How to use red light therapy to eliminate chronic overuse muscle pain?
A study reviewing muscle overload in male and female college athletes found that over 25% of all injuries are classified as muscle overloads. This statistic implies a significant risk that many of these athletes may develop chronic overuse muscle injuries without proper treatment.
The same research indicates that women have a higher incidence of overuse injuries, while men are more prone to acute injuries. Before detailing the specific ways and reasons how red light therapy can help with muscle overload, let’s first explore important differences.
What is an overuse injury?
It’s an injury that appears with repetitive stimuli at a micro-level, affecting bones, joints, tendons, and/or muscles, with excessive stress on a specific area. Physical activity and exercise are beneficial, but in excess, it can delay and hinder the body’s natural recovery processes.
When you exercise, your body strengthens bones, ligaments, muscles, and other tissues. Exercise leads to the breakdown of connections between fibers, followed by their reconstruction to increase resistance. If the breakdown process exceeds the reconstruction process, an overuse injury develops.
Overuse injuries often occur when people try to abruptly increase the duration, frequency, or intensity of their training sessions, for example, trying to make up for a period of inactivity by pushing harder at the gym can have the opposite effect.
The main difference between acute and chronic injuries is that the former result from sudden traumatic events, such as broken bones, dislocated joints, and torn muscles or ligaments; acute injuries are generally associated with symptoms such as inflammation, pain, and bruising, sometimes leaving the affected area temporarily unusable.
Compared to injuries caused by overload, acute injuries are less common and usually have a clear and easily identifiable cause, which is why they are usually easier to diagnose, making the treatment approach easier compared to overuse muscle injuries.
Managing a chronic overuse muscle injury
First, it’s crucial to understand that ignoring an overuse injury can worsen it. Commonly, healthcare providers prohibit you from exercising for some time, and this may not be viable for most of us. So, we seek a doctor willing to develop a comprehensive treatment plan that addresses the symptoms and supports our need to stay active, avoiding the loss of already-gained fitness.
Countless treatments can benefit from the red and infrared light emitted by BioluxPro, improving faster.
Red light therapy as a complementary treatment for chronic overuse muscle injuries
Current non-invasive treatments for chronic overuse injuries represent the first step towards recovery and include:
- Physical therapy
- Kinesio tape
- Massage
- Others
These treatments primarily aim to relieve stress on the injured area by strengthening the surrounding muscles and tissues, allowing them to absorb some of the load and at the same time, promoting greater blood circulation that favors tissue healing and regeneration.
Red light therapy optimizes these processes, making it a valuable complement to non-invasive options. Additionally, it increases protein production, which benefits the regeneration of muscle tissue, tendons, ligaments, and bones. Red light therapy improves circulation, ensuring that the essential components for tissue repair are readily available, thus accelerating the healing process.
Red light therapy for pain relief
Both injuries and treatments can induce inflammation and pain. Pain relievers are used to alleviate the pain and discomfort produced during or after treatments such as physical therapy, stretching, etc.
Red light therapy modulates inflammation and accelerates the recovery process by stimulating the production of essential components and oxygen. Additionally, it triggers the body’s immune response, regulating inflammatory processes and decreasing the presence of pain.
Red light therapy offers a non-pharmacological approach to pain management and inflammation control. The specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared light, such as those contained in BioluxPro, trigger the release of hormones with analgesic properties, increasing, for example, levels of serotonin, endorphins, and other natural opioids produced by the body.
The role of red light in surgical treatments
In severe cases, an injury may require surgery, and red light therapy can play a supporting role in both the preparation and recovery phase, as tissue restoration is one of the most important benefits of red light therapy. As is known, red light accelerates healing after surgical treatments while also participating in scar reduction.
Red light therapy contributes to scar reduction, its effects on the skin impact the tissue damaged by the intervention, improving blood flow and promoting angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, increasing oxygen levels and facilitating the repair of damaged tissue. Blood flow is not the only requirement for tissue regeneration, the release of nitric oxide (NO) plays a basic role in wound healing and the prevention of infections. Red light therapy promotes the release of NO, thus contributing, among other things, to the healing process and facilitating the production of ATP at the mitochondrial level.
At the core of red light therapy lies its systemic effect, energizing the body to promote its own healing, our bodies are intelligent and amazing systems that recognize their needs and requirements; providing the necessary energy boost for the body to carry out its essential processes in optimizing health is the best way to accelerate healing.
Despite its compact size, Bioluxpro is a powerful device. In addition to offering localized and specific red light therapy in an area, it can be positioned in a way that provides unprecedented systemic and energizing effects.