Let's take a few minutes today to talk about inflammation: what it is, how to control it, and why would we even want to be able to control it or reduce it. Many people have heard about inflammation or have blamed inflammation for their issues, especially in the last few years as there has been a big spotlight on inflammation at the root of many health disorders and painful syndromes.
First of all, what is inflammation? Inflammation is a chemical process that occurs in tissues when they become damaged or irritated, or when there's some type of irregularity in those tissues. And that inflammatory process brings the body's immune system cells to that area to provide the resources needed to either fight off an invader or begin the repair process. You can think about it like this: When you get a small, minor cut on your hand, what happens? You initially have pain initially from stimulation of the nerve endings in that area. Then you have some bleeding, which then stops when it clots. After that, typically people notice some pain and some swelling in the area with some redness. That's inflammation. That's the body's process of getting healing started. So, really, inflammation is the first step in repairing tissues.
Once you have that first step started, what happens is you've got the body's immune system cells in that area. They chew up damaged tissue. They start to lay down scar tissues and new healthy tissue to start to repair that damaged area. Once that starts, you get this chemical cascade that happens in the tissues that continues to heal those tissues that have been damaged, and it generates new tissues and generates scar tissue. That's that's only positive, right? Again, thinking about the cut, what happens after you've had that swelling, redness, and inflammation in there for a day or so? Well, typically you have a scab that develops and then gets kind of itchy, and that is an example of histamine release, which is a part of the body's healing process. Eventually that scab comes off and you're left with a little scar, or you're left with nice healthy skin again, and the body has done its job. It has completed the repair process. Inflammation is one of those first steps.
So if inflammation is that first step in the repair process, why would we want to talk about controlling it—either reducing or increasing it? We have to understand that there are times when inflammation as that first step in healing actually causes more problems than it solves. An example of this is a runaway inflammatory process. And an extreme example would be an autoimmune process like rheumatoid arthritis, in which that inflammation mechanism gets out of control. The body loses control of it, and your own immune system starts to attack tissues that are actually healthy, not damaged. And that attack means that your body starts to chew itself up.
But some people really don't heal well. They are slow to heal or they catch every bug that comes around. And that's an indication that the immune system is dysfunctional. It's not doing what it should be. In many cases, we want to improve that initial inflammatory approach, but it's more common that people with pain, people with autoimmune disorders, people with arthritis and other conditions that involve inflammation, they want to see that reduced. They want to see inflammation come down because that means less pain. It means better function of the tissues as well.
How do you help the body control this repair type process? There are both internal factors and external factors. And when we say internal factors in this case, we're talking about things that go on inside your body that you can have some influence on. One of those is diet; many times, the consumption of sugars and high carb items will fuel inflammatory processes. If you can reduce the influx of sugars, inflammation problems usually get better. Another one is exercise: Exercise can stimulate inflammation, but if done correctly, you'll see the production of chemistry in the body that helps to control inflammation on a systemic level. In many cases, exercise can be a great internal factor to help control inflammation in the body.
Then there are external factors. For example, using exercise again, if you overstrain an arthritic joint, it's going to get more inflamed. If you're trying to use exercise to help control pain and control inflammation but you have a damaged joint or damaged tissue or a tendonitis problem, you don't want to overwork and overstrain those areas while you're trying to exercise and help the body recover.
Another external factor would be medications. Medications are something people can use to control inflammation, especially if they're taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen. As you know, there is certainly a place for these; generally, though, they only try to reduce inflammation in the short-term. They have some pretty nasty side effects. Outside of temporary relief of some inflammatory-generated pain, it's not necessarily a solution you want to look at as a long-term method to control inflammation. Obviously, I'm not telling you not to, or to take over-the-counter drugs or to change your prescriptions at all. You need to be talking about medications with your primary care provider and how they apply specifically to your case. I'm simply saying that, in many cases, artificially trying to tamp down some inflammation isn't really going to give you long-term results. Not only that, but many times it's at the cost of some significant side effects.
There is another external factor that can be used to help with controlling inflammation, and you probably already know it's going to be laser. Laser therapy and light therapy can be very effective at helping to reduce inflammation by controlling some of the chemical processes that happen with that inflammatory cascade. We're not going to go into depth on that inflammatory cascade because, to most people, it's incredibly boring. However, if you're someone who wants to know the mechanisms behind the inflammatory cascade, we encourage you to look at this paper, "Mechanisms and Applications of the Anti-inflammatory Effects of Photobiomodulation" by Dr. Michael Hamblin. It was published in May of 2017 in the AIMS Biophysics journal.
In that paper, Dr. Hamblin discusses some conditions for which we have good evidence for utilizing laser and light therapies. Number one being Achilles tendonitis, the big tendon in the back of the ankle. Achilles tendonitis can be really painful. It's been well-proven that laser can be helpful for reducing pain and inflammation there. Second is muscle performance and recovery. And if you have read this post from us, you already know that utilizing light therapy on muscles post-exercise helps them to recover quicker and gain strength faster. Third is arthritis, which can be very much helped by the application of laser therapy to control pain and inflammation. Lastly is alopecia areata, which is inflammation and inflammatory loss of hair follicles. This can happen to anyone, at any age, it's not the typical male pattern baldness or hair thinning due to age. This is where the immune system goes a bit haywire and actually attacks hair follicles. Many times it results in the complete loss of hair. If it's controlled properly, though, the hair oftentimes comes right back and does just fine.
Beyond that, we have more and more evidence every year that many inflammatory diseases can be helped by the application of light therapy. Now that's not to say that this is the only approach, right? We already said diet, exercise, and medications can be used to help control pain and inflammation and to bring about a good outcome from whatever inflammatory type problem you're dealing with. But laser therapy has a lot of advantages, and it works well in conjunction with those other inflammatory controllers, so we encourage you to speak with your local healthcare provider to learn how to best treat your inflammation. To find a Laser Therapy Institute Member near you, view our clinic map.