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What Makes Red Light Therapy a Perfect Muscle Recovery Remedy?
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Post-workout rest and recovery are so important that if you’re not resting enough, you might as well stop exercising entirely. Not only can exercise without the appropriate amount of rest be ineffective, but it can also actually hurt your muscles, joints, and even your heart. It’s important to have your go-to muscle recovery remedy.
When you stop exercising, your body does everything in its power to heal from the effects of the strain it has endured. As a result, you get bigger and stronger muscles, a stronger skeletal system, and even your heart learn how to shorten the time necessary to recuperate.
While exercising, muscles create tiny tears in their fibers. When you are in the resting phase your body sends satellite muscle stem cells to heal these fibers. By merging them together and rebuilding them, these cells create more muscle tissue and that’s how your muscles grow. Your muscle-building processes are most intensive within the first 24 hours after the workout and then their intensity drops.
At the same time, your body releases lactate into your bloodstream. At first, this is useful because it helps your muscles get their fuel faster, but after a while, this process can affect your pH value and cause more damage than good. During the recovery phase, your system metabolizes the lactate and flushes it out. Lactate is the cause of that post-workout muscle soreness.
This is why red light therapy makes a perfect muscle recovery remedy:
1. It’s an Efficient Muscle Recovery Remedy
Red light therapy works great for muscle recovery and there are numerous studies to support this finding. To understand that muscle recovery means the elimination of serum lactate from the bloodstream, alleviating muscle fatigue, there are many studies confirming this effect. Here are just some of them:
Photobiomodulation therapy significantly (p ≤ 0.05) improved the average time of sprints and fatigue index in BST. Photobiomodulation therapy significantly decreased the percentage of change in blood lactate levels (p ≤ 0.05) and perceived fatigue (p ≤ 0.05).
Source Study
Pre-exercise LLLT, mainly with 50 J dose, significantly increases performance and improves biochemical markers related to skeletal muscle damage and inflammation.
Source Study
LLLT irradiation before the Wingate test seemed to inhibit an expected post-exercise increase in CK level and to accelerate post-exercise lactate removal without affecting test performance. These findings suggest that LLLT may be of benefit in accelerating post-exercise recovery.
Source Study
2. It’s Easy to Use
You don’t need special preparation for your red light therapy if you are using a portable red light therapy device. All you need to do is put it directly on your skin and choose the right program. In the case of FlexBeam, you have three presets, so you just push the button and let it do its thing. Take a look at how it works:
Remember to use it before and after your exercise for the best results. It is advisable to take a pause from time to time if you are using it every day.
3. It Helps Other Muscle Recovery Methods
Besides just getting comfortable and having a nice nap, there are other ways for you to improve the rate at which your muscles recovery. Red light therapy helps muscle recovery on its own. It helps your body get rid of the lactate buildup and improves your blood flow to flush out this substance as quickly as possible.
Other muscle recovery remedies can be very efficient, as well. Red light can make them even more efficient and here’s how:
| Muscle Recovery Remedy | How it Works | How Red Light Therapy Improves it |
| Lymphatic Therapy | Filters toxins and provides an additional way to remove serum lactate from the muscles. | It is possible that LLLT increases the forming of new lymphatic vessels. |
| Hot/Cold Showers | Creates a “pump” for flushing out serum lactate by constricting and dilating blood vessels. | Improves circulation and aids in lactate elimination. |
| Magnesium Supplement | Helps to make glucose readily available and delays serum lactate buildup. | Helps with increasing levels of serum magnesium in the blood. |
| Anthocyanin Supplement | Aids clearing up lactate by its antioxidant properties. | Reduces oxidative stress, so the antioxidants have less work to do. |
| Breathing Exercises | Signal the brain that it’s time to relax and go into recovery mode. | Promotes serotonin production of the gut bacteria, helping eliminate stress. |
| Restorative Sleep | Gives the body the time to double down on the restorative processes of the muscles | Regulates melatonin production for better and deeper sleep. |
4. It’s All Natural Muscle Recovery Remedy
It can hardly get more natural than sunlight. Red and near-infrared are wavelengths of light emitted by the sun. Moreover, red and near-infrared light devices, like FlexBeam mimic the effects dawn and sunsets have on the human circadian rhythm.
There isn’t anything about the effects of this device that isn’t natural and in tune with a holistic approach to healing and wellbeing. Which ties in well with the next point.
5. It’s Non-Pharmaceutical
The processes that your portable red light therapy device triggers in your body are natural processes and they are not being aided by a chemical or a compound. Red light LEDs energize the body so it can distribute that energy where it’s needed most.
This is a holistic approach and a full body muscle recovery remedy, and it is entirely different from ingesting or injecting synthetically created chemicals in the hope to cause healing processes. There is nothing pharmaceutical about red light therapy. This means that it is safe from the side effects that medicines sometimes have, and none of the withdrawal symptoms either!
6. It’s Goes Well with Any Exercise or Dietary Regimen
Different dietary regimens usually come with certain limitations. If you are on a strict, no-sugar diet, some of the supplements may not go well with it. There are sports drinks that contain sugars and caffeine and they don’t go well with such diets. If you are into intermittent fasting, it means that you aren’t allowed to take your protein shakes during your fasting period.
However, regardless of whether you’re on keto, intermittent fasting, paleo, or any other regiment that aids your athletic efforts, red light therapy will go perfectly with them. It improves your gut health and does wonders for your microbiota. That means that you will get the most nutrients from your diet as your healthy gut will absorb everything it needs.
The same goes for any exercise regime. Both endurance sports and strength exercise efforts benefit from red light therapy treatments. There is even evidence that using red light therapy for weight loss is a really good idea.
7. It Comes with Additional Benefits
Red light therapy is not about muscle recovery only. Both red and near-infrared light have amazing effects on your body. Some of them include:
- Pain relief
- Sleep improvement
- Relief from anxiety and depression
- Weight loss
- Joint and muscle repair
- Nerve damage regeneration
- Blood pressure regulation
- Enhanced detox processes
- and much more
If it were possible to describe the effects of red and near-infrared light therapy in just one sentence, then it would be that this spectrum of light energizes the body and boosts its natural healing systems. Light therapy doesn’t really change the way your body works.
There’s no reason to mess with that finely tuned organism that already knows what needs to be done. It just helps it work faster and more efficiently. Red light therapy gives energy to your body and redirects it to the processes it needs the most at the time.
You can get the best effect of red light therapy if you use it regularly. What better way to get your daily red light therapy dose at home than to get your own portable red light therapy device. Check out how FlexBeam can help with your fitness goals.