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Fascia is a layer of fibrous tissue – or the connective tissue structure that covers muscles, muscle groups, blood vessels, and nerves, joining some structures while allowing others to slide over each other gently. It’s essentially a band or sheet of connective tissue, mainly collagen, under the skin that attaches, stabilizes, encloses, and separates muscles and other internal organs. We classify it by layer as superficial fascia, deep fascia, visceral or parietal fascia.
And its function is significant in the human body. Fascia is what distributes water equally into our carefully structured skin system. It's mainly made up of collagen and ground substance. So how can fascia be harmful?
In itself, fascia isn’t something bad – in fact, is essential to a healthy body; but if it isn't functioning optimally, things can take an ugly turn. The dysfunction of our fascial system can cause great discomfort and pain. Fascia is ideally supposed to move around as we do, and yet there are many things that cause problems with this tissue.
When fascia is in a shortened position for prolonged periods due to such a lifestyle and overall poor posture, it will adapt – shortening and tightening. Fascial restrictions can also occur from trauma, infection, inflammation, or surgery. These changes affect our fascia's regular movement, creating tension points in our body, pain, applying pressure to surrounding tissues. Therefore, it causes restriction of movement due to the pain and tightening that occurs. So – how can light therapy help?
Light therapy consists of exposure to a filtered light with an intensity of up to 10,000 lux emitted by a particular lamp. Through light, it can help with a number of problems and specifically offers great benefits to the skin.
Light therapy treatment for fascia can be done any time of the day; however, it is best done in the early hours of the morning, with a duration of up to 30 minutes, and must be repeated for long-term effect.
Next to doing stretches and trying other forms of relaxation methods to release tension, fascia can be treated with light therapy. The skin reacts biochemically to light therapy, directly improving cell functions. ATP, our energy source, increases in production with light therapy treatment, resulting in improved cell rejuvenation. Light therapy benefits are that they reduce the discomfort of pain and inflammation by increasing blood flow and tissue repair mechanisms in the body.
Apart from a healthy functioning body, keeping your fascia rejuvenated also helps with appearance. Body symmetry and alignment improve, the blood flow increases, which gives faster exercise recovery, stretch marks and cellulite get reduced, scar tissue breaks down easier, and overall less pain and better performance in the day-to-day tasks.
Repairing connective tissue such as fascia helps with muscle recovery, which is why light therapy is also used in sports. In the release of ATP, our muscles gain their power back. With light therapy, the recovery is sped up; sessions improve the time it usually takes for our cells to do it themselves.
Plantar fasciitis is often created from strain at the ligament of the sole of the foot. It's a pain in our heels, and with light therapy, tissue repair is accelerated. Light therapy is an overall regenerating way of treating any issue related to connective tissues.
Light therapy can also help with cellulite. In itself, cellulite isn't a health issue, but since light therapy helps collagen production, in the same way it helps fascia, it can also be effective with cellulite. With higher collagen levels, skin appears smoother and tightens, which can reduce the appearance of cellulite.
Light therapy, while treating fascia, can also treat other issues. There are different ways to use light therapy and different settings for different outcomes. Infrared light is used for tissue repair, pain reduction, and similar problems. Red light resolves problems such as inflammation, tissue repair at the surface level, general pain relief as well. Blue light is ideal for combating bacterial issues that lead to our skin becoming acne-prone even when we're past that stage.
That said, you want to make sure you are using the right red light device. At Kaiyan Medical, we have MDA-certified and FDA-approved laser light therapy devices that will make sure you’re receiving medical-grade light therapy treatment for your fascia and other issues.
