Healthy Colorado: Laser light therapy helps treat neurological and autoimmune patients

OLD COLORADO CITY, Colo. (KRDO) -- Laser light therapy is an emerging technology that offers a noninvasive approach to prevent cognitive deterioration, and it can also treat a variety of injuries or other illnesses. One physical therapist is seeing results with a couple who have two different health issues.

Jessica Hunter and Brock DeShane come to Peak LiLT in Old Colorado City multiple times a week for low-intensity light therapy treatment.

"The laser can sound scary, but all it is a concentrated beam of near-infrared light," says Melinda Couch, owner, program director, and physical therapist. "But it's in a beam format so we can get it deeper. And the research shows that we're getting light about 2.5 centimeters in the brain and then that's enough to stimulate the tissue healing response."

Hunter and DeShane have treatment together but for different health reasons.

"Overlapping our appointments so we can come in and get healthy together," says Hunter.

Hunter has autoimmune issues and DeShane has neurological conditions.

"What his is showing is probably past head traumas that just never healed and caused cellular death in the brain and that's the reason he was having cognitive decline issues," says Couch.

"It's a very strange and crafty disease," says DeShane.

This therapy, also known as photobiomodulation, offers safe and potentially effective therapy for the treatment of symptoms associated with neurodegenerative disease.

Here's how it helps the tissue. Light therapy probed into the brain or other parts of the body can increase blood flow, decrease inflammation, and lead to the formation of new, healthy cells. In
the brain, researchers have found that it promotes neurogenesis and synaptogenesis, or the
formation of new brain cells and new neural networks.

"When those two wavelengths of light are applied to human or animal tissue it stimulates this modulating effect in the cells at a cellular level, and it's primarily acting on the mitochondria which is the powerhouse of our cell. Mitochondrial is very important for human health," says Couch. "The other thing the light is doing-- it's simulating a photochemical reaction to stimulate to DNA protein synthesis, which is just how our body makes new healthy cells."

Couch has been a physical therapist for over 30 years and doing light therapy for almost a
decade, expanding her treatment approach to treating more neurological conditions in recent
years.

"We're mostly treating muscular skeletal injuries, orthopedic injuries, sport injuries and working quite a bit with post-surgical healing, which we started getting great results with right away," says Couch. "And we did start working with concussion injuries fairly soon as well, but in the last 3 or 4 years I really wanted to fine-tune our focus and working with neurological conditions." 

And it's working for Hunt and DeShane. After 6 months of treatment, they're both feeling a lot better.

"I've seen improvements like at the beginning of his treatment you would ask me the same question maybe three or four times over the span of 15-20 minutes in exactly the same way, using the exact same words, the same facial expressions, and intonations," says Hunt. "It is very jarring as the other person because it feels like Groundhog Day, but 6 months later, that doesn't happen anymore."

Light therapy is very safe, according to Couch. There can be short-term, transitory reactions for someone with a more sensitive nervous system. The most common of which is a mild headache on the day of the treatment. If this occurs, settings are reduced to avoid this type of reaction. After having appointments a few times a week, at the 3-4 month mark you could move to a home device system to continue treatment at home in conditions such as Dementia or Parkinson’s disease which need ongoing maintenance treatment.

Insurance does not cover light therapy, but Couch says she has created a physical therapy
program for the neurological treatment they are doing with patients and insurance can be billed
for that portion of the treatment session, thereby reducing people’s overall cost of the light
therapy treatment.

For more information on how it works and how to book an appointment, click here.