fbpx
Skip to main content

Podcast Episode # 16: Lasers for Gut Health and Photobiomimics with Dr. Robert Silverman

In this episode, we interview functional medicine expert Dr. Robert Silverman. Dr. Silverman highlights how he uses low-level laser therapy to help establish healthy gut-brain connections. He teaches his cutting-edge protocols on the national and international speaking circuit and we cover some of his protocols in this episode. Also, connect with Dr. Silverman on Facebook for notifications about his upcoming speaking events and books: https://www.facebook.com/DrRobertSilverman

http://drrobertsilverman.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrobertsilverman/

https://www.erchonia.com/seminars/

Transcript

Dr. Chad Woolnder: This episode of The Laser Light Show is brought to you by Dr. Robert Silverman’s Erchonia continuing education seminars. Erchonia laser is the worldwide leader in low level laser technology and education for physicians, chiropractors, physical therapists and veterinarians. Erchonia Education utilizes Dr. Silverman both nationally and internationally in Seminar presentations at the introductory and advanced levels. These laser presentations include cutting edge protocols with hands on applications to learn about Dr. Silverman’s next presentations and to see a seminar listing near your area. Go to Erchonia.com/seminars.

Dr. Chad Woolner: What’s going on everybody, Dr. Chad Woolner here with Dr. Andrew Wells. And this is episode 16 of The Laser Light show on today’s episode, we’re going to kind of do this as an unofficial part two. We’re gonna pick up with Dr. Rob Silverman again and we’re going to be talking…last episode we talked about lasers for musculoskeletal. On this episode we’re gonna be talking about lasers for gut and photobiomimics. So let’s get started.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to laser light shows at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They would put on these amazing light shows with incredible designs synced up to some of my favorite music. From the Beatles to Pink Floyd to Jimmy Hendrix and Metallica; they were awesome. Little did I know then that lasers would have such a profound effect on my life decades later. As a chiropractic physician, I have seen first-hand just how powerful laser therapy is in helping patients struggling with a wide range of health problems. As the leader in laser therapy, Erchonia has pioneered the field in obtaining 20 of the 23 total FDA clearances for therapeutic application of lasers. On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low-level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Woolner along with my good friend Dr. Andrew Wells and welcome to The Laser Light Show.

Dr. Chad Woolner: All right, welcome to the show, everybody. This is again, an unofficial part two is what we’ll call it with Dr. Silverman. Dr. Silverman, welcome back again to the show, we had such a blast with you on the last episode, it was a ton of fun getting to chat with you. And I could just tell that you, like so many other brilliant doctors that we chat with, wanted so desperately to go off of the reservation outside the realm of musculoskeletal and start diving into some of these other areas. And so now it’s our opportunity to kind of allow you free rein to just go wherever you want to go and go and talk about some of these other really, really cool topics. And so yeah, we’re going to be talking about gut and photo biometrics. And so I gotta be honest and say in saying that term, I’m just going to be honest and say, I’m not really sure what that means photo, I can kind of break it down, but maybe, maybe you can kind of start there and tell us what you mean by gut and photobiomimics?

Dr. Robert Silverman: Absolutely, thanks for having me back. That was great. And I definitely wanted to go off the reservation without question. 2,500 years ago, Socrates said “all disease begins in the gut.” 20 years ago, Alessio Fasano said, “all disease begins in the leaky gut.” We took that big jump. Some gut factoids. For me, the gut is the epicenter of health. 80% of immune cells are in your gut. It’s where your macro and micro nutrients are absorbed. 90% of the scientific literature describing the microbiome has been published in the last five years. 

Factoid: 100 trillion bacteria cells outnumber human cells in a ratio of 10 to one. So humans; we’re 90% bacteria at a cellular level. Yet, most physicians look at the 10%. For me, they’re extremely myopic. And that poses a major issue, even when you look at genetics. 99% of DNA in human bodies is bacteria. 

Some more factoids, critical things for all of our doctors out there. 72% of the US adults say they have experienced the GI symptoms a few times a month or more. 74% of participants have lived with their GI symptoms more than six months. What does that mean? Ladies and gentlemen, everybody sitting in front of you to the tune of about three quarters of them have a gut problem. If you don’t ask, they’re not gonna let you know. 

So, off the reservation, I pulled myself back into the reservation, I made something I call the Dr. Rob’s Gut Matrix. So if I could vivify it for everybody, again, your gut is the epicenter of your health. It’s your bullseye. When we say our gut, what are we talking about? Our small and our large intestine. Our small intestine is a misnomer. It’s really long. It’s an average of 22 feet, and varies in most humans from 20 to 52 feet. It’s small because it’s diameter is an inch. It’s sole purpose is to allow micronutrients, vitamins, minerals in small digestive food particles to go through. It has been postulated that the outside of the body and the outside world meets the inside world when something gets digested to the small intestine into the bloodstream. That said, what is more important to our overall immune health than to keep a pristine small Intestine or a gut? 

Let’s avoid that proverbial leaky gut. You know, if we did a PubMed search, and you did leaky gut and conditions, it would populate. Interestingly enough, if you did a PubMed search for laser, you would have over 11,140 searches for low level laser and a multitude of articles would populate between laser and gut. 

Having said all that, leaky gut increased intestinal permeability leads you down a track of failing health, can damage your liver because your liver and your gut are bi directional. Also, you have a higher incidence of blood issues like diabetes, blood sugar, insulin, body composition, auto immunity. It has been shown that people that have a leaky gut have a higher incidence of thyroid problems, and chiropractors and I hope we get to cover this chiropractors. Leaky Gut leads you to an overexpression of cytokines, which can lead you down a path of arthritis and joint pain, and a release of MMPs (it’s matrix metalloproteinases). All that leads to soft tissue injuries. 

Your discs are made out of fibrocartilage, which can be damaged by MMPs matrix metalloproteinases and what I call the superhighway to help the gut to brain access. Whenever you do the gut, you do the brain. Whatever you do to your brain, you do to your gut, and you do it in a millisecond. So if you read a piece of gluten, which we all know is damaging to one’s gut, your brain will respond in a millisecond. So let’s really dig into the idea and let’s answer the question if you did photobiomimics. For me it’s a look to the future combining laser and nutritional therapies. Integrating nutritional protocols and laser therapies, photobiomimics, the effect of the microbiome, is opening up new avenues for effective patient treatment. 

So in addition to widely accepted use between low back pain, low level laser or photobiomodulation, can be a valuable adjunctive treatment for metabolic and inflammatory diseases. When laser modulates the gut microbiome in combination with targeted nutritional therapy, that’s the sync of the laser chiropractic and functional medicine. The word photobiomimics comes to light. Laser therapy for these diseases become even more effective. The value is evident in treating gut issues and those that have and I know we’ll get to a low vagal tone and even autoimmunity. So research strongly suggests that photobiomodulation of the low level laser of the microbiome can help sharply improve the gut’s microbial diversity. We want biodiversity, we don’t want Alpha diversity. Maintaining diversity in the gut microbiota is the key to sustaining healthy production of numerous vital metabolites, such as a short chain fatty acid called butyrate that produce bacteria. It’s critical for keeping pathogens from gaining a foothold in the gut. Diversity actually crowds out those harmful bacteria. Therefore, using laser therapy to rebalance the gut microbiome has a theoretical therapeutic potential that is off the charts for alternative therapies that we offer today. Sorry about the pontification. But when you talk gut you turn Rob on and he just wants to go 

Dr. Chad Woolner: No, that’s evident. And that’s exciting. I was gonna say to perhaps tie this back to the previous episode, I’m gonna get really pragmatic and practical here. Real world. I had a patient literally just yesterday who came in to see us. He has psoriatic arthritis, and he was complaining of lower back pain. And up until now, his rheumatologist that he had seen…the strategy that they are employing with him, if that’s what you want to call it, is ongoing long term NSAIDS. That’s the strategy, “we’re going to put you on non-steroidal anti-inflammatories.” 

And I told him…I asked him like, “so this is like, this is the strategy like, this is their plan?” And he’s like, “yeah, basically like, I’m going to just take this forever.” And I’m like, you know. And so when we talk about something like psoriatic arthritis, there is so much that can be done. No doubt nutritionally and with lasers to assist, and to help in that whole process. And yet, the only solution that patients are hearing apparently, is drugs, medication. Whether it be, you know, over the counter or prescription. You know, and so I think this maybe is a really practical jumping off point because of the fact that here, you’ve got kind of the musculoskeletal world, which we’re talking about in…that which we spoke on in the previous episode. And now all of a sudden, it’s intersecting with kind of the gut world and the, you know, kind of autoimmune world all together. So you see, you know, understandably so…why, why last episode, it was kind of hard to stay in that lane, because it all merges together to some degree. We’re talking about this is a classic example here, you know. So, in a situation like that, you can see how these things kind of literally bleed together, you know, gut health, you know, musculoskeletal health all that together.

Dr. Robert Silverman: Absolutely. So I always say, if people could see me, my left hand is the chiropractic hand. My right hand is a functional nutrition, functional medicine hand. When, as you said, you bleed them together. If you can simplify your functional medicine protocols, your laser protocols, you really got something strong to base your treatment on. Now, what’s most interesting, as you said, NSAIDs; non steroidal anti inflammatory disease, ibuprofen, Advil, they do decrease pain, but they impair healing. 

Lasers therapy, decreases pain and promotes healing. Which do you want? Supplemental lifestyle changes, decrease pain and promote healing. What’s the better option? Now, in addition to that, now you’re talking about the gut level and the laser, you talked about psoriatic arthritis. I too, when people come in with low back pain, I say, “Listen, I can put a BandAid on a bullet wound, and I can help your lower back. But if I don’t look at your gut, I’m not able to help you long term.” And that’s what it is to being a holistic practitioner. It’s looking inside the body, not just on the outside of the body. Incidentally, if you have psoriatic arthritis, and you have a little psoriasis, let’s say on your skin; your skin is the second way your body will tell you something’s going wrong inside your gut. The first is gas and bloating. One B is brain fog and then you’ll have some skin but psoriatic arthritis. Hey guys, autoimmunity, no doubt about it. 

By the way, musculoskeletal conditions, when they start to damage, are typically under the autoimmune like osteoarthritis genre and umbrella. So if you’re a chiropractor, and you don’t look at the gut, I’m going to suggest strongly that we start to look at the gut, because it fits in everybody’s toolbox to analyze gut health. Now, in addition to that, laser therapy is shown…I use it in my office all the time, I’ve created a multitude of laser protocols to help the gut. The combination of violet, and the red laser is the critical element because remember, as Dr. Alessio Fasano once said, “The gut is not Vegas, what happens in the gut doesn’t stay in the gut.”

Dr. Chad Woolner:  Because of the vagus nerve, largely.

Dr. Robert Silverman: Right, and your j… I love it. I love that. You mentioned the vagus nerve, you’re really trying to get me to start doing some jumping jacks and burpees.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Dr. Silverman, you mentioned something that the gut affects the brain, brain affects the gut. And we have these conversations inside of functional medicine circles and doctors talking about how upstream you’re thinking can you get? Does the problem start in the gut? Or is there something above that that’s the initial cause? Or is it? Is it a nerve related issue? Is it a nervous system problem that affects the gut or vice versa? Is it kind of the chicken or the egg type of discussions? In your opinion, is there anything more upstream than gut health in terms of the cause of a lot of these chronic issues that we’re trying to help patients with? 

Dr. Robert Silverman: You know, I think if we got 10 people to sit down, the kind of experts that you would put on your podcast or in person and I think that would be some people would say the brain and some people would say the gut. And I do believe it is as I said before the superhighway to health, but I think the key component and I think you’re soft balling this for me, I appreciate that. So strap on, let’s go. We’re gonna racecar it,  and I’m ready to go…is without question…not the only thing; but the big player is the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve, cranial nerve number 10. The longest cranial nerve in the body goes from the medulla oblongata down to the transverse colon. It is anywhere between 80-90% [inaudible]. So when you think about [inaudible] going from the gut up to the brain. Whereas when it’s about 10 to 20%, instead of going from the brain down. 

The interesting thing is people always ask me anatomically okay, how does it know what’s going on in the gut? And in 2020, they found out that anatomically, there’s something called a neural pod. The neural pod is something that connects to the vagus nerve and senses what’s going on inside the gut. So let’s stop for a moment. Let’s not get too technical. The bacteria in the gut, communicate with the vagus nerve attaching to outside the gut through a neural pod. And that vagus nerve now communicates with the brain. That’s going in reverse the brain now communicates via the efferent with the vagus nerve, to the transverse colon inside the gut. 

So now we’ve just opened up some ideas on how we can communicate. So that neural pod was great vagus nerve that communicates with the heart, with the lung, with the kidneys, with the liver. It has primary functions. It’s parasympathetic, its special sensory. It’s sensory, and its motor. So obviously, you want to have an appropriate tone and vagus nerve, you want to up regulate it. 

