Living A Full Life

Revolutionizing Recovery: Class 4 Laser Therapy

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 4

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Unlock the secrets of cutting-edge healing as we explore class four laser therapy with Dr. Enrico Dolcecore. Imagine rapidly accelerating recovery from injuries like tendinitis or sprained ligaments with advanced technology that doesn't just treat symptoms but addresses the root cause. Discover how class four lasers, with their superior tissue penetration and power, can significantly reduce inflammation by boosting ATP production through photobiomodulation. This episode promises to transform your understanding of injury recovery and brain health, explaining why these lasers stand out from traditional therapies like ice, heat, or even surface-level red light treatments.

But there's more—class four laser therapy isn't just about healing; it's about enhancing brain function. We dive into the intricate dance of neural connections and the role of laser therapy in addressing retained primitive reflexes, which can impact sensory, motor, and behavioral control. Learn how chiropractic adjustments and exercises, alongside laser therapy, can stimulate brain function and promote health awareness. Picture a world where our organs are as visible as our skin, prompting a revolution in self-care and lifestyle choices. Dr. Dolcecore invites you to engage with these ideas and consider visiting reputable laser therapy centers like Full Life Chiropractic in Tampa for an in-person experience of this revolutionary treatment. Join us in this enlightening discussion and share your thoughts for future episodes.

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Speaker 1:

I'm Dr Enrico Dolcecori, and welcome to another episode of Living a Full Life. This week we're going to dive into some cool science behind lasers so if you're a nerd, you're going to love this one and how class four. Lasers are used in all types of modalities and rehab across all healthcare industries, from dermatology, physical therapy, chiropractic, neuroscience, it goes across, and it's a cool modality that's been used for over four decades, believe it or not. It just keeps getting better and better as we fine tune the frequencies and the wavelengths. So we can dive deep into this and how lasers can be used for different issues from tendinopathies. For different issues from tendinopathies tendinitis, sprained ligaments, strained muscles, disc herniations, inflammation and, more importantly, the brain and how we use it in our office. It's a cool thing.

Speaker 1:

So let's dive deep into class four laser and we say class four instead of just lasers, because there are different classes of lasers Ones you can buy off Amazon and bring home and they look like a pen. Laser are not even classed, they are just continuous light and if you've ever had one of those laser pointers that you play with your kids, there is no therapeutic effect because it doesn't even penetrate the first layer of the skin, so it doesn't do much. As far as stimulation, when we get into class three and four, the difference is they don't burn. So up to class three class three B lasers you won't get a continuous stream of light that could burn the epithelial layer of the skin or even deeper, and dermatology. What you end up using is the burning class four lasers in different techniques to help with wrinkles, chemical peels, skin irritations, moles, and then there's a whole bunch of things that they use it for in dermatology. What we're talking about with lasers is how we can use it to help speed up the process of healing in the body. So it's a really cutting edge tool in modern healthcare.

Speaker 1:

I've used it for 20 years. I had a class three B laser in Canada. We used it. I liked it. It was safe because it wasn't going to ever burn anyone. Here we've introduced the class four laser and we're already doing some amazing things as far as healing and the potential impact on brain health as well. It's really cool.

Speaker 1:

So it differs from class three because of the continuous pulse that's there, but the emission of infrared light and its ability to penetrate into deep tissue is where class four is one step above and probably the gold standard when it comes to laser therapy is it has the deepest penetration, has usually more power to it. You can even buy machines with different wattages of power. The cheaper machines can get up different wattages of power. The cheaper machines can get up to 10 watts of power, the mid-range ones up to 50 watts of power. You can buy the 100 watts of power as well. The only difference between going through that much kilojoules or watts between 50 and 100 is just to speed up the therapy. So let's say it's a physical therapy office and they do a lot of patients and this machine has to do a lot of work. The high power one will shorten the time of treatment, but 50 and 100 is typically the therapeutic dose and powerhouses that you'll see in the industry.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so there's cellular effects that happen with laser, and so you're probably thinking why would I ever need to use laser? Well, if you have an acute injury and you see inflammation or feel the inflammation, laser is a no brainer. It's going to be faster than ice or heat. It's going to be faster than any type of topical you can use. It's going to be almost as fast as a steroid. Honestly, it's going to be, and it's going to be localized. So instead of ingesting a pill or a steroid or getting an injection, you can go right to the source of the inflammation, light it up with red light and inflammation immediately goes down.

