Laser therapy is a modern version of an ancient treatment. The curative powers of light have been known for thousands of years. The light emitted by a laser can penetrate human tissue and the healing power of light can be used inside the body with laser therapy. Light stimulates the body's natural healing processes and laser therapy is able to stimulate healing for musculoskeletal injuries, degenerative conditions and wounds.
Light is energy, and when that energy is transferred the cells of the human body, it is used to stimulate cellular activity. When the light used in laser therapy reaches damaged tissue, the stimulated cellular activity speeds up the healing process already underway in the body. The monochromatic nature and polarized characteristics of laser light allow for the deep penetration of tissue to stimulate damaged tissue while leaving normal cells unaffected. The energy transmitted by the laser light is absorbed by molecules in tissue cells. The light energy is transformed into biochemical energy and allows cells to function normally, which vastly speeds up their natural healing ability. In other words, it is difficult for an injured cell to heal itself, but laser therapy gives the cell the energy it needs to return to normal function and improved healing.
There are a number of advantages to laser therapy over conventional treatment methods. First, laser therapy is non-invasive, which means other cells are not affected. Surgery ?invades? the body with a process that affects other cells and requires additional healing. Pain reduction, which is used to mask a symptiom until the body has healed itself, can also affect the body in ways that are not related to healing or correcting the problem. Laser therapy is also non-toxic, unlike many treatments that involve chemicals that are harmful to other body cells and processes. Laser therapy is also a very effective treatment. Cure rates of over 95% have been achieved - all in a process that has no recorded side-effects.
Another advantage of laser therapy is that it is a cure, not merely a treatment of symptoms. By stimulating the body's natural healing energies, the problem is actually repaired, not masked. Curing the problem helps in a number of ways. There are no side effects from chronic conditions, where the body adjusts its structure and/or functions to compensate for an injury or affliction. Natural healing keeps energy levels throughout the body at peak levels, which reduces the incidence of a ?domino effect? of issues related to a root problem.
While there are no known negative side effects of laser therapy, there's an extensive list of positive side effects. It has long been known that exercise stimulates the body's production of beta-endorphins, which inhibit pain. Beta-endorphins are responsible for the ?high? that many athletes experience when performing. Laser therapy also stimulates the production and release of beta-endorphins in the body.
Laser therapy increases the production of cortisol in the body. Cortisol is the body's natural version of cortisone and helps the body deal with stress. Again, by stimulating the body's own defences, laser therapy speeds the healing process while keeping the rest of the body in peak, unstressed condition.
The list of benefits of laser therapy goes on. Long-term effects include improved cellular metabolism, allowing the body to generate more energy; higher DNA production; higher levels of serotonin and acetylcholine that stimulate nerve function; faster cell replication, which means damaged or abnormal cells are replaced faster; the formulation of new blood cells is improved and cellular communication is enhanced.
Unfortunately, laser therapy does not stimulate or release enough energy to have repair very serious cellular injuries and afflictions and so it is ineffective for many diseases, such as cancer.
However, additional laser therapy benefits include stimulated immune response, improved lymphatic drainage, more histamine and growth hormone production.
Overall, laser therapy stimulates the body natural healing processes which carries with it a number of physiological benefits that not only speed the healing of a wound or injury, but improves the body's other processes to help prevent re-injury and better prepare the body for further stress.
If an injury is keeping you from an active lifestyle, the expert laser therapy practitioners at The Urban Athlete can help.
But first, what is quit smoking laser therapy?
Laser therapy to stop smoking has been around for quite a number of years. It is, according to those who practice it, the application of low level laser to the acupuncture points in the body to stimulate the nerve endings which in turn produce endorphins.
And this, it is claimed, is a way to help smokers to kick those cigarettes and stop smoking. The release of endorphins help relieve the stressful effects of nicotine withdrawal and make it easier to kick the tobacco habit. The physical cravings are reduced and the stress of the addiction withdrawal are reduced.
This low level laser treatment is combined with counselling in most cases, and it is the overall treatment which results in tobacco addiction sufferers being able to quit smoking according to those who offer low level laser treatments for stopping smoking.
It is claimed by some practitioners that one half hour laser therapy session can be enough to be successful for getting a large number of people stopping smoking. Others claim no more than a few sessions should be sufficient.
It is, of course, quite expensive to undertake this quit smoking laser therapy, given that the actual amount of face to face time is quite limited.
I don't intend to tell you here whether quit smoking laser therapy works or not. That's for a number of reasons, particularly that I don't have sufficient evidence to tell you either way. However I do intend to alert you to the fact that there is quite some doubt over the technique, and there are those who maintain that it does nothing at all to assist people to quit smoking.
Unfortunately it seems that there is little published and publicly available scientific evidence on the efficacy of using low level laser therapy for stopping smoking. Although the laser clinics claim scientific evidence it is difficult to find any, and they do not offer links on their websites to the papers published by the scientists who have studied this laser therapy. The author has been unable to find any authoritative published studies, and there are plenty of others who claim this lack of any supporting evidence means that, currently at least, laser therapy to stop smoking has to be viewed as unproven.
For example, in 2006, the US consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to stop 5 US quit smoking laser treatment companies from claiming that low level laser therapy is successful in helping people stop smoking. It is not approved by the FDA as an anti smoking treatment, although it is as a pain relief treatment.
And I document on my website a range of other sources all of which suggest that stop smoking laser therapy is a fraud or close to.
Even the companies which market laser therapy will admit to it being "experimental".
For those in the grip of a serious nicotine and cigarette addiction it isn't easy to find a way forward to combat that addiction and to stop smoking successfully. However anyone who opts for laser therapy as a means to stop smoking should understand that it isn't currently scientifically proven to work.
Both Wsiarticles & Peter Clark are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Wsiarticles has sinced written about articles on various topics from Fitness, Dog Care and Home Improvement. Contact The Urban Athlete today and start helping your body to heal itself with . Wsiarticles's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.
Peter Clark has sinced written about articles on various topics from Aging Supplement, Swimming Pool and Aging. Peter runs a website that looks at the evidence for and against called the Quit Smoking Laser Therapy Guide. Readers can contribute their own ex. Peter Clark's top article generates over 165000 views. to your Favourites.