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Bruises can be a pain to deal with, both physically and cosmetically. Thankfully, red light therapy (RLT) may offer a solution to get rid of these bruises quicker without any reported side effects.
In this article, we’ll explore how bruises happen, how to treat them, and how combining them with red light therapy at home can help you heal faster on a cellular level.
Bruising happens when a traumatic external force - where you forcefully bump into something or mistakenly hammer your thumb, for example - causes your blood vessels to rupture, and allows blood to leak into neighbouring tissue.
However, where the skin doesn’t break and blood doesn’t flush out of the body, it instead pools under your skin, forming the characteristic coloured mark that signifies a bruise. Depending on your skin tone, the bruise may look black, blue, yellow, brown or purple.
Bruises happen more often for active individuals - or in manual labour jobs, for example, where exposure to traumatic force is more frequent. Those elderly, or people with certain conditions such as thin skin, may also bruise more easily, with most bruises usually going away without treatment in a week or two, amid some initial pain.
Since bruises hurt and may cosmetically alter our appearance, it’s only normal for us to help the healing process to facilitate normal health.
One of the tried-and-true ways is to rest, ice, compress, and elevate the bruised area – the RICE method. While this is certainly effective, this method mostly focuses on minimising pain and swelling, and may not help to speed healing. Complete rest may even slow down healing.
Often an accessory to modalities in physical treatment, red light therapy at home may offer a complementary treatment that can treat conditions, where remedial and homegrown methods fall short.
Red light therapy uses specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared light (630-850 nanometres) that penetrate the skin.
Our cells absorb this light - via presence of chromophores in our cells - triggering a cascade of interactions responsible for transcription in the mitochondria to stimulate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production. This generation of active energy helps to kickstart our cells' metabolism and repair processes.
For bruises, this means accelerating the healing of blood vessels (angiogenesis) and damaged tissues. RLT also provides anti-inflammatory effects that can help with swelling. When inflammation goes down, the pain will also go with it, making recovery a bit easier.
However, how effective is it in real-world applications?
Numerous case reports involving bruises have tried using RLT as a supporting treatment to help them heal faster.
In one case report published in 2020, an individual was recorded to have fallen from their bike, injuring their hip in the process. In the process of treatment, they sought to apply the RICE method, and followed up with RLT (shown as light therapy) and Sustained Acoustic Medicine (SAM).
The figures show that both RLT and SAM were effective in pain reduction and accelerating healing. What's more interesting is that RLT may have had a stronger effect - as treatment only went on for only 30 minutes, when compared to the SAM's 4 hour treatment time.
While more studies are likely needed to form a definitive stance, we are excited about the applications of red light therapy at home in treating bruises.
Since RLT doesn't involve direct skin contact and has no reported side effects, it's minimally invasive and perfect for individuals with sensitive skin.
Again, it’s best to consider that RLT works best when paired with traditional treatment methods such as RICE.
If you're interested in trying out its effects yourself, we recommend getting Rojo’s Refine 360 as it's easy to use and ideal for delivering intense light to specific body parts.
This and the rest of our Refine series also feature low-EMF/ELF and Flicker-free technology in order to protect you from its invisible, yet damaging effects. Contact us today for more details.