Speaker 1:

So what happens is the mitochondria in all of the cells in your body, especially the damaged tissue, absorb the light and then you get photobiomodulation which increases the production of ATP. It's adenosine triphosphate. It's the energy-producing molecule, chemical in the mitochondria that's released. Now it's normally released at a certain rate. It's produced all the time, all throughout your life and every cell in your body. But when the light hits it, the mitochondria speed up that process and you get a huge influx of ATP which creates a lot of healing and waste removal from the area, which pushes inflammation out. So then you trigger cellular repair and regeneration at a faster rate. Hence the healing process speeds up. So you can take something like a severe high ankle sprain or low ankle sprain that will take four to six weeks to heal and treat it within two weeks and the patient can be back on the basketball court playing with minimal to no pain, and you'd probably want to tape it and secure the ankle for another two weeks to make sure you get full healing so there's no more damage there.

Speaker 1:

But that's the power of red light, of the laser light that we get, and it's different than red light. So you you'll see red light spectrum from infrared saunas all the way up to class four. Lasers and infrared has a lower wavelength. When you sit in there and you get hot quite quickly you can feel the heat from the light right away. Then there's red light therapy where you may get, like pads or boxes of red light or even like we have in our office, the full bed that you lie in and you get full body modulation of red light. Even that wavelength is a little bit lower, so it takes a little bit longer to get warm and the penetration is only one to two centimeters below the skin. That's why we help with cellulite, fat cells, skin. It's great for skin and psoriasis and rashes and anything there. It even cleans up brain fog and even some allergies. But once you get to class four now you can get six, seven, 10 centimeters of penetration which is quite deep, two to three inches deep, which now you can start helping things like organs, discs, deep hips, shoulders, people with bigger shoulders. You can get deeper into that to help with rotator cuff issues, and that's how you help speed up the healing process.

Speaker 1:

Now the brain that is what this whole podcast is about. We you know sprains and strains are great, but we know what to do with that. Ice heat, see the chiropractor do some massage. Those things all heal because we all know, listening to this podcast, that the body heals itself. So if you ever hurt yourself, just rest and chances are your body's going to heal right. So now let's talk about the brain. The brain also heals itself, but this is a new frontier, especially with light therapy. And if you know a little bit about what we do and how we help with chiropractic and vibration and modalities and reflexes to help stimulate the neuroplasticity of the brain, especially in children, you can see why we added this as a no brainer to help add another modality to speed up the great success that we already get in our office. So when it comes to brain health, we need to think of a couple things when we're using modalities.

Speaker 1:

One tough part about the brain is it's encapsulated in a bowling ball, it's called your skull, and that skull is a very strong encasement for this brain. It's there for a reason it's to protect this very important organ and it's a little bit thick to penetrate. So you can't really get to it. You can't really massage the brain, you can't touch the brain. This is all good, this is a good thing. You don't want to ever do that. But penetrating the skull is the first thing. So this is where wavelength comes into effect.

Speaker 1:

Having a class four laser can penetrate the bone because it's, you know, the the skull is a thinner bone, but still it needs enough energy to penetrate that, to light up brain tissue. So you can now get the surface of the brain and we know where the brain is mapped right. Everything is on the surface, from sensory motor speech, everything's on there. You just need to know where it's mapped on the brain. You can light this area up almost in a tennis ball sized area each time and moving quickly so that you don't burn the skin or especially the hair follicles. And what ends up happening? When you light up neural tissue anywhere in the body peripheral nerves in the body or central nerves in the brain you stimulate neural repair and you improve oxygenation of the cells immediately.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to the brain. This is huge in healing and you say well, why would you need to heal the brain. This would be maybe like a concussion, a hit to the head, a hematoma, any lesion to the brain that could happen. This is big in sports therapy too. So anyone that does a concussion should be using class four lasers. They use it in the NFL, they use it for the pro athletes, so we can treat our patients like pro athletes as well. There are potential benefits for conditions like traumatic brain injuries, migraines and even neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's or ALS or MS2, where, if you can get an MRI, see where the lesions are, you might be able to create some photomodulation in that area to help stimulate oxygen and nutrient repair to that tissue. Again, atp, right, it's all good stuff, and the nice thing about red light and cold laser is it's safe. It's so, so great they're even using it.

