What is Cold Laser Therapy?

Video Transcription

Hi. Dr. Brad Holden. HealthFirst Spine & Wellness. Today we’re going to cover the topic of cold laser therapy. We’ll start by covering what it is, what effects cold laser has on your body. Then we’re going to jump into some frequently asked questions I get in my office about cold laser therapy.

Let me start by saying cold laser therapy is simply a laser unit that emits a laser beam in the form of photon energy. This photon energy really affects your body on a cellular level. So when these photons penetrate through the skin and hit the cells, that’s going to stimulate the mitochondria, or the powerhouse of the cell to produce more ATP. This ATP is really the energy unit of the cell. Any time we have an injury in our body there are repairs that need to be made to the tissue, and there’s also waste products that need to be removed from the area of the injury.

The analogy I like to use is that of a construction site. Imagine you have this building that is up. Then a storm comes by and knocks the building down. We need to have workers on the site with a wheelbarrow removing some of the damaged material that has fallen. We also need to have construction guys on the site to rebuild the building that has been knocked down. Basically this laser would be like putting more people on the site both removing the waste, and rebuilding. It also really, really speeds them up so they’re more efficient than normal.

Some of the effects we have with cold laser therapy is increased blood flow, decreased scar tissue, decreased inflammation, and increased cellular growth. It’s really doing a lot to aid the body in healing itself. Some of the questions I’ll get are what does it feel like, or more importantly, does it hurt? When you’re getting cold laser therapy done, it doesn’t hurt at all. Most people report feeling a slight warmth in the area being treated. Some people notice nothing while the treatment is being applied.

What are the side effects? Over the past 25 years as cold laser therapy has really taken off in popularity, no real long term side effects have been noted whatsoever. Although this has never happened in my office, and I’ve been doing this on a weekly basis for the past ten years, some people can have some skin irritation if they’re sensitive to light. So if you’re really sensitive to light you might want to check that out. But again, out of the hundreds of patients we’ve treated with it, we’ve never had an issue with any skin sensitivity. But it has been documented with some individuals.

What is the average treatment time? Typically it’s a pretty brief treatment time. You’re looking at anywhere between five to ten minutes per body part that’s treated. So if you have tennis elbow, or patellar tendonitis, or runner’s knee, or something like that, you’re looking at about a five to ten minute treatment time per area to get it treated.

How long before you’ll feel the results? Typically a lot of people feel results after just one session. Obviously it’s going to take more than one session to address the underlying issue that’s there. Usually anywhere between 6 and 12 sessions will resolve most issues. But most people do report some immediate change even after the first visit.

What are some of the common conditions? Some of the common conditions we see will be anything from acutes lower back pain, knee tendonitis, tennis elbow, any sort of rotator cuff injury. Any of those things will work very, very well with cold laser therapy. Sometimes people with TMJ issues can be helped by cold laser therapy as well.

I hope you found this video informative, and gave you a little bit of a better glimpse of what cold laser therapy is, and how it may be able to benefit you. Thank you.

Learn more: Cold Laser Therapy