What is Laser Therapy?

It is also a therapeutic method utilized by homeopathic doctors and natural ones. There exists the Spanish Society of Laser therapy, as well as one of Fitotherapy and Mesotherapy. Laser has many applications, especially in the field of surgery, the plastic subspecialty and of rheumatology.

Naturally, not all lasers employed in each one of the applications are identical, but that their different purposes confers them with a necessary distinct nature. The laser utilized as a scalpel is logically not the same at the employed to mitigate rheumatological pain. There are lasers of neon infrared, argon lasers, utilized basically in plastic surgery and in angiology, of helium neon, utilized in rheumatology, the nd’yag laser, employed for digestive endoscopies, broncoscopies and surgery, the carbon dioxide laser (anhydro-carbonic) that is employed because it is the most versatile and easily adaptable to the majority of surgical subspecialties.

The laser theory was partially described by Einstein in 1917. Nevertheless, the first ray of laser light was created in 1960. Its discovered was a North American, Theodore R. Maiman, who worked in the industrial group of Howard Hughes in his research laboratories.

Maiman carried into practice the idea of another North American Charles Hard Townes who had discovered in 1951 the "maser," which earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964. It deals with the amplification of microwaves by means of emission stimulated by radiation. On the other hand, the same method of emission of radiation application to a un beam of light which would later become known as a "laser" ray, abbreviation of Light/Luz Amplified by Stimulation of Radiation.

Such an evaluation obtained a great quantity of energy in a very short time and appeared concentrated in a minimum space (that of light).

The first laser built by Maiman was a small ruby cylinder two centimeters long. The two bases of the cylinder were silvery one of them completely, which converted it into a reflecting mirror, the other was only partially one, which made a semi-transparent mirror out of it. Light penetrated within the ruby one, owing to a spiral flash lamp, the flashes of which stimulated the production of photons (shining particles), by means of the process already descried by Einstein in 1917. These photons began a roundtrip between the two mirrors, until their intensity was such, that they existed on the exterior by means of the semi-transparent mirror. In this manner the first beam of red light was obtained.

The emissary lamp created by Maiman constituted in the beginning by two principal elements: the ruby cylindrical chrystallite and the flash light. The ruby, as a precious stone, constituted by means of aluminum oxide and some chrome atoms which are the one that given the chrystal its red color. These atoms have an electronic structure because they are located around the atomic nucleus as if they were electrons. In such a manner, upon receiving the light of the day, as is know, it is composed of all the colors of the rainbow, as it absorbs this light and returns the exclusive color of chrome, that is to say, red..

The flash of the light of the lamp gives right to numerous photos, which stimulate in passing, the chrystal of the electrons from the chrome atoms, and this is how amplification of light is obtained. Besides obtaining another quality of this beam of light is that it is coherent, that is to say, that all the rays of light vibrate in the same direction so that that intensity is concentrated in the same directions. In this manner, the mirrors that force and direct the path of the photos are charged by means of their extremes. As is logical, one of the first applications of amplified light was in the field of the image. Later, the rest came.

In medicine, the caloriphic capacity was endeavored to be put to use, by applying to the therapeutic and the capacity of work that from it is derived, was applied to surgery.

The laser has shown itself to be effective in the field of pain (rheumatology and as an analgesic, in chronic processes of migraines, in neurology, in pathologies: tumors, peripheral vascular and central, in infections, in degenerative pathologies, in trauma y in surgical repair.

It is known that laser acts on the nervous substrate by achieving analgesic action, though because laser has directed itself towards the painful part by facilitating stimulation of the zona and the subsequently biochemical normalization of it, while because it has irradiated itself in the points of treatment directed to the diseased part as are the points of auriculotherapy or of ear acupuncture.

Laser is applied in these points in the form of a needle. The stimulus is carried by means of nervous fibers, first through the cutaneous ectodermis, towards the intra-spinal path penetrating in the spinal column., But in this court, it is important to analyze the participation of the spinal level and the transmission at the level of the encephalus with its connections, ramifications and its propagation at the diencephalic level, as well as to observe the mechanisms of action of the nervous system before this response is tried.

Pain receptors that constitute the free nervous ends are those that basically are going to participate and the most sensitive ones to painful stimulation, even though it is admitted that there does not exist and individualized receptor, but that all of them can participate in relation to the stimulus received. With respect to the mechanism of inhibition of pain, this inhibition can act by means of stimulus coming from the upper tronco-encephalic strata or by the stimulation of the peripheral nerve. Likewise, experimentally, it has been able to be demonstrated how at the medular level, an inhabitation by means of stimulating the spinal neuron can be achieved. But there exist diverse mechanisms of inhibition. For example, it was demonstrated in1968 that cerebral stimulation produced an analgesic action.

The stimulation that laser produces is evident that it engenders some biochemical effects that lead to the stimulation of the endorphic substances and that it will produce almost an inhibitory action. There are experimental studies that demonstrate this. The application of laser augments the production of a determined series of biogenic amines which are precisely those that intervene primarily in the synthesis of essential amino acids that constitute the group of endorphins or neurotransmitters that are implicated in the transmission of painful stimulation.

In this case, endorphins are the neurotransmitters responsible for the passage of painful stimulus. Laser would produce its inhibiting "contras" of these and responsible for the synthesis and absorption of the endorphins, without with these is no painful sensation

On the other hand, surgical laser is employed in ophthalmology and in plastic and reconstructive surgery, besides trauma surgery and other surgeries. Its supporters say that from it a lesser wound is produced, at the same time that it cuts, cauterizes the tissues. With which, the loss of blood is less, the wounds are finer, and the recuperation, as a consequence is quicker.

For this reasons, it can also be used is small procedures as can be the case in the extraction of hemorrhoids.