See the (Red) Light

Red light therapy, cold plunges + more science-backed wellness in DFW

C'mon, take a dip.

Photo courtesy of Altered States Wellness

Though it's technically been around since the 1980s, biohacking feels like the trendy new buzzword for health and self-care.

Also known as DIY biology, biohacking is the all-encompassing term for tips and tricks you can try to get your body to function at peak performance, recover better and more quickly, and maybe even extend your lifespan.

Dallas and Fort Worth have plenty of spas and fitness studios that have embraced biohacking, offering red light therapy, cold plunges, salt rooms, compression therapy, IV drips, and more. In alphabetical order, here are just a sampling of where to go and what to try.

Altered States Wellness
Coppell, Richardson
Introducing the 2025 Cold Plunge Challenge, where for $49 you get 10 cold plunge sessions over the course of 30 days. Immerse yourself in 40-degree water for two to five minutes during each session to enjoy such benefits as enhanced recovery, improved metabolism, increased energy, and stress reduction. Bonus: A portion of the proceeds from the challenge will benefit the Alzheimer's Foundation.

Other services offered include infrared saunas, fire and ice therapy, compression, float rooms, and PEMF therapy, which harnesses electromagnetic fields to enhance cellular activity, in turn reducing inflammation, boosting energy, alleviating stress, and improving sleep quality.

CYL Infrared Studio
Dallas
Infrared lymphatic rolling, also known as lymphatic massage and lymphatic drainage, maximizes body detoxification, and relieves pain and inflammation, plus reduces weight, cellulite and inches and improves overall appearance and wellness. Infrared saunas use the invisible light spectrum to heat your body directly from deep within your core, similar to how you may feel when vigorously working out. Many people say that their sleep vastly improves after each 30-minute infrared session.

Evolve Human Optimization Labs
Dallas
Access cold plunge, red light therapy, compression sleeves, infrared saunas, and 20-plus other services and devices with a free day pass to this "wellness playground." You don't need an appointment, and can sample and explore everything at your own pace. Monthly memberships let you visit as often as your schedule allows.

Fort Worth Float Company
Fort Worth
Try the traditional float, which means climbing into a tank filled with salt water dense enough to support you and minimizing as many external sights and sounds as possible. Or do a cold plunge to increase blood flow and reduce inflammation while also boosting your immune system. During the warming phase that follows, fresh blood will return and bring with it nutrients and oxygen to aid in recovery.

Glow Sauna Studios
Dallas
This is billed as the premier infrared sauna experience, offering three-in-one infrared technology that unleashes a number of benefits in just one 30-45 minute private session. Sweating can help with detoxification, immune support, weight loss, pain relief, skin health, blood pressure regulation, and improved circulation.

Haven Wellness
Dallas
Have you heard of the Wim Hof Method? It combines conscious breathing technique with cold therapy to increase energy, improve sleep, reduce stress, and strengthen your immune system. You can learn it here under instructor Bri Forrest, and pair your practice with a yoga or meditation class to really get in touch with your body.

Recess Fitness Club
Dallas
This playground-inspired gym is already outfitted with swings, rope climbs, and even a two-story slide, but in 2025 it's branching out into biohacking. Cold plunges, infrared saunas, and metabolic testing are joining RecessRx, which provides members with 24/7 access to physicians, personalized lab testing, hormone therapy, peptide treatments, and more.

R&R Aesthetics + Wellness
Fort Worth
If you want to tackle anti-aging at a cellular level, start here. In addition to traditional medspa offerings like injectables and facials, this women-owned studio also features an IV drip bar, halo salt therapy, high-dose Ozone therapy, and the BrainTap, a device that uses light, sound, and vibration to deepen your state of relaxation and synergize the mind.

Restore Hyper Wellness
Colleyville, Dallas, Frisco
From cryotherapy — which can relieve pain and swelling while boosting mood and energy — to red light therapy — which powers up your mitochondria with low levels of near-infrared light — you can try out all manner of science-backed therapies here. Pause for IV drip therapy, which can help you hydrate and flush out toxins while replenishing vital nutrients.

