How Can Light Therapy Help With Calf Injuries

If you are an athlete, calf injuries might be a normal affair for you. But no matter how normal they are, it’s still really painful and must be really worrying for you. And if you are not an athlete, and you injured your calf due to some accident, then the pain might feel even stronger. Where there are many different types of treatments available for calf injuries, light therapy can be a really good option for this. Light therapy can provide a quick and painless recovery from a calf injury.

Light therapy has revealed itself as a revolutionary method of treatment for many different problems, including skin problems, mental health problems, sleeping problems, energy problems, etc., in recent years. It has gained immense popularity as a result. But most importantly, red therapy has performed really well in terms of treating various muscle injuries and wounds. Even though calf injuries can be different from muscle injuries from other places of the body, light therapy can treat it well enough all the same.

Among different types of light therapy, red light and infrared light therapy are mainly used to treat different muscle injuries, including calf injuries. Red light and near-infrared light can penetrate the skin and work on a cellular level to treat problems such as pains. Red light therapy has been a prime choice for athletes while they face any kind of pain or injuries to their backs, shoulders, legs, etc., and the users have been really satisfied with the way red light therapy deals with soft tissue injuries. First, you should know a bit about calf injuries before you can know how light therapy can help with it.

Calf Injury and Its Symptoms

The calf is basically the lower back part of your legs, and two muscles work to make up the calf area. However, when these two muscles face any kind of strain, the fibers of the muscles get torn to some degree. This can happen if your muscles get overstretched from excess exercise.

Calf injuries are actually really common in runners and athletes, as their legs go through a lot of pressure during both the actual run and the training sessions. Also, people who are into heavy exercises or other different sports might suffer from this injury too. You might get your calf muscles pulled other ways too, however, you need to take care of it properly. Otherwise, you might face a chronic long-term injury derived from this injury.

Depending on the severity of the injury, the symptoms of the calf injuries can vary. Even a mild strain can leave you with feelings of severe pain in the lower half of your leg. Among very mild and common of these symptoms is feeling strained and uncomfortable while walking, and not being able to run or going through any hard exercise or training. Other symptoms might include-

• The area getting redness
• Mild swelling
• Bruising in the injured calf area
• Inability to stand up on the ball of the foot

The sharp pain you might feel due to a severe pull in the calf muscle, can affect your mobility severely, and make you unable to walk at all.

Light Therapy and Calf Muscle Injury

There are many treatments available for calf muscle injuries that include applying ice or cold compresses to the injured area, applying heat pads, using leg wraps to cover the area, different pain medications, etc. Also, you can go for taking rest, propping your leg up above your heart level, etc. treatment measures. But the one that can be more effective than this lot is light therapy. Red light therapy can provide a great amount of relief from the pain you might feel due to calf muscle injury. Also, the usual recovery time might get reduced a lot if you use red light therapy instead of other conventional methods.

However, severe swelling can make you feel really uncomfortable. Red light therapy can take care of that discomfort by reducing the swelling. Red light therapy will increase the blood flow to the injured area, and stimulate cell generation in order to reduce pain and treat the injury. The light penetrates the skin and affects the cells, and helps the mitochondria in the muscular cells to complete the respiration cycles more efficiently, and the muscles suffer less fatigue as a result.

Also, healthy muscle tissues get developed more essentially due to the formation and activation of muscle stem cells. Thus, you can get relief from the pain, and the discomfort too. Also, the regeneration of cells and the efficient work of mitochondria due to increased ATP make sure that the injury gets recovered as soon as possible.

Final Words

However, it is still better if you take care of the injury by collaborating other measures with light therapy such as taking meds, heat pads, leg wraps, ice compresses, etc. Light therapy will work to enhance their effects too. You can easily get a red light therapy device to treat yourself easily at your home, and without needing any help from others.