Did you do any genetic testing to uncover polymorphisms? Rita: That's not one of the tests I start with right away because any elevation on the functional lab tests — we always try to bring balance back by building resilience in the gut, restoring what's missing in the gut to function optimally. When you start focusing on building balance back in the gut microbiome, everything kind of starts to settle down on its own. For Jordan, what I always found was that every time I would retest, he would always have mitochondrial markers elevated. When we continued running the organic acid tests, we consistently saw the methylglutaric and hydroxyglutaric elevated. One of my mentors recommended we run a mito swab for Jordan, which would look more directly at how the electron transport chain was functioning. That test found that complex one wasn't working efficiently, and there were inefficiencies in complex two and three. Which confirmed that his cells were under strain. I had run genetic testing on Jordan years prior and he has multiple genetic variants — one of them was the SOD2 variant, which affects how the body handles oxidative stress at a mitochondrial level. When you put all that together, it really painted a picture of mitochondrial stress and an increased oxidative load. We also did plasmalogen testing and his plasmalogens, the white matter, were very low. From a cellular and mitochondrial membrane level, he was struggling. That's when we started adding targeted support to help rebuild those levels. And that's when we were introduced to red light therapy. Genevieve: Right — as a non-dietary or non-pharmacological intervention to help support mitochondrial function. We so often use the term mitochondrial dysfunction in relation to autism spectrum disorders and ADHD. But you don't necessarily see what is actually causing that mitochondrial dysfunction. You mentioned three complexes in the electron transport chain were affected. For those listening who remember grade 11 biology — the electron transport chain has four complexes and is an essential, complicated part of our physiology. This is where red light therapy comes in: it supports the production of cellular energy specifically through effects on complex four. What have been your experiences using red light therapy to support mitochondrial dysfunction? Rita: Jordan used to stutter a lot and that's when I would notice something was going on. When a child is diagnosed with autism, there are so many complex issues going on. But when we start bringing balance back, a lot of children who have an autism diagnosis get better — the diagnosis gets removed. And then you have other children like Jordan, who doesn't have those same imbalances but is a neurodivergent individual who's just different — thinking and behaving differently than a neurotypical kid. For me, what I really needed to focus on was how to help Jordan gain that calm in his body that he's lacking. We started with the Tri-light panel — a small one we put on his lower back and the back of his head. Then it was recommended to me from a chiropractor colleague that Jordan would benefit from one specifically over the head. That's when I connected with Fringe, because Fringe offers a full head wrap that allows more coverage across the brain. Genevieve: The goal is to get light to the cells and tissues. When we're talking about somebody who has autism, the main target we want to get the light to is the brain. There's some evidence that delivering light to other parts of the body — the lower back, back of the head — has also been found to be beneficial. But for the most convenient, easiest delivery, especially for a child or teenager, it's helpful to have something that fits comfortably and is portable and wireless, so you can walk around while you use it. That's why we designed our head wrap the way we did. When we talk about red light therapy for the brain — the light form that is most important for brain health is near-infrared light. It's not visible to the eye, but we can feel it as a little bit of warmth, and it's an extremely powerful wavelength. Both red and near-infrared act in essentially the same way: they stimulate the electron transport chain to increase the production of cellular ATP. Where they differ is depth of penetration. Red light is quite superficial — a few millimeters. Near-infrared penetrates more deeply. When we look at the scientific research on supporting brain health, including for individuals with autism, pretty much exclusively we're seeing near-infrared light as the one that matters. Our products include both red and near-infrared intentionally. We have superficial blood vessels all around our head, and if you can get light as superficially and as deeply as possible, you're going to have the best outcome. For our head wrap, we use two forms of near-infrared light — one wavelength at 850 and another at 1050 nanometers — for broader coverage. Have you noticed anything else from Jordan's experience with red light therapy besides the stuttering improvement? Rita: His days are very structured and it was very hard for him to accept changes in routine. That's decreased, which is great. His skin is also better — he had severe acne and that's improved. Jordan does have a language impairment and his processing speed is slower than most, and he acknowledges that. But he's at a point in his life where he just wants to continue to thrive. He's doing intensive work at the chiropractor doing reflex integration and body balancing as well. I would definitely say the red light therapy has helped. How is the light actually working at an intracellular level when we apply it to the head? Genevieve: Great question. Red light therapy is unique as a non-pharmacological supportive tool that goes into your toolbox. It's not a drug intervention, not a medical device per se, but also not a lifestyle intervention. And it has an incredibly good safety profile — though with a caveat: if you're using a very high intensity device, the risk of increasing oxidative stress does increase. When you use a light therapy device — whether you're putting it on your head, chest, gut, or low back — the mechanism is the same. Depending on the wavelength, red or near-infrared, there is penetration and then absorption by a molecule called a photoreceptor. The red light is absorbed by photoreceptors more superficially in the skin. Near-infrared is absorbed by deeper photoreceptors. The target photoreceptor we want is the electron transport chain molecule called cytochrome C oxidase — complex four. Through that absorption, there is a release of nitric oxide, which is a tiny gas molecule that helps with blood flow. And ultimately through a cascade of downstream events, you have an increase in the synthesis of cellular energy. There's also another photoreceptor — water. Our cells are full of water, and this is a very underappreciated aspect of red light therapy that's really only starting to be recognized. Water absorbs near-infrared light and changes its structure, becoming slightly more viscous. When ATP is being synthesized in that mitochondria, that change in water viscosity actually helps in relation to the mitochondrial water. The main outcome — the umbrella effect — is an improvement in the metabolic health of the cell. This is why it's so relevant for people who have mitochondrial diseases or mitochondrial dysfunction: it helps support the production of cellular energy, which can restore some or all of that cellular function. And this is also why the lifestyle factors matter: if you're adding insults through diet or environmental toxins that are causing mitochondrial dysfunction, light therapy helps but it won't be the same as if you have that generalized mitochondrial support in place. Genevieve: On the question of whether light is actually getting into the brain: if you take cadaver skulls and look at whether light actually penetrates through the hair and skull into the brain, you find that very little is penetrating. But then you look at the clinical literature and see that when light is applied to the head in a wide range of brain disorders — Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, depression, autism, ADHD — we see benefits. So the clinical benefits most likely aren't happening because of deep brain penetration. There are other things going on. A cadaver skull is not a fully functioning living system with blood flow, lymphatic flow, and energy transmission. And some of the studies on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's have applied light to the gut and found benefits to the brain — which speaks to the gut-brain axis. When I looked at the literature for autism, I found around four studies I consider reasonably well done. One is a standout because it was controlled, using a placebo device, comparing it to an actual light therapy device over eight weeks of transcranial photobiomodulation. The group that received actual near-infrared light therapy had statistically significant reductions in autism severity scores — a subjective measurement — but very importantly, they also found EEG changes. That's an objective result. The other studies, though not controlled, also found benefits. Animal model studies found objective measurements: decreases in oxidative stress and decreases in neuroinflammation. The limitation is that we don't have big studies with hundreds of subjects. But what we do have is a small number of studies including one that was very well controlled, animal studies, and both subjective and objective measurements with internal consistency. Because of that, and because of the incredible safety profile of red light therapy, I am very comfortable saying that applying light to the brain is something with really no downside. There's only upside. Rita: I know that many chiropractors focus on red light therapy and some have a laser. Is that the same thing? Because a lot of families spend a lot of money on therapy and treatment, and if someone can save money and get a great product that they can use at home, I'd rather bring them that route. Genevieve: A laser delivers a single wavelength of light at a very high intensity, which is why it's only used for a very short period of time. An LED light delivers a range of wavelengths. For example, our head wrap delivers three different wavelengths of light. One of them would be the 850 nanometer near-infrared, but it actually delivers a range of about 820 to 880 nanometers with 850 as the peak. That's the first difference: laser is a single wavelength, LED is a range. The second difference is intensity: the laser is extremely high intensity, the LED is low intensity. What happens in our body is that the body is interested in the dose of light — a function of treatment time and intensity. If we want to match a laser dose using an LED, we can — we just do the math. That's why our head wrap is meant to be used for 10 to 20 minutes while a laser is usually only 30 seconds. Can you get benefits from lasers? Absolutely. Can you get benefits from LED? Absolutely. So then it's a matter of weighing the other issues: going into a clinic versus doing it at home. That increased compliance with at-home use can actually make LED therapy superior because you can do it more frequently. And for somebody with a SOD2 polymorphism like Jordan, who's more sensitive to oxidative stress — the higher the intensity of the light, the greater the cellular stress, nudging up on that level at which you can tip the cell into increased oxidative stress. With LED devices, our wiggle room is much greater. We're much less likely to overdo it. After looking at this in depth, the answer has been clearly: no, we do not need lasers to get benefits. But there are benefits to both. It's really just up to people to decide what works best for their budget, lifestyle, and comfort. Rita: If someone wants to purchase one, what would be a safe level and amount of time to start with? Genevieve: The first thing to establish is the intensity of the device you're going to be using. At Fringe, we look to nature to guide our decision-making — we mirror the intensity of the sun, which is between 20 and 40 milliwatts per centimeter squared for those red and near-infrared rays. We do it for a longer period of time: for our head wrap, 20 minutes is our maximum, with some people choosing around 10 minutes. With people with autism, we have to be more intentional with the lead-in because of sensory issues — start low