We talked about concussions in the last part, if you will. Well, the vagus nerve is referred to the rest and digest; the wine and dine nerve. So when you talk about vagus nerve and talking about the parasympathetic system, the one that calms you down, the one that I’m not utilizing enough right now, the sympathetic is fight or flight. The problem with them is that they’re not. They’re seesaws, they have to be balanced, so they can’t be dominant at the same time. So after injury after any kind of brain injury, you’re actually shut down on your parasympathetic nervous system and most Americans are sympathetic oriented. So you will find a lot of benefits in your chiropractic practice to stimulate the vagus nerve, trance continuously. 

And we’re going to go over in this diatribe if you will, on how to do it appropriately. Also, when the vagus nerve decreases, you also have decreased digestion through something called the migrating motor complex Peristaltic contractions, which move the food bolus from the stomach to the small to the large intestine. Forget all that, when you have low vagal tone, like you would see in IBS or IBD. You have a decreased secretion of hydrochloric acid, pancreatic enzymes, parietal cells, and bile. Anybody in the functional medicine world, bile is the hidden gem, we need the appropriate file. So you just start digesting well. So we want to stimulate the vagus nerve. 

And again, I will talk about how to do it with lasers. You want to stimulate the vagus nerve because it reduces inflammation, it improves outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis and actually inhibits those inflammatory cytokine production by 30%. And one little factoid as we know, since this size is a little bit less vagus nerve is vastly different than the right, to left nerve is all about satiety. The right nerve is about morning behavior. And lastly, before I turn it over to my great host. What’s most interesting about the bacteria and vagus nerve in the brain is they did a study with mice and the mice had autism. Never knew mice could have autism. But in this study they did. They gave him a probiotic called El root Tierra. Great probiotic probiotic gave him the probiotic, and the ASD went away. Unfortunately, they did veganotomy, took out the vagus nerve, filled him with El root Tierra and they went back to their ASD normal. So another takeaway is you can give all the supplements in the world you want. If you don’t have the communication of that vagus nerve between the gut and the brain, they’re not going to optimize your nutritional protocols. And there is one great example of the mesh of functional medicine with low level laser therapy.

Dr. Andrew Wells: We talked about in the last episode that it was kind of a no-brainer that laser therapy was used for musculoskeletal problems. And I don’t think most doctors are even aware that you can use light therapy, laser therapy for these chronic conditions. And so, maybe Dr. Silverman, you can speak to the actual practical protocols of how you are using a laser? Are you lasering the vagus nerve? Are you lasering the gut? How does it actually work when you’re stimulating these areas transcutaneously with light?

Dr. Robert Silverman: That’s a great lead in thank you so much. So all the guys that work for Erchonia had the baby step. We all do this very similarly. And I’m not gonna say one is better than the other. I was very early. I was an early adopter to it and what I found out was when I used the Erchonia laser and predominantly the EVRL Erchonia violet red laser. The protocol was based on this robust literature and also on heart rate variability. So when I saw that heart rate variability change, I knew I was in the secret sauce spot, the sweet spot, if you will. So from me, and this is a little different than others, but hear me out. I use the violet light as I go over the medulla oblongata down through the transverse column. And that’s the only time I use the violet light. I then switched both the red and violet on by the way, with the violet light, I just used the acne setting. I then, with the EVRL, switch to violet and red. And I use a setting of the vagus nerve, the perfect 10 10 10 10. I laser in the right quadrant, the migrating motor complex in the ileocecal valve. So pretty like… 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Can I interrupt real quick? Yeah, when you say 10 for Docs, we’re listening. They’re like 1010 10. That’s the frequency, correct? 10 hertz, 10 hertz, 10 hertz, is that correct? 

Dr. Robert Silverman: That’s right. That is the frequency, the frequency, the amount of time the light hits the skin per second. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Okay, perfect. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify, continue on, sorry. 

Dr. Robert Silverman: Oh, thank you so much. So then I go back up to the cervical region where the jugular foramen is, and I use the red and violet in that area. So I do three to five sweeps on the right and the left side over the thoracic region. I then laser the migrating motor complex and the ileocecal valve with the red and violet. I go to the cervical region on each side for 30 to 60 seconds, same frequency. Then, and here’s the big takeaway, I go into auricular area, the data is coming out now. That’s pushing everybody that…”you know that we may just be able to stimulate the vagus nerve from the auricular area” certainly stimulating the vagus nerve and auricular area is great for ASD, both sides. And as I said in the last podcast, nobody else is doing this. This is new. You want to also laser, the trigeminal nerve at the origin. And the reason you want to do it is the trigeminal nerve through the nucleus communicates in the brain with the vagus nerve. Some of the trigeminal nerves are stressed or static. The vagus nerve goes down. When you laser the trigeminal nerve, you’ll balance the two systems that are the parasympathetic and the sympathetic system. So that is new data on that. And I have to tell you, we just two years ago, three years ago, we’re just running off the legs up and down the chest region. Now, we’re talking about preciseness, we’re talking about other cranial nerves. We’re talking about a plethora of different things that we can do because the vagus nerve is so important in overall health, in that it’s shown to decrease triglyceride levels and fat. It’s critical for musculoskeletal diseases. To speak to what you were talking about doc, decreases systemic lupus. It shows a decrease in pain and fibromyalgia which incidentally, is an autoimmune condition, because the dorsal root ganglia has good adverse effects backing and helps with hand osteoarthritis. So we’re seeing overwhelming evidence that vagus nerve stimulation is a component for musculoskeletal and helps with an immune response. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: A couple of couple things real quick, left side again, of the vagus nerve is satiety, correct? Right side is mood and behavior. Is that what you said?

Dr. Robert Silverman: That’s correct. Okay. Right. They are different. Okay. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: And then and then ASD, can you define that again for us? 

Dr. Robert Silverman: So, autism, you’re on the spectrum disorder. So they showed that symptomatology has decreased by stimulating the vagus nerve at its auricular branch, inside the ear and slightly behind the ear. As a matter of fact, some interesting things about stimulating the vagus nerve. What I do when I laser and the auricular region, I also apply a little pressure to the ear. And one thing that I forgot to mention, the physiological side. So Dr. Andrew Huberman shared this on some of his podcasts. So the side works really well to stimulate the vagus nerve, I do the side in conjunction with lasering, the vase vagus nerve in the thoracic region, and the physiological side is a double inhale on the way down as I sweep down, and a long exhale to stimulate the vagus nerve and shift towards a parasympathetic state and your times of stress. So we’ve heard you know, you can sing, you can doggerel, they’re great. I just found this to be even more effective to affect the breathing during the laser and you know what, I’m happy to do a video. I know this is a podcast and audio. I’m happy to follow up with a video and everything in that five minute video thing that we talked about, I think that would be critical for our listeners. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: So when you want say- real quick, sorry, when you say sigh like a yawn, is that what you’re saying? Like, you know, so that people can hear it. I know they can’t see it. But like a yawn is what you’re in essence saying? 

Dr. Robert Silverman: You know, it’s not truly a yawn that the sigh is. Um, hopefully you guys can hear me. *blows into mic* And I hold and then *blows into mic* So they call it a physiological sigh. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Okay. All right, perfect. Sorry. Sorry, Andrew, continue.

Dr. Andrew Wells: No, that’s okay. I want to point out something that as Dr. Silverman is going through these, these, these protocols, you may be trying to scribble them down and write them down. I just want to point out one of the nice things about Erchonia. Not only do they make amazing lasers and technology, but they have an amazing set of resources and support for doctors who buy their lasers and are integrating these things into their practice. If you need to get training on these protocols, they have tons and tons and tons of training so that you can actually feel confident when you pick up a laser for different conditions that you’re using it properly. 

You’re following these protocols that Dr. Silverman has created and is developing and working with other doctors to implement. There’s tons and tons of support for that. So don’t feel like this is your like, this is your one and only opportunity. Like man, I’m working off these notes from this podcast. There’s tons of support there for you. And also, I wanted to mention too, I think it’s interesting that you’re combining these physical actions while the patient’s being lasered. We mentioned in the last episode, we were talking about concussion and TBI protocols, you’re having the patients… as their brains are being lasered, you’re having them read, do crossword puzzles. And you’re saying these functional medicine applications, you’re having them do breathing exercises to stimulate these different different parts of your nervous system that I don’t necessarily understand the physiology of it, but it intuitively makes sense that you sort of activate these parts of your nervous system as you’re doing this, this therapy on them.

Dr. Robert Silverman: Correct. So that physiological side is new. Some people will have them gargle things. You want to use in a multitude of ways to activate that vagus nerve because the vagus nerve does get stimulated by the laser. But, it works better in synergy with the laser and these other type of activations. And, you know, again, I do want to reiterate, we were in rudimentary stage three years ago when we were lasering, the vagus nerve, and I saw the HRV. 

Now look what we’re talking about auricular in the neck, migrating motor complex. We’re talking about a physiological side, we’re talking about gargling, we’re talking about during the year, we’re talking about trigeminal nerve. I mean, and the data is growing daily, because vagus nerve stimulation is a critical element because it activates the inflammatory reflex. Do you know this study in 2021 to speak about a 50% decrease in Crohn’s disease, a 43% decrease in ulcerative colitis, and when they say a decrease, they achieved clinical remission. 

Vagus nerve has also been used in stroke rehab now. Vagus nerve stimulation is also targeting that inflammatory reflex which modulates the TNF alpha production, reducing inflammation in humans and the severity of rheumatoid arthritis. Here’s one for you. In those functional medicine, let’s keep it simple. Human Vagus Nerve Stimulation produces specialized pro-resolving mediators. Specialized pro-resolving mediators allow for the resolution of inflammation. It is converting Omega-3 pathways to allow them to respond in the resolution of inflammation. Now again, I use the term…my mantra is to manage and modulate inflammation. I always want to supplement with SPMs. Now, I can create the conversion by using laser therapy to Vagus Nerve Stimulation. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m stoked. I wanna go grab some patients. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s, that’s incredible. I hope docs are picking up on something. There’s a shift happening in functional medicine, a big shift happening, where we’re elevating what we’ve done over the last 20-30 years in supplementation and lab testing. So the biochemical aspect of functional medicine or functional nutrition and we’re getting now into bioenergetics. And I think this is where the puck is heading in functional medicine, is some very fundamental applications, or very fundamental therapies that are being used for a lot of these chronic conditions, gut health being one of them that I think most docs and even a lot of functional medicine docs, very smart docs aren’t aware of, you know, they, I think we realized that there’s a major shift happening towards bioenergetics and I think this is one of those things that is, it’s a no brainer for most functional medicine docs but I think it’s one that often gets overlooked or even isn’t isn’t- most docs aren’t even aware of this, which is surprising. I wasn’t aware of this a year ago. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Quick quick question for you, Dr. Silverman. For some docs who are listening, because for me, I’m listening to this and I’m like, okay, this is awesome. Obviously, in order to do this, you need a laser. So the doctor, like, okay, I gotta get an Erchonia laser. But the other thing you’d mentioned, too, is measuring heart rate variability. What do you use for that in terms of measuring pre and post heart rate variability and or any other tools that you use for pre and post measurement? What do you typically- what does that look like?

Dr. Robert Silverman:  Excellent query. You have a couple of options. I happen to use a company called “The League.” It’s inexpensive. A little device that goes on one of the fingers. Goes into your cell phone. Some people use our point. I’m sending it to you guys to see if we’re talking better or rain (?), I’m fine if you use that. But you do want to use something that documents the heart rate variability because, One: if you want to talk to a medical doctor, and you say heart rate variability, then they’re going to give you a thumbs up. Two: it is standard in what we refer to to know that the Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation is working. 

And I know that I gave a lot to unpack. So let me make it easy and tangible for everybody. You know, it sounded like a lot was going on in my vagus nerve protocol. So let’s take it, dial it back one step. You can simply point and shoot the laser at the gut area to get the photobiomimics, you can even leave the room. So you don’t have to worry, like standing up tall and doing the back step. That’s number one. Number two, running it up and down the thoracic region is pretty easy. You’re able to do that with a handheld, just point it in the neck region, you’re gonna get it, point it in the ear region. I don’t want everybody to get intimidated by the explanation and the amount of steps. There’s really only three or four very easy steps. So again, I teach it at seminars, everybody’s able to adapt to it. Again, laser is very easy to implement in your practice, because you start with what I call the point and shoot.

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s great. And that’s- that’s one of the points I was hoping docs would get. Like, if you- we were hoping that this podcast is educational but also a catalyst to get you guys to look into using this therapy for your patients. And I want to I want to shift. We seem to be going- we’re talking about the concept of gut health and we seem to be going up the body, right? We’re talking about gut, we’re talking about fibers going up to the brain to the vagus nerve. But I want to talk about something that’s kind of a very much emerging topic in functional medicine, which is brain health. Most functional medicine docs have their ears open to brain health. Most docs have heard of leaky gut. Most docs haven’t heard of leaky brain or the blood brain barrier and how this affects health, maybe we can start talking about functional medicine applications with laser on the blood brain barrier.

