Racing the Recovery Clock

So we all know about the advice to stretch, warm up, stretch and cool down (in varying order depending on where the advice is coming from!) when you are participating in any form of sport. But that doesn’t guarantee you won’t ever suffer a muscle or tissue-related injury. Read more here about how you can speed up the healing process.

In a report on www.practicalpainmanagement.com it states that “A novel therapy introduced to western medicine over the past 15-20 years is photo-biostimulation, or light therapy. Phototherapy is the application of specific light wavelengths and energies to body tissues that elicits a complex chain of biochemical responses. Most of the focus is on red and near infrared wavelengths. Much of the early work was conducted in the former Soviet Union and its East European satellite countries. The impetus was to improve performance and injury recovery in both military and athletic patients.”

The report goes on to say that “The net result in clinical studies suggests increased strength of tissue repair and minimal scarring. In both soft tissue and connective tissue injuries, infrared light therapy can increase the final tensile strength of the healed tissue. By increasing the amount of collagen production/synthesis and by increasing the intra and inter-molecular hydrogen bonding in the collagen molecules, IR therapy contributes to improved tensile strength. The preceding effects combine to achieve an accelerated healing rate. The time from onset of injury to mature healed wound is reduced.”