Restore + Revive Wellness Center
Fort Worth
Welcome to the Revive Room, where you climb into a zero-gravity lounge chairs, rest atop an infrared PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field therapy) mat, don a LED light shield mask, and apply NuCalm bio-signal processing discs to your wrists and low-EMF headphones on your ears to gently tune your brain frequency. An organic weighted blanket and aromatherapy finishes it all off.

SweatHouzz
Dallas, Fort Worth
This franchise utilizes state-of-the-art equipment to provide contrast therapy, cold plunges, infrared saunas, and even vitamin C showers to help you feel even more invigorated at the end of your session.

The Wellness Center
Fort Worth
This physician-supervised facility offers an array of medical services, as well as workshops and health programs to balance both body and mind. Choose from a variety of massage services, including deep tissue, trigger point therapy, medical massage, cupping, scraping, lymphatic, and sports massage. Follow it up with IV therapy, which infuses a blend of all-natural vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and electrolytes directly into the vascular system to allow for full utilization, instead of traveling through the gastrointestinal system first.

health fitness spas medspa red light therapy cold plunges iv drips promoted

Worm News

USDA is building fly factory in Texas to stop flesh-eating screwworm

U.S. Department of Agriculture/aphis.usda.gov

Screwworm fly

The U.S. plans to build a $750 million factory in southern Texas to breed billions of sterile flies, ramping up its efforts to keep flesh-eating maggots in Mexico from crossing the border and damaging the American cattle industry.

Secretary Brooke Rollins announced Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture hopes to be producing and releasing sterile male New World screwworm flies into the wild within a year from the new factory on Moore Air Base outside Edinburg, Texas, about 20 miles from the border.

She also said the USDA plans to deploy $100 million in technology, such as fly traps and lures, and step up border patrols by “tick riders” mounted on horseback and train dogs to sniff out the parasite.

In addition, Rollins said the U.S. border will remain closed to cattle, horse, and bison imports from Mexico until the U.S. sees that the pest is being pushed back south toward Panama, where the fly had been contained through late last year through the breeding of sterile flies there. The U.S. has closed its border to those imports three times in the past eight months, the last in July, following a report of an infestation about 370 miles from the Texas border.

American officials worry that if the fly reaches Texas, its flesh-eating maggots could cause billions of dollars in economic losses and cause already record retail beef prices to rise even more, fueling greater inflation. The parasite also can infest wildlife, household pets and, occasionally, humans.

“Farm security is national security,” Rollins said during a news conference at the Texas State Capitol in Austin with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “All Americans should be concerned. But it’s certainly Texas and our border and livestock producing states that are on the front lines of this every day.”

The pest was a problem for the American cattle industry for decades until the U.S. largely eradicated it in the 1970s by breeding and releasing sterile male flies to breed with wild females. It shut down fly factories on U.S. soil afterward.

The Mexican cattle industry has been hit hard by infestations and the U.S. closing its border to imports.

Mexico’s Agriculture ministry said in a statement Friday that Mexico Agriculture and Rural Development Secretary Julio Berdegué Sacristán and Rollins signed a screwworm control action plan. It includes monitoring with fly-attracting traps and establishing that livestock can only be moved within Mexico through government-certified corrals, the statement said.

And on the X social media platform, Berdegué said, “We will continue with conversations that lead to actions that will permit the reopening of livestock exports."

The new fly-breeding factory in Texas would be the first on U.S. soil in decades and represents a ramping up of the USDA's spending on breeding and releasing sterile New World screwworm flies. The sterile males are released in large enough numbers that wild females can't help but mate with them, producing sterile eggs that don't hatch. Eventually, the wild fly population shrinks away because females mate only once in their weekslong lives.

In June, Rollins announced a plan to convert an existing factory for breeding fruit flies into one for breeding sterile New World Screwworm flies, as well as a plan to build a site, also on the air base near Edinburg, for gathering flies imported from Panama and releasing them from small aircraft. Those projects are expected to cost a total of $29.5 million.

The Panama fly factory can breed up to 117 million flies a week, and the new Mexican fly factory is expected to produce up to 100 million more a week. Rollins said the new Texas factory would produce up to 300 million a week. She said President Donald Trump's administration wants to end the U.S. reliance on fly breeding in Mexico and Panama.

“It’s a tactical move that ensures we are prepared and not just reactive, which is today what we have really been working through,” Rollins said.

animals