For decades, cold laser therapy has been a drug-free way to treat a range of pain conditions, including carpal tunnel syndrome and osteoarthritis. The properties of low-level laser light stimulate body healing responses.
Most medical laser devices use heat to get results, whether it’s to coagulate collagen as with many cosmetic applications or for precise incisions in surgical applications. Cold lasers won’t give you a chill during treatment, but their energy doesn’t convert to heat.
At Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation, we use cold lasers to complement to our other soft tissue treatments, a modality that’s medication-free and widely compatible. It may be the addition to pain management you need to put chronic pain behind you.
Other cosmetic and medical lasers absorb into target tissue, and light energy converts to heat to accomplish the goals of treatment. Cold light therapy isn’t absorbed in the same way, due to its low energy levels, so its benefits come from different reactions.
All lasers output light in a single wavelength, though this can often be tuned to different wavelengths in one laser device. Cold lasers typically use wavelengths of 600 to 700 nanometers (nm) for shallow penetration of surface skin and tissue, while light of 780 to 950 nm treats deeper layers.
These wavelengths are on the red and infrared side of the spectrum. Soft tissue cell damage often responds to stimulation with these colors of light, prompting a healing response that otherwise doesn’t occur.
Cold light therapy therefore acts as a trigger to jump-start natural healing. It’s classed as a regenerative medicine therapy, since it prompts your body to boost its own healing abilities.
Joint pain typically begins when soft tissue within the joint starts to break down. Osteoarthritis is a common cause, when the cartilage covering the bones of a joint begins to wear away.
Joints also suffer from sprains and strains, injuries to ligaments and muscles. Bursitis and tendinitis are inflammatory conditions that result in joint pain and stiffness. Often, inflammation associated with natural healing responses is a pain generator on its own.
Some of these conditions are degenerative, like osteoarthritis, while others may be difficult to treat, since the demands of daily life often interfere with a joint’s need for rest during the repair process.
Cold laser therapy provides a natural way to reduce inflammation while stimulating cell growth and repair. One of the most noticeable reactions to treatment is the reduction of pain symptoms.
This on its own can make your entire treatment process easier to manage. Pain relief from cold laser therapy can reduce or eliminate your need for long-term use of pain medications, which carry side effects and generally aren’t a viable approach to treating chronic pain.
Find out if cold laser therapy is right for you by talking with our specialists at Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation. You can request an appointment with any of our five locations online or by calling the nearest office directly. Book your visit today.
