“Hey Doc, I am really scared, my face is drooping and my doctor says there is not anything else to do…Can you help me?” This was the plea of one of my patients about a year ago. This patient had been diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy (a condition where the facial nerve is paralyzed). She had drooping of the eyelid, mouth on one side of her face. She was on all of the appropriate treatments, but was not seeing improvement.

I have seen this condition many times in my career and it usually takes 2 weeks up to 6 months or more to improve. In some cases it never improves!

Well I had recently purchased a laser for the clinic and so we decided to try using this therapy to help her facial nerve function. It was amazing and fun to see her face come back to normal function within a few days of using the laser therapy. I had never seen such a quick resolution of Bell’s Palsy in my career!

Since then, we have used Laser Therapy to help many of our patients at Living Health Functional Medicine.

What is Laser Therapy?

There are many types of lasers, so today we will be talking about Cold Laser therapy, also known as Low-level laser therapy (LLLT). Cold laser therapy is a non-invasive treatment that uses an impulse of light to stimulate healing in the body. This type of laser delivers energy from light to the damaged cells of the body. The energy from the laser can stimulate energy production in the cells.

LLLT is also known as photobiomodulation therapy - it uses light to modulate the biological processes at the cellular level. Basically, the light is used by the cells to improve energy production and then improve overall function. The light delivered by the laser helps the cells to function in a better way. There are now thousands of studies showing the benefit of Laser therapy.

Cold laser therapy delivers specific wavelengths of light to penetrate the skin and tissues to stimulate the body’s natural healing processes.