What You Need to Know About Lasers

 Lasers are classified according to their power output:

• Class 3a—maximum of 5 milliwatts of power (standard laser pointer)
• Class 3b—maximum of 500 milliwatts/0.5 watts
• Class 4—anything over 500 milliwatts/0.5 watts

The most significant issue with the clinical use of lasers is the depth of penetration. Some practitioners make the mistake of using low-power Class 3 lasers, which basically amounts to a standard laser pointer.

Most class 3a lasers only use a red wavelength – 635 nanometers in the visible red. When you look at the depth of penetration with laser, red laser light only penetrates about one to two millimeters (far less than 1/8 inch) into the human body.

Granted, red laser is highly useful for treating superficial wounds, cuts, abrasions, and perhaps even for the treatment of vitiligo, but they will not penetrate far enough for deep seated pain reduction. However, infrared lasers (around 800 nanometers) penetrate far deeper and able to go several centimeters, into your body which will reach most tissue injuries.

Power is also another crucial factor when it comes to laser therapy. Power is measured in watts, and you can think of it as the brightness of the light. A higher-powered laser is a brighter light, and it can produce more energy per unit of time. When it comes to doing laser therapy treatment, a higher-powered laser (Class 4) provides two benefits:

• A therapeutic dose of laser light can be applied to a much larger volume of tissue
• By shining that brighter light at the surface, photons of light are able to penetrate deeper into the tissues, which allows you to treat deep-seated pain conditions

Health Benefits of Class 4 Laser Therapy

Basically, three things happen during Laser treatment. First, infrared laser therapy treatment helps reduce pain, reduce inflammation, and enhance tissue healing—both in hard and soft tissues, including muscles, ligaments, or even bones.

“When we look at the basic mechanism of how it works, we are enhancing the microcirculation. We are getting more red blood cells flowing to the area,” Dr. Harrington explains.

"But it’s not just the arterial blood supply to the area; we are enhancing the venous and the lymphatic return from the area. We’re also increasing oxygenation of those tissues. We are stimulating the hemoglobin molecule to dump off oxygen at the treatment site, so we are increasing the oxygenation of those tissues.”

Finally, the treatment stimulates the cytochrome oxidase enzyme in the cells’ mitochondria. This is really one of the key discoveries in the whole science of laser therapy. Specifically, injured cells are targeted because damaged cells are more readily accepting of photons of light, whereas healthy cells don’t need this extra energy.

“By stimulating the cytochrome oxidase enzyme, we are utilizing that oxygen in the respiratory chain inside of the mitochondria, producing more ATP for that cell. So regardless of what kind of cell it is, it’s going to function at a higher level. Now, we are not turbo charging. We’re not making your body do anything that it could not normally do. We’re just facilitating the process. We are helping those cells produce the energy that they normally would, so they can function as they normally should,” he explains.

Now, lasers are also used in other areas of medicine, specifically in surgical interventions where they’re used for cutting, removing tattoos, and a lot of other dermatological applications. But the class 4 Laser does not do that. The Laser can produce up to 15 watts, and the laser light is allowed to diffuse to a spot size about that of a quarter, whereas ablative lasers, the ones used for surgical cutting, are closer to 100 watts, and the laser light is focused to a tiny spot size.

“The interaction that we’re getting in the body with the Laser is called a photochemical reaction,” Dr. Harrington explains. “By shining that light on a tissue, we are getting that ATP energy produced, whereas your surgical lasers, hair removal lasers, or tattoo removal lasers, are designed to cut or ablate the tissues. They have a very, very high-powered density, a very high concentration on that laser.”

The infrared wavelengths used in the Laser allow for targeting specific areas of the body. The Laser is unique in that it is the only Class 4 therapy laser that utilizes these three infrared wavelengths, allowing for deep penetration into the body to reach areas such as your spine and hip (the Laser also has a 100-milliwatt, 660-nanometer visible red which, again, is excellent for superficial wounds):

• 800 nanometers penetrates the deepest, and is at a peak of absorption for the cytochrome oxidase enzyme
• 905 nanometers most efficiently targets the hemoglobin molecule
• 970 nanometers most efficiently stimulates microcirculation in the tissues

(By: Vishwadeep Garg: Area Sales Manager : vishwadeep_sales@unicorndenmart.com )