LOW-LEVEL LASER THERAPY
What is Low Laser Therapy?
Low-level laser therapy is a form of alternative medicine that uses laser light at low levels.
The light is applied to the surface skin of the body to decrease pain or inflammation, promoting the healing of wounds, tissues, and nerves, or preventing tissue damage.
This is much different from the high-level lasers that we know for surgical procedures to cut and destroy unhealthy tissue.
How Does Low Laser Therapy Work?
Low-level laser therapy is said to work through a photochemical effect (which also occurs with photosynthesis in plants). When cells inside tissue are stressed via disease and injury, the mitochondria (or powerhouse/place where metabolism takes place inside a cell) produce harmful nitric oxide. The nitric oxide displaces needed oxygen from cells, thus causing inflammation or cell death.
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When tissues absorb the light from the low-level laser therapy, the nitric oxide is dissociated (or irreversibly split), allowing more oxygen back into the cells and therefore increasing tissue oxygenation.
Via this mechanism, cell metabolism and mitochondria function is restored, allowing the health of the tissue. The absorption of the light is also said to increase cell proliferation and migration (regeneration) and to modulate levels of growth factors and inflammatory mediators.
