The strength of your bones is incredibly important, because they protect your brain, heart and other organs from injury.
Your bones are also responsible for storing minerals such as calcium and phosphorous, which are released into your body when required for normal bodily functions. Weak and brittle bones can result in fractures or osteoporosis.
In this blog post we are going to discuss the impact that red light therapy can have on your bone health, covering fractures as well as osteoporosis.
To start, let's begin with one of the most common ailments associated with bone health - osteoporosis.
What is Osteoporosis?
Osteoporosis is one of the most common bone diseases, where the bones become weak and are prone to breaking.
Naturally, your bones go through a process of breaking down and reforming, but as you get older, the rate of bone breaking down increases, and the amount of bone reforming decreases.
If we don’t look after our bones as we age, we lose bone density and this leads to porous bones, also known as osteoporosis.
The picture below indicates how a healthy bone (left) compared with a bone that has osteoporosis (right).
Risk factors for osteoporosis include:
- Diet – not consuming enough calcium & phosphorous
- Insufficient Vitamin D
- Physical activity – bones become and stay stronger with regular exercise (bonus – exercising outdoors where you can have sun exposure to increase Vitamin D production!)
- Smoking & drinking alcohol excessively
- Extremely low body weight
Prevention
- Consuming a diet rich in Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Calcium and Vitamin D (through diet and sunshine)
- Exercising regularly
- Having a bone density test if you are concerned and to understand your risks
Unfortunately, many medications that are used to treat clinical conditions, such as arthritis and asthma (medications called Glucocorticoids), actually cause bone loss.
Yes that’s right, a treatment for arthritis (degeneration of joints) can cause the degeneration of bones.
This is why many people are now looking for treatment options which can aid bone health, without any side effects.
Using Red Light Therapy For Bone Health
In order to provide a holistic treatment plan that builds (literally) your bones and results in positive outcomes, we’re going to tell you how red light therapy can be utilized to help bone strengthening and healing.
In short – the type of light used in red light therapy encourages your mitochondria to boost energy availability. This extra energy that is available can be utilized in numerous ways to help you to be your strongest and healthiest self!
Red light therapy achieves this by:
- Increasing bone mineral density
- Increasing collagen deposition
- Encouraging osteoblast formation (the good guys that build strong bones)
- Reducing inflammation in areas of injury
- Reducing oxidative stress
Red light therapy has also been shown to help increase the speed of bone healing when it results from a traumatic injury.
An incredible study performed in 2017 investigated how red light therapy can be utilised in post-traumatic edema (swelling) in patients with facial bone fractures.
The study compared 20 patients treated with a red light therapy device vs. 20 patients treated with a fake red light device over 5 days.
Results showed a 16.5% reduction in edema size in the group using red light therapy vs. a 7.3% reduction in edema size with the fake device. This study concluded that inflammation and swelling can successfully be reduced through RLT which results in a quicker bone healing.
If you're ready to get started with red light therapy, using one of the most powerful devices on the market, then be sure to checkout the MyLight collection below:
View The MyLight Collection >>>
Written By: Caroline Bursey