and slow. For someone who had an SOD2 gene polymorphism and was new to red light therapy, I would recommend starting at 5 minutes per day at 50% intensity. Our devices start at 100% intensity, but there's a button that reduces the intensity by 50%. Start there for a week, three to five times a week, monitoring for any adverse responses — no increase in hyperactivity, no headaches, no eye pain. These are very uncommon results, but it's always better to go slow rather than have to pull back afterwards. If they didn't have the SOD mutation, I would still start at five minutes but keep it at 100%, then over two weeks work up to 10 minutes, then 15 minutes, then ultimately 20 minutes if they're comfortable. Higher intensity devices — around 100 mW/cm² — typically you don't want to go above 10 minutes. There's also controversy over whether devices are actually as high intensity as they say, since there's a systemic issue in this market of using incorrect measurement tools to verify intensity. Make sure the device has third-party testing that validates the actual intensity. And for the brain, you don't want a red light only device — you want both red and near-infrared, or near-infrared only. We have two wavelengths of near-infrared and one red in our head wrap, with a ratio of one red to two near-infrared chips. Is it safe to do it every day at a lower intensity like Fringe devices? Yes. But almost all of the research in brain health uses a frequency lower than daily. Three to five times a week is what we recommend. The most important thing is consistency. Benefits have been observed using frequencies of two times a week all the way to seven times a week. Rita: Can you speak to how we can use the Fringe head wrap for gut health? Genevieve: The gut-brain axis is critical to the proper functioning of our brain — we talked about this so much at the beginning. There's an emerging area of research in this space. In humans, I haven't seen any studies with autism specifically, but I have seen studies with Alzheimer's, depression, and Parkinson's disease. The approach being taken is to target both the gut and the brain with light therapy. If you want penetration into the gut, you're going to need near-infrared light to get in deeper. There has been actual demonstration of changes in the gut microbiome towards a more favorable profile, as well as changes in the cognitive and behavioral outcomes being measured. We designed our head wrap so that it can be used on both areas. It opens up and can be laid flat, fitting very nicely along the gut — it covers both the upper and lower abdomen. In terms of protocols: this is one where people often prefer to alternate days rather than treat both areas in the same day. A very easy approach: one day you treat the head, the next day you treat the gut, and take one day off a week. That gets you at three times a week for each area. For the gut with children, it's a great opportunity during quiet time when they're sitting and maybe on their iPad — just put it on there and secure it with a Velcro strap around the waist. One of the things that's notable in this gut research is that you're seeing effects not just on the microbiome but on the human host as well. The light is getting in and benefiting two organisms: all of the bacterial species and also the human gut tissue itself. There's a lot of potential for benefit here, especially for our kids with autism and ADHD. Rita: This is not just limited to children with complex needs like those diagnosed with autism or ADHD. This really benefits everyone in the family, just like nutrition and lifestyle is for everyone. Genevieve: I agree completely. There was even a study recently published looking at using red light therapy at the family level, with children and parents both using devices and reporting the different benefits observed. These devices can be shared across family members. Our head wrap is adjustable — it fits on tiny heads and bigger heads. It accommodates different people across the age span and different genders. I use the head wrap on a regular basis for cognitive health. There have been nine studies published to date on using transcranial photobiomodulation in people who are generally of healthy cognition, which are the hardest to find benefits in. It's remarkable that in healthy adults, applying red light therapy to the head has improved aspects of cognition including memory. I usually do it three times a week. It also helps support hair growth, which can be great for menopausal women and men as well. Very diverse benefits. Thank you so much Rita. Where can people find you? Rita: They can find me on Instagram — my handle is Rita underscore purely functional nutrition. That's the best way to find me. I also have a website, purelyFunctionalNutrition, but I share most of my information on Instagram. If anyone wants to schedule a call with me, there's a link in my bio. Anyone can send me a DM or an email — I'm always quick to respond. My hope for every family I connect with is to leave them with clarity on how to move forward. Genevieve: Amazing. Thank you so much for being here, and thanks to everybody for listening. Please join us next time.

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June 24, 2026

Full Body Red Light Therapy: What You Need to Know

Alyson and Dr. Genevieve Newton introduce the newest Fringe product — a full-body red light mat that rolls up like a yoga mat, offers a cordless/wireless option, and comes with a TPU protective cover. But this episode isn't just a product launch. It's a comprehensive look at the science behind full-body photobiomodulation, including some of the most common misconceptions in the red light therapy space. Dr. Gen addresses the intensity myth head-on: devices claiming 100 mW/cm² have been measured by third parties at 38–50 mW/cm². The Fringe approach targets evidence-based intensity levels modeled on what the sun produces, not on marketing numbers. The 1:2 red-to-NIR ratio used in most Fringe products is explained through physics — how red light works more superficially and near-infrared penetrates deeper tissue. The dosing science is equally important: because cellular effects last 12–48 hours after a session, the goal is three to five sessions per week, not daily overexposure. Research highlights include fibromyalgia, cardiovascular health, sleep quality, and the autonomic nervous system's parasympathetic shift during sessions. The episode also covers who should be cautious (photosensitivity, active cancer sites, pregnancy), why pets are safe at reduced intensity and shorter duration, and what it actually feels like to use a full-body mat as a daily wellness practice.   Listen on the go — The Fringe podcast is available on Spotify and YouTube. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.   Transcript Alyson: Hi everybody, welcome to the Fringe. My name is Alyson, owner and co-founder at Fringe. Today we have Dr. Genevieve Newton, our Scientific Director at Fringe, and we're going to be talking about a topic that Jen and I have been working on for about a year: full body red light therapy. There are so many red light therapy products now — toothbrushes, shower heads, face masks, body wraps — and you can also go to recovery facilities and get into what looks like tanning beds or saunas with red light therapy. We got very interested in the additional health benefits of utilizing red light therapy for your whole body, researched it, and started working on a product we felt would be really helpful for our community. To start — Jen, a brief explanation of what red light therapy actually is and how it works in our bodies. Genevieve: Red light therapy is the term we use to describe the use of either red, near-infrared, or the combination of both for the purposes of influencing biology. When we talk about light, we're describing a photon traveling through space along a wave function. We measure wavelength in nanometers — 10 to the minus 9 meters — so very, very tiny. The shortest wavelengths are ultraviolet light — high energy, important for vitamin D synthesis in the skin, but can also cause UV damage. Then as we go into the visible spectrum from violet to red, those wavelengths get longer. At the end of the visible spectrum, we have red light, which is about 620 to 750 nanometers. Then we shift into the infrared group, going from about 750 all the way to about 1400 nanometers. We can break that up into near infrared and far infrared. With red light therapy, we're using that near infrared range — usually 810 to 850 nanometers. For more specialized products like for the brain, we tend to use even longer wavelengths around 1000 to 1100 nanometers. So that's what we mean when we say red light therapy: using red and near-infrared light for the purposes of influencing biology. There are really two ways that light affects our biology. The first is light through our eyes, which activates pathways in the brain related to circadian rhythm regulation, mood, and hormones. The second — which is how most products are used today — is light to tissue. That can be skin or tissue inside the body. As the light gets to our tissues, they're filled with organelles called mitochondria. Every single cell in our body is filled with these energy-producing components that make ATP, which is our energy currency. ATP fuels everything: growth, repair, maintenance, all cellular functions. We have essentially an epidemic of mitochondrial dysfunction right now because of our lifestyle, exposure to toxins, poor dietary choices, lack of activity. This is really the reason why red light therapy is proving to be beneficial for so many people for so many different things — our mitochondria need support, and this is a really easy way of doing it. Alyson: Light is basically a nutrient for our body. Coupled with sedentary lifestyles, poor diets, lots of toxins in our environment, we also simply do not energize ourselves via the sun enough. Jen and I focused a lot in the early days on what really is red light therapy — and our focus has been to try to emulate or make those wavelengths of red and near infrared light as close as possible to what we actually receive from the sun. And we put two times the amount of near infrared light in almost every product we make. Can you speak to why we're doubling up on near infrared? Genevieve: As a starting point, philosophically, our approach to product development has really always been to mimic nature as much as possible. We're spending 93% of our time indoors now. So when you have a product that's designed to mimic nature, it's more of a situation of almost replacing what's been lost. When we look at the distribution of wavelengths in the sun, just under 50% of those wavelengths are made up of red and especially near-infrared. If we were to sample the sun and say what's the most important part of this spectrum, you would look at what's present in the greatest amounts — and that's your red and near-infrared, especially near-infrared. Near-infrared in particular has been found in recent years to be really remarkable. It doesn't vary throughout the day in the same way that other wavelengths do — there's much more consistency, and even when you're in the shade, you have an enormous exposure to near-infrared light. Those green leaves everywhere on the trees are reflecting that light towards our bodies. There's been absolutely fascinating research just in the last year showing that long wavelength near-infrared light passes right through our bodies. It's even passing through our clothing — also recently discovered. Where red light and near-infrared differ is in depth of penetration: red light goes in about two to five millimeters. Near-infrared — recent research is showing it has the ability to penetrate right through the body. If we're going to use both wavelengths and want to induce effects that are deep within the body as well as superficial, you need to combine the two. That's why we use a ratio of one red light chip to two near-infrared light chips — very deliberately and intentionally. Alyson: Red and near-infrared light in laser format has been used clinically for decades and has been studied for 50 years. It's just new in its popularity. One of these small lights actually has three chips generating light via LED technology — two of those chips are near infrared, which you don't actually see. The interesting thing is you can receive near-infrared light and there's no brightness to it — it's completely invisible. But the light absorbs into our body and energizes the cells. It doesn't matter if the cells are in our hair follicles, skin, fat, muscle, ligaments, tendons, or organs. Once the light is absorbed, the effect really is systemic. Which is why we moved from saying: I've got a shoulder that hurts, put this on my shoulder. To asking: is there an opportunity and should we entertain that a full-body light therapy session has much more systemic benefit for our body? Genevieve: Systemic really just means going throughout the entire system. When you think about what we've done with our approach to health over the last hundred years, we've started breaking the body up into all these little parts — different medical specialists, not thinking about the interconnectedness of all the systems. The cardiovascular system, the lymphatic system, the nervous system — it goes from top to toe, outside to inside, it's everywhere. If we want to influence those systems to a greater extent, you're going to have a greater effect if you're delivering light to the entire body at the same time. The most well-researched area for full-body light therapy is fibromyalgia, because fibromyalgia is a full-body pain condition. If you want to address pain in somebody with fibromyalgia, you can use a localized approach, but that's going to be really time-consuming one area at a time. There have also been a couple of really interesting cardiovascular studies — people with hypertension doing full-body exposure — and studies for athletes on performance and recovery. The lack of research in this area has more to do with research limitations than lack of benefit. A study would require every subject coming in three to five times a week for 20-minute sessions — very labor intensive and expensive. Now that we're moving into technology allowing easy at-home use, it's going to open up a lot more evidence. I've been using our sample mat for about a month and what I find most remarkable is the nervous system effect. I had read about a research study looking at autonomic nervous system effects in fibromyalgia patients showing a shift towards a parasympathetic response, and I remember texting Alyson the first time I used it and saying: I feel so relaxed, it's unbelievable. That's something we don't really get with localized therapy — that ability to have the entire nervous system shift towards a parasympathetic state, which is really great before bed. There's also a study in athletes showing that full-body red light therapy improved their sleep quality. Alyson: The product itself: it's a mat that lays on the ground. It rolls up like a yoga mat, it has double near-infrared light, there's an optional TPU protective cover so if your pets want to lay on it you don't have their fur on it or you can sterilize it. You can plug it into the wall or charge the battery pack for portability. You do 15 minutes face down and then 15 minutes on your back, or whatever works for you. Sessions go up to 30 minutes. And it's very relaxing — I hope people slow down and use this. I hope people do a 15-minute session and just lay there and breathe and relax, maybe listen to some music, maybe do a little movement on the mat. Something that's restorative. Alyson: How often should people use it? How long? Should they use it every day? Genevieve: We as humans have this inborn tendency to think more is better. But we've had thousands of research studies unpacking how red light therapy works. We know how it works on a cellular level and it's been very carefully mapped out. We know there is a cellular response that lasts between 12 to 48 hours. It's not a spike and drop — it's a gradual rise, a peak, and then a return to baseline after about 48 hours. We also know that the effects are cumulative. Light therapy actually gives you a dose of light in the same sort of way that taking a supplement gives you a dose — we can calculate the dose in joules per centimeter squared, which is a function of intensity and treatment duration. If the dose is too small, nothing happens. As the dose increases, there's this really significant range at which there are benefits. But you can also reach a point where the benefits start to disappear — this is called photo inhibition. Thankfully the beneficial middle range is really quite large. So with many different devices you can fall into this range. Most people will experience benefits from using devices with a range of intensity from around 10 to 50 milliwatts per centimeter squared. Circling back to how often: it's safe to do it daily, but you don't need to do it daily. The cellular effects last up to 12 to 48 hours, so typically we recommend three to five times a week — consistent with what we know about cellular biology and consistent with the scientific literature. Very few studies use a daily frequency, and when a study finds benefit at less than daily, that means we don't need to do it daily. Once a day on a single body part is fine. For a full-body mat, once a day, perfectly safe. But if your lifestyle doesn't allow for daily use, you'll still probably get as good a benefit as you would with daily use. Alyson: We literally get these questions every day. We tell everyone three to five times a week. The answer of whether you should use it every day should be based on whether you're experiencing additional benefit. Use it three to five times a week, then try a week of every day and see if your shoulder feels better or you notice a positive difference. There's very little that's black and white about light therapy. One really cool thing that happens when light is absorbed: the body generates energy or ATP, but also releases nitric oxide — which acts like opening a blood vessel, increasing blood flow to a region. That's measured and is an incredibly beneficial response. Light is supportive to what the body naturally does. You don't have to worry so much about messing something up by putting it over an area — it's a natural nutrient, and when we make it like our bodies were designed to receive it, our bodies are very intelligent in using it. Genevieve: Let's mention a couple of situations in which it would not be beneficial. One scenario is if you're using a very high intensity product for an extended period of time — if you stood in front of a really high intensity panel for 10 to 20 minutes, you could have some superficial skin damage, an increase in oxidative stress, and generally feel quite unwell. So that's not advisable. For contraindications: pregnancy — we can't do research with pregnant people, so we use that as a contraindication. If you're pregnant, use the light on different body parts. You can use the mat lying on your back — you just wouldn't lie on your stomach over the abdomen anyway. We also have to be cautious with use over active cancer sites. Light therapy should be avoided over active cancer sites but can be used supportively on different body parts. There's cool research showing light therapy benefits things like chemotherapy-induced neuropathy and lymphedema. For people who have a history of skin cancer, the general consensus recently published in the literature is that it is safe as long as that's a recovered cancer, not an active one. Many people take photosensitizing medications, which makes them more sensitive to light — not a contraindication, but you may be more sensitive to the heat generated by near-infrared. The approach is to reduce treatment time and start really slowly: low and slow. And if you do have many medical problems or are taking a lot of medications, consult with your healthcare provider before starting any new therapy, even something as gentle as red light therapy. Alyson: We generally tell people: if you can be out in the sun for 20 minutes, you can do red light therapy. But when it comes to a specific condition, ask your doctor, talk to them about it. People want a trusted source of information — that's what we're trying to be. And we have six people on our medical team now with various backgrounds. Some of the most fun questions are the ones we don't know the answers to yet. As for eyes: should they be open or closed during a full-body mat session? Genevieve: The most commonly researched outcome for light therapy is actually using it to benefit vision. That said, the tissues of the eye are very, very sensitive. If you stand in front of a high intensity light panel with your eyes open, you're probably going to do retinal damage. With our lower intensity products, it's really a matter of comfort — we certainly don't advise staring directly into the light. If you have photosensitive eyes, you may want to use a goggle. But for most people, just closing your eyes is absolutely sufficient when lying on the mat. Eyes closed, relax, and you're totally safe. If the light bothers you, just cover your eyes. Genevieve: Two social media trending topics I'd like to address. The first is "magic bullet wavelengths." When we look at the body of literature — thousands of studies — in the red range and near-infrared range, as long as you're avoiding the 700 to 800 nanometer range where you don't get much cellular response, you get very good cellular response in the 600s and in the 800s. There's no magic wavelength because the sun doesn't generate just one single red wavelength and one single near-infrared, and it wouldn't make sense for biology to work that way. Also: LED lights generate a range of wavelengths, not a single wavelength. When we say our mat is 660 nanometers, that's not quite accurate — it generates from about 640 to 680, maybe a little more on either end. The peak is 660. Companies advertise a specific wavelength as a magic bullet for skin health or brain health or joint health — that's inconsistent with biology, inconsistent with LED technology, and inconsistent with how the sun works. The second topic is pulsed light. The claim that you need to flash the light on and off to get benefit is not consistent with our biology or with the scientific literature. When we compare pulsed delivery to continuous delivery, you absolutely can have benefit from pulsing — it's still light therapy — but you don't need it. The one place where pulsing has some differential effects is in the brain, and that's because of brainwave entrainment — a different story than what's being promoted on social media. Alyson: And one more: many people contact us saying they read they need a product that's over 100 milliwatts per centimeter squared. Genevieve: When these devices are measured by independent third parties using appropriate measuring devices, almost never are they actually 100 milliwatt per centimeter squared or higher. Products on the market claiming to be at 100 mW/cm² have been measured at closer to 50. I've seen some measuring in at 38 and 40. The experts in this field generally say: if they were really that high, we'd be seeing harm and not benefit. This is great for these companies because they're actually thankfully producing products that are beneficial. But unfortunately we have this problem in the industry where values are being shared that are not accurate and are misleading — making people think these high numbers are targets they should be trying to achieve, when really the upper limit that experts suggest not exceeding is 50 milliwatts per centimeter squared. That's half of what these products are claiming to be at. At Fringe, we try to make every product within the range the sun measures for red and near-infrared — roughly 20 to 40 mW/cm² — which is evidence-based and very safe. We feel really comfortable telling people they could use it every day if they wanted to, but three to five times a week is ideal. Alyson: Okay, well, that was three great myth busters to end our podcast today. We are part of the medical team at Fringe — my name's Alyson, and this is Jen, our Scientific Director. We're super excited to have a full body red light therapy mat coming to market. If you've been someone who loves using red light therapy and just wants to get it all in one place, you are going to absolutely love this. And as a shout out to all my furry friends: please, if you have animals in your house, order the cover to go on top of your mat, lay it on the ground, and let your dogs and cats come lay on the mat and receive a session as well. Super safe for them — they're very similar in how their bodies work. They just teach us because we don't tell them what to do. They just go do it. Thank you, everyone. Talk to you soon.