Dr. Robert Silverman:  No doubt, you know, it’s great you said upstream and downstream. So the blood brain barrier. The blood brain barrier protects the brain. It actually filters 400 miles of blood vessels into the brain. When you think about it, I never realized we had that many vessels. The blood brain barrier encapsulates the bulk of the brain material and just doesn’t encapsulate the pituitary, because the pituitary needs to communicate with the blood directly. The blood brain barrier, there’s a lot of examples. I call it the doorway or the bouncer to the brain. Unfortunately, once you’re able to get or a pathogen can get past the blood brain barrier, and into the brain, it’s a bad day. So breakage or damage to the blood brain barrier can portend 16 years in advance, neurodegenerative disease, so I purport to everybody, if you want to treat the brain, you have to understand the blood brain barrier. You also have to test for the blood brain barrier and new treatment protocols for that blood brain barrier.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Are there some simple things that you can assemble, nuggets you can give to docs on what you’re doing to, to assess these, this potential. 

Dr. Robert Silverman:  There’s multiple labs that have markers that will let you know that the blood brain barrier may be compromised. Whatever you do, your gut again, you do your brain, whatever you do to your brain, you do your gut. And typically what will damage the prime, which will damage the brain and the blood brain barrier is typically concussion, believe it or not, so you get a primary injury mechanism. Then you stimulate these things called micro grids, they become prime, they’re overactivated following mechanical injury. 

Now, as you said, ether communicates on the way down. So you get structural and functional damage to gut tissue. That neural trauma induces increased intestinal permeability and now you have a change in the gut microbiota, you get something called dysbiosis. And a leveling of the good and bad bacteria, you get the gut to communicate backup eighths currently in the superhighway to help this systemic immune response to intestinal dysfunction, leading to pro-inflammatory cytokines influencing the central nervous system. And you get an ongoing secondary injury mechanism, microglial mediated persistent neuroinflammation. 

So let’s break that down, there was a lot there. You hit your head, you damage your brain, it communicates with your gut, it damages your gut, and you get a secondary attack from your gut to your brain, and you have this circle going on. So the real question is, that a lot of docs ask me and patients- do I treat the brain or do I treat the gut? Because that’s what you asked me. My answer is, you gotta treat both because you can’t get optimum outcomes without treating both because they’re a highway. You can’t complete the highway unless you pave both roads.

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s a fascinating concept, you know, this whole idea of, of this kind of like negative feedback loop that happens. We see that so often, in various ways, in terms of these, and this is something we teach a lot of our doctors is this whole idea of various types of like, chronic stress loops, that tend to happen. And in essence, that’s what you’re talking about, right? It is a type of chronic stress loop, right? You know, being in a sympathetic dominant state doesn’t help that, the fact that people are also dealing with other forms of stress. So we talked about a head injury is obviously a very obvious type of stressor on the body, but in essence, what you’re talking about the strategy from, you know, 10 miles up is, is in essence trying to break some of these negative feedback loops, right, by treating the gut and treating the brain you know, and then that’s, it’s an interesting idea that you bring up there because I think many doctors would not even connect those dots, you know. 

A head injury is a head injury, you know? Very much like different…and we tend to do that. I think some doctors tend to do that where they look at the body as different parts in a vacuum. You know, your finger isn’t connected to your shoulder or you know what I mean? Your foot isn’t connected really to your low back or you know, those sorts of things and what you’re in essence saying, you know, is that if we’re really going to help patients with these outcomes, number one, we gotta break those loops, those negative feedback…same goes with pain, like we were talking about this in a pain episode, right? Where if pain persists long enough, it creates this, in essence, this permanent new loop where the brain will literally change its structure. And so you got the same sort of idea, right? The lasers can kind of help break up some of those negative loops, and reprogram, so to speak, some of those areas. So maybe talk about that for a second too, in terms of how that’s used to break up that loop, treating the gut and the brain.

Dr. Robert Silverman:  I mean, you’re speaking my language. I mean, I’m, wow. I’m at a loss of words, I’m so excited. 

So those loops. You know, you’re talking about traumatic brain injury. Let’s use that example in intestinal dysfunction. Brown University found out that in six hours after trauma, there is damage to brain cells. They also found out that tight junctions into the gut wall and the brain will also open in six hours. LPS Lipopolysaccharide endotoxin, which holds gram negative bacteria inside of the gut, you do not want this guy released into your bloodstream. It’s released in three hours. And when LPS is released, it decreases the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factors, the Miracle Gro for the brain, which actually comes from the gut to the brain. 

So, what do you do? What’s one of your options? Again, we’re getting right back, stimulating the vagus nerve to prevent intestinal dysfunction after a traumatic brain injury. If you can stimulate the vagus nerve, get that laser in there, within 90 minutes, there is no damage to the gut. There’s not going to be any damage to the brain. Data indicates that from 2010 and 2011. They also did studies with mice, they did sheets of mice, and in that they had a sham and added TBI. And man if you could see the sham, obviously, everything’s perfect. If you could see the TBI. It looks like a nuclear bomb was dropped on somebody’s intestinal track. 

However, they also did vagus nerve on some of these mice, stimulation, and TBI. And the epithelial cells look like they’re in pristine untouched condition. So the takeaway there is vagus nerve decreases brand edema, it decreases specific interleukins. And the data truly suggests that Vagus Nerve Stimulation exerts a neuroprotective effect against any kind of brain explosive injury. So the vagus nerve is a critical element for the treatment of TBI, and vagus nerve was shown to reduce the blood brain barrier disruption. So breaking that negative feedback loop, stimulate that vagus nerve as that communicator, and then get to the gut, and then get to the brain. So in essence, we talked about lasering the brain last podcast, we talked about lasering in the gut, we want to laser them both, and they want out of communication. You know, the circuitry of the vagus nerve, and I can tell you, that’s what I do in my office. 

Now, I suffered from a concussion. I know everybody says it’s no surprise by the way I act and all that. But I had a concussion in high school- excuse me, a college basketball game, I got knocked out cold. My teammates said it was the only time they ever saw me quiet. As they say you’ve been talking basically. I was out. And I had some gastrointestinal problems. The moment I lasered them, within a week or two, my gastrointestinal problems went away, I was able to start to put some muscle on. So here’s a beaming symptom. If you hit your head, did you follow with any gastrointestinal problems after? If you did, you got to look at it when you hit your head. So let me make it a little clearer. Those people who suffer from concussion usually have gastrointestinal issues. So I just served up for you guys to chew on a little bit now. 

Dr. Chad Woolner:  Well, the first thought that I couldn’t help but think is, and this is more so for patients than for doctors- if your doctor is recommending after a concussion to watch and wait or just to rest and just chill out and just kind of hope that things get better on their own, I would think that that’s probably a telltale sign that you need to find a different doctor. That is what I would suggest you know, if we’re talking about this based on what you’re saying really time is of the essence. But that next follow up question for me that I’m thinking is okay, for those patients who are listening to this who are like well crap, you know, I had a concussion a week ago or two weeks ago or a year ago or five years ago, is all lost? You know what, what, what to do for those people who didn’t have the advantage of knowing this information that you’re now sharing in terms of time being of the essence? What do they do?

Dr. Robert Silverman:  All is not lost, we’ve got the answer. We’ve got functional medicine, nutritional protocols. We’ve got laser therapy. We’ve got Functional Neurology protocols. We’re sitting in the catbird seat to help people, they just need to seek us out. They need to listen to more of your podcasts where you’re putting experts on, and I’m not considering myself an expert, but all these other people that are experts, the data is robust. You know. That being discussed, let’s really talk about it, you know, you can help the gut let’s start with the gut let’s use that. Let’s say bottoms up today. Talk about bottoms up. Let’s talk about the gut. I have a seven hour action plan. That seven hour action plan is real simple. 

We’re going to reset your lifestyle, we’re going to put you on a good quality diet, we’re probably gonna take your dairy out, we’re probably going to tell you to decrease your added sugars and food allergies and food sensitivities. We’re going to replace, excuse me, we’re going to remove- we’re going to remove pathogens, we’re going to remove the bad bacteria, we’re going to move the viruses, we use specific nutrients like serum bovine immunoglobulin, Berberine, oregano, we’re going to replace we’re going to replace digestive enzymes, stomach acid and bile. We’re going to regenerate where we’re using a litany of nutrients needed to help do two things inside the gut- create anti-inflammation and also heal and feel the gut lining. We’re also going to reinoculate with pre- when I say prebiotics.  they’re probably more important now than probiotics to create a postbiotic. Then we’re going to reintroduce things that we took away. Because you guys practice like I do. If you take something away from a patient, you don’t give it back to them, they leave. 

And lastly, you’re going to retain- you’re gonna retain health with a great lifestyle. You add laser therapy to that, now you’ve got a very synergistic approach. You do your vagus nerve stimulation. And then your vagus nerve stimulation, you also have the opportunity to use certain nutrients. The vagus nerve- specific probiotics like a reuteri, β-lactam, B. longum, short chain fatty acids, fiber, increased bile acids, omega three fatty acids. 

Intermittent fasting to work with circadian rhythm will get your Vagus Nerve Stimulation to go. Then you can adhere to a brain protocol, which we talked about in the last podcast, and use some specific nutrients that have pointed at blood brain barrier health, like L carnitine, magnesium L-threonate, omega three fatty acids, pro resolving mediators, vitamin D. So you take this composite and you start piece by piece, putting them all together, you now got a real strong protocol that is gonna  change people’s lives. I can tell you when people come in and they can start chatting, remembering, not having to go to the bathroom six or eight times, you made an indelible mark on their everyday life.

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s incredible.

Dr. Andrew Wells: I think this, you know, this might be a good place to start tying some things together. Dr. Silverman, this has been amazing. I always like functional medicine discussions that don’t just revolve around testing and supplements. And I think you’ve given some, a lot of docs and things to chew on and some things to think about. Where would you direct doctors who want to learn more about implementing some of these protocols into a functional medicine type program? Or if you’re new to functional medicine and want to start, where would you direct them? 

Dr. Robert Silverman:  Well, don’t we have an XFM? Can we talk about that a little bit? Just fill in the blank. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: This by the way, this was not a softball plug for our program. 

Dr. Silverman: Oh, no, no. You guys were great. And we were talking about this off air, if you will. And, you know, I’m excited about getting involved. And I think everybody needs to know about it. So go for it.

Dr. Andrew Wells: : Go ahead. If any of you know, Dr. Woolner and I are functional medicine flunkies from back in the day. We, we understand the idea of functional medicine to the benefits of the patient and the benefit to your practice. And, Chad and I both went through functional medicine training programs. And at the end of those programs were at a loss for how to actually implement the things that we learned to implement the protocols to implement the science, and we got really frustrated with it and scrapped the idea of adding functional medicine. 

And I always, you know, I was always upset about that, that we didn’t have, you know, some really streamlined protocols and really a good jumping off point and starting point to get into the world of functional medicine. So one day, Chad called me. And this was a handful of years ago, he said, “Hey, Andrew, I’ve got this great idea for a functional medicine program.” Like, thanks, man. But if you forgot we failed at functional medicine, what other great ideas do you have. And he goes, he said, No, no, no, he’s goes, “I think I figured it out. What if we designed some streamlined, streamlined protocols, just around the common conditions that we see in our practice?” Things like gut dysbiosis, things like weight loss resistance, anxiety, depression, fatigue, brain fog, a lot of these really common symptoms that Americans have, but don’t have very good solutions for. 

Chad said, “I developed a protocol to help that specific person.” And so what we did was we developed these protocols that doctors can very easily implement in their practice that doesn’t require years of training diplomate, diplomate-level training programs and expertise to launch and so it’s a very much a functional medicine program where it’s rubber hits the road, we always ask the question what not what’s possible with patients, but what’s probable. And if you start from a position of what’s probable in terms of causing these problems, then we can very easily and confidently move forward and address and help solve those issues. And so if functional medicine seems confusing to you, if it makes you feel stupid, it’s not that you’re stupid, it’s just the you don’t have a good starting point. And so if you’re interested in integrating some of these protocols, we’ve done all it for you, a simple place to go is to go to simplifiedfunctionalmedicine.com. And we just kind of, we have training there, and some really simple steps you can follow to learn more about our approach to functional medicine. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: And I would just simply add to that what’s been really cool, especially as of late is the program has evolved in such a way that we have incorporated a lot of expertise outside of ourselves. People like Dr. Silverman, Dr. Trevor Berry, Erchonia as a whole, have, have really been influential in helping us evolve a lot of these protocols to ensure that really, our doctors that are coming into this program know that it’s not just….the point that I would simply point out is that the protocols that we’ve developed are not because of my genius, or Andrew’s genius or anything like that. 

I don’t think we’re dummies by any means. But we recognize that there are a lot of really intelligent, incredible doctors out there. And so we want to, we want our docs to know that the protocols we’re using are extremely sound. And these are based on, you know, the best available evidence. And that’s one of the reasons why we’ve really woven into a lot of our protocols, things like Erchonia lasers, because it really ensures that we can really get incredible results. And from a mile up, the thing that I would say is this- if you’re going to make an impact on patients’ lives, which is really what this is all about, three things have to be in place, in order for that to happen. 