Speaker 1:

One contraindication well, there's two. Two laser would be pregnancy. We don't want to use the laser on the abdomen during pregnancy. We don't want to increase ATP production in the developing fetus because it's already on hyper warp speed as it's growing. It's the one part of our life where we're in the fastest growth mode ever and our cells are replicating like crazy anyway. So to bring light to that area and create even more ATP and more speed. It sounds contraindicated, which it is, which it is. So you don't want to mess up that wonderful process that's happening. So that's. One contraindication is just to keep it away from the abdomen. So if a mom has a headache or an ankle sprain or anything, she can use it anywhere and her body's perfectly safe. We just don't want that light going into the womb.

Speaker 1:

And then, number two, cancer. Some types of cancers, the fast growing teratomas that are replicating quickly. Again probably a bad idea to put in red light or laser light and stimulate ATP in atypical cells of cancer. So that makes sense too. But the new frontier of class four, laser, is that they are using it for some types of cancers like lymphomas and other things there too, sarcomas. So to help reduce inflammation and bring more oxygen to the area, which most atypical cells don't like oxygen. They like acidic environments and less oxygen, so bringing more there kind of stifles their progress. But again, we don't do that stuff in our office. But those are the two contraindications.

Speaker 1:

So when it comes to the brain, this is the stuff I love is the brain, because it's mapped out so perfectly. We've done such great research over the last thousand years, even way back in the day when people were alive and they just removed part of their skull and touched their brain and saw what happened. We learned a lot and we mapped out this brain and now we know where every part controls, which is very, very cool. So knowing that map and having that geography of the brain really helps us help people across all spectrums. When it comes to the brain, who doesn't need some brain stimulation? I do, geez, I could use it myself too and sometimes brain fog, fatigue, all the things that are having stress, all those things that are there too.

Speaker 1:

But when it comes to the children that we help in our office, they're usually with neurodivergent conditions like ADHD. They're on the spectrum. They have sensory processing disorder, behavioral dysregulation, enuresis, whatever these things may be. We're seeing a faster result. We already get amazing results pretty quick with what we do in our office, with the chiropractic and primitive reflexes that we know to map out and train and teach, to do at home with exercises. But adding this just makes it smooth, you know, like that smooth icing on a cake. It just makes it super nice and easy and effective to get results faster, which of course families love because that's what they're in for.

Speaker 1:

So the science behind class four laser and children is that it's gentle stimulation of the neural pathways, so we're not overstimulating anything. Again, zero side effects with this. The only thing that can happen is positive. Even if you take a relatively healthy child that has no symptoms, let's say, and you do some type of therapy for their brain, there'll be really no effect to it. You may not notice anything positive or negative from it, because there is no negatives to it. It's absolutely great. So, used by a professional, no problems there. It's gentle. It has potential to improve neuroplasticity and brain function. That's why we're doing this.

Speaker 1:

For me, diving deep into neuroscience, we know that the brain in the fetus and in the early development, even like one month, four months, six months old, these infants that are still breastfeeding and not doing much movement yet and not quite crawling, during this rapid growth between the nine, 10 months in utero and the next four to six months after that. So those first 60 months of development is where the brain is creating. It's just like planting a new shrub or flower bush in your garden or in your yard, and when you get a new one and it starts to grow, what do you do? Right away. You start pruning it, one to take shape, two to grow healthy and strong branches, and two grow more lush. Right, that's the whole point of it is you keep it. Otherwise, if you let a hydrangea bush just grow, it just grows out of control. The leaves start growing past the flowers, then they don't get enough sunlight and then you get less flowers and it's straggly. Can you tell I've moved to Florida? Yes, you can. Okay, so now you have this and you prune it. It's like any tree, any, any palm, any tree, oak tree, anything like that. You prune this to make sure it grows nice and healthy.

Speaker 1:

There you go, same thing that naturally happens in the brain. So we have all these reflexes as a newborn Startle reflex, moral reflex, the Babinski reflex, where the toes curl, the startle, you know, when you clap your hands they startle, they may even cry. All these reflexes need to go away or be pruned by the brain naturally, by six to 12 months, so within that first year of life. So the brain's doing its natural pruning, but sometimes we miss a few branches and for whatever reason, in uterine constriction, traumatic birth process, toxic exposure, whatever, maybe all of the above and it interrupts that process of pruning in the brain. So then we're stuck with these called retained reflexes and as a chiropractor I see this in fully grown adults, 40, 50 year olds. You're touching their back and they have this startle reflex and this contracture of gallant or moral reflex whatever it may be that they've retained. And then you give them exercises, you adjust them, you put them on the vibration plates and they create that vibration frequency. After an adjustment they go home, they do some snow angels on the carpet and they come in a few months later, after a few adjustments, and all those retained reflexes are gone. But they were living with them their whole life. So same thing with kids.