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June 24, 2026

Fringe's Journey Into the Supplement Industry

Dr. Genevieve Newton and Dr. Abby Kramer explain the simple reason Fringe started making supplements: they couldn't find anything on the market they trusted enough to take themselves. This episode walks through the values that shaped the Fringe supplement line from day one — simple formulas, clean and food-based ingredients, effective doses, and complete transparency including published certificates of analysis and batch-level testing for heavy metals, pesticides, and mold. The conversation focuses on Fringe's three core essentials: an unflavored electrolyte mineral blend with trace minerals, a magnesium support formula, and a vitamin D&K combination. Dr. Gen and Dr. Abby dig into what separates these from the crowded supplement market — including the widespread use of maltodextrin hidden in "natural flavors" and the real challenge of flavoring powders with actual fruit without compromising quality. For anyone trying to cut through supplement marketing noise, this episode is a practical guide to what to look for on a label and why most products don't make the cut. The Fringe philosophy is straightforward: if they wouldn't take it themselves, they won't sell it.   Listen on the go — The Fringe podcast is available on Spotify and YouTube. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.   Transcript Genevieve: Hello everybody, welcome to the Fringe. I'm Dr. Genevieve Newton, Scientific Director at Fringe, and I'm here today with Dr. Abby Kramer, our Medical Director. We love supplements and we have come up with what we call our essentials line — a select handful of supplements that for a variety of reasons we're going to discuss today are really essential for most people most of the time. Abby is really the brainchild behind the development of our supplement line. My job today is to ask her questions that will help you understand our rationale, our products, and what we do here at Fringe with respect to our essential supplements. To start off — why did we get into this supplement business? Why did we start making supplements? Dr. Abby: At the core of it, it became really apparent to me and all of us — Alyson included — that the lid kind of blew off: what can we trust? I understood how important hydration was and electrolytes. That was the first thing we really started chipping away at. I'd seen such great patient outcomes in clinic with something as simple as putting patients on a daily electrolyte supplement. But I didn't feel awesome about myself or my daughter taking this stuff for 20 years every day. There were a few ingredients I didn't love. I didn't really know where they were being sourced, what testing was going on. So it was almost out of necessity that we were like: we need these things and we want cleaner products, so I guess we need to make them. Because they don't necessarily exist that are fully up to our standards. Not many companies will publish their testing results or let you know exactly what they're doing. So fundamentally it was like everything we make at Fringe, we're making for ourselves. We want more transparency or higher quality or to understand the process from the ground up. And we really wanted to start with the basics. There's a lot of noise in the world today — especially on social media — like you need this supplement, this protocol, this cleanse, this detox. And we thought long and hard: what do people actually need? What can we confidently say is essential? In our modern world, we are unable to get what we need no matter how clean you eat. It's incredibly hard to get enough magnesium from food. These three products are what we truly believe, through years of formulating and research, are really essential — must-supplement things. I love other supplements. You should see the shelves at my clinic. But that stuff isn't essential. These are things every human on earth basically should be taking most of the time. Genevieve: Between you and me and Alyson, we have very different aptitudes for supplementation. You love working with supplements and are totally comfortable taking them. I have this kind of love-hate relationship where I buy a lot of supplements and then throw garbage bags of them away because I just can't bear to take anymore. And Alyson just hates taking everything. But I think that dynamic is actually good — we keep each other in check. At Fringe, we'll develop products for specific conditions, but we really wanted to start with this foundation. Coming at it from the clinical perspective — working with people for over a decade, working with a huge range of supplements, getting to know what actually moves the needle in terms of helping pretty much everyone feel better — that's your end of things. Then as we got into development, we quickly realized we needed to articulate our core values around supplements, because this determines everything we do. What are those core values? Dr. Abby: This took time — you kind of have to be in the trenches in that process. First and foremost, we really like to make simple products. There are so many products where you flip them over and there are 50 ingredients. Less is more. You shouldn't need that many things in a product to move the needle. Our products are very minimal. Clean ingredients — we take a very long time to source the cleanest possible ingredients we can find. Organic whenever possible, non-GMO whenever possible, food or earth-based whenever possible. We don't like to chase trends like special nano sizes. A lot of the supplement world is going more pharmaceutical — more is better, making everything 10 times more absorbable. Our ethos at Fringe is really to get back to nature, to get nutrients in the form we're designed to get them from — from our food and water. As natural-based as possible, as non-synthetic as possible. And effectiveness is big. I know clinically what I've seen be effective. Then Genevieve goes and does her deep dives, reads the research, and — thank goodness — almost always comes back and says the data really backs this up. A lot of products in the supplement industry, especially more synthetic, more generic products, are also really low dose. A perfect example is vitamin D. If you go to CVS and buy a vitamin D supplement, it might not be in the most absorbable form, and it usually is a really low dosage that just won't be effective. Patients are like: I've taken vitamin D every single day for years, how are my levels still at 30? I see the product they're taking and it's 1,000 IU — just not enough to move the needle. So we make stuff in really targeted, therapeutic ranges so they'll actually work. And then the biggest thing that blew the lid off reality for all of us: the transparency in testing. We test everything before and after production. We test for everything possible to test for. And we take it a step further and publish those testing results on our website, which almost nobody does. It's a risky move, but we really believe our customers should have informed choice — they should be able to see the testing results and make informed decisions. I'm hopeful this trend continues and consumers start demanding more transparency. Genevieve: The things that you've seen in practice with respect to the way people are sensitive to things that are generally recognized as safe — there's very little strong research on some of these. Citric acid is in absolutely everything. Maltodextrin is in absolutely everything. The market is so saturated that there's this baseline acceptance across the industry that these are fine. And you came into it with practical experience of seeing that some people don't respond well to these things. There's emerging evidence about maltodextrin in particular. Dr. Abby: And if it's not in your product in high enough amounts, you don't have to put it on the label. That to me is the worst thing we uncovered — can you even trust someone's label? So when people ask me how to know if a product is clean, can you look at this label and tell me? I really can't tell you. I just hope we're on the forefront of this changing. Whole social media accounts are now dedicated to buying a product and sending it for third-party testing. It's only a matter of time before most companies have to come on board. If you include maltodextrin in your product, just put it on the label. Genevieve: Maltodextrin is often included in the "natural flavors" umbrella — that's how it typically sneaks into many of the products you're consuming. If you're only consuming a very small amount occasionally, it's typically not going to have much effect on your gut microbiome. But if you're consuming it from all these different places day after day after day, that's when we start to see things not being quite as optimal. In the most high-level terms — how do you think our supplements are different from what's on the market? Dr. Abby: From the formulation level, we have a very different approach to making products. I think most companies just go to a supplement manufacturer and basically white label someone else's product. They want to make a sleep support supplement and the factory shows them five versions that have done really well and they're like: great, just put our label on it. You can see this across different supplement brands — they all basically sell the same thing. We really take the time from the ground up. Where does each individual ingredient come from? Where is it sourced? Let's see the testing. Building it from scratch is what we do. Our average product takes us two years. Incredibly long time. And if it's not perfect, we won't put it out. We're going through this right now working on another electrolyte flavor. If it's not right, we're not going to launch it. The sourcing, the cleanliness, our extensive list of things we will not use — that makes it a thousand times harder to make products because we are that picky. And the testing we do: there are different tiers and we go to the top tier, testing for everything possible. Our personal standards for heavy metals, for example, are the most stringent strict limits. The main thing is our standard for quality. Genevieve: I finally wrapped my head around why we can honestly say we make some of the best products on the market in terms of quality. The ingredients that got in at the ground level of supplement manufacturing with the designation of being generally recognized as safe have had very little research done on cumulative effects, additive effects, long-term effects. Most of them are probably neutral in terms of their health effects — some of them will have some level of harm, but we're not talking about things that are highly toxic, more like neutral to slightly harmful. But what we've chosen to do is not use those things and instead use things that actually have health benefits. So that filler that goes into our supplement will be a prebiotic fiber that feeds the gut bacteria. We've changed the focus: these are our less active ingredients that also have a biological function. That's something I just don't see anybody else doing. Dr. Abby: I think about the electrolyte market. For many years it was: a handful of key players came in that made electrolytes far better than traditional Gatorade or Powerade. There was this whole movement of let's make things more keto friendly without sugar, use stevia, no dyes. But then we just coasted and no one really asked questions. Now there are new players, including us, coming in and saying: you actually can flavor stuff with real fruit. Is it harder? Yeah. Are there more challenges? Absolutely. That's why people do natural flavors — it's made in a lab, it's stable, it's never going to taste different. But we're so firm in our values that if we're out for a month because we couldn't find the right organic fruit that meets our quality standards, that's okay. We could cut corners, but we won't do that. Genevieve: Let's circle back to our essentials. Just give us a big picture overview of what we identified and developed as our essentials line. Dr. Abby: A lot of people still think of electrolytes as something you take if you're an athlete, if you're sweating, if you're doing a sauna. But truly, most of us need more minerals because our soil is really depleted, as is our water. We should get our minerals from our water and our soil, but minerals are stripped out through modern water treatment. And most people have great water filters — which is