Low Level Laser Therapy Heals Neck Pain
In a previous post, we discussed what happened to your neck after a minor fender bender. If you missed the article, Click here. These types of breaks in George’s line can happen with any trauma to the neck.
So how can we fix this? The problem is ligaments have very little blood innervation, this means they take a very long time to heal when torn. You may have experienced this if you’ve rolled an ankle. Depending on multiple factors such as: how severe the tear is, how old you are, what your diet is like, or how well you’re resting it; it can take much longer than the standard “6 weeks” to fully heal.
This is where low level laser therapy comes in. Low level laser speeds up the entire healing process. At Anatomy, we use the Erchonia Low Level Laser. We have a handheld and a giant one! These lasers use a specific wavelength of red light that helps the cells in the body regenerate.
How do these lasers decrease healing time? First, the lasers send out a specific wavelength of red light that stimulates the mitochondria in your cells. Mitochondria are cellular structures that produce all the energy (in the form of ATP) for the cell. All cells need energy to function. When there is ligament damage from a trauma, tissues are damaged. These damaged tissues require more energy to heal and eventually replicate. Thus, adding laser to an injured area allows it to produce energy and heal faster.
Another thing the lasers do is reduce inflammation. The red light directly interferes with the production of major inflammatory molecules. This is crucial for tissue repair. While inflammation is necessary to bring repair molecules to the injured site, chronic inflammation actually slows down healing and can cause more pain. By adding laser, we reduce inflammation and also reduce pain.
Finally, we can use the lasers to activate certain areas in the body that are involved in the pain cycle. Pain is complicated, especially if the pain is chronic. We can determine what areas need activation when we study movement patterns of our patients.
Erchonia lasers are also painless – no heat is emitted. This is also a difference between low level laser and infrared laser.
Erchonia is also the ONLY laser that is FDA approved to treat chronic neck and low back pain. There are many other low level laser brands on the market but not every laser is made the same! For example, some low level lasers in the market that do emit heat. Erchonia is the only laser company with 21 FDA clearances to treat neck, back, shoulder, chronic pain, and much more!
We know it sounds too good to be true. Laser that is painless, has no side effects, and is FDA cleared to treat neck pain and low back pain? Here are a couple of x-rays of patients who have undergone laser therapy treatment in our office.
Person 1:
This person was in a car accident, this her neck in extension. On the left, 3 breaks in George’s line and 3 months later, we are down to 1 break! For all car accident cases, we use the exact protocol that Erchonia used in their FDA approval study.
Person 2:
This was her progress photo after 1 month of care. She went from having 4 breaks in George’s line to 1. The coolest thing about this is we used the laser for a shorter time period and she still got amazing results!
Both these patients were receiving care at Anatomy Chiropractic in conjunction to these laser sessions. We are a specialized clinic in San Diego, CA that specializes in Atlas Orthogonal and Activator Chiropractic. We are the only San Diego Chiropractor that combines these low force techniques with low level laser therapy. We’ve seen amazing results in many of our neck pain and shoulder pain patients in addition to those who have suffered from whiplash incidents.
While we are not sponsored by Erchonia, we truly believe in their laser technology. We also support all the research that the company conducts to further advance their practices. And finally, we see the proof in our patients!
