Is Red Light Therapy good for you and

can you over do it?

Is PBM Red Light Therapy good for you?

Is Red light good for you (and Near Infra Red – NIR) – PBM Therapy uses both wavelengths of light? This is a question we get asked regularly. The simple the answer is ‘YES’, Red and NIR light makes unhealthy cells healthier and healthy cells even heathier. BUT this ‘YES’ does depend on a number of factors.

“It’s not just a simple case of pointing a device on a body part and you will get a benefit. There is more to it than that!”

PBM Light Therapy, like so many things in life, has a specific tolerance for doing good – giving a positive effect or conversely a negative effect. There are times clinically, we purposely set our THOR LX2’s to ‘negative settings’ as this calms down ‘over firing nerves’ thereby relieving acute nerve pain. This setting also relaxes muscle spasms/trigger points (knots). But this setting will hinder tissue healing.

All Medicines have a correct dose established by scientific method. If you take less than the recommended dose they won’t be effective but if you take more (thinking more is better) it will almost certainly be harmful. So it is essential that our clinicians are up to date with all the current research in PBM Therapy so when you are treated with your specific problem we give you :

‘The Goldilocks treatment – not too much – not too little – but just right’

The video from THOR Photomedicine below demonstrates this Goldilocks effect

You can see how too little does not help. There is a ‘treatment or therapeutic window’ for good. However, if you have too much the good effects are lost and can actually slow down the healing of your condition. The dose at the end of the curve is what you want to achieve to calm down painful ‘over firing compressed nerves’ and muscle spasm but this will slow healing of other tissues.

Why is light irradiance important?

Researchers have established what light intensity – ‘irradiance’ (which is measured in milliWatts /cmmW/cm2) – is needed to produce a therapeutic, beneficial effect for EACH SPECIFIC MEDICAL CONDITION. The irradiance is dependent on:

  • The power of the actual device delivering the photons of light
  • The time that the device is operational
  • The area that the light is focused on

The above 3 factors are dependent on the manufacturer’s machine specifications, and type of device or probe used. The THOR LX2s have different hand held probes delivering the PBM Therapy light treatment. It’s laser probes have a more concentred coherent light beam over a smaller probe area. In contrast, the LED probe’s light beam is more diffuse over a larger area. This leads to very different irradiances for the same time used.

Our NovoTHOR whole body light bed is a very different beast to the hand held THOR LX2s and so comes with its own special set of irradiance parameters for various medical conditions.

What do you want to help with Red Light Therapy?

Very importantly to know is, what do you have to do for each medical condition to improve symptoms? Are you:

  1. Aiming to reduce soft tissue swelling? PBM Therapy Light is applied to distant Lymphatics/lymph nodes to reduce/clear the swelling – not at the site of the injury. This needs a specific irradiance at each lymphatic drainage location.
  2. Aiming to heal a new injury/condition or an old one? These have different treatment irradiances.
  3. Aiming to treat nerve pain symptoms? To calm down pain, light is applied to spinal nerves to stop painful messages going to the brain. Research shows this is more effective at blocking pain at the spinal level than at the site of the injury. The irradiance used for nerves would slow down healing if applied to the injury site – the opposite of what you want to achieve!
  4. Aiming to reduce muscle spasm? Again this has a very different treatment irradiance to treating an injury site.
  5. Aiming to increase Stem Cell release and so speed up repair mechanisms? This needs a specific treatment irradiance, it needs to be a laser (not a LEDs) for this to occur and needs to be applied to specific bone marrow regions.

Are you starting to see a pattern emerging?

Applying Red and NIR light is not just as simple as getting a device, turning it on and expecting it to achieve a good result. This 2 minute video, PBM Therapy home vs medical grade PBM Therapy also aims to highlight the pitfalls you can encounter if you are not aware of all the factors involved!

To read more just search the site and watch the videos on our PBM Therapy You Tube channel. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us on 01332 224829 . Not sure if PBM Therapy could help you or someone you know? Why not come and have a FREE discovery Visit. Just click tap the button to find out more!

PBM Therapy Science Fact Not Science Fiction

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