Recently I had been careless in the kitchen while cutting food and sustained two, pretty severe cuts on my left hand in separate incidents.
The first one occurred shortly after last Thanksgiving when I was using a very sharp carving knife to shave off the last bits of spiral cut ham off the bone. I held the knife with my right hand and gripped the ham bone with my left hand. The knife slipped and cut deep into the side of the base of my left index finger. The knife was so sharp that it left a surgical-quality incision; deep but very clean edges (not jagged). I could see the layers of epidermis and dermis with the distinctive, yellowish subcutaneous fat as the flesh separated, and seconds before the blood started to flow. The wound went down to the muscle and probably cut a few muscle fibers as well.
The image below shows the layers of skin, and the black arrow represents how deep the cut went. Below the muscle layer is bone (not illustrated):
The second, more recent one occurred while I was cutting an onion (NOTE: never cut an onion on the convex side, because not only is it uneven it is slippery and presents a high risk of knife slippage, especially if your knife is not very sharp). This time, the knife slipped and I again suffered a deep cut this time to the lateral, distal middle finger at the level of the base of the nail. This also cut past the dermis and was stopped by the hardness of the nail.
In both of these laceration wounds, there was profuse bleeding. I went through many Kleenex tissues and kitchen paper towels to stop the bleeding. Facial tissues and kitchen paper towels are good for such cuts because not only are they highly absorbent, they shed tiny fibers into the cut, which are used by the fibroblast reparative cells for scaffolding as they lay down collagen fibers to fill in and close the wound, as well as scaffolding for clotted blood that stops the bleeding. These fibers become part of the scab that eventually disappears, so no need to worry.
The main stages of wound healing. Credit to © Guniita | Dreamstime.com
When the bleeding stopped, I gently cleaned around it and put a bandage on, with firm but not too tight pressure. Then I used my red light therapy torch device to accelerate the wound healing. I took off the bandage and applied the light to the cut 2-3 times a day, for about 6-8 minutes each time. I placed the torch directly over the cut, so there was light contact. Long story short, the wounds healed completely in little over two weeks!
Mind you, these were NOT scrapes, abrasions, or superficial paper cuts. These were deep lacerations. The first one on the base of the index finger, which I should have gotten stitches or surgical glue in retrospect due to its severity, I estimated to be 1.8 cm long and 4-5 mm deep. Here’s what it looks like today:
The second one was about 6 mm long and 3 mm deep, which would have been deeper if the hard nail bed wasn’t there to stop the knife, as I was putting a lot of force into cutting the onion.
For the second cut, I decided to take pictures to document the healing,
Images of my deep finger cut, treated with Red Light Therapy over 14 days
Picture taken 30 minutes after sustaining cut
Note, I actually applied red light to the wound almost daily and include only pictures of two treatments here.
You can see the dramatic changes in the way the cut healed in such a shorter period of time. The inflammation and swelling lessened; the space between the skin closed just after a few days, and the redness decreased until just the dead cut skin remained as a remnant of the cut. I’ve had these kinds of cuts before where I did not have red light therapy available, and they took about 50% more time to completely heal. So, that’s my best estimate of the benefits of using red light therapy to heal injuries—for small wounds such as these, it can shorten the healing rate by about 50%; meaning, red light therapy can accelerate healing a flesh wound to completion in 2 weeks, that would normally take 3 weeks to fully heal.
How Does Red Light Therapy Work?
I’ve written about how red light therapy works several times on this blog, and made some videos on YouTube explaining red light therapy. Basically, red light uses photonic (light) energy to modulate (control; affect) certain biological activities that occur following injury.
Photons, the smallest units of light, are packets of energy and are received by parts of cells called chromophores. Chromophores are found in DNA, hemoglobin, proteins and most importantly, the mitochondria—the components in all cells whose function is to generate energy for the cell in the form of molecules called adenosine triphosphate, better known as ATP.
Photons from red light (wavelength of 620-750 nm, or billionths of a meter) tend to upregulate (enhance; trigger) some of the metabolic pathways involved in wound healing; notably collagen synthesis, reparative cell migration to the wound area, ATP production in the mitochondria; and downregulate the inflammatory and pain-producing pathways (it helps reduce swelling and redness).
What the Resarch Says About Red Light Therapy
If you wish to read less biased, more scientifically-based information on health and therapy-related topics, which you should as the internet is full of unreliable and often downright false information, go to Pub Med. This site is basically an index of medical research produced by those directly involved in treating medical conditions (medical researchers, doctors) and evaluating certain therapeutic interventions for those conditions. Pub Med is free to the public (other medical databases require a subscription).
A quick search on Pub Med on the efficacy of red light therapy (also referred to as phototherapy and LED-Low Level Light therapy) produced a study, among many others, in the medical journal Laser Therapy
Here’s a snippet from the abstract:
“…Among the clinical applications, non-healing wounds can be healed through restoring the collagenesis/ collagenase imbalance in such examples, and ‘normal’ wounds heal faster and better. Pain, including postoperative pain, postoperative edema and many types of inflammation can be significantly reduced.”
Kim, W. Is light-emitting diode phototherapy (LED-LLLT) really effective?2011;20(3):205-15.
And as I like to mention whenever explaining the therapeutic effects of red light, it is actually common knowledge that light has beneficial effects on living tissue. Three, well-known examples are: how light catalyzes photosynthesis in plants, enabling them to synthesize sugars for their energy needs; how UVB light starts Vitamin D production in the skin; and how animals rely on the diurnal cycle of sunrise and sunset to regulate their biorhythms, the patterns of physiological activity involved in the functioning of all living organisms.
A fourth example that suggests the connection between light and health that isn’t quite fully understood by science is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a mood disorder characterized by depression that occurs at the same time every year in regions where there is less sunlight at certain times of the year.
In summary, therapeutic red light can speed up wound healing by accelerating the metabolic pathways involved in tissue repair. It is therefore logical to conclude that red light can also help with other types of tissue healing such as bone fractures, tendinitis, muscle bruises, gum and tooth pain, vascular pain, and nerve pain. There are even red light devices to help relieve sinus pressure and improve certain gynecological conditions.
As far as red light therapy devices go, the most common types are the handheld red light torch as I mentioned in this article, which resembles a small flashlight and are ideal for focused treatment on small wounds/injuries; and the multi-LED wraps, which can be used for larger areas such as for low back (lumbar) pain and which can be wrapped around an extremity such as the knee, elbow, or shoulder. Some people even use red light LED wraps to reduce fine facial wrinkles. You can also place your feet on an LED wrap placed flat on the floor to treat plantar fasciitis or general foot aches and pain.
Finally, there are the more expensive, “industrial strength” red light panels which are popular in medi-spas for whole body red light therapy skin treatment.
Bottom Line: Red light therapy devices make a great addition to your home therapy kit and are a great investment in your health because they are relatively affordable; are safe to use; are easy to operate and portable (take to office or travel); and most importantly, are known to provide good results for tissue repair and pain reduction, and have published medical research to back their efficacy in this regard.
