Deep tissue laser therapy helps to speed up the healing process and decrease the pain in the areas being treated.
The deep tissue laser has a mechanism of action which increases blood flow to the injured area(s). By increasing blood flow to these area(s), it will carry oxygen and nutrients to the cells and carbon dioxide and lactic acid away from the cells. In the capillaries, blood flow is regulated via pressure and thermal gradients which target water with radiation. This is one of the best ways to produce the temperature gradient that will increase localized blood flow. When blood reaches the cells the hemoglobin that carry the oxygen have to reduce or drop off their oxygen supply. The blood then carries the waste products away from the cells.
High intensity laser therapy can speed up this process because, when hemoglobin absorbs the laser light, this reduction process increases and the blood dumps more oxygen to the cell to be processed into cellular energy. Once out of the blood, oxygen passes through the cell membrane and into the mitochondria, where it’s processed by a chain of respiratory enzymes whose end product is ATP.
At this point in the mechanism, oxygen is processed by the last of the respiratory chain of enzymes called Cytochrome oxidase. Cytochrome oxidase is the transport enzyme between the end of the respiratory chain and ATP synthase, which is the enzyme that produces ATP. Every cycle produces a molecule of ATP and without the high intensity laser treatment this process happens at its normal pace. However, if this enzyme is reduced or oxidized, it will absorb laser light thus causing the cycle to rapidly speed up. By applying the high intensity laser to the injured area(s) this means more energy will be delivered to the cell(s) and the injury will heal faster than without applying the high intensity laser.