Why Laser Therapy is Beneficial For Chronic Inflammation

Usually, you think of inflammation as a "bad" thing, right? But in fact, in its most acute state, it's an important part of your body's natural immune response to some kind of onslaught, infection, or injury. It occurs as a process that's meant to protect and heal your body from the trauma, injury, or infection, and when things go right, it does. Blood vessels dilate, blood can flow to the injured area, and special cells and agents meant to protect and heal are rushed to the site of the injury or infection. Normally, this response to the injury, trauma or infection both protects the body from further degeneration because of the trauma and induces healing.

…until it becomes chronic

However, something different happens when chronic inflammation occurs. Just exactly what causes this permanent inflammation isn't quite known, but it can occur as a result of an old injury that won't heal, hidden infections including such supposedly mundane infections like gum disease, because of behaviors like smoking, commonplace stimuli like pollution, and so forth.

Why is chronic inflammation a problem?

Chronic inflammation becomes a problem because it places the body under constant stress. As the heightened immune response interferes with your body's healthy tissue function, this can result in permanent pain and disability, and can even result in genetic mutations that lead to diseases as diverse as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's, or stroke – even depression.

Treating chronic inflammation

Regardless of why this ongoing inflammation occurs, health professionals have struggled to figure out ways to mediate the inflammatory response and reduce or even eliminate it so that the body is not under constant onslaught.

With medications

While medications that target the inflammatory response can help, they don't cure the underlying cause of the inflammation, and they can have serious side effects.

With laser therapy

Low-level laser therapy works to treat chronic inflammation in a non-invasive, safe, effective and gentle manner without any side effects.

Benefits of laser therapy

Laser therapy can reduce the swelling, pain, and inflammation caused by conditions such as:

• Carpal tunnel syndrome
• Rotator cuff syndrome
• Tendinitis
• Arthritis
• Spinal pain
• Headache
• Low back pain
• Shoulder pain
• Knee pain
• Neck pain
• Other soft tissue injuries

How it works

Low level laser therapy (also called photo-biostimulation or LLLT) reduces inflammation, speeds healing, and provides relief from pain and swelling. Low-level laser therapy affects the healing process at a cellular level. It's not quite known just how this happens, but chronic inflammation is thought to be reduced when compounds related to pain and inflammation are reduced by the laser therapy, while healing and new tissue generation are stimulated at the same time.

Undergoing treatments

Inflammatory conditions are often treated with LLLT sessions three times a week, although your healthcare practitioner will make the final decision. The treatment has cumulative benefits, meaning that the longer it's used to treat and heal chronic inflammation, the more effective it will become.

What can you expect when you undergo low-level laser therapy?

Over time, repeated sessions of low-level laser therapy can be expected to produce the following results:

• Increased energy production over time, resulting in the production of new, healthy cells.
• Protein levels within cells, an important building block for healing, are increased with LLLT treatments.
• Hormones like mood-improving serotonin are produced to a greater degree with these regular treatments.

There's no need to live with the pain, disability, and risks of developing even more serious diseases as caused by chronic inflammation. You can relief with gentle, non-invasive, effective low-level laser therapy.  Contact us for information, or schedule an appointment today.