Number one, you have to drive good clinical outcomes, you have to get a result for the patients, because obviously, it doesn’t matter how good your marketing is, or anything else, if you’re not actually delivering a tangible real result, it doesn’t really matter. So that’s the first thing, ensuring there’s good clinical results. The second thing is that you do have to have good marketing and business systems in place for this to move forward and progress and be successful. You can be the best doctor in the world and drive the best results in the world, but if you can’t get people to come into your clinic, it really doesn’t matter, right? So business and marketing systems need to be in place, which is what we provide as well. And then the third is effective and proper patient communication for education and enrollment. And so the whole idea is this look, even if you have incredible, great marketing, and business systems, and even if you can get a good result for the patient, if you can’t effectively convey that value to them to the point that they’re going to sign up and enroll, it doesn’t matter. 

And so really from a mile up, that’s what Simplified Functional Medicine has been designed to do is really address all three of those core competencies or areas and we do that in a really simple way so that doctors can literally plug it right in. And this is based off of, you know, proven systems that we use in our own practice. I’m a full time practicing doc. These are the same systems and tools that I use with my patients, doctors all across the country. At this point of time, we’ve had nearly over 100 doctors in nearly all 50 states who have gone through this program and so yeah, so that’s that and, and moving forward, what we see is ongoing continuing education through Erchonia. So like the other thing that I would say is Dr. Silverman, you’re speaking how frequently with Erchonia? How often are you there with them?

Dr. Robert Silverman:  Oh, every month, both nationally, internationally. You know, the international speaking has grown. And I have been in the UK, Amsterdam and going to Switzerland. To see the growth amongst the practitioners throughout the world, you know, guys I just like to share a little, you know, when you stand up there, and you see it, it is a surreal feeling to know that we’re making that kind of mark on the practitioners, which are exponentially touching the world’s population. 

Dr. Chad Woolner:  That’s amazing. Absolutely amazing. So, docs to kind of tie this all together, I would say, look, if you’re if you’re interested in learning more about these things, definitely check us out. And that’s awesome. But if you’re like, hey, you know what, I just want to kind of maybe dip, dabble my feet in the water, so to speak, I would say the best place to start would be looking at the next upcoming event with Erchonia, whether that be in person or virtual, guaranteed, you’re going to find Dr. Silverman there at one of those events and or they even have archives on their site of previous ones too. 

So even at the very least, if you’re like, I’m just going to kind of dabble a little bit deeper, those are all great starting points for you to really kind of take some of the next steps there. But Dr. Silverman, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule. We appreciate it again. You did a great job, really over delivering in terms of sharing with docs in a very transparent way exactly what it is that you’re doing there. And we appreciate all the great things you’re doing not only for practitioners but also for patients alike, and really looking forward to future conversations for sure with you. It’s been an absolute pleasure. And docs, we hope that this has been valuable for you as well, and we’re excited to share more with you on upcoming episodes. Have an amazing day, and we’ll talk to you guys later.

Thanks for listening to The Laser Light Show. Be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about Erchnoia lasers, just head on over to erchonia.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources including research news and links to upcoming live events, as well as Erchonia’s e-community where you can access for free additional resources including advanced training and business tools. Again, thanks for listening and we will catch you on the next episode.

 

Podcast Episode #15: Lasers for Musculoskeletal Pain with Dr. Rob Silverman

In today’s episode, we dig in deep on the subject of low-level laser therapy for musculoskeletal pain with Dr. Robert Silverman. Dr. Silverman shares some incredible insights for using lasers for pain and a host of other chronic conditions. As an educator, he has a knack for describing the science and physiology behind laser therapy in a way that makes sense. To learn more about Dr. Silverman or to attend one of his upcoming training you can check out more here: https://www.facebook.com/DrRobertSilverman

http://drrobertsilverman.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrobertsilverman/

https://www.erchonia.com/seminars/

Dr. Chad Woolner: This episode of the laser light show is brought to you by the immune reboot, a brand new book that will be out by Dr. Robert Silverman. Dr. Silverman is a chiropractic doctor, clinical nutritionist, national and international speaker, author of Amazon’s number one bestseller Inside Out health. He’s the founder and CEO of Westchester Integrative Health Center, the ACA Sports Council named Dr. Silverman sports chiropractor of the year in 2015. He is a seasoned health and wellness expert on both the speaking circuit and the media. Dr. Silverman is a thought leader in his field and practice, a frequently published author in peer reviewed journals and other mainstream publications. And Dr. Silverman’s new book, The immune reboot will be available on Amazon September 2022. 

What’s going on everybody, Dr. Chad Woolner here with Dr. Andrew Wells. This is episode 15 of the laser light show and on today’s episode we have with us our good friend and special guest Dr. Rob Silverman. He is going to be talking about lasers for musculoskeletal pain.  

[INTRO]

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to laser light shows at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They would put on these amazing light shows with incredible designs synced up to some of my favorite music. From the Beatles to Pink Floyd to Jimmy Hendrix and Metallica; they were awesome. Little did I know then that lasers would have such a profound effect on my life decades later. As a chiropractic physician, I have seen first-hand just how powerful laser therapy is in helping patients struggling with a wide range of health problems. As the leader in laser therapy, Erchonia has pioneered the field in obtaining 20 of the 23 total FDA clearances for therapeutic application of lasers. On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low-level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Woolner along with my good friend Dr. Andrew Wells and welcome to The Laser Light Show.

Dr. Chad Woolner: All right, we are underway here with Dr. Rob Silverman. Dr. Silverman, thank you so much for being here with us. We sure appreciate you taking time out of your schedule.

Dr. Rob Silverman: Thanks for having me. I’m excited and without question truly stoked to be here to share some insights on laser therapy.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Awesome. And for our listeners, if you think this is gonna be a boring musculoskeletal, here’s why you should use lasers episode, this is not going to be that it’s going to be really exciting. If for no other reason. We have a New Yorker as a guest on our podcast. And so it’s going to be a colorful episode at least I hope it will. Expectation Dr. Silverman. So I hope you can live up to that.

Dr. Rob Silverman: I’m gonna try. I’m going to try and be rhapsodic Rob today.

Dr. Andrew Wells: There you have it. I love it. You know, not too long ago, I thought when I heard of Erchonia lasers, I just assumed I thought just because of a lack of knowledge. And just being naive. I thought that lasers were only used for musculoskeletal pain. That’s what they were designed for. And that’s all they could do. And as I learned more about laser therapy, on, you know, this, this vast amount of protocols and different conditions you can use it for, it’s pretty astounding. But today, we’re going to focus on what most Doc’s would think of as the obvious, especially if you’re a chiropractor, you just kind of associate laser therapy with musculoskeletal pain. And so we’re gonna dive into that. And I’m kind of curious about Dr. Silverman. In the chiropractic profession, especially we have lots of gadgets, we have logic, lots of gizmos, equipment, things that you go to any chiropractic conference, or we’re just bombarded by these different like, innovations in technology kind of seems like and so for musculoskeletal pain, you have anything from decompression tables to 10s units to cold therapy, hot therapy. Oh, man, and if you go to a chiropractic conference, and you’ll be kind of astounded by what the possibilities are, but kind of curious for you, how did you Why and how did you decide to use lasers in your practice?

Dr. Rob Silverman: Yeah, that’s a great starting point. Those who have seen me or know me, know that I suffer from what we call congenital torticollis. So in that, you know, like you said, I’m in New York, growing up in a tough section in New York. That wasn’t a bunch of fun. That said, about 10 years into practice. My neck really started to fuse at the osseous level. And I was looking for something to actually help myself and a friend of mine, a big sports car to come in and say, Man, you got to try this laser. So I investigated it, went to a seminar, tried it on myself, I needed something other than just obvious adjustments. And man, it lit my fire. It was an epiphany without question. So as most of us when we try something in chiropractic, we try it ourselves. Then of course we try it on our friends and our family. We put it into practice, and really that little spark was the fire to get out and really talk about and utilize lasers and make protocols. It was, you know, hopefully not selfishly views for myself, for after seeing that response. I wanted to share it with everybody else. And that’s the unique thing about chiropractic, if I may say that practice always or touched or do something, or haven’t done to themselves, to spur them on to want to share with everybody else.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, that parallel is really that Erchonia was even founded out of desperation, somebody with lower back pain that needed this solution, and, and created this solution out of a need to feel better and to and to function better. So that’s, that’s interesting that you did that you found it through your own personal health needs.

Dr. Chad Woolner: The thing too, that I think is incredible, especially going back to what you were saying, Andrew, when you’re at all these different shows, and conventions, and you see all that array, you know, you go through the gauntlet of different vendors, promoting their various tools and technology. I think there’s a certain inherent part of us that wants to feel something like immediately when it’s happening, right, we want to get zapped, we want to feel the heat coming off of some tool or something like that. And I think that’s one of the most incredible things about your Erchonia lasers. And, and I would, I would assume with you, Dr. Silberman, that must have been an epiphany for you having used these lasers, you know, especially for such a really important need, and to not necessarily feel anything during the treatment, while the treatments are actually happening. You’re like, What the heck is going on here, and then all of a sudden, to see the results that you’ve seen from it that I think almost enhances the kind of wow factor, I think, to a certain extent, because, for me, that’s kind of I’ve come to that I’ll admit it, you know, I want my patients to feel something, you know, and it needs to produce something I can’t I can’t tell a patient, hey, if you’ll just wait 20 visits, or six months, we may see something happen, you know, and they’re like, Yeah, right. I’m not going to do that, you know, so they need to, we live in a kind of an instant gratification world. And so there has to be something either that zaps you, like I said, or heats up your skin or something like that with Erchonia. You don’t get a lot of that. But what you do get is a profound, almost immediate result when people see that. And so that had to have been, I’m guessing again, you tell me if that was the case for you, but very eye opening for you to experience that.

Dr. Rob Silverman: Again, without question, what’s interesting about it is it’s non thermal. So there’s no heat involved as a matter of fact, in certain heating lasers, that can be extremely deleterious. Right. The real takeaway for me for laser therapy over the last 12 years, is its ability to attenuate or ameliorate different symptoms in outside conditions. So I believe that the economy laser is the most versatile healthcare tool of the 21st century, in that it’s versatile in the ability to work with so many different conditions. It’s versatile, and I can take it from room to room, I can take it home, I can go to the field. When I say the field, you know the playing field, I can also have a great equalizer amongst 15 different dogs who have different skill sets with adjust. But what’s most interesting to me about lasers is, you know, they think it’s the new kid on the block. It really is it in 1903 Dr. Thiessen was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology for treating skin tuberculosis with blue light and smallpox with red light, which truly mimics our adrl About 120 years later, wow. Now 50 years ago, a couple of doctors in Hungary were using it for wound healing. So really to speak to what Dr. Wells said, laser. What does it mean? Well, faccin acronym, light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. It’s a focused beam of light that emits Photon energy, you want it all going in the same direction in the same beautiful wave. And we call that coherence. That’s a critical element to laser effectiveness, some synonyms of laser to really speak to the idea where you don’t feel it, but you see the results after photobiomodulation, or low intense light therapy. Here’s the skinny, here’s the secret sauce. It’s electromagnetic transfer of energy based on a photochemical effect, not a photo thermal, those chemical changes change within the cells. And what I like to correlate it to or use of metaphor, if you will, it’s photosynthesis of the body. That said, five big components for beneficial outcome of laser therapy is the wavelength and I hope we go through it in two wavelengths that according to utilizes our 635 nanometer wavelength, which is red because the red depicts the type of wavelength and a four or five violet wavelength. Some other things are dosage, one of the unique components To corneas lasers is a low dosage, low power, guys, you don’t want a lot of power, you don’t need a lot of power. Because that delivery mechanism needs to be coherent. It’s all about absorption. The body is all interconnected. It’s not about depth of penetration. And of course, we’ll talk a little bit about I’m sure in some of the succeeding topics, we’ll talk about movement. And the big idea for musculoskeletal because that’s the big overlay that we’re talking about, is that we want the light to be pulse. Interestingly enough for the photochemical idea, what are some of the molecular targets for low level laser therapies? Well, I tell a lot of my patients because they think they understand this a little better. Think of different wavelengths of light as like different nutrients, it’s important to determine which nutrient is the best for also the timing and the dosage, lasers effective with wound healing, reducing inflammation and pain. That’s the kind of practice that I want my mantra is to manage and modulate inflammation in my patients. The target of visible light, not to get too technical, is cytochrome c oxidase that resides in the mitochondria, the cytochrome c oxidase initiation signal cafe that stimulates the cellular response. Everything that the mitochondria is really what the laser is pointed to. So a brief simplification, you get a photo of photon absorption, electromagnetic transfer of energy, mitochondria activation, increase the efficient ATP production, and stable healthy cells.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Well, that’s the I think that’s the best way I’ve heard the science of lasers articulated. And yeah, so that’s, I understand now, why Erchonia wants you to do talks? Because that was great. I can’t help adding something to you.