great — but then you lose even more mineral content. Our soils are so devoid of minerals. Even organic, even all of that — unless you could get everything from a regenerative farm, we just can't get the mineral content we did 100 years ago from our food. Minerals are co-factors for pretty much every single biological function our bodies perform. So we have our electrolyte mineral mix — that's our first product. A big difference here is that it doesn't just have the classics people think of: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. We also add trace minerals, which is super important. It's unflavored. I put a scoop in my water bottle every single time I fill it up, because I have a reverse osmosis filter at home so there are no minerals — you need to add them back in, or your body will strip the minerals from your bones and teeth. Alongside that is magnesium support. Magnesium is a super important mineral that should be in our food and our water and largely isn't anymore. It's important for a million things. And then vitamins D and K — another one that virtually everyone is deficient in. I rarely find someone on blood work with optimal levels unless they're supplementing, especially in the winter months, but honestly even in summer for most people because we just don't get outside enough. You need to be outside in direct sunlight with bare skin to absorb it. So that's our essentials bundle — three things that are very hard to get optimal levels of in your body on a consistent daily basis without supplementing. They're all unflavored. You can do a scoop or two of each a day in your water and you're good to go. Genevieve: We chose to make powdered products that allowed flexibility of adding to food and water. And they're also great for kids. We don't talk about this enough. Kids also need magnesium — they're incredibly deficient in magnesium, just like us. And most kid-focused products are just full of junk ingredients. We've researched going into tablets and chewables and it's basically impossible to make them up to our standards — we would have to add things we don't love. So with the magnesium powder, for example, we have kids dosing on the website. My patients put it in their kids' smoothies, pouches, applesauce, even in water with some juice. It's such a simple way to get those necessary things into your kids. Genevieve: Do you think these supplements are essential even if somebody has a super healthy diet and lifestyle? And would there be any exceptions where people maybe don't necessarily need all of them? Dr. Abby: 99% of people do. The one exception would be vitamin D — some patients genetically absorb and hold on to vitamin D beautifully. We always say in our blogs and on social media: please get your levels checked once to twice a year. I like my patients to check their levels in summer and winter. Some people have a genetic SNP on the VDR receptor where they do not absorb vitamin D well even from the sun. For me, I have to supplement vitamin D even in summer. I'm a soccer mom at tournaments four times a week and my levels still won't be great. But for minerals and magnesium — the magnesium content in spinach is something like 90% reduced from what it used to be. And when you're tracking nutrients using apps and databases, those values were assayed many years ago. People actually have no idea how depleted they are in minerals today. If you could get your vegetables from a local regenerative place, the mineral content would be much higher — regenerative agriculture literally puts the minerals back into the soil. But that's probably not what most people are consistently consuming. Genevieve: Is there any rationale for or interconnectedness between these minerals and vitamins? Dr. Abby: Definitely. Vitamins D and K are the perfect example and they also work alongside magnesium. A lot of people are saying K really helps D absorption, which isn't exactly true, but they need to be taken together. I have patients whose vitamin D levels are great but I still absolutely have them on vitamin K2, because no one has enough K2. K2 does many things, but its correlation with vitamin D is that vitamin D frees up calcium in the system. Vitamin K2 then goes and scavenges that free calcium and puts it where it needs to go. Without enough K2, which is incredibly challenging to get dietarily, you can get calcium deposits in weird places — kidney stones, bladder stones, joint pain, buildup in the joints, even atherosclerosis. K2 puts the calcium where it belongs. It's super important for heart health — pretty much any woman 30s and above should be on a K2 supplement even if they're not on D, in my opinion, for heart health and bone health. And magnesium is super important — these minerals all work together. You can't just look at it as replacing one thing. You need this full spectrum of vitamins and minerals all working together. Or things can go haywire because we're not meant to just have super crazy high levels of vitamin D and low levels of other things. Genevieve: And that's obviously why we formulated our vitamin D along with vitamin K. I remember at the outset when we started seeing all these supplements for vitamin D, most of the time it was just vitamin D by itself. As you said, it can get deposited in different places — one of the primary locations is in the cardiovascular system. You end up with deposits in the arteries and atherosclerosis, and it's a risk factor for heart attacks. Dr. Abby: And then there are so many people pounding calcium supplements for bone quality. It's still so widely recommended, and in horrible forms that are not absorbable — basically taking a chalk supplement every day. I highly encourage people to have this discussion with your healthcare provider. Especially women as they age are often encouraged to start taking calcium supplements without any awareness of the vitamin D conversation, vitamin K conversation, for bone health. In my opinion, minerals are actually what's needed to increase bone health instead of just pounding calcium. Genevieve: Yeah, and calcium — when you do supplement — you want to make sure it's not a really high dose at any given point. I would never personally go above 250-300 milligrams. It should be the equivalent of what's in a serving of calcium-rich food. If you wanted to supplement more than that amount in a day, you would split it up across two or three times to mitigate absorption issues. So you've used this stuff in clinic for many years — what are some of the benefits you see people experiencing from taking these supplements? Dr. Abby: With electrolytes — I'm not someone super sensitive to supplements. I usually take all these things and feel nothing. But the one supplement I immediately feel a difference with, and this has been the case for 15 years, is electrolytes. I take electrolytes and I immediately feel clearer, more energy, brain fog gone, fewer headaches. I'm prone to dehydration headaches and that just doesn't happen if I'm taking an electrolyte supplement daily. So for electrolytes: recovery, muscle tension and soreness, headaches, brain fog, energy are the big things. Some people also notice a big improvement in their skin because anything that dehydration can cause, electrolytes can help. A lot of people are so chronically dehydrated even though they drink a lot of water. I'll have patients who drink 120 ounces of water a day and are always thirsty and still feel dehydrated. That person is mineral deficient. Our body needs minerals to hold on to the water and be hydrated — so it just runs right through them. Magnesium is another one where if you are deficient, you almost always feel a difference when you start supplementing. The big buckets for magnesium: anxiety and stress — it can really support that, especially magnesium glycinate which is great at helping people feel more calm and less anxious. Muscle soreness and tension and joint pain — magnesium can help with that a ton. If you hold a lot of physical tension in your body, magnesium can help tremendously. And sleep — probably the biggest testimonial we get is: my gosh, I got the best night's sleep ever when I started taking that product. Magnesium is also amazing for heart health. Anyone who has any type of heart issues should definitely take magnesium every day. And there's an amazing research study on PMS and menstrual symptoms and magnesium — women took between 150-300 milligrams daily just during the luteal phase and had insane positive results: less cramping, fewer mood swings. So many women who suffer every month are just magnesium deficient. And then vitamin D — go back and listen to our episode on seasonal depression. Chronic pain, chronic inflammation, people diagnosed with fibromyalgia literally just get their levels up and symptoms resolve. I had a patient with crippling postpartum anxiety and depression, and her vitamin D level was 12. Missed for months by her doctors. I put her on a high dose and within a week she emails me: I'm better. And it's so simple and inexpensive — they were going to put her on four different medications. So for mood, immune function, joint pain, inflammation, autoimmune stuff — anything that relates to immune function, vitamin D can support it. Genevieve: I think what most people don't realize is that vitamins and minerals are essential — meaning we can't survive without them. What they're doing in our body is making it so that the trillions of processes that happen at a cellular and molecular level every moment of every day are able to carry out. They make it all happen. And when you don't have them, you see that list you just rattled off of clinical outcomes. You could have kept going. There will be a lot of inter-individual variability in responses to supplementation, but that's because these nutrients do so many different things in everybody's body. As a final thought — how would you like people to think differently about supplementation than the general attitude we have right now? Dr. Abby: I want people to think about supplementation from a much more foundational perspective. If you haven't nailed the foundation, don't go searching out in the crazy weeds yet. And yes, still eat all the vitamin- and nutrient-rich health-promoting foods first. You can't out-supplement that — that's not what this is about. But the foundation is: eating clean food, drinking clean mineral-rich water, getting sleep, getting sunshine, taking care of yourself, supplementing basics that we know we need and are deficient in — and see what that does. That is the 80% of most people's issues. And I see this in practice again and again. People are buying some crazy liver protocol, some parasite thing, some this and some that. I use those things with patients too. But we start with the foundation. That woman with the postpartum depression — I could put her on a bunch of herbs and things that can help boost your mood. But that is just like a step away from the pharmaceutical approach, which is just to suppress symptoms rather than get to the root cause. If you've got severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies and you fix that, then it's done. You shouldn't have to take ashwagandha every day forever to feel normal. That's an amazing tool and I use it with patients — but setting that foundational approach first, instead of just looking for a bunch of natural band-aids, is what I'd encourage. And get back to the basics: go to bed earlier, drink your water, get outside. Most people know, when they tune in with themselves, what probably needs to be adjusted in their lifestyle to help them feel better. And it usually goes back to all the basics. Genevieve: I absolutely agree. The parting message at Fringe is really always to get back to nature and the supportive processes that we know are tried and true. Now we're in an environment where we actually have to do the same thing with supplementation — there are some things we simply are not able to get for a variety of reasons. Those are the foundations met through supplementation. Then, once you've addressed those things, that's when you can start layering on additional therapies. That term you used — natural band-aids — is a really important one, because people don't often think about whether what they're taking is just getting rid of symptoms, or whether it's also looking at getting to that foundational level of supporting the body to do what it knows how to do. Thank you everybody for joining us on the Fringe. We'll see you next time.

