Bell's palsy is a paralysis of one half of the face. One side of the facial nerve undergoes some kind of trauma. We're still not really clear on what happens or why it happens. Generally, it's due to facial weakness. It doesn't typically hurt. It looks a lot like a stroke. Many times, when it begins, people are rushed to the ER to check if there has been some kind of stroke damage. Thankfully, in these cases, there has not been, but it can be pretty scary. It results in a disfiguring of the face, which is emotionally distressing and can cause people embarrassment. There can also be some level of danger to the eye because, if you can't blink to lubricate the eye with tears, then the eye dries out and can suffer some damage to the cornea, along with eye fatigue. It can sometimes involve some drooling, sinus irritation, loss of taste, and sometimes pain as well (but that is less likely).
We're going to be referring to a study entitled "The Efficacy of Low-level Laser Therapy in the Treatment of Bell's Palsy in Diabetic Patients." This was published in June 2020, in the Journal of Lasers in Medical Sciences. You can read the study here.
We know that Bell's palsy oftentimes occurs in patients between 15 and 40 years old, but it can occur at any age. Thankfully, in most cases, this is something that is termed a self-limiting disorder, which means that it goes away on its own. If you give the nerve enough time to recover, the facial muscles slowly go back to where they were, and function and movement returns; in fact, many individuals are left with no residual symptoms at all. However, some people either never recover at all or only recover partially. If you're older or if you have hypertension, high blood pressure, or diabetes, your chances of a full recovery are lower due to those risk factors.
Often the one-sided facial paralysis is noticed when the patient wakes up with it or when coworkers or family members gradually notice it showing up throughout the day. What happens next? Once you get checked out and you know that it's not a stroke, typically nothing happens because there's not really any particular treatments out there for it. Some doctors, though, have recommended an antiviral medication, as well as steroids. Antiviral medication is supposed to help find any kind of virus that may be affecting the nerve, and the steroids are supposed to reduce inflammation, which could be affecting the nerve. But if you're a diabetic patient, the use of steroids is contra-indicated. You really should not be on steroids if your sugars are not well controlled. So then what? What do you do if you can't have those medications? Primarily, there's just a waiting period for the body to repair the damage. And that is why researchers have looked at laser therapy as a way to actively treat and get the nerve back to functioning normally so that you can blink, smile, chew, and perform those kinds of movements without any problems.
Sometimes Bell's palsy could potentially be due solely to diabetes. Even if you don't think you're diabetic, the researchers in this paper say you should get your sugar levels checked if you have Bell's palsy because there's a possibility: In fact, it could be the very first symptom of diabetes.
In this study, the researchers took patients who had diabetes mellitus in addition to Bell's palsy. They rated how severe the facial paralysis was, and then they prescribed 12 sessions of laser therapy (three times a week for four weeks) followed by retesting and then a three-month follow-up. They saw that "laser therapy was effective for the majority of cases. The recovery rate showed that laser therapy is a safe, reliable, and proper alternative approach to the treatment of facial nerve palsy, especially in conditions, such as diabetes, where we cannot use conventional medications, such as corticosteroids due to their complications."
What does the process of treating this disorder look like? Well, first is a medical examination. If blood work or other testing needs to be done, those should be ordered. If laser therapy for pain will be used, it's just a few minutes of applying a non-invasive, non-burning laser to the side of the face that's effected along the nerve pathway. Many times, patients will feel a little bit of warmth, but we're not talking about a surgical laser process here. We're talking about gradually stimulating the repair of that nerve by utilizing a special type of FDA-cleared infrared laser light for pain. When we do that, it is very typical to see improved recovery for nerve injuries, especially diabetic-related nerve injuries. And as these researchers pointed out, facial nerve problems can be linked to diabetes. To receive laser therapy treatments from a provider who can use proven laser protocols that have been used in multiple clinics around the world, find an LTI Member near you.