Dr. Chad Woolner: I think I can’t help but think when you’re explaining this, Dr. Silverman, I’ve been surprised as to how many of my patients are actually listening to this podcast. I thought originally, when we started this, it was just going to be all for doctors, rightfully so. Right? Because we’re diving pretty deep. And yet, I’m finding that patients are really wanting to know this information at a really deep level. And so I’m, I’m really as you’re, as you’re explaining this, I’m like, Oh, I’m so excited for my patients, and other doctors, patients, for that matter, to to hear these explanations, because I think when they hear it, all of a sudden, it’s gonna like really resonate, especially that comparison to photosynthesis, but then really helping them understand it at a deeper level. Because I think sometimes with technology like this, rightfully so, we as doctors, want to just kind of gloss over things. And we’re in some instances, maybe we do that, because we don’t necessarily feel totally comfortable. Getting at a deep level. We’re just kind of like, Yeah, I know that when it stimulates the tissue, it speeds up healing, it reduces inflammation, and a bunch of other good stuff, you know, and they’re like, okay, but but for some patients, they’re like, Yeah, but how does it do that? You know, and so I think, again, you’re doing a great job explaining that in vivid detail. And yet, it’s fairly straightforward. You know, that makes sense. When you hear that you’re like, oh, that totally makes sense. So, yeah, that’s awesome.

Dr. Rob Silverman: You know, it’s funny, you mentioned that there was an article yesterday. And the last thing I want to do is talk about COVID. But the explanation was outstanding in that patients resonate, and rely on doctors that communicate that they trust. So when they’re able to understand what you’re doing, because you don’t feel the laser, would you see the results? If that trust is that explanation, and I start testing for treatment, and the testing after the treatment. So I always assess, treat, and reassess. Which really speaks to what you said, this way, the patient knows what’s going on. I mean, everybody in that photosynthesis way, understands what photosynthesis is. In seventh grade. Everybody knows what mitochondria and ATP are. Yeah, because we learned that in high school, do you let me give you one little tidbit, I always love to get these factoids. The number one party of the body that gets stimulated has the most mitochondria, your brain and where are you accurate, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Now, to most doctors, I think what you’re saying makes sense. And I think it’s calm is a common sense approach to helping your overall physiology and your cells work better your brain work better, your muscles, your musculoskeletal system work better, but what would you say to a doctor that says, like, you know, this, this makes sense to me, I want to try to integrate this into my practices are a model that I can follow. That was easy for me to pick up and start using this with patients and I think you’ve developed what you call like a three three phases of care model. Can you explain what that looks like?

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah. Now, to most doctors, I think what you’re saying makes sense. And I think it’s calm is a common sense approach to helping your overall physiology and your cells work better your brain work better, your muscles, your musculoskeletal system work better, but what would you say to a doctor that says, like, you know, this, this makes sense to me, I want to try to integrate this into my practices are a model that I can follow. That was easy for me to pick up and start using this with patients and I think you’ve developed what you call like a three three phases of care model. Can you explain what that looks like?

Dr. Rob Silverman: For sure, are the three phases of care and you know, very simplistically in a concise manner, looking at different phases of healing phase one is the acute phase. That’s obviously let’s use a strength danco Lower back that’s the initial outward hurt swelling is hot. It has all the signs of inflammation that typically runs its course in a three to five day period. But it’s critical, you want to support different things in those first three to five days, then phase two is what we call the sub acute phase where there’s repair and remodeling of an injury, current. And this is where collagen and fibroblast proliferation occur, where you’re hoping that the soft tissue structures will heal in a parallel form and not a perpendicular form, leading you down a path of scar tissue, again, for the four five up into including the gates. And of course, there’s a third phase of care, which I think we all want to live in, which is wellness, and performance. This is after an injury, not just holding where they were before pushing them to new levels, because as we know, the American population is not healthy. Everybody’s on fire. 75% of Americans are overweight or obese. 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy, and only 3% of Americans are here on what we would call a checklist of a cure for wellness. And one little thing to keep in there. There’s also the chronic and unfortunately, too many of us as practitioners deal with the chronic because the patient waits to see if the injury goes away. If you’re a patient, if you’re a consumer, don’t wait to see if it goes away musculoskeletal injuries will heal on their own with scar tissue. Go see your practitioner. And one of the beautiful things I just want to give a little background. There’s a great study in frontiers of physiology in February of 2022, which really depicted and explained in a very scholarly manner. The mechanisms of low level laser in the treatment of a tendon injury as we all know attending goes from the muscle to the bone and helps us do what we call differentiation of cells, collagen synthesis, and angiogenesis. It also allows for the remodeling which I referred to before, of extracellular matrix, everything outside the bone and here’s a real takeaway outside the bone, cartilage, ligaments, muscle fascia, so it showed that factors that were associated with the remodeling of extracellular matrix, it increased laser protein synthesis and decreased protein degeneration. And it also decreased the damaged stage of specific cytokines which are emmalin macrophages, neutrophils, TNF alpha, interleukin six, interleukin Iby, Cox two and of course, the NF kappa B inflammatory pathway, and it stimulated the repair phase, the m two macrophages and we could spend all day on this cop seven, and interleukin seven. So essentially the takeaway there was laser decrease inflammation, stimulated repair at a cellular level and the ecrl and or the FX four or five, which is mix slides, both a red and a violet light, are without question, the choice for these musculoskeletal injuries because the red light or six batteries is great for wound healing tendons, ligaments, cartilage and bone. But the violet light is great for fascia, the saran wrap of the body. And that molding of those four or five different things leads to higher level outcomes because I believe the lack of that saran wrap of the body now when I say saran wrap, what’s a good example for patients? Anybody ever pulled the skin off a chicken? Well, you got the meat, you got the skin, but that little white film, that’s your fascia, if that’s not healed, if that’s not addressed, you’re not going to have a musculoskeletal optimum. So in the violet light that synergy between them is the choice laser light to use for musculoskeletal injuries.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, I found it interesting. I was just gonna say real quick. I remember in in chiropractic college, you know, them giving us this kind of model to follow that, you know, if if there’s an injury to an area, the body is going to send all of the various repair cells and or, you know, kind of infrastructural, you know, fibroblasts to do something. But if nothing is done to, in essence, signal them to do what they need to do. Basically, the default mode is going to be scar tissue or fibrotic tissue, right? And so the reason why we would engage the patient in some type of rehab where we’re actively moving, you know, the injured area to strengthen or stabilize it, a big part of that is to, in essence, signal those repair cells to do something other than the default. Right? And that’s how we help. One of the ways in which we help, but if doctors are hearing this, the way that I’m hearing it, what we’re hearing is that one additional tool in that quote unquote, signaling And I think there’s something to it. I’m hearing this and again, maybe you can connect this better than I can Dr. Silverman, but something about this idea of the coherence of light, right? This is the light being organized or structured in such a way that it’s not scattered. It assists in creating a coherent likewise tissue structure, right? Because ultimately, that’s the one of the differentiations between say fibrotic tissue or scar tissue and let’s say healthy muscle or tendon is those parallel fibers or you could say those coherent fibers so coherent something about that is, am I am I hearing that correctly, coherent light creates coherent fibers, scattered light may not necessarily help to develop those kind of parallel or coherent fibers is that is that a correct analogy there?

Dr. Rob Silverman: That’s a great analogy, the bodies all interconnected. As we all know, from our chiropractic origins, we communicate, the body should communicate in a molecular soliloquy, if you will, not disease is like an orchestra playing without the conductor, right. So the laser right, though coherence, the ability for it to be pointed, verse scattered, allows for clinical outcome. And I think that’s beautiful. And that is one of the key components to the corneal laser because they have a special lined line dial that enhances the coherence and just think of it a sniper verse, or better yet, what I tell all my patients is take a hose and press the hose, so it goes straight out the water, put your hand on the hose, and it’s scattered all over the place, you get everybody wet, but you’re not really hitting the fire that you need. Right. So your analogy was stellar.

Dr. Andrew Wells: So I want to kind of jump in the different different body parts you’re using this for so we’re talking about musculoskeletal pain. The first one obviously, that jumps to mind is lower back pain. That’s I’m sure I don’t know the percentage but it’s a bulk of patients walking into any health care providers office with pain, good chances lower back pain without so maybe we’ll start

Dr. Rob Silverman: sorry. And 10 Americans, as we all know, at some point have lower back pain. I mean, we were having a conversation before Functional Neurology functional medicine is chiropractor, or practitioner just honed in on lower back, they would be so busy, they probably would have 10 practices and 15 different associates. Sometimes people stray from that, but that’s where we all started. That’s our home base, if you will laser shown to help with spinal cord injuries, it’s actually shown to allow neurons to survive is shown to elevate specific interleukins interleukin four interleukin 13. So the takeaway and in nature.com study was that a low level laser can be an effective candidate for the treatment of spinal cord injuries. Lasers, also shown to precipitously decrease specific objective blood markers like interleukin six and interleukin eight. And as I said before, interleukin six is the the evil sister when that’s elevated, a lot is going on as a matter of fact, lasers shown to decrease dramatically interleukin six and interleukin eight but here’s what’s most interesting 405 nanometer wavelength does a great job and interleukin six and the red light 635 does a better job on the interleukin eight really piggybacking on the theme that the mixed life is a better choice as we all know, or cornea has an FDA clearance requirements or back pain. And when you looked at the visual analogue scales, the Oswestry scales and treating low back with the 12 month follow up, you had this dramatic drop in pain, you had this tremendous increase in range of motion. But here’s the idea to speak to what Andrew spoke about before the idea of putting the body’s health signals in motion 12 months after any treatment, there was still an 80% decrease in pain with no other treatment. So one that should excite any patient number two, doctors should say well, you know what, I have to let them know that they’re going to continue to get better. And I think that’s where, unfortunately sometimes we fall short and we’re not elucidating what we need in June 2019 To really pile on a little bit akoni was the first to receive a non-invasive technology FDA clearance for overall most receptive musculoskeletal pain. So what does that mean in layman’s terms? It basically means anybody for any muscle, any joint you apply the laser, you’re gonna get a good outcome. But let’s take it one step further. Let’s really mesh that idea about using the laser in a red light and then the vital life why the violet light works so well on the lower back. Well, studies have shown that about 50% of people have a bacterial infection in a herniated or surgically repaired desk, the violet lights, special properties are that bacterial, antifungal, antiviral. So that says, when you mix reading the vital life, you’re really getting a better musculoskeletal outcome. And if I could just say for me, using what we call the FX 405, I found that laser therapy is either a standalone set it and leave it or synergistic with other treatment modalities. So the standalone home, set it and forget it, right? You can walk out of the room, or you can use it with myofascial release, electric stim, if that’s your jam, exercise, rehab, acupuncture, dry needling, decompression, taping, even adjustment, instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization, and any other modality. So again, the real takeaway is it’s great as a standalone in musculoskeletal life. But it’s great in synergy. So people also say, Hey, do I have to lose something to put the laser in? Nope.

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s one of the big messages I’m getting for you. Dr. Silverman, is I’m thinking of all the different ways that chiropractors and other physicians practice, like, Hey, I’m, I’m a sports chiropractor, or I’m a pie doc, or I’m a wellness Doc, I’m a high volume Doc, I’m a pediatric doc. From what I’m understanding this could fit in and correct me if I’m wrong. Is there any? Is there any general chiropractic practice model where this would not complement what they’re already doing?

Dr. Rob Silverman: I’m a big believer, that low level laser corneas laser fitting any practitioners armamentarium.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, I’m just making like, I came out of school, like a very like, I call myself a right wing chiropractor, like, all we need to do is adjust the patient. And I had never heard of this study where 50% of people with lower back pain or disc issues have some sort of underlying infection, there are some infections going on that and adjustments not going to affect in a positive way, at least in the short term.

Dr. Rob Silverman: And nobody’s saying that we don’t have to adjust the patients, we’re just saying that this fits in within the adjustment. If we get a lot of things like, do I have to give up adjusted No. adjustment is an extraordinarily effective thing without question ScienceBase. But being that we’re ScienceBase, we have to look at other things. My goal isn’t to adhere to a principle, my goal is to fix the patient. So when someone comes in, it’s not that I’m married. Technique matters, America is getting better. That’s my Oh, that’s what I promised my mom.

Dr. Chad Woolner: I wanted to chime in. You know, I had a patient literally just yesterday, who was asking me about the laser. And his question to me was, he says, so if I do this laser, and I go through, you know, X number of sessions, are the results going to be permanent? Is what he asked me. I mean, talk about a loaded question there, you know, and I couldn’t help but think of this study that you just mentioned there that after a 12 month follow up, there were still positive results with these patients. And, and that was what I was trying to explain to him is that the studies that I was aware of, and this is this is a good study to reference. Whenever I get that kind of loaded question there is, and my response, obviously, is we don’t live in a vacuum. Obviously, I can’t predict the future in terms of what happens, you could slip, you could fall, any number of variables, infinite numbers of variables can come about. But that being said, Knowing and I think that the question that they’re asking isn’t necessarily is it going to be permanent? But is it going to be a band aid? Or is there going to be a longer term outcome here, and I think that’s the benefit that you’re talking about. There’s definitely longer term outcomes. So that’s exciting to hear. Patients should be really excited about that.