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June 24, 2026

Fringe Founder Story

Alyson and Anthony, co-founders of Fringe, sit down together for the first time to tell the story of how the company came to be. It starts in 2015–2017 at RockTape — where they first worked together, Alyson growing the medical channel and Anthony running retail and distribution — and picks up in 2018 when the company was acquired and they found themselves navigating a corporate transition that didn't feel like theirs. By 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, Alyson made the call: let's build something new. Anthony said yes. The early years were nothing like either of them expected. They launched into the CBD space (a sector they still believe in but couldn't openly discuss), couldn't run ads, and had their payment processor hold their revenue for months. What got them through wasn't a playbook — it was grit, agility, and the refusal to quit. Anthony distills it simply: you need all three, and you need them over a long time. They're candid about the lows, the panic attacks, the revolving door of early-stage hires, and what it means to bet on something when failure is very public. The episode closes on what actually matters to both of them: helping people feel better, empowering customers to take ownership of their health, and building a workplace where their 16–17 person team can genuinely thrive. It's a rare, unfiltered look at what it actually takes to build a brand from nothing — told by two people who are still in it. Transcript Alyson: Welcome everybody to the Fringe. My name's Alyson. This is Anthony. We are the co-founders of Fringe. We're here today to tell you a little story about what it takes to go build a company like Fringe. Alyson: The story dates back — right now it is January 2026 — to 2015, 16, 17 when you and I were working together at a company called Rock Tape. Ant: Wow. It's been a while. Alyson: It's been a long time. That's where we met. I handled a lot of our medical channel and growing our medical business. For those who don't know Rock Tape, that's the sticky kinesiology tape. And then you came in and really cleaned up our retail space, our online retailers, and distribution. In the end of 2018, Rock Tape sold. And I think that's really where the story of Fringe kind of begins as an idea. When Rock Tape sold, I think you and I both loved our teams, we cared a lot about the people we worked with, we cared about the brand because we had built it. And when we were bought, you and I went to work for the large company that bought Rock Tape. And you moved across the country and really went all in. For me, that's where the idea of Fringe began. And it was probably 2020, in the middle of a full on pandemic, where I just said: I got this thing I want to go do and I don't want to do it without you. Ant: That was a strong sentence. End of 2018, sold, moved out here to North Carolina — raised in NorCal my whole life. The company that bought us was based out of here, so it really came together for us. To be completely open, we came into the acquisition really wanting to make it work. But we were in an environment that was in its own stage of evolution. It felt kind of startup-y, but also large at the same time. We tried for a couple of years. There were some successes, some failures. No shade to that situation. It just wasn't ours. And I think when you were like, hey, I've got this thing I want to do — I was standing in my garage, probably heating up food in the microwave, talking on the phone. And you said, I think we can go do this. I felt like at that time, we had done what we could do in that transition environment. The timing felt right, even though it was crazy — middle of a pandemic. In hindsight I'm glad I didn't think too much about it. I'm a big faith guy and very much feel like things are written. And there were two things I needed to decide. One: if I was dying, would I regret not doing this? The answer was an unequivocal yes. And two: am I okay with very public failure? I had to be able to say yes to that. And then you're just in it and churning. Alyson: Something happened very quickly during that acquisition and it wasn't positive. Anyone who's been involved with companies being bought and sold and private equity being involved — the heart and soul of a company gets lost in the transition. Anyone can go make products. But the thing you feel about a company is really the heart of the people behind it. I was in a full send stage of my life. This was my third company. I was going to go in the middle of a pandemic, get a divorce, I had three kids, and I had a big corporate job I was just going to walk away from. The thing I always credit when people ask what's been the trick to growing Fringe — it's really that I knew I didn't want to do this alone. And I also knew I'm not made to run a company. I'm really good at the ideas and the vision and the fuzzy, rainbow-y description of leadership. But I couldn't run a company. I had enough experience of companies not being well run that I didn't want to sign up for that. So I came to you with: I have this idea. In many ways it's a continuation of a path I've been on for a long time. I'm in alternative healthcare, natural healthcare — I just call it healthcare. I care about people feeling well. I'm a chiropractor. I have cared about this for 30, 40 years. I wanted to go create a brand that could be all-encompassing with no limitations. And I had this idea that what we would start out doing would be nothing close to what we would end up doing. Alyson: The name Fringe — chiropractors, naturopaths, acupuncturists, basically anything that isn't mainstream medicine — they're always referred to as the fringe of medicine. That's implied to be a bad thing. The fringe of science, the fringe of politics, everything fringe is sort of referenced as: well, you're not with us. And I was listening to a group of people say, well, they're the fringe of the profession. And I was like, why is that bad? Everyone I know who has helped so many people is for sure an outlier. Fringe by definition is unconventional or the outside borders of a group. That's really where I've always been and where I feel like I belong. And I feel like way more people belong there than they realize. Now from a business standpoint, we are Fringe. If that means you question the norm and have a very open mind to ideas that may not be mainstream, sign me up. That name took on a life of its own. Alyson: So the idea was brewing and we took the jump in 2021. You should tell everybody what the first week of our business was like. Ant: Everyone knows starting a business is hard conceptually, but until you do it and encounter the hard, it's almost never the type of hard you think it's going to be. And that makes it harder. We launched a business, we started selling things, and immediately our credit card processor said: we're not giving you any of your funds for a while. We started as a CBD company, and even though everybody knew that, all of a sudden they were just like: nope, we're not depositing your revenues. So we were selling things, we needed to buy things, we needed to spend money, but we had no access to our funds. Not a day or two. Not a week or two. A month or two or more. We came in with the idea of a playbook: we'll run social ads. Nope, can't do that. We'll do this. Nope, can't do that. From the jump, things went haywire in really impactful ways. We can't sell anything. We can't tell anyone what we do. And even the people who find out about us — basically our friends and family — if they buy something, we have no access to that money. And that set the tone for the last five years. Our disposition, for better or worse, is we have way more fight than flight. It was just: okay, this is how it is now. And it continued like that for years. Alyson: Four years, really. I think there's something where when people tell me no, that's about all I need to make sure that will be a yes at some point. The industry we started into — I still feel so strongly that it's such an important part of people's options for health and healing. But I also care more about building a business that can help a lot of people. And you can't help a lot of people when you can't talk about it. So we started in the fringe of the fringe of the fringe of industries. We had to become agile. We leaned heavily into very grassroots growth tactics. Our money was so lean that spending wasn't even an option. We are privately funded by myself and by Anthony — for better or worse it made us have to make decisions where there weren't many options. A lot of companies get a lot of funding upfront. We would have wasted a ton of investors' money in the first two, three years. We didn't have the option to do that. So we just white-knuckled it. The hardest part for me was the revolving door of people that come and go in a startup. When you're a people person, you really develop a gut for startups. And when people ask how we did it, I often say: you don't quit. Every corner you turn, you're like: this would be way easier to quit. And you just don't. It's not an option. So then you have to figure it out. But that's not for everyone. Ant: It's for very few people. There are no tricks, no tips, no hey do this, do that. Every business and every scenario is so unique. What we've learned is you have to have the grit to not give up. You have to have the agility to be able to adapt. And then you need to do both of those over a really long time period. Grit, agility, endurance. And I had panic attacks in the middle of the night and went to those deep dark depths that very few people ever even approach, let alone work through. And then you just keep going. If I knew then what I know now, I don't know if I'd say sign me up. People say to me, that was so smart, that was so brave. Neither of those things is true. I just have very well-timed bouts of productive insanity. When I want to do something, my brain shuts off and I say yes. And then I wake up and I'm in it, and the best way out is through. Alyson: Yeah. And then the crazy thing about being in it is it's just failure after failure after failure. People who can handle that are well-suited for a startup environment. We're so accustomed to sharing highlight reels, but if you were to make a clip of lowlight reels, there's 10 times more. Maybe 100 times more. That probably goes for our lives too. I think people would look at me and say, she's been so successful. It's just a series of lowlights that I worked through. The relationship you develop with failure — which is just: that didn't work as we thought it was going to — and how quickly do you correct course. For me, I correct course really fast. That didn't work, let's go quickly find something that did. And I'm a massive worst-case scenario planner. So even when something doesn't work, it's like: but it wasn't the worst case scenario I drew up. We're still cruising here, everybody. Alyson: Your conviction — for you, a lot of it is your faith. For me, it's a very deep sense that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. That has always been in this category for me. From a very young age, I knew I wanted to be a helper in medicine. I was drawn to the natural side of medicine from a very young age — high school — and knew this is what I would go and do. I had no idea I would end up growing businesses and using this platform to be a helper. But it's a deep conviction inside me that I want to help people feel better. I don't have to do that with my hands one-on-one. I just know that what I'm working on every day needs to be contributing to that in some way or form. To create Fringe and then have a group of people working for Fringe who can start to feel that too — just today you shared some testimonies, reviews that come in every day. We don't know these people. And then they email us or call us or DM us and share very personal, impactful stories about how what we created helped them. When your battery's low and those come through — that's the conviction. So for me, the thing I care about most is helping people feel better. I'll ask you: what matters to you when it comes to running a business? Ant: I actually don't think our convictions are different. I think our tool chests are just different. You care about helping people and have the background you have. I care about helping people and have the background I have — economics, business, people management. When you said hey, I want to go do this thing, I was like: so long as that thing is generally positively contributing to the world, I'm in. My deep conviction is that work is killing people. Stress is killing people. And it's highly tied, at least in Western cultures, to the jobs people have. Being in companies — it's like: this can be better. We can do this better. It's significantly harder to choose to run a business the way we choose to run this business. But I think if we can actually scale this thing to a place where it becomes visible to other businesses, and we can show: hey, you can do it this way — and not only can you do it this way, it can thrive this way in a very economically viable way — that's my conviction. My background in economics allows me to tie subjectivity to the economics and the language of commerce. If you look at bad culture in a business — something like 15% of employees' time is spent wishing they didn't work for you. There are literal dollars you can assign to that. You pay that person a salary. 