FWD:Can a Beam of Light Cure Chronic Pain?

Health
Can a beam of light cure chronic pain?
By JEROME BURNE - More by this author » Last updated at 09:54am on 31st October 2006
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Laser therapy is something normally associated with beauty treatments such as hair removal - but now a new form of it, low-level laser therapy (LLLT), is being used to help reduce pain, heal wounds and even knit broken bones.
We are all exposed to light every day without these apparently extraordinary benefits - what makes LLLT different, explains Professor Mary Dyson, former director of the Tissue Repair Unit of Guy's hospital in London, is that this particular light operates at a wavelength which encourages the body to start healing itself.

'It stimulates the cells to start producing all sorts of growth factors, which is why it can help with wound healing and bone repair,' she says. 'It also has an effect similar to an anti-inflammatory drug — hence the pain relief.'

Speeding up bone healing by beaming light onto it may sound a bit flaky, but American researchers are taking it very seriously.

In fact, it may even help regrow spines one day, according to Dr Juanita Anders of the Uniformed Services University in Maryland, who has been testing its effects on the damaged spinal cords of rats. Besides causing the nerves to regrow to some extent, it reduces inflammation.

At the Medical College of Wisconsin, researchers have been using LLLT to restore the vision of rats whose retinas have been deliberately damaged. They reported that 95 per cent of the injuries were repaired.

There are also reports of American Special Forces soldiers using similar precise wavelengths of light from arrays of LEDs (light emitting diodes similar to the ones you get in digital clocks and TV remotes) to heal wounds; training injuries among the U.S. Navy SEALS supposedly healed 40 per cent faster with regular use of the light.

This work dates back to space program days when NASA tried to find a way to counteract the effect of zero gravity, which weakens astronauts' bones and muscles.

If LLLT works in the way experts believe, it could well help with one of the big challenges in the care of diabetics - a nasty condition called 'diabetic peripheral neuropathy', which is responsible for a number of amputations every year.

It happens because high sugar levels in the blood damage the nerves in the hands and feet, leading to a combination of numbness and bouts of pain.

'Imagine taking a hammer and hitting your thumb - this is worse,' says one sufferer.

This condition is also common among cancer patients - either as a result of the cancer or as a by-product of surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy.

Last year, the prestigious Mayo Clinic in the U.S. started a double-blind trial with peripheral neuropathy patients.

One of the few hospital departments in the UK that gives LLLT as a regular part of treatment is the pain clinic at the Royal Oldham. 'I've been using it for nine years on patients who either don't respond to drugs or who are fed up with the side-effects,' says consultant anaesthetist Paul Cook. His team also uses it to relieve pain in scar tissue and arthritis.

Cook explains that it's not a cure-all by any means. 'It reduces pain by about 50 per cent after around six weeks,' he says. 'You then have to top people up after a couple of months. We reckon about 50 to 60 per cent of people respond well to it compared with 40 per cent to a placebo.'

LLLT is usually delivered via a 'pen' or through a pad that is strapped over the affected area. The patient feels no sensation as the light is 'cold'.

What is odd is that LLLT is not more widely available. It's not a particularly new technology: it's been around for nearly 40 years. There are hundreds of research papers that show it can be both safe - it is virtually free of side-effects - and effective.

One study published recently found it was effective for chronic neck pain, another that it had 'credible biological action on tendon tissues'.

It's being used in clinics in a number of countries including Scandinavia, France, Germany, Italy, the U.S. and Australia. And yet in the UK it is still very much a fringe treatment.

'We don't treat hard-to-heal wounds and nerve damage at all well,' says Professor Tim Watson of the University of Hertfordshire, an expert in the use of various forms of electrotherapy, including LLLT.

'The tragedy is that the electrotherapy machines which could help are usually languishing under-used in hospital physiotherapy departments. But nurses treat wounds and they rarely talk to physios about them. We've estimated that, properly deployed, electrotherapy could treat 60 per cent of peripheral neuropathy.'

The problem may be that as a cure-all, its claims seem almost too good to be true, and without the sort of resources available to pharmaceutical companies it is impossible to test them all.

Vets, however, tend to take a rather more pragmatic approach to treatment, especially when there is good evidence that it is safe. So, in the UK, you are more likely to be offered LLLT if you are an animal.

When professional racing driver Liz Halliday hurt her back badly in a riding accident, she faced having to give up her career.

'I do GT endurance racing, which is pretty hard on your body,' says the 27-year-old.

'I'd tried manipulation and physiotherapy, but nothing helped much.' Liz then had LLLT and says her back is now 'the best it's ever been'.

LLLT is not a panacea, and it doesn't work for everyone. But with its potential to help with conditions that exact such a toll of misery as backache, unhealed wounds and chronic pain, it must surely be worth a more serious research programme to refine it.

For more information, go to www.lightforhealth.co.uk and www.electrotherapy.org/home.htm