Trigger Point Cold Laser Therapy
A cold laser is a light-emitting device that our chiropractor will apply to the acupoints and trigger points in your muscles. It only takes a few minutes for each treatment.
Myofascial pain is caused by tight, knotted bands of muscle called trigger points. They feel like bumps or nodules in your muscles and cause tenderness to the touch.
What to Expect
Trigger point injections are an effective treatment option that provides instant pain relief. It also allows patients to get back to their daily routine without having to carve out time for recovery after the appointment.
Once your provider has located the trigger point by palpating, they’ll pinch the spot between their fingers and stabilize it with their other hand. This may cause the muscle to twitch or spasm, but this is a good sign that they’ve found the right spot.
Laser therapy uses low levels of red and near infrared light to stimulate cellular healing and tissue building. This can help to deactivate and break up the knot of muscle fibers and relieve referred pain from other parts of your body. It can also be used in conjunction with dry needling.
During Treatment
A trained provider will feel for the knotted muscle and then gently poke it with a needle called a dry needling. This may hurt but it also releases the trigger point. The twitch response caused by this minor injury calls healing cells to the area and increases endorphins, natural pain fighters and relaxation hormones.
Trigger points are painful knots that occur in muscles and can cause myofascial pain syndrome. They can be caused by acute injuries, poor posture (like hunching over computers) or psychological factors like stress and anxiety. Massage, physical therapy and exercise can all help prevent and treat trigger points.
Cold laser therapy uses red and near-infrared light to stimulate healing on a cellular level. This light helps increase ATP production, the energy source for all cell functions. This treatment zaps the pain at its source and speeds up your body’s natural healing process. It can be used alone or in combination with other treatments like dry needling and massage.
After Treatment
Many patients experience immediate relief from pain. For some, several treatments are necessary for complete pain relief. It is normal for patients to feel fatigue as chronically tensed muscles return to their normal tone.
Acute and chronic injuries are also effectively treated with laser therapy. The laser energises the cells of the body, encouraging the growth of healthy new tissue. This helps the body to heal faster, as well as removing wastes and toxins.
LLLT can be used to treat muscle pain, connective tissue pain (like ligaments and tendons), nerve pain, and more. At White Integrated Health Clinics, Dr Dale White Jr, Dr Kevin Sykes, and nurse Jerry Lyon use LLLT to address pain from trigger points in the neck, back, hips, knees, feet, and joints. They can also teach you self-treatment techniques to relieve trigger point pain at home. This is a safe treatment with no side effects. It is effective in relieving myofascial pain syndrome.
Follow-Up
The re-establishment of normal muscle function allows for the release of pain and tension that are associated with trigger points. The accelerated growth of healthy tissue also increases blood flow and delivers oxygen and nutrients to the area that helps relieve myofascial pain patterns.
A double-blind randomized controlled trigger point cold laser trial was performed to evaluate the immediate effectiveness of laser therapy applied at myofascial trigger points compared with classical acupoints in patients with cervical myofascial pain syndrome (MPS). The results showed that application of LLLT to myofascial trigger points significantly improved the pain level and cervical range of motion.
Trigger points are tight bands of muscle that restrict the flow of blood and oxygen to surrounding tissues, which causes a deprivation of vital energy for the cell. Eventually, this deprivation leads to the accumulation of metabolic wastes and a toxic environment. The pressure of the handpiece used in LLLT treatments acts as a “pressure release” to move this metabolic waste and toxic debris away from the cells, thus releasing myofascial tension and reducing pain.