Dr. Rob Silverman: And it takes the patient variability out so we do everything and I know you guys do, we had a nice conversation. Everything’s personalized and individualized. There’s no, no people asked for a protocol, but we individualize and personalize our protocol for each one of our patients. But within that, some patients have difficulty following instructions. There are strains on them, the laser, even an appointment, shoot, help somebody. But the special idea is that if you can get that person moving, so I do something that I like to share with everybody, I call it Simon Says, as simple as 123. So all your laser guys, everybody calls up and wants to know how to have the eyebrow grow. And I’m just using that as a wild example. Sure. So it’s really simple. Everybody pointing shoots at the area. Passively move the area while applying a laser. Actively have the patient move the area. Use a little resistance to upregulate the brand, and you just had it out, standing tree ring, you covered it simply as 123. And you got a little proprioception in there. And guess what? That patient is going to be better. Now we can share real complex protocols with complex conditions. But everybody needs to start with that, especially in a musculoskeletal, like, keep it simple, keep it consistent, individualize and personalize it and you’re going to optimize your outcome. Without question.

Dr. Andrew Wells: I’m hearing a consistent theme with a lot of the doctors and experts we’ve interviewed on this podcast and that if you’re using a laser number one, you’re not going to hurt somebody. Number two, it’s pretty easy to help somebody by just keeping it simple. Like you said, point to the area that hurts, get some motion going and you’re gonna do a lot of good and not have to worry about injuring that person or, or worry about getting, you know, the best outcomes just start somewhere. And I think that’s a great way to start. And I was thinking about how Dr. Silverman had a really nasty car accident about four years ago and broke my neck and broke my shoulder and I was out for a while. And you know, I had a lot of good therapies at my disposal, but my shoulder wasn’t healing quickly. And I had it diagnosed as a misdiagnosis, a tear, and I had an MRI and I was pretty sure it was a frozen shoulder but it just wasn’t getting better wasn’t getting better. I went to a really nice chiropractor who’s in town here. He had PMF machine that he did some work on and some hold similar types of laser laser therapies, and I think it helped but I was desperate with a frozen shoulder for a solution. Do you see a lot of frozen shoulder issues in your office?

Dr. Rob Silverman: I do and laser data is robust on helping with frozen shoulder studies that have shown a significant decrease in overall night and activity pins at the end of different time intervals for eight and 16 weeks. There was also a significant decrease in shoulder pain and disability index in those same time frames coupled with a decrease of disability of arm, shoulder and hand. And the very basic health appraisal questionnaire really decreased precipitously in 48 weeks. There was also, believe it or not, a study on lasers for shoulder 10. The opposite was 17 randomized controlled trials. And a lot of times, they’re attended oppositely before the frozen shoulder. And the takeaway was that optimal low level laser therapy can offer clinical Revelin pain relief and initiate a more rapid course of improvement, both alone and in combination with physiotherapy interventions and other chiropractic. So for me, I believe combining low level laser with exercises over a three month period is really the type of approach that you want to have with a frozen shoulder. So exercise works, laser works, the combination works best.

Dr. Andrew Wells: I love it. I want to talk a minute about this kind of deviation a little bit from musculoskeletal conversation. But let’s talk about concussions for a minute. And your treatment protocols for concussion and how lasers are being implemented for this type of issue.

Dr. Rob Silverman: You know, I applied for laser concussion out of need about five, five and a half years ago, so many of my high school athletes were coming in with his costume and weren’t being treated and a couple of notes on concussion. Number one, you don’t actually have to have a concussion that damages the brain. It can be a cumulative self concussion, a bump on the head can do it. Women are much more apt to have a concussion than men and women are more susceptible to concussion simply because even though there is a strong pound for pound it is men below the waist. They’re a little weaker up the waist pound for pound more of a height with more of a shear more of repair. Also, they are morally different. So something called withdrawal hypotheses. Women are based on a progesterone in the last two weeks of their menstrual cycle. When progesterone elevates, it has a healing calming effect on a female’s brain. The problem is after concussion, there were strong hypotheses that the pituitary in many instances stops producing progesterone and that we’ll get to women’s microglial cells really get turned on in crime much quicker than that. So let’s dial it back down and let’s talk about a concussion approach and multi system approach number one musculoskeletal system. Everybody shouldn’t be looking at the upper cervical region. The occipital triangle especially the rectus capitis posterior minor is Dural attachments really implicated in a concussion number two balanced training if you will proprioception your balance in your nervous and your muscular system number three visual disturbances. I know you’ve had a couple of Cairo neurologists who did a great job above explaining that with gaze stabilization laser and of course, we’re going to go into laser and nutritional supplementation. I’ll try and touch upon that. But my five big nutritional supplementation suggestions are magnesium L, three and eight pro resolving mediators, omega three fatty acids, and glutathione. And good old tumeric, which decreases NF\ kappa B. But we really want to delve into lasers. So let’s get a little granular: what is the molecular cascade that occurs after a concussion? Well, concussion can damage axons, from the whipping back and forth in these, what I like to call electrical cords can tear if they tear, it’s a bad day. In addition, you have something called excitotoxicity. The NMDA our pathway opens this synaptic cleft in calcium goes from the extracellular space to the intracellular space in potassium goes from intro to extracellular. That being discussed, there’s membrane disruption and axon damage, it can lead to painful ptosis. It can also lead to mitochondrial dysfunction, which can lead to cellular damage. Concussion injury also can lead to microglial activation, what with microbials. We hear it all the time. Well, they’re actually macrophages, they eat up cellular debris, they’re very specific to the central nervous system. So in their primes over activated for the macrophages exam, one is very damaging to overall health. So the takeaway is you want active and targeted treatments that may enhance recovery after concussion. One of the big things I tell everybody I love to share with my practitioners is when you talk about laser therapy, each individual has a different tolerance threshold, and a need for variability. So protocols are not going to be 20 minutes or two minutes, it’s going to be within a specific timeframe for that individual. Having covered that low level laser therapy in multiple studies have shown to be effective for acute recovery post TBI. They improve neurological performance, they stimulate the growth of new nerve tissue. They also help regulate proinflammatory microbial cytokines. They are also shown, especially 635 nanometers, to modulate and decrease NF kappa B signaling pathways. Dr. Oran in Israel did studies and showed that the size of an injury 30 days later, after concussion was significantly smaller if you apply the laser versus placebo. And the big question is, if I can try and put in one epigrammatic paragraph, how does laser work? Low Level lasers suppress pro-inflammatory cytokine expression of interleukin one beta and interleukin six. So protective effects of low level laser may be ascribed to enhance ATP production and selective modulation of pro inflammatory mediators. So that was a little bit of a load. I’m sorry to give you so much. Oh, no, I was great.

Dr. Andrew Wells: That was great. Would this help for somebody who had a concussion, let’s say, two years ago, or five years ago, or 10 years ago? I’m thinking like, my thought is, obviously if you have a concussion or traumatic brain injury, this inflammatory cascade happens immediately. But we all are starting to learn now that having a traumatic brain injury really affects somebody decades later. So let’s say you had an injury, played sports or football or had a car accident or fell and hit your head years ago, is there an application for laser therapy for somebody years post post injury?

Dr. Rob Silverman: Absolutely. You know, people ask that, and that is probably the most frequently asked question I had six years ago, 10 years ago. Can you help me? Well, number one, we can stop generation number two. In most instances, it’s never too late. So when you really look at what laser does, and this comes from November 2017, neuroscience research and I love to quote non chiropractic journals when it comes to laser and concussion, really to speak to what you said, applying laser or 635. anatomy to red light, actually increased angiogenesis, blood vessels, decreases brain edema, lymphatic drainage, increase, increased blood flow, so you had cerebral oxygenation allow for neuronal progenitor cells synaptogenesis, basically and stimulated something called BDNF brain derived neurotrophic factors. And this is the key component by stimulating BDNF. You’re allowed to have brain neurogenesis, ultimately having positive neuroplasticity over a duration of time and decreasing the excitotoxicity. So to answer your Last June, yes, it’s typically never too late, but it’s always better sooner.

Dr. Chad Woolner: So selfishly, I’m going to ask you, Dr. Silverman in this context, I have a patient right now literally coming in. We just got the lasers into our practice about almost four weeks ago. And we’ve been getting so many patients who have just been coming in from referral already, it’s been actually pretty shocking to us to see that. We have a gentleman who was in a really traumatic car accident racing accident, he was a racecar driver, and had a really bad brain injury 12 years ago, and he still to this day is having difficulty with speech, difficulty in terms of speaking and then also cognitively making that connection in terms of being able to articulate the words he and you can tell, he understands, cognitively, everything’s fine, and everything’s there, but just having a difficult time getting the words out. And so were and when they asked me, you know, can this help him? You know, my response was lasers, you know, can help just about anybody. But I was obviously, as you could imagine, probably a little apprehensive just because of the fact that I’m, I’m not a neurologist. You know, I’m familiar to a degree with, you know, some of these protocols you’re talking about in terms of, you know, recovering, but in that instance, anything particular that you would recommend in that situation, in terms of protocols, specifically with the laser, specifically with speech, and things like that. Yeah,

Dr. Rob Silverman: Absolutely. So the concussion protocol that I would give you, obviously, again, I think you guys have to be one, the 635 or the four or 5am? Am I correct? 

Yeah, we have the 405.

Okay, great. Apply the 405 for, you know, two to 10 minutes. Again, you want to see how they respond to win you imbue the mitochondria. With all that energy. You’ll have them speak during the process, have them read, have them do a crossword puzzle. And also, I know we’re going to cover this and maybe some of the upcoming podcasts, vagus nerve stimulation, especially in VR, a regular portion of the body that is now without question, the hidden job. It’s a true clinical nugget to get that regular portion. And are you guys ready for this? I know I don’t want to give away everything. I know. We’re going to talk about it later. But you know, not everybody listens to every podcast, if you want to decrease the sympathetic activity, activation of the vagus nerve, laser, the trigeminal nerve. Okay, so doing all that, getting a little proprioception, doing some crossword puzzles, having them read, having them speak. So a little personal note, my mom had some trouble speaking with my mom, 93 and 91 and a half, she was starting to lose some of our cognitive ability, Nothing extravagant. Unfortunately, she got COVID COVID affected her brain cognition most. And it was pretty bad. You know, I’m a Jewish guy. As you guys said, from New York, my mom has never called me by my Hebrew name in my whole life, my Bar Mitzvah. And my mom was starting to call me by my Hebrew name when I walked in the house, which is, which will be out if I can use a particular type of binoculars? Yeah, so I’ve been doing exactly what we said. And you know, the only people in the world to call me Bob, so please don’t call me Bob, or my parents. She’s not referring to me, as Bob and cognitively is coming back. So that protocol was not mainly just for patients. That protocol was made to help my Jewish mom. So there was a lot of pressure there.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Thank you for sharing that story. You know, it’s interesting how some of these protocols come about. And again, we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, just out of sheer necessity to help people and help the people that are closest to us. So appreciate you sharing that story with us. I know Dr. Silverman, you do a lot of work with athletes and sports performance. How have you been using lasers for those types of patients?

Dr. Rob Silverman: I’ve been using them in a two fold manner using for protective and energetic so number one protective you know, I’m trying to decrease oxidative stress, improve our muscle fatigue, trying to decrease blood, blood lactate levels, obviously the inflammation that we talked about muscle injuries, etc. But for performance, people don’t realize how energetic the laser can have tremendous impacts on performance. Muscle strength gains speed of muscle adaptation, time to onset of muscle soreness, dramatically decreases time to exhaustion, stress, resistance and recovery and speed. The couple of studies in 2016 really spoke about laser and human muscle tissue having a tremendous advantage. In sports performance, they thought it was such an unfair advantage, they almost want to ban it on an Olympic level. I mean, think about that, and say that they want to ban it. Now from some personal notes. I’ll go to some gyms if they’ve been CrossFit gyms and everybody knows what a TR is a personal, fast or personal record. So I’ll tell some of my friends who want to compete. So let me ladies you before you do your why your workout of the day, let me lazy before you do your deadlift, and to a tee, everybody’s got a PR, I used to do that for my wife, she used to go to the cross my bench, but you gotta do 50 pushups, I can do 30 or 35. And my wife will not do a modified push up. That is just a no brainer not happening. So I’d have to raise her to get to 50. And I can tell you from you know, the weekend warrior, to the Olympic athletes, it’s giving them an unfair advantage in performance, who would want to adapt that into their lifestyle?

Dr. Chad Woolner: So can I can I put up timeout real quick here, just for a second, because the minute you said that, Dr. Silverman, I’m thinking, you know, from a business standpoint, I think you just gave docks here a golden nugget, diamond gem, whatever you want to call it in terms of a marketing opportunity here, I can just see this. And quite frankly, I think this is what we’re going to do. So we’re gonna go to our local CrossFit gym, we have a really good friend of ours who a patient of ours who runs a CrossFit gym here in town, just down the road, set up your laser, and offer that as an opportunity to see, you know, if you can’t help these people, you know, improve their prs. And, you know, boy, what an incredible hands on, you know, demo opportunity to show and showcase the power of these lasers in your practice, no doubt, I guarantee you, you would have these athletes coming into you immediately following that, especially when they see that kind of improvement. That’s that there. So I just wanted to kind of point that out and connect some dots when you said that there I thought that’s a genius idea.