15% of their salary is being wasted by them hating their job. Plus the opportunity cost of them not driving incremental revenues. When you put those dollars to companies, it's a lot of money very quickly. And I'll say, forgive the language, but it costs you money to be a dickhead. If that's the only language you speak, that's a reason to entertain a different approach. That's my conviction: I want to help people too. And I think that's how I can do it. And I think we're doing pretty good. Alyson: The second thing I care a lot about — and I think it's your second too — is the customer. The way I care about it comes from my background. I care that the customer feels very empowered by the information we bring to them, the products we bring to them, how we approach talking about healthcare. This matters so much to me — that people feel like healthcare is accessible to them, that these tools out there in the industries are available, that they can become educated about them, that they feel empowered to take more ownership in their healthcare journeys. I'm perplexed and bothered by a lot of the current traditional medical industry where people go in, they're told they need this medication or surgery, and they just do it without asking: why shouldn't I? What are my other options? Could something go wrong? I care so much about empowering our customers to learn and to provide alternatives for their health. And any interaction with us — you should leave feeling like we genuinely care. That's the leadership, Anthony and I, but it's infused all the way down. Ant: Absolutely. It's infused and it's empowered. Anyone on our team will never get in trouble for trying to do the right thing for our customer. I don't care how badly that went. The intention was correct. You can't do it just for the numbers — it short circuits the impact of these approaches. You have to actually care about the customer. I don't understand how, if you're in a business, you could treat your customer like an annoyance. Do you know who pays our salaries? If people stop buying stuff from us, we all lose our jobs. That disconnect, that distance from the customer never made sense to me. I'll give an example from a previous job: a customer wanted to exchange something that broke. It was international. I was involved, the EU head was involved, the head of Asia was involved, the CEO was involved — all talking about whether to do this replacement. With our salaries, that 30-minute conversation probably cost the company a thousand dollars. The item we were talking about replacing costs $6 to manufacture. This customer is pissed because they're not getting an answer. We're lighting cash on fire. This makes no sense on either side of this equation. Just be better. Just be nicer. If not for the reason of just being nice, then for this reason. Alyson: Yeah. Anyway — help your customers. At this stage, how many people work at Fringe now? This is 2026, everybody. Ant: We've got full-timers, contractors who are highly involved, and part-timers. I define it by who's on our biggest internal email list. I think we're at 16-17 now. Alyson: Right. 16, 17 people who work for Fringe. And that is — if I had to pick three things I care about: I care about helping people feel better. I care about empowering our customer to feel like they can take leadership and ownership in their healthcare journeys. And the third thing is taking care of the people who work for us. I think about their time with their families, what their lives look like working for Fringe, do we provide them an opportunity to really step into a life they thought they couldn't live. I'm a mom of three teenagers — those are the things I care about. And when you and I get on calls, you always reference their professional growth as people. How can this job better them? Ant: Yeah, that's everything. The customer experience is never going to exceed the employee experience. We can't authentically have our customers feel a way about Fringe that our employees don't. People who work at Fringe came to Fringe because they know how we feel about our people. Pretty much everybody, minus maybe one, who works at Fringe — we've worked with them already at some point over the last 15 years. The most sound economic proof I can give you for this concept: people quit their jobs and worked for Fringe for free for years. You don't get that from an approach you don't believe in. Just because of that conviction, this matters — very real care about this — meaning at some point this becomes what we want it to be. That's why this year is so exciting. We're starting to be able to deliver on all of this. The team is meeting up in a couple months and it'll be impactful. Just like, holy crap, that was wild. We all made it. No one died. Now let's get back to some of those concepts we talked about when we launched. And I'm stoked for that to mean something for our team and our customers. And maybe people start noticing and we have some influence on other businesses. If not, we're over here doing our thing with our crew. And if it's providing for us on all levels — not just financially — I would call that a success. Alyson: Would, I would too. I looked at his flip-flops standing at a professional medical event where everybody was in dress shoes, khakis, and polos, and said: yeah, this guy and I are going to start a company someday. And it's going to be a great ride. We stay ourselves, wear what we want to wear, say what we want to say, do what we want to do. That should invite everyone who becomes an employee here to have that feeling of safety. And our customers should feel that too. I'm going to go make a bunch of new products this year for Fringe. I make them because our customers email us and say, you guys should do this, or do you guys have this? And that's the most fun thing now — we're able to communicate with people and hear what they love, what they wish we would make. I'm making things I never imagined in a million years I would be making. Pretty fun. Ant: Yeah, it's exciting. Thanks everybody. Bye. Alyson: Thanks everyone for listening. All right. Bye, everyone.

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May 27, 2026

Fertility's Oldest Secrets

Liz Frey, Fringe's Pelvic Health Medical Director, is joined by Dr. Lorne Brown, a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner and founder of AcuBalance Wellness Centre in Vancouver, for a wide-ranging conversation on integrative fertility care. Dr. Brown shares his unexpected journey from accounting to TCM and how two decades of working with fertility patients led him to photobiomodulation — first encountered at an IVF conference in 2008 when a Japanese physician presented remarkable clinical outcomes using red light therapy. The episode explores the core mechanisms through which red and near-infrared light may support reproductive health: improving blood flow to the uterus and ovaries, reducing inflammation, supporting mitochondrial function in egg cells, and even influencing the microbiome. Dr. Brown also addresses male factor infertility, including protocol adaptations and important cautions around heat and testicular exposure. The conversation touches on the role of the nervous system and stress in fertility — and why a purely hormonal approach often misses the bigger picture. Two patient stories anchor the science in lived experience: a woman with premature ovarian insufficiency who went on to have two natural pregnancies, and an IVF patient facing high aneuploidy rates who conceived naturally after adding photobiomodulation to her protocol. Whether you're navigating fertility challenges personally or supporting patients through them, this episode offers a compelling look at what integrative care can add to the equation.   Listen on the go — The Fringe podcast is available on Spotify and YouTube. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.   Transcript Liz Frey: Hi, Lorne. So good to see you. So good to have you on the podcast today. Dr. Lorne Brown: Thank you, Liz, and I'm excited for our conversation. And I really enjoyed the conversation you and I had on my podcast with you and Genevieve. I'm going to give a shout out right at the beginning — it was episode 129 on the Coherence Code podcast, our deep dive into red light therapy and fertility and hormones. Liz Frey: Yeah, that was a great conversation. I wanted to have you introduce yourself to our audience. Most people would know you as the fertility expert behind AcuBalance. I'm curious — before all of this, who was Lorne Brown, and what made you decide to essentially leave a career in accounting to become a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner? Dr. Lorne Brown: Yeah, so I left the chartered accountant path. I had digestive issues, Candida, chronic fatigue, and I couldn't find any solution for that. I tried all the conventional medical approaches. It wasn't until I started seeing naturopathic doctors and then a Chinese medicine doctor — I actually flew to a different city — and it changed my life. My digestion healed. My clarity in my brain — is this what it feels like not to have brain fog? For 10 years after that experience, I studied different alternative medicines, spirituality, nutrition, Chinese medicine, kind of like a hobby while still practicing accounting. Finally I left that career, went back to school, and graduated in 2000 with a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I started my practice, AcuBalance, in Vancouver. And it was somewhere around 2004 where it became focused on reproductive health. That only happened because somebody came to see me early in 2002 with fertility issues going through an IVF. There was nobody focusing on fertility back then. She introduced me to her acupuncturist in Houston, who became my mentor. By 2004, I was just doing reproductive health. Now here we are in 2026 — 26 years in practice, big focus on reproductive health, fertility, perimenopause, and menopause. Liz Frey: Was there a moment or experience where you realized that conventional healthcare wasn't enough and wasn't working? Dr. Lorne Brown: Yeah, I saw it with my patients and I saw it for myself. I got scoped up the yin yang literally up and down because they were trying to find out what was going on with me and they couldn't. I was even called a hypochondriac at some point. But then I started having severe bleeding symptoms that they couldn't ignore. My aunt was into alternative medicine — that was my entry point. And the results were undeniable. My symptoms went away and the level of clarity and focus I had was awesome. I reached a point where I felt so good physically — what I could do at the gym, my concentration, my thought process — I wanted more. I'm not one of those practitioners that disses another medicine. I'd say Western medicine, Chinese medicine, naturopathic medicine all have their place and I'm a fan of integration, not either/or. Western medicine is great for acute care. Chinese medicine is great for chronic care. The future of medicine, how I see it, is doctors trained in both prevention and intervention. Liz Frey: So what do you think people are getting wrong right now when thinking about fertility and reproductive health in conventional medicine? Dr. Lorne Brown: There's a God factor in this — there's more we don't know than we do know. I think we hear a lot about people waiting longer, aging, which is probably a factor. But I'd think that's probably not the main reason, because I see 39, 40, 41-year-olds — people that age are still in their reproducible phase of life. I think the environment, chemicals and toxins, are definitely impacting. They're everywhere — in our food, soil, water, clothing, makeup, cosmetics. Lots of endocrine disruptors. And the other one is stress — nervous system dysregulation. It's not so much the stressor, but how your body perceives the stress. What I see in 26 years of practice when I do regression work — I'm also trained as a clinical hypnotherapist — sometimes it's their childhood where a parent picked them up late from daycare. That's not a traumatic event like we think of abuse. But for some people, based on how their nervous system came into this world, the way they perceive and interpret