This post's subject matter: making high-intensity laser work for you and making sure that you get good results.
We'll be referring to a study entitled "The Beneficial Effects of High Intensity Laser Therapy and Co-interventions on Musculoskeletal Pain Management: a Systematic Review." This was published in 2020 in the journal Lasers in Medical Sciences. One of the exciting things about laser therapy is all the studies that have been published in recent years. We know from a scientific standpoint that laser therapy can work, but how do you make it work for you? There are a few things in this study that we'll be extracting because we think you should know them before or while you're receiving laser therapy treatments.
The first one is that laser therapy works. This particular study took a whole bunch of trials that were done; 19 studies qualified as high-quality studies. They said 94% of the articles included in their study revealed positive effects from high-intensity laser therapy on pain. Musculoskeletal pain is the main cause of chronic pain in adults. Such pain includes conditions like plantar fasciitis, osteoarthritis, discomfort in the spine such as in the back or neck, tennis elbow, rheumatoid arthritis pain, disc protrusions, wounds, and more.
Now, what do we really mean by "high intensity" laser therapy? We're not talking about surgical lasers. We're not even talking about cosmetic lasers. We're not talking about super heating the skin or the tissues. What really happens with therapeutic lasers is infrared light gets down into injured tissues—kind of like shining a flashlight through your hand. The light can get into those tissues and stimulate a cellular change in damaged tissue. This will help your body supply more oxygen delivery to the area in which the tissues are exposed to that infrared light. As a result, your body can speed up the rate at which those cells can create energy. And this helps the body to heal itself. So, we're not talking about cutting or burning tissues, but simply driving light into the tissues noninvasively to stimulate the body's own healing mechanisms. Also, we're not talking about trying to irritate the tissues in order to start a healing response: We're not damaging or irritating tissues with laser therapy; laser therapy simply promotes the body's repair mechanisms in areas that are already damaged. Other treatments, such as PRP (platelet rich plasma) or prolotherapy, induce a little bit of inflammation and a little bit of irritation to the body in order to stimulate a healing response in that area. But therapeutic lasers act to fuel the healing response without irritating those tissues at all.
If you have a musculoskeletal condition and are seeking or currently receiving laser therapy, what should you be doing to make sure that you are going to be successful? Well, fist let's point out what you should avoid doing. One thing that the researchers in this paper said will definitely reduce the effects of laser is taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)—drugs like ibuprofen. They said it absolutely will reduce the amount of benefit that you can experience from laser. Another thing to avoid is giving up after only one or two laser treatments. You should be getting at least 10 sessions for most musculoskeletal pain conditions. So, if you get one or two treatments and you don't really notice much, don't stop. Don't give up. You need to keep going. According to the research, it's not usually just one or two treatments that makes all the difference. It's a series of treatments, oftentimes over a month or two months, and at least 10 sessions. Furthermore, the authors of the study say that chronic problems especially need more laser than acute problems. So, if your condition has been going on for a long time, it's likely you're going to need more laser over a longer period of time than an injury that just happened yesterday. Over the many years of combined experience in applying laser therapy in clinical settings, LTI providers have seen many patients suffer a sprained ankle or the like who come in for just a couple of treatments soon after that injury occurred, and they quickly feel much better and are able to be released from care with great results. Conversely, we've seen others that have been dealing with ongoing pain for years and who are just not able to experience a lot of benefit from just a couple of treatments because it's going to take longer to resolve chronic problems that didn't start recently.
Many times, laser therapy is used in conjunction with other treatments, called co-interventions (things like exercise and additional passive or active modalities). Many times, we'll pair exercise with laser therapy to see improved results on the long term. And that is what these researchers saw, especially for osteopenia or osteoporosis, which is decreased bone density. Also, for plantar fasciitis and osteoarthritic knee pain, they saw that very good results were had with high-intensity laser therapy coupled with exercise.
Often, it's not just a single magic bullet. Frequently, there needs to be several treatments working together to address a problem from multiple angles. For instance, when we're talking about plantar fasciitis in particular, patients oftentimes need to include other interventions like nighttime bracing, stretching routines, and exercises because plantar fasciitis is a difficult condition to resolve. Adhering to a comprehensive care plan can help tissues recover quicker. One observation this study allowed us to make is that laser therapy can be added as part of such a care plan to help promote the healing of inflamed tissues. Laser therapy is great for healing, and if you'd like to learn more about how you might benefit from it, we encourage you to search for an LTI Provider near you.