Achieve better patient outcomes with red light/infrared therapy

As a doctor of chiropractic, you may treat patients from infants to seniors and all ages in between.

And although your patients suffer from a wide range of conditions, your goal is always the same — to reduce and relieve your patients’ aches and pains while maintaining, or increasing and restoring, their range of motion and mobility without the need for expensive and possibly risky surgery, or the long-term use of potentially addictive pain medications. And you employ a combination of treatment strategies to reach this goal. Should red light therapy be one of them?

Better patient outcomes

Is there anything that can make your job easier and ensure better patient outcomes at the same time? How about having a noninvasive, painless and risk-free treatment modality at your fingertips that can be used anywhere on the body and can always be depended upon to quickly and effectively relieve pain, increase circulation, relax muscles and accelerate the body’s own innate healing processes? This would certainly multiply your chances for always achieving your goal and enable better patient outcomes. Several thousand scientific studies on pubmed.gov prove that red light/infrared therapy is such a treatment modality that pairs well with hands–on therapy to assist the success of your treatment plans.

Pair red light/infrared therapy with chiropractic

Just like chiropractic, red light and infrared light therapy is up to the task of relieving pain and discomfort in a wide variety of health conditions. And like chiropractic, red light/infrared therapy can be used to treat conditions at the soles of the feet all the way up to the shoulders and the neck. It can quickly increase circulation and provide relief from any type of pain, soreness and stiffness anywhere in the body.

All types of tears, sprains and strains respond well to light therapy. Red light/infrared therapy can improve a patient’s ability to bend and straighten a knee, an ankle or an elbow or relieve pain in a hip. Even chronic degenerative conditions you treat regularly, such as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, respond well to photons of light. And red light therapy pairs perfectly with exercise to help patients restore function after surgery.

Excel at treating musculoskeletal issues

DCs routinely encounter patients with a range of musculoskeletal problems, and red light/infrared therapy excels at treating these issues. Red light/infrared therapy “has been shown to reduce inflammation and edema, induce analgesia and promote healing in a range of musculoskeletal pathologies.”¹ Acute and chronic musculoskeletal pain of any cause is amenable to red light/infrared therapy. A German study done in November 2017 concluded that red light/infrared therapy “shows potential as an effective, noninvasive, safe and cost-efficient means to treat and prevent a variety of acute and chronic musculoskeletal conditions.”²

Fast pain relief plus healing support

Science has found red light/infrared therapy not only provides fast-acting pain relief, it also supports the body’s own innate healing processes. Red light/infrared therapy “is beneficial for pain relief and can accelerate the body’s ability to heal itself.”³ Wherever a red light/infrared therapy pad is placed on the body, photons of light are released that induce cascades of beneficial biochemical processes within the cells, increasing mitochondrial products such as ATP, NADH, protein and RNA, and releasing nitric oxide (the body’s natural vasodilator), which allows for greater circulation. Blood rich in oxygen and nutrients can flow more freely into that local area, reducing pain and supporting the body’s natural healing ability. Increased circulation enables tissues to heal and nerves to eventually regenerate, which in turn allows for an increase in sensation — which is especially beneficial for patients suffering from dysfunction caused by impaired sensation anywhere on the body.

Red light/infrared therapy is FDA-cleared

Red light/infrared therapy systems have been granted FDA clearance for increasing circulation, relieving pain, relaxing muscles, relieving muscle spasms and relieving the aches and stiffness caused by arthritis — and all of these are important and essential results for DCs. The systems are considered Class II medical devices.

Easy to administer

Because red light/infrared therapy is safe and risk-free, it can be administered without concerns for any negative side effects. Patients can be left unattended during their therapy sessions, allowing you to treat other patients. Administering red light/infrared therapy is simple and easy: therapy pads are placed on the body where needed, the system is turned on and the pads do their work. Most red light/infrared therapy systems will automatically shut off after 20 minutes, signaling the conclusion of the therapy session. Red light/infrared therapy treatment pads are highly flexible, which makes them very versatile, allowing for the same pad to be used on different body areas. Multiple pain issues can be treated simultaneously using several pads during the same treatment session.

How to use red light/infrared therapy

Red light/infrared therapy may augment many benefits of your hands-on therapy. Light therapy can be administered either before or after adjustments.

Before hands-on therapy: Red light/infrared light therapy can be administered before hands–on treatment to provide pain relief more quickly and effectively. Photons of light will penetrate the skin and increase circulation in muscles, tissues and joints, reducing pain, stiffness and soreness wherever the therapy pads are placed. This may potentially enable greater flexibility and range of motion to be achieved during hands–on therapy and make stretching and exercising easier and less painful.

After hands-on therapy: Because of the many benefits caused by this increase in circulation stimulated by the photons of light, administering red light/infrared therapy after hands–on therapy may help the increase in flexibility and range of motion achieved manually to be maintained for a longer time period. Any pain, soreness or stiffness still lingering after the stretches and exercises may then be eased.

The bottom line

It is easy to see how red light/infrared therapy pairs extremely well with chiropractic. Adding red light/infrared therapy to your treatment tools can greatly enhance the success of your treatment plans. Red light/infrared therapy can not only quickly and effectively relieve your patients’ aches, pains and stiffness, it can augment the results of your hands–on therapy and biostimulate and accelerate their body’s own innate healing processes. There is no downside to integrating red light/infrared therapy into your practice; the systems are surprisingly affordable, with a wide range of options available to meet the needs of any size practice.

ROB BERMAN, MBA, is a partner at Energia Medical LLC, a national distributor of light therapy pads and controllers. He helps healthcare providers improve patient outcomes while increasing provider income. He has held a variety of sales and marketing positions during his career, which included building and managing a marketing department, directing product development and product management for multiple organizations and serving as a general manager for a variety of business units. Berman can be contacted at 860-707-4220, at rob@energiamedical.com or via energiamedical.com.

References

Cutler HB, et al. The Use of Low Level Laser Therapy (LLLT) For Musculoskeletal Pain. MOJ Orthop Rheumatol. 2015;2(5):1. PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26858986/. Accessed March 17, 2024.
Baltzer AWA, et al. Low level laser therapy : A narrative literature review on the efficacy in the treatment of rheumatic orthopaedic conditions. Z Rheumatol. 2017;76(9):806-812. PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28466181/. Accessed March 17, 2024.
Op cit 1. Page 7. PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26858986/. Accessed March 17, 2024.