it can imprint on their nervous system and impact them. I used to really focus on the physical — diet, lifestyle, supplements, herbs — and I don't ignore that. But the missing link in my practice is that we've dismissed or neglected nervous system dysregulation. That nervous system dysregulation affects your immune system, which plays a key role in implantation. It causes more inflammation from stress hormones. Chronic systemic inflammation leads to accelerated biological aging — there's a term called inflammaging. And it impacts your blood flow. If your body doesn't feel safe, your reproductive system is dampened down, blood is diverted for survival to your heart, lungs, and major muscles. And by the way, photobiomodulation at certain locations on the body has been shown to engage the parasympathetic. So even that can address this. The third thing — if you're in a heterosexual relationship, men are involved. And 50% of infertility is related to the man. Men are still fairly ignored in this process. If I could treat every woman's partner simultaneously, I think our success rates would jump through the roof. Liz Frey: Walk me through what it looks like if you have a new client coming in with a diagnosis of infertility. Dr. Lorne Brown: We want to find the underlying cause. I want to hear their story — not just the labs. That story I know is going to impact their nervous system. People want to be heard. There's healing behind being heard. Then we do the physical conventional side — day three blood tests, all the standard labs. We probably do a little extra in functional medicine testing — vitamin D levels, a full thyroid panel rather than just TSH, inflammatory markers, metabolic health, cholesterol lipid panel. Because everything's a system and everything's connected. Then our approach is diet, lifestyle, movement — that's always non-negotiable. Adequate rest, good sleep, movement. Digest well, eliminate daily. Regular ovulation, no menstrual pain. We address all that through low level laser therapy, photobiomodulation, acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, naturopathic IVs, NAD injections and precursors for mitochondrial health. And then I do what I call conscious work or energy psychology if people want to work on their deeper patterns. First we want to find the underlying cause. Liz Frey: What made you move into and use photobiomodulation in your practice? Dr. Lorne Brown: In 2008, I was at a Western IVF conference and one of the doctors shared they were about to release an abstract using laser acupuncture on transfer day. They replicated the Paulus protocol — the 2002 study that showed acupuncture on transfer day improved implantation rates over 60%. Their study had four groups: laser acupuncture, sham laser, acupuncture, and control. The laser acupuncture group had a 1.5% increase in implantation over everybody, which was exciting because the sham versus real laser showed it's not placebo. So I called up the IVF doc and acupuncturist, learned their protocol, bought that laser, and we started going on-site to the Olive Fertility Clinic in Vancouver to do acupuncture combined with laser acupuncture before and after transfer. We did two years of looking at our data — those that had our AcuBalance treatment had a higher pregnancy rate and lower miscarriage rate than those that didn't. Then I came across Dr. Oshiro in the literature. He's a medical doctor and pain specialist in Japan who by accident started using it for fertility. He would first treat around the neck and the celiac plexus to engage a parasympathetic response — bring blood flow head to toe — then go to the local area. A woman with back pain who wasn't menstruating came in. He resolved her back pain and her period came back. When a second woman with the same situation came in, he realized: maybe by increasing blood flow head to toe, I'm bringing more blood flow to the ovaries and rejuvenating them. He did a pilot study: 74 women, average age 39, nine years of infertility, 15 ART cycles. High 20% pregnancy rate, around 68% live birth rate. He expanded to 701 women with similar results. That got me down a rabbit hole. I traveled to Toronto to meet Fred Kahn, a vascular surgeon deep into photobiomodulation. I went to Australia to Roberta Chow's clinic — she's published in The Lancet showing photobiomodulation can relieve neck pain, and her clinic was also seeing women with endometriosis infertility conceive naturally after treatment. Then I learned about a group out of Denmark — Anne-Marie Jensen had a large case study group showing high pregnancy rates when treating three times a week during the follicular phase over three cycles. I also got to interview Dr. Nakamura in Japan, who works in an IVF clinic combining acupuncture with low level laser therapy. He had 10 years of data showing that over at least three cycles, he doubled blastocyst rates. Our protocols ended up being almost identical. That's kind of how we developed our Lazy Baby program and incorporated photobiomodulation into our practice. Liz Frey: Are you finding that in the fertility world there's starting to be more conversation about cellular energy, mitochondrial activity, and the importance of light therapies? Dr. Lorne Brown: Mitochondrial health is on the radar for many diseases, and fertility for sure. The current theory for why advanced maternal age matters is that it's a mitochondrial issue — the maternal mitochondria goes to the embryo from the egg, not the sperm. For the egg to be prepared to be inseminated, it has to separate its chromosomes — that takes a lot of energy, related to the mitochondria of the egg cell. Then for the embryo to divide whether in the fallopian tube or in the IVF lab, that takes energy from the maternal mitochondria. So we want to help the mitochondria of the female. What damages mitochondria health? Stress, inflammation, oxidative stress, poor blood flow. That's why we say eat anti-inflammatory, get rest, move the body, sleep. One of the main mechanisms of why low level laser therapy treats pain and accelerates recovery — and now fertility — is because it improves mitochondrial function. My understanding is cytochrome C receives the photon, it dislodges the nitric oxide from the heme molecule, and now you have good vascular dilation. The heme molecule without that nitric oxide bound to it improves the cycle of energy production and you get more ATP. The reason I also like light on other levels is we know it regulates inflammation systemically, through the blood. We know through Parkinson's research that it helps with the microbiome. The microbiome impacts egg quality and uterine receptivity. If we're using it for blood flow, inflammation regulation, and the microbiome, there are studies showing that just putting it for 15 minutes on the upper traps affected blood sugar metabolism. Can it improve egg mitochondria directly? Indirectly yes, we think. Directly — if we can get enough photons to the level of the ovary. The further the light source from the target, the less energy because light dissipates. And that's why I'm very interested in the pelvic wand. The vagina wall is really thin — that's why IVF retrieval goes in through the vagina to reach the eggs. If you put light into the vaginal wall towards the ovary, maybe those photons seep into the pelvic bowl and reach the ovary. We don't have data that it can do this, but I'm curious. Because it already has benefits of blood flow, regulating inflammation, helping with the vaginal microbiome — those things we know it can do. Liz Frey: What do you do for the men that come in? How do you integrate light therapy for sperm health? Dr. Lorne Brown: We will often use a device along the sacrum area and lower abdomen, the microbiome area. We don't put our LED systems directly on the testes because testes don't like heat — heat can impact motility or count, just like fevers or hot tubs. The LED systems people buy off Amazon can give off a lot of heat. In our clinic, we use laser probes for the testes because the laser does less heat than the LEDs, and we can control the dosage of photons. We hand the patient the probe and they move it around gently under a sheet. For LED wraps, we do those on the lower back and lower abdomen but not directly on the testes. I had a gentleman who had really poor sperm quality, got to great sperm quality, then came back months later devastated because his motility was shot. He had started doing infrared sauna every day. I said, stop the sauna and retest in three months. It went back to normal. So I'm cautious with heat near the testes, but we do use light therapy for men as part of the fertility protocol. Liz Frey: Can you share a patient story that has really struck you? Dr. Lorne Brown: I'll share two. First: a woman in her mid-30s diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency. Her AFC was essentially zero, the ovaries even looked shriveled, her AMH was undetectable, she wasn't ovulating, and for her own reasons IVF was not an option. She said, I'm looking for a miracle. We worked with her for nine months — herbal medicine, acupuncture, laser two to three times a week at the beginning, and energy psychology. I always like to heavy-load the front end to get momentum going. She ended up ovulating again. Her doctor put her on letrozole, which wonked out her cycle. We regulated again, they put her on letrozole again, it didn't work again. Based on that pattern I asked: would you be willing to take a break from letrozole and let us try to get three natural cycles? We got three nice natural ovulation cycles. Nine to ten months later, she conceived naturally. She had a baby. Then after her baby, her cycle came back and she conceived naturally a second time. Two kids. What I learned: we know very little, listen to yourself, women are the stronger sex, and perseverance is everything. Dr. Lorne Brown: Second story: age 39, a health provider herself. She went through IVF and got five or seven embryos biopsied — all came back abnormal, all aneuploidy. She was devastated. When she came in, she was in sympathetic overdrive: insomnia, inflamed skin, aches and pains, always tired, gut issues. She had a needle phobia, so her treatment was energy psychology, herbs, and predominantly laser therapy with laser acupuncture because we didn't want to add more stress. About six months later, she conceived naturally and gave birth. Five or seven embryos from IVF all abnormal — six months older, conceived naturally. Then she miscarried a subsequent pregnancy, came back for a tune-up. But she was a completely different person than when I first met her. She'd lost weight without counting calories, her skin changed, her sleep changed, she became calm. She had transformed. This time she wasn't panicked. She said, I just want a tune-up, remind me of the tools, can I do some herbs and a few laser sessions? She conceived her second child naturally at 41 or 42. This was my aha moment that nervous system regulation is the most important part of what I do. She went from ‘I can't live if I don't have this baby’ to ‘I really want this baby, but if I don't have this baby, I know I'm okay.’ And that's when the miracle happened. In Chinese medicine, for fertility to happen you have to have flow and receptivity. She was in a receptive, allowing state. She got rid of the noise. Flow and receptivity happen. Liz Frey: What's one aspect of health that's just not negotiable for you personally? Dr. Lorne Brown: Mental health. I use gadgets — I use light on my head, my neurovisor regularly. And I use this process I call energy ecology throughout my day for my mental wellbeing. Right action follows right thinking. If I can clear the noise, then I can tap into my intuitive self. If I'm in a state of fear and lack, the actions and behaviors that follow will produce more fear and lack because that's the root of the action. If I come from feeling whole and complete, the energy behind the action is whole and completeness and I'll get more of that. So nervous system regulation, mental health — non-negotiable for me. Liz Frey: Lorne, I want to thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise and wisdom on fertility, light therapy, and acupuncture. For our listeners, where can they find you? Dr. Lorne Brown: Two places: lornebrown.com is where I share my Coherence Code podcast and all the mental health and energy psychology work. And accubalance.ca — if you're interested in reproductive health, you want the fertility diet (free to download with 21 days of meals), blogs, and podcast episodes related to reproductive health, perimenopause, and menopause. Lorne is spelled L-O-R-N-E and AcuBalance is acubalance.ca because we're in Canada. Liz Frey: Thanks so much, Lorne. A pleasure. Dr. Lorne Brown: Thank you, Liz. I really enjoyed our conversation.

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