Speaker 1:

We need to find these primitive reflexes and prune the baby branches so that when we prune them they grow new reflexes, connections, new synapses, stronger synapses to the brain, which helps regulate control, all types of control sensory control, motor control, behavioral, social, adaptive, academic. That's what ends up happening. How can we prune these baby branches so that they can grow? Well, red light does this because we know where to put the light and we can concentrate the light in that area. So as we adjust and we create the new synapses and light up the brain, literally through the chiropractic adjustment and through class four laser you're stimulating fast pruning and growth of this beautiful garden so it grows lusher and thicker with new synapses.

Speaker 1:

It's very cool, encouraging calming effects and better focus through improved circulation and cellular repair as well. That's always a good thing More circulation, more cellular repair. But the brain shouldn't be going through a lot of trauma. So we don't want to see a lot of cellular damage, which isn't typical. The neural cells in the brain typically live out their full lifespan because they don't have to go through a lot of trauma. So head traumas are that too. But if we ever have a concussion or hit our head, then it might be a good idea to quickly light up the tissue to help reduce inflammation through there as well. So we can check for those things as well.

Speaker 1:

So the safety protocols of class 4 laser are so simple. When a patient comes in, they use these green glasses to protect any of the red light going into their eyes. Oh, I guess that's. A third contraindication is continuous class IV or laser going into the eye through the iris, into the retina. If it hits the retina it can actually burn or damage the retina. So there is a risk there. So we don't let the kids play with this. We don't aim it at the eyes Both the doctor and the patient can wear the glasses but I definitely give it to the kids because I make sure not to point it at my eyes. But other than that, knowing how to use it is great. And there are some lasers that we actually send home with parents as well. Like Class 3B, they can never burn their child. So there's ones that you can buy. They're not cheap, they're in the $5,000 to $7,000 range but it's a lot for therapy, right To invest in that.

Speaker 1:

So coming to the office and doing it in an office is the best bet. So if you've heard this podcast and it stimulated a lot of thought and you're like, oh my gosh, my friend's kids, these people that, oh, I think I've hit my head 20 times, whatever it is, look for a class four laser office near you. If you're in the Tampa area, of course full life chiropractic is your go-to for all this. It's newer to our office. We've had it for just over a month. The results are amazing. We've had people with plantar fasciitis two treatments better. People with knee pain two treatments better. You know. Rotator cuff five treatments better. Um numbness, tingling, disc herniations. We're just adding this to the therapies and we're getting results faster, which is unbelievable. It's absolutely great. We're super happy we have it, and it's just a new modality to talk more about what the brain.

Speaker 1:

We have to just keep convincing people about their brain. You never see your brain. It's stuck in that bowling ball that we talked about. So if you did, you'd treat it a lot better If you could see it. If our skulls were made out of glass, you would look at your brain every single day and you try and make it as healthy as possible, because that would be the sexy thing. To do right Is just to look good, so your brain would look good too. Same thing.

Speaker 1:

I talk about smokers too. I wish there was a window right here in our chest where we could see our heart and lungs. We would never smoke. We would never do anything to clog our arteries. We would never do. We would see the damage each morning and just choose not to do it. But because we can't see these organs and the damage that's going into their vaping, smoking, all these things exist, but if we could see it on a window and make it sexy, no one would do it right. So that's, that's the cool part about that. They probably trying to get tattoos on their lungs and on their brains. I guess, right, that's the way the culture is. But uh, that's that. So all about the brain class four laser many ways to use it. Reach out to us at info at full life tampacom if you have any questions. We love answering any questions you have and please share subscribe the podcast. It's growing each and every month. We love this. That's why we keep doing it, and if you have any questions that you'd like a podcast to do or any guests I'm starting to get tired of listening to my own voice Any guests that you want us to bring on from anywhere in the world, we'll try and get them on here and have a

People on this episode

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host
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Dr. Crystal Corona

Co-host