Dr. Rob Silverman: I think that’s a great idea. And you can combine that with sports teams, because their performance base, whether it’s your peewee, your high school, your college, all the way up to your professional Olympic athletes. You know, they start somewhere. And that’s actually why I started my practices with sports injuries with a 10 year old and they grew up. And a lot of them played high school and played college, some even play professional. So I love the idea that you gave a practice management nugget for everybody to noodle on. Because the fact of the matter is, if we don’t see people, we can help them with the laser because the laser is abstractly into a room that I’m by myself. And we want all listeners, especially chiropractors to benefit from the utilization of lasers. And the reason that we want that is because we want to get them matches better. Yeah, there’s nothing better. It’s a non drug approach. Isn’t that what we like to remember? Drugs had their place, but unfortunately, it came with some side effects. There’s been no known contraindication of any of the 20 FDA clearances by our cornea. And without question, that excites me to no end. Because now the safety factor is on my side. There’s no shadow when the patient walks

Dr. Andrew Wells: I think we can have the fortunate benefit of having you Dr. Silverman for another podcast episode here. We’re going to record her very soon. But as we’re wrapping up here, can you just rattle off a list of conditions, other conditions that we maybe haven’t talked about that are useful with the laser,

Dr. Rob Silverman: Absolutely peripheral neuropathy. The Sides add up and I said that word specifically since I added sciatica carpal tunnel, believe it or not, here’s one for you. There’s some data that talks about decreasing tooth sensitivity after a dental bleaching event guy like me, I’m all about it. Vertical tinnitus. Believe it or not TMJ, TMD fibroid and I think we’ll get more into that in the gut, and autoimmune chronic asthma and maybe one of the biggest ones because we always liked that functional medicine overlay. Lasers have an effect on vitamin D and magnesium levels. It increases those levels. And lastly, because of my torticollis most people think I have dystonia, and I don’t buy cervical dystonia, as an FYI, and of course, congenital torticollis go for it guys.

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s amazing. I love it. Yeah, it’s incredible to hear like again, going back to kind of what Andrew started with. You know, I think most if Doc’s are aware of lasers, most are immediately going to kind of hone in on lasers being used dominantly for aches and pains, musculoskeletal in the you know, but but just the application. And I should say the implications of this are pretty incredible when you hear the wide array of different things that these lasers can be used for.

Dr. Andrew Wells: And one of the reasons we’re doing this podcast is to get the word out, I really wish that as I was going through your chiropractic school and early on in my career, I’d known about this because I would have purchased a laser and used it not just to help more patients, but because I saw it with Chiropractors, we see so many different types of conditions that this can help with. And I just see this is almost an indispensable tool that chiropractors can use for so many different problems that we’re trying to help our patients with. And so Dr. Silverman really appreciates you being on here to help educate doctors and educate patients on the use of laser therapy, and how it can be used for how it works. And why I think this should be a major tool in most, most chiropractic and even physician offices. So is there anything that you want for any parting wisdom that you want to leave us with? As we wrap this episode up?

Dr. Rob Silverman: Absolutely. Here’s something that I tell all my patients, one of my favorites, Jim Rome, take care of your body, it’s the only place in your house to live. Laser is really going to help you take care of it.

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s amazing. And you have a new book that’s coming out in September, the immune reboot, maybe tell us a little bit about that, what we can expect with that, where we can get all that fun stuff.

Dr. Rob Silverman: Well, over the last two and a half years, something has overtaken the world. And it’s called COVID. But it’s a virus. And one of the biggest problems that we in America had is that, as I alluded to before, we’re an unhealthy population. So I explain how the immune system works, how the immune system should work. And it has a plethora of protocols for everybody to utilize to keep their immune systems balanced, rejuvenated and resilient.

Dr. Chad Woolner: So if I’m hearing you correctly, there’s more that we can do proactively than what we’re hearing in terms of most of the mainstream. Messaging, correct.

Dr. Rob Silverman: What was that question? I was appalled. I loved the medical doctors. But I was appalled by the fact that people did not discuss the idea of ajisen type of functional nutrition to help the immune system in any status, or any desire or what patients wanted to do. I mean, one little study vitamin D levels of over 50, right? Nobody died, whether they were vaccinated or not, if their vitamin D level was over 50. So you know, as basic as vitamin d3 is with King two, let’s talk about sugar, for argument’s sake. 300 calories of carbohydrates at one time, decreased your immune system by 50% over a two hour period. So when I’m traveling two years ago, on a plane wearing a mask, and everyone’s wearing a mask, everybody’s having a frappuccino at Starbucks, it made no sense.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, yeah, crazy. Well, I’m looking forward to that book, I’m going to make sure we get it and definitely share that with our patients. Because I’m confident that that’s going to provide moving forward. I unfortunately don’t foresee a whole lot changing in terms of the current kind of mainstream paradigm. But at least this is going to be a tool to maybe potentially help combat a lot of that. And I’m going to use this term, very deliberately misinformation that’s out there in that respect. And so we appreciate all that you’re doing Dr. Silverman, we’re super excited for the book. And we’re super excited for Doc’s to get this information into their hands and into their practices and ultimately, so they can help their patients. So Doc’s, we appreciate you listening in. We hope this has been incredibly insightful and valuable for you. Now go and start using these, these lasers and these protocols that you’ve learned here from Dr. Silverman to better help your patients and so we will share more with you guys on the next episode. Have an amazing day. We’ll talk to you later. Thanks for listening to the laser light show. Be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about our Konya lasers, just head on over to or codea.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources including research news and links to upcoming live events, as well as are CONUS e community where you can access for free additional resources including advanced training and business tools. Again, thanks for listening and we will catch you on the next episode.

[OUTRO] 

Thanks for listening to the laser light show, be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about our Erchonia lasers, just head on over to Erchonia.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources including research news and links to upcoming live events, as well as the Erchonia community where you can access for free additional resources including advanced training and business tools. Again, thanks for listening and we will catch you on the next episode.

Podcast Episode #14: Lasers in MMA with Dr. Mark Burdorf and Henry Cejudo

In this episode, we interview Dr. Marc Burdorf and his patient, Olympic gold medalist, and two-time UFC champ Henry Cejudo. Learn how Erchonia lasers have been an integral part of Henry’s training and performance in and out of the octagon.

https://www.instagram.com/henry_cejudo/?hl=en

https://twitter.com/HenryCejudo

https://drburdorf.com/

Dr. Chad Woolner: What’s going on everybody, Dr. Chad Woolner here with my good friend Dr. Andrew Wells and this is episode 14 of the laser light show and on today’s episode we have with us special guests Dr. Marc Burdof and Henry Sahudu and so we’re really excited to really dig into this episode, talk about lasers and their applications with Henry and his career in UFC and beyond. So with that being said, let’s get to it. 

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to laser light shows at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They would put on these amazing light shows with incredible designs synced up to some of my favorite music. From the Beatles to Pink Floyd to Jimmy Hendrix and Metallica; they were awesome. Little did I know then that lasers would have such a profound effect on my life decades later. As a chiropractic physician, I have seen first-hand just how powerful laser therapy is in helping patients struggling with a wide range of health problems. As the leader in laser therapy, Erchonia has pioneered the field in obtaining 20 of the 23 total FDA clearances for therapeutic application of lasers. On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low-level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Woolner along with my good friend Dr. Andrew Wells and welcome to The Laser Light Show.

All right, we have with us Dr. Burdof and Henry Suhto, welcome to the show both of you! We’re super excited to have you guys here. 

Dr. Burdorf & Henry Suhto: Thank you! Thank you for having us. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yesh! Absolutely! So, if the name sounds familiar for any wrestling and MMA fans, you’ll know the name Henry Suhto. But, I just want to point out the fact that he, I believe, was the youngest American wrestler to win the gold medal and that was in 2006. Is that right?

Dr. Burdorf & Henry Suhto: 2008

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, 2008, and then went on to a really great MMA career as well. So, I followed you when you were wrestling and loosely followed you in MMA and many people have said one of the greatest combat athletes of all time, so pretty impressive background. Today, obviously we’re gonna be talking about, with Dr. Burdorf, how laser therapy has helped you with your physical health and overall health and also performance in combat sports. I’d like to start off with stating the obvious that when you’re a wrestler and an MMA athlete, the amount of physical abuse that you put your body through. Whether it’s just from the rigorous training or from fighting it puts an amazing amount of pressure and a huge toll on your body. You’re still a young guy but what I wanted to start off with, and you’re in amazing shape obviously, but what is this career? What kind of impact has this career had on your physical body?

Henry Suhto: Well, it all goes back to, well I’ve been dealing with Dr. Marc for over the past decade. I think overall, years in the making, and just the difference of having somebody that understands a neurologist/chiropractor understand the game of lasers or even you know, explain these certain things that are, according to my eyes, things of that nature. Obviously the sport I do is rigorous in my brain, you know. I do want to say I don’t get hit enough now but I get hit. So, that being said, it’s like you got to use this technology and find the right engineers and right resources and I think that’s really giving me the longevity and success that I have. You know, it’s pinpointing all of that because, you know, the layers really make a huge difference. And I’m going to talk about how Dr. Barbara actually got the word problems lasers I had, I had sprained my ankle. When I was fighting, I went over to the upper division on that Monday night, I sprained my ankle fine for a second UFC title. And there’s this, I might even have to pull out you’re gonna have to pull out we have to find every type of resource to do so. Yeah, we really were a difference when we started getting lazier on the on my left ankle, I just thought that was like the biggest impact that really took me to a whole nother level. It’s just like, it’s crazy to think of a lesion that within days wasn’t 100% But I was so much better than I was right after I got injured. You know, so I think Little things like that. What we do with Dr. Marc it’s the proper adjustments when it was completed the time coming in with them in conjunction With a lady who has just spoken to senergy that I think people tend to miss some. They know the technology portion of what it actually brings and I can tell you I was tested in some of the lasers to be able to, you know, to win a second UFC bill. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s amazing. Dr. Marc, do you have advanced training in neurology we’re working with? Henry, are you working with him from just an injury standpoint? Are you also working with him from a neurologist to make sure that he’s performing at a high level or both of those?

Dr. Burdorf: Yeah, I mean, we do neuro rehab. I mean, I do less than chiropractors do a lot more neuro rehab. It was all about sidenote doing eye exercises and balanced exercises. And you know, myself also kind of like animal science projects or Guinea pigs because that fight when he beat Maria’s for the second title UFC, so he sprained his ankle and by the safety of God got a friend we got Dave, the whole line as a friend is pretty close second, and Dave got on the phone with me and he had your one of your handlers from fire open up by rate from neuro force one comb. And it’s one thing I came up with the protocol of lasering, frequent several times a day and we basically lasers Henry, he picked up the laser Tuesday night, and got to Chicago. And I came in on Friday and you know, took over but they were laser on him like every three, four hours around the clock. And that’s how I knew ahead of Linden Mason, physical therapist, she taped them and everything, but I had nightmares the last couple nights, there was a I saw Henry going into a kid and washed his left ankle buckle and boots. And when Henry came out, and he won, and his previous sight when he brought Dillashaw you know, he destroyed recruiting two seconds, I never heard from Henry. And Sunday morning after Maria spike calls me up, I am unable to speak at work. And I worked on him all day. And I had to go home at about six o’clock that night. He came on the following Wednesday and went to see you on Sunday. So women have a laser protocol for his concussion. And so we put them back together. And it’s been, it’s been a fun run. Looks like it’s going to start all over again.

Henry Suhto: Before coming to Dr. Marc, especially like that, and that’s the edge. This is what Dr. Marc has, here’s the edge of being able to combine those two components. The neurology with the chiropractic work, they’re typically I don’t think you can just have one without the other. At least I don’t know, I’m a big proponent, Dr. More trauma, you know, I understand what the quality is. You know, it’s the longevity way isn’t because like I said, I’m a good speaker, I can speak just for that same reason that I’ve been able to take care of the neurology portion up here. So this is where you get credit.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, I would imagine that this is a really challenging area to navigate for a lot of high level athletes in that you go down the supplement route. And that can create all sorts of problems unintentionally, because of all the various banned substances and things like that, that that performers may not even know about, and are aware of, and so finding how to be able to recover faster, and optimize your performance without running into any of those potential problems. I mean, I know that like the TJ Dillashaw fight, for example, after the fight, correct me if I’m wrong, but I remember hearing something about he had gotten tested and found that he had had some performance enhancing substances in his system. And so I would imagine that this is a really powerful way for you to kind of navigate those waters safely, right. So you can really make sure that you’re optimizing your performance without having to worry about any of those potential concerns that could come up in those other areas, correct.

Henry Suhto: No, 100% I think a lot of people have a lot of fires in particular. They don’t focus enough on recovery. Recovery, like the labor issues, aren’t practical. That’s the real recovery. It’s not about just working hard like you can, you have to maintain that Ferrari according to No, you can’t just throw 100,000 miles and not change the oil. Absolutely. You have to be able to have the ability and just have the right or the right to take it to take it to that extent. You know, just like the concussion portion I you know, like my and that’s part of my IQ. Yeah, you know, with the Doc show, there’s been federal funding that talks like you got to come in. So you know, coming in and doing that but not just speed but a lot of my my mentor days online, a lot of fighters that caught on to this, this whole therapy, laser thing earpiece stuff that makes a huge difference. I remember how to bump foot, I think it was with one of my clients, and I was able to just pinpoint it, there were relationships within three sessions. But coming back to where I was in like limping or anything like that, because you can see that there you can see the progress, like immediately, you know, which is not, you know, it should seem surreal at times, you don’t I mean, that’s why I like my big bank or five, being able to be able to at least move they have the ability to move around, where it was cool. It was expensive. So, you know, we all have a lot to do, you know, with the process of technology.

