i bought the exact lamp off of ebay about 6 months ago... and sad to say that it didn't help. in fact it even made my skin worse (a lot of small white heads around my forehead and chin which just added to my existing acne). I used the blue light for 3 months, once a day for 15min.

If your like every1 else on this site that has tried countless products, then go ahead an try it. Everyone is different. lucky for me, i'm finally on accutane!

Thank you for your feedback on the ebay lights. We need to get a lot of data before we can determine effectiveness, and your report is most appreciated! I am also concerned that you are the second person to say the lights created more whiteheads, without clearing basic breakouts. We need to be sure we do not steer people toward anything that makes things worse (or is ineffective) for sure.... Glad you are getting help from your current treatment. Best of luck to you! -Dan

Thanks for sharing your experience, sorry the lamp didn't work out for you. Out of curiosity, how far did you keep the bulb from your face? And did you have any products on your skin at the time of treatment?

Good luck with the Accutane, I know from first hand experience that is is sometimes the only thing that helps. Please be careful though, I experienced some horrible side effects from it, some of which I still live with to this day.

Best wishes!

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Hmm looks like it's been about 5 months since anyone wrote about this, thought i'd share my experience. I did some research on the subject, which led me to this post. There really isn't much out there about using actinic 03 lights for acne treatment, but I found a light which seems to peak just at the necessary wavelength (415-420nm) without going into the UV range (or any other non-useful wavelength). The light is a coralife actinic 03, 24" I believe it's a 27watt bulb. Got it from a pet store (petco) for like $20... picked up a cheap fixture at walmart for another 10 bucks. From what I understand, p. acnes bacteria become nonviable when exposed to a certain amount of energy of the effective wavelength (415-420nm). Basically it produces an environment which renders the bacteria are unable to reproduce, meaning eventually they just sort of die off slowly. My experience would seem to confirm this- I used the light VERY close to my breakouts, i.e. 2" or less, even resting on the surface for about 2 weeks and i started to see results that were promising. Got pretty busy and started slacking off, and the acne came back stronger than ever. At this point I did some calculations, based off some test data (converted joules to watt-hours) and ended up with about 39 minutes. I committed myself to determining how effective it was. Well flash forward 2 more weeks and there is a huge improvement, my breakouts on my face were essentially gone and the cysts on my chest had dramatically improved (my main concern, it was pretty bad for a while - i've always had breakouts here, and nothing seemed to have much effect, except for accutane).

I'm about 4 weeks in, and I have to say that I'm very impressed with the results, especially considering the small investment. If improvement continues, I'll probably invest in a solution that's a little more convenient. So far, my conclusions seems to be:

1) The light needs to be administered consistently for results. for me, about 40 minutes a day seems to have definite, measurable success

2) I'm using a less intense light, but with more time. I believe with a more intense light i may be able to get away with less time, but it could be that the bacteria need prolonged, intense exposure in order to make them nonviable. At this wattage the light doesn't seem to have any problem getting through the folicles.

3) doesn't seem to make a difference what source the light is from, so long as it's the proper wavelength. Actinic 03, or 415-420nm penetrates water, and presumably skin, better than just about any other wavelength of visible light. I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that perhaps the higher wattages of light people are trying to use may NOT be more effective, simply because increasing intensity could theoretically create "noise" in the spectrum of light that is produced - like when you turn a speaker all the way up, you get distortion - and in this case, other wavelengths of light than the desirable 415-420nm range. If someone who has experience with fluorescent lights would like to chime in here, it would be GREATLY appreciated.

I'd like to hear what other people have to say about this, I know that there are certainly physics and math involved that are simply above my head!

Hello, I was looking over the internet and I found two pretty similar products which emit red and blue light simultaneously. The first one is Beautyskin and it used 6 15W bulbs and the other one is Naturebright Clarity, and it uses 6 9W bulbs. For the Beautyskin the instruction say have atleast 6" distance from the face. For Clarity it says to have a distance of up to 4" from your face. The Watts differences between the two is 36W (54W and 90W). I was wondering if I will be okay with Naturebright since I can put it closer to my face and get the same amount of light. Will I get the same result though?

I'm asking those questions because Clarity is little cheaper than Beautyskin and it comes with 6 additional bulbs. That means longer life time. But the output level is lower. so I am debating which to buy