Red Light Therapy For Arthritis

What is Arthritis?

Arth equals joint, and itis equals inflammation.

Arthritis is a disease of the joints and surrounding tissue, and can be an extremely painful and debilitating condition for a lot of people.

If you’re reading this - you’ve likely been affected by this condition in some way or another, or know of someone close to you who has been affected.

Let’s break down exactly what Arthritis is and what it's primarily caused by, so we can properly dissect how Red Light Therapy can help with healing your arthritis condition.

Firstly it’s important to understand what a joint is.

What is a Joint?

Joints are places in the body where bones come together, such as the knees, wrists, fingers, toes, and hips - and with age are prone to degeneration.

Both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis are common types of arthritis that affect a large number of people on a daily basis.

What is Osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis is a painful, degenerative joint disease that often involves places like the hips, knees, neck, lower back, or small joints of the hands.

Repeated overuse of these joints from performing particular tasks or movements over and over again results in consistent impact that thins and wears away the cartilage that cushions the ends of the bones.

Bones rub together, causing a grating sensation and ultimately leads to swelling and inflammation in the joint.

What is Rheumatoid Arthritis?

Rheumatoid arthritis on the other hand is known as an autoimmune inflammatory disease which usually involves various joints in the fingers, thumbs, wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, feet, and ankles.

An autoimmune disease in contrast is one in which the body releases enzymes that attack it’s own healthy tissues.

In rheumatoid arthritis, these enzymes destroy the linings of your joints which causes pain, swelling, stiffness, and reduced movement and function.

What are the similarities between Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis?

Although different in some ways, these conditions share similarities in the fact that they both result in increased inflammation and swelling in your joints - which are used everyday to perform basic tasks.

Both conditions affect the bones, joints, and surrounding muscle tissue in your body and without effective treatment can continue to worsen over time.

Unfortunately a lot of the treatments for arthritis, including natural treatments - don’t directly address the problem areas but rather are simply pain management methods.

Things like massage therapy, acupuncture, meditation, yoga, or topical gels - help to relieve pain in some way or another, however they fail to fully address the core problem areas in deep muscle tissue, bones, and joints.

Chances are you’ve tried many of these natural solutions and even prescriptions as well to cope with pain on a daily basis.

How Red Light Therapy helps with pain caused by Arthritis

Now that there’s been a clear breakdown of the condition and how it affects your body, along with some of the alternative solutions to pain management and worsening of the condition - let’s get into red light therapy as a solution for addressing arthritis as a whole.

Whether you’ve heard of red light therapy, tried it, or it’s a completely new term to you - this will help you understand the science behind it and how it aids in the natural healing of your body.

Light is the main source of energy for all living organisms, humans are no different.

As humans, we’ve evolved with the sun. Light quite literally powers our cells and provides us with the energy we need to live.

Different wavelengths of light have different effects on our bodies, in fact you may have heard about the negative side effects of harmful blue light wavelengths over a long duration.

Just as there are negative side effects of blue light, there are extremely positive benefits of other wavelengths on both the visible and non-visible spectrums that can have a tremendous impact on many different ailments and conditions - including arthritis and diseases that affect the bones, joints, and deep muscle tissue in our bodies.

Red and Near-Infrared wavelengths have been proven by 1000’s of clinical studies to be a non-invasive solution for stimulating a natural response in human tissue and enhancing overall healing performance of your cells.

Let us explain.

What is Red Light Therapy?

Red Light Therapy and specifically near-infrared wavelengths can painlessly deliver concentrated wavelengths of natural light into your deep muscle tissue, joints, and bones.

The light is absorbed by the mitochondria in your cells, which are otherwise known as the “powerhouse” of your cells - they produce adenosine triphosphate or ATP which is a molecule with a sole function of storing energy in your cells.

The more efficiently the cells in our body can make and use energy, the better the body functions.

So you’re probably wondering what this does for your arthritis condition and coping with pain - so let’s dive into it.

The release of this ATP cellular energy in the body makes the most out of the nutrients, oxygen, detoxification, growth, and repair in your cells.

The combination of increased cell activity and blood circulation works to reduce inflammation and therefore pain caused by arthritis as well as other injuries.

In addition to directly addressing the source of inflammation in your body, red and near-infrared treatments have been proven in many clinical studies to improve bone density.

What does Red Light Therapy do for Arthritis?

RLT stimulates energy production in your bone cells, and enhances the production of collagen and procollagen which stimulate the growth of bone cells.

This is why so many professional sports teams and organizations have begun using RLT to get their players back in the game quicker - and with the development of LED technology it’s become more and more accessible for everyday use at-home for many other ailments and conditions.

Because of the fact that red light therapy is a natural and non-invasive process, it can be used in conjunction with most other known arthritis treatments.

However it’s worth noting that if you use topical arthritis cream, apply the cream after your light therapy session to avoid interfering with the treatment.

If you’re looking for more information about how red light therapy can help your arthritis condition and are searching for alternative natural solutions to pain management - take our personalized light quiz on our website to see if red light therapy is right for you.

You’ll get some more in-depth articles and information regarding RLT for bone health, inflammation, and many other side effects that come from using red light therapy on a daily basis like skin health and complexion, sleep optimization, and much more.

Thanks for reading, and have an amazing day!