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s amazing.  I imagine with the recovery work that you do, does this allow you to, to work out harder when you’re fully recovered and prepare better for fights?

Henry Suhto: Oh, 100%. So, but sometimes in the fight camp, I was, I’ve seen Dr. America at least, maybe a couple, two or three times a week, depending on, you know, on the fighter, the fighter, how am I fine, we’re still in. And, of course, of course, if I can, but there’s all sorts of processes that are in place, because I don’t always want to spike because that can also lead to injury. So there’s, there’s a way where it is that you should keep, we’re not just spiking now, there’s only about two spikes per week that we always tend to do. Or after we spar, we do that and that’s when we should be hit with releases. Because that’s just one example. We probably took a little bit of blows that could affect us throughout the week. So it’s always important to Hey, now I gotta go here. This is the first thing I should do after I get them spar because if a motorcycle you get into these, you can get into these mini car wrecks that, you know, I mean, it happened like twice a week or at least once a week. We’re just like, if you don’t, if you don’t, you know you’re you can be salvaged. You know what I mean? Like the opposite about cars, you can beat a cipher to that point. Well, there’s a way to piping. I think it’s also important that you have to like the right. I call them engineers, your trainers, your training partners, making sure that everybody’s using the exact same simulation look, with the opponents you’re gonna find and making sure you’re speaking. So it’s also adding a physiologist, you know, somebody that can really also pinpoint your schedule. Wow. And you’re adding the infrared saunas in there. And the therapeutic type shape conditioning. You know, we’re not so much focused on power. And I just feel like that’s what a lot of people are, are missing it but don’t have the edge. And this is why we have a great team. That’s why we’re able to bring world championships to, you know, to Gnosis to Scottsdale, Arizona.

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s amazing and you know, Henry, you brought up a really good point, I want to go back to this. You talked about long term brain health, and I can’t help but think about Muhammad Ali, who took so many shots to the head as a boxer and other people who are in combat sports or people who are professional football players, college football players, high school wrestlers, high school football player that do so much damage just from these repetitive car accidents right to the head. What are you looking for? Do you have a game plan? Or are you kind of looking forward to what your health looks like 10-20- 30 years from now so that you can now maintain your health and enjoy your life that you’ve worked so hard for, like what does that long term maintenance look like for you?

Henry Suhto: I feel good this is the same reason why I’m coming back I thought he’d be happy for your feedback and that means a lot to me because we’ve done a lot and but at the same time it’s like I’m so healthy and I am in my prime I think there’s a way that we can do this again and you know I’m able to you know have a have a family perspective. The moment is a little different now but now it’s my wireless shot. Shot cuz she dropped

Dr. Burdorf: It’s like LEGO Star Wars, Muhammad Ali never had the opportunity. And the cool thing is, when Henry gets injured, I see him right away afterwards. So rather than the people and there’s a lot of people my age that took some shots in their 20s and now they’re brain dead and then 50s And so that’s the cool thing is sooner you can address something afternoon injury, recovery chance goes way up. Like I said, we’re trying to maintain a very long life after he cites it finally ending it up.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, this was a great point mark. And this was one of the reasons we were really excited to have Henry on the podcast because I think it’s so important for either doctors, chiropractors or kids listening to this program that If you’re in a sport like like Henry’s performed at a high level and or at any level, you definitely have to think you know, about brain health and nerve health long term so that we don’t end up in degenerative nerve conditions are on the rise, it’s getting worse, it’s not getting better. And here we have such a simple technology like laser therapy that can have a huge impact on the quality of somebody’s life long term. That’s easy to do that can be in the hands of almost anybody. It shouldn’t be in the hands of anybody doing any kind of physical sport, what Henry’s involved in. And so I think there’s a good opportunity for you to be an advocate for brain health in the future.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, absolutely. And I was gonna say, it sounds like that’s what’s happening, Henry, it sounds like a lot of the other fighters are picking up on this technology as well. Do you see that evolving over the next 510 years where this becomes kind of more mainstream and or standard for training camps?

Henry Suhto: 100% and I think we’re just I think we’re a little bit ahead of our time. You know, in that we’re at the end of the recovery, like even my ship condition is in what’s called neuro force format, where it’s, it’s pinpointed to, you know, to science. Yeah. And with the lasers that Dr. Marks has here, constantly, you know, I mean, lasers just everywhere, especially if you’re in the brain, it saw, Oh, man, it’s an edge band that I can only send it I’m just blessed to have the people around me that whole other people could follow because it’s because now we do have life after sports. We do have to have to be able to do interviews, be able to convey the message, according to you guys.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah. It’s clear that you’re thinking way further ahead than probably many, if not, most aren’t. So, that’s amazing to hear that you’ve got the kind of people that are playing checkers and we’re just, we’re playing 3D chess. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: So Henry, we know that you have a crazy busy schedule. Today is no exception to that. So we really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to be here with us. Any final thoughts number one, and or number two, anything coming up that you want to share with anybody on the podcast in terms of exciting things going on with you?

Henry Suhto: No, of course, final thoughts are making a comeback. To come back. Oh my gosh, she’s fighting for a third copy to become the first 3d rendered champion in history. That’s my goal. And you got to find the right team, find the right team. Know how to structure your training camp. And, you know, take it as far as your competition, the competition between you and yourself. You know, take care of yourself and have the right engineers and use Find the edge and everything that’s whether it’s lasers, whether it’s just ice baths, things of that nature, understand the understand how to peak with whatever it is that you’re whatever it is that you’re doing any you can just go full time. So my biggest thing is what I take from one of the successes that I’ve done is having the right team yes to be out there fighting in the cage. But you know, without Dr. Umar Pathak things alone, without my trading partner without my coaches, like, a lot of stuff, I wouldn’t be possible.

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s amazing, wonderful words of wisdom. I was gonna say, you know, I’ve trained in Brazilian jujitsu. And the one thing you’ll learn about me as I am, the mediocre is jujitsu practitioner you’ll ever meet in your life. That’s my claim to fame. But the thing I was going to say in harmony with what you’re saying is my instructor, that was his big, really, his big soapbox was making sure that when you train jiu jitsu, you train for life. And so making sure emphasis is on proper technique, proper training, you’re not exactly like you said, Go Go going full bore all the time. That’s just not a sustainable approach. And so making sure that you approach it strategically. And I love that analogy, use of playing chess when others are playing checkers, thinking down the road, and really investing in your health and especially in brain health. That’s such a huge, and I would say to that that emphasis on being a thinking fighter is got to be huge for you really being an analytical fighter in terms that makes all the difference in the world for your performance. So absolutely incredible. We’re rooting for you. We’re super excited as you as you’ve engaged, they’re in the ring. We’re super excited about that. Anything you want to end with Dr. Wells.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Just want to reiterate, yeah, thanks, Henry for your time, and thanks for bringing your experience to the lives of other doctors and Dr. Mark. You’re amazing. Thanks for facilitating this and helping promote this technology not just for athletes and fighters, but for everybody who needs this type of therapy. So thank you guys so much. We really appreciate it.

Dr. Burdorf & Henry Suhto: Yeah, thank you guys, 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Thanks, everybody. Alright, that’s it. Doc’s. Thanks for being here. We appreciate it. Hope you guys found this valuable. Super excited to hear about Dr. Mark and what he’s doing to really revolutionize things in the MMA world and for high performance athletes. We appreciate Henry being here with us and we’ll talk to you guys later.

 

[OUTRO] 

Thanks for listening to the laser light show, be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about our Konya lasers, just head on over to Erchonia.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources including research news and links to upcoming live events, as well as the Erchonia community where you can access for free additional resources including advanced training and business tools. Again, thanks for listening and we will catch you on the next episode.

Podcast Episode #13: The Family Business with Vanessa Brown

Join us as we interview Vanessa Brown, nominee for female entrepreneur of the year in the northern UK. After seeing the amazing benefits or Erchonia lasers as a healthcare provider, Vanessa joined the Erchonia family to help other experts learn how to use lasers to help more patients and build a dynamic business.

Linkedin Vanessa Brown

https://www.emeraldlaser.co.uk/

https://www.vlaesthetics.co.uk/

Transcript:

Dr. Chad Woolner: What’s going on everybody? Dr. Chad Woolner here with Dr. Andrew Wells, and this is episode 13 of the Laser Light Show. And on today’s episode, we have with us Vanessa Brown, and she’s gonna be talking about the family business. So let’s get to it.

[INTRO]

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to laser light shows at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They would put on these amazing light shows with incredible designs, synced up to some of my favorite music from The Beatles to Pink Floyd, to Jimi Hendrix and Metallica. They were awesome. Little did I know then that lasers would have. Found affected my life decades later as a chiropractic physician. I have seen firsthand just how powerful laser therapy is at helping patients struggling with a wide range of health problems. As the leader in laser therapy, Erchonia has pioneered the field in obtaining 20 of the 23 total FDA clearances for therapeutic application of lasers.On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Walner. With my good friend, Dr. Andrew Wells, and welcome to the Laser Light Show.

Dr. Chad Woolner: On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Warner, along with my good friend, Dr. Andrew Wells, and welcome to the Laser Light Show. All right. Welcome to the show everybody, and a huge welcome to Vanessa. Glad to have you here. 

Vanessa Brown: Hey, so good to be here. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: So Vanessa, you are over in the uk, is that correct? 

Vanessa Brown: Correct. Yeah, I’m over in the north of England at the moment. The weather changes for July, which is good. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s awesome. Yeah. We were saying before the show, the title of this episode sounded like we were gonna be interviewing, a mafia Family is what it was. But this is not a mafia family. This is a healthcare family, is what we’re talking about here. 

Vanessa Brown: Yeah. I mean, we could rebrand The Sopranos probably, but I mean, we’ll see. We’ll see how this podcast goes and then see there could be a future for it. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s hilarious. It’s interesting the more podcast episodes we do, this is number 13, but if you go back and listen to some of the previous episodes, you’re gonna hear this common theme with rc that this is a family business. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah. And you don’t have the last name shanks. So you weren’t born into the family, but maybe we can start off by talking about how you actually are the ER family. Maybe you can start off there. 

Vanessa Brown: Yeah. Yeah. So I have been involved in business since I was a young girl, so probably since about 10, 11 years old. I’ve been involved in family business, my own family business, and my own kind of entrepreneurship things that I do. I started out in business when I was about 12 years old. And I would basically sell celebrity autographs on eBay. I would write to celebrities. I would get their autographs for free, and then I would sell them for about 20, 30 pounds each. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s genius. 

Vanessa Brown: So that’s how I kinda first started in business. Obviously I think then people caught on that you can just write them letters and they will send you them for free instead of obviously having to buy them. So that obviously business, I had to switch it up a little, and then I didn’t, when I just, just for the record, I didn’t realize that, and so the wheels are turning in my head right now. I think I’m gonna start that business here in the States . Well, I actually did, so obviously I’m in England, so I used to write like reality TV kind of people over in England. But I did write a few letters to people in the States and I didn’t actually hear back from anyone. So maybe you guys can do that and then you might get a better response because obviously your address will be a US Postal address, so it’ll be okay. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s amazing. 

Vanessa Brown: And then what happened was when I was about, kind of 13, 14, my parents had a family business I was involved in from a young age. So I’ve always had that business sort of, sense and I’ve always, always wanted to do that. Then I went to school, then I went to university. I graduated with a Master’s in International Business Management and then I took over our family business. So hence the family business podcast title. Originally it was a health and wellness clinic, which I think tied in so nicely to the ethos that Erchonia has all about improving health. It’s all about improving wellbeing for. So I took over the family business and it was originally health and wellness. And when I graduated and now it was five years ago,, I rebranded it into a medical aesthetic spa. So we basically focus on result driven face, body and laser treatment.We’re an award-winning clinic, we’re a C Q C registered clinic. So for anybody, in the UK listening, that basically means we’re a medical grade, and a medical ledge clinic. So everything is done to the highest standard. So when you do anything to the highest standards, you need to be using the most effective clinically proven technologies that are on the market. That’s obviously what patients looks for. So I suppose that’s how I got into Erchonia because as, you know, a business woman who runs a business looking for the next latest thing, the next latest piece of technology,, being in the UK we always look at what’s in the states because the states are so far ahead that’s so much more advanced than we are in the UK. So whatever happens in the States, I always look at that as.  I came across the Emerald Laser, which is a CO’s premium fat loss laser. I came across that probably about 18 months ago now, and I was really impressed with it. I wanted to bring it into my own clinic, because we were missing a gap. We were missing technology that could treat larger patients, but wouldn’t just treat larger patients would do it from a very safe and healthy and effective way. In Europe and the UK we are bombarded with so many different devices that just don’t, they do not have an FDA clearance to do what they are promoting. I was looking for something that was really result driven and then I came across the Emerald Laser and then I met Simon Ramshaw, who everyone knows is the managing director of Erchonia over in Europe