What Is Infrared Light Therapy?
In order to understand the benefits of infrared light therapy to relieve knee pain, let us first understand what infrared light therapy is.
Infrared light (or rays) are waves of energy that are invisible to our naked eye. These rays are part of the electromagnetic spectrum that penetrate under the surface of our skin where they gently elevate the body’s temperature to about 107F/42C and above, creating an environment of artificial low-grade hyperthermia/fever.
A low-grade fever is your body’s built-in intelligence for fighting an infection or an inflammation.
However, it is not just about the heat that provides the therapeutic deep healing, but the infrared rays mimic the morning sunlight that provides your body what Nature intends, even in supplying the needed vitamin D that your body needs.
Not only does infrared rays penetrate into the skin, they also induce significant physiological changes inside the tissue. Infrared wavelengths deliver energy into cells, stimulate healing, relieve pain and inflammation.
When consistently used therapeutically, infrared light therapy may help to completely heal the source of the pain. The keyword here is “heal” – something that conventional treatment does not offer.
Causes Of Knee Pain
Your knees are the largest joints in your body. From the moment you learned to walk when you were a toddler to where you are today – your knees have come a long way and have taken quite a beating.
Standing, walking, running, jumping, bending, kneeling, climbing, kicking … all these movements cause wear and tear over the years, especially when coupled with a poor diet that contributes to inflammation in the body.
If you’re reading this now, chances are you have a knee pain. It could be chronic or acute.
Acute knee pain occurs when you have an injury or inflammation. This type of knee pain needs care and treatment for it to heal. Chronic knee pain as a result of a serious injury, an untreated inflammation, or arthritis, can become crippling in severe cases.
The causes of knee pain can be grouped as follows:
- Inflammation – tendonitis, bursitis, gout
- Degeneration, wear and tear – various types of arthritis, runner’s knee
- Injury – dislocation, torn ligaments, overuse
Whatever the cause of your knee pain, it can slow you down. How can you heal your knees without harmful drugs and surgery? Well, the answer depends on who you ask.
Conventional Treatment For Knee Pain
Your doctor may initially prescribe simple painkillers such as Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen to help relieve your knee pain.
What these painkillers do, however, is really just sending signals to your brain to trick it into thinking that there is no pain. It gives you an almost immediate relief to your knee pain. But, the injury or inflammation is still there. When the painkiller wears off, the pain will come back.
When the pain gets more severe, it would call for a more drastic action. Your doctor may then give you cortisone shots that can only offer you temporary relief from the pain while the inflammation silently gets worse by the day!
After some time of cortisone shots, the knees don’t get better although you may experience no pain the entire time. When the condition gets worse, a knee surgery will be recommended. And you can imagine the implications and complications of a surgery.
Often, even after surgery, knee pain will return as the causes of inflammation have not been dealt with.
Infrared Light Therapy To Relieve Knee Pain
Infrared light therapy is as safe and natural as sunlight. It has many therapeutic uses in the human body, but in this article today, we will focus on how we can use infrared light therapy to relieve knee pain and gradually heal.
- Infrared light can penetrate (about 2 to 7 cm) deep into the layers of your skin, into the muscles, bones and ligament. While doing that, it enhances and improves circulation and helps draw oxygen and nutrients to the affected area, promoting healing.
- One very important way infrared light therapy heals is by stimulating mitochondrial action within your cells, thus triggering the growth and repair of new muscle cells and tissues.
- While using a Kneelepad, you may sweat in your knee area. This is a good sign that the infrared light is helping to dislodge toxins hidden under the skin and in tissues. As your skin is the largest elimination organ in your body, it makes sense that toxins are eliminated this way.
- What is even more exciting is that with the consistent use of infrared light therapy, it naturally helps with the production of collagen and elastin under the skin. This is awesome news if you understand how collagen can help strengthen your tissues!
- Infrared light therapy has shown to be effective in reducing muscle fatigue and improving muscle recovery. It helps to increase the release of endorphins – your body’s own natural painkiller hormones to fight inflammation, thus reducing pain.
- Light therapy has been used clinically for the treatment of arthritis for decades. It is a reliable healing method for patients of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory joint conditions. Infrared rays open up capillaries to improve circulation and enable healing of damaged tissues.
- Sluggish lymphatic flow is one of the major causes of water retention, often resulting in swollen knees and legs. Using Kneelepad light therapy helps to improve lymphatic drainage and reduce swelling.
- If there is an infection in your knee, infrared light therapy stimulates white blood cells production to destroy harmful microbes. White blood cells are your body’s natural defence system.
Simple Lifestyle Modifications To Support Your Healing
It is advisable to support the healing of your knee problem by simple lifestyle modifications:
- Cut out all processed and junk foods from your diet!
- Limit consumption of carbs (and sugar) in your diet, including rice, pasta, bread, pastries, cakes – these are often the number one causes of inflammation in the body, and they retard healing in your body.
- Use spices and vinegar in your cooking whenever possible. These are highly healing condiments that are easy to integrate in your healthy diet.
- Lose weight. If you observe the above three points for at least two weeks, you can and will lose some weight.
- Do light-weight exercises such as “taichi” and other stretching exercises. You may refer here for our 5 simple and light knee exercises.
- Use Kneelepad once or twice a day for at least 20 minutes each time. This can be done while you’re at rest. Applying pure castor oil on the affected area before using Kneelepad enhances the result.
Infrared light therapy is a safe and effective way to reduce knee pain. It is drug-free with no side effects and non-invasive. The beauty of it is, it’s natural and stimulates your body’s regeneration of new cells for healing.
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