If injured at work, your first question might be, “How soon can I go back to work.” Therapeutic intervention can do a lot to move that date forward.
One thing that might help you return to work sooner is red light therapy. There is still a lack of consensus in the medical field about what red light therapy can or cannot do. Ongoing research suggests it might be able to help in various ways:
1. Reducing chronic pain and inflammation
Research has shown red light therapy can do this for animals with particular conditions. Whether it can do the same for humans is less clear. Chronic pain can keep people off work for years, as well as making it difficult to sleep or enjoy everyday life. Anything reducing it would be welcome.
2. Speeding muscle repairs
Studies suggest red light therapy can help muscle repair and growth. You can severely damage a muscle in a workplace accident, or it can waste away through lack of use, such as when you break a leg. The faster your muscles return to previous levels of strength, the better.
3. Helping the brain
Researchers believe the therapy can help those who suffer brain injuries by improving blood and oxygen flow to the brain, enabling new neurons and synapses to form.
4. Encouraging wounds to heal faster
Unhealed wounds risk infection, which could lead to serious health problems needing more time off work, and potentially causing a risk to life. Faster healing reduces that risk.
Depending on the workplace injury you sustain, any one of those four benefits might be worth investigating. Consider legal help to understand if you might be entitled to receive these or any other kinds of treatment as part of a workers’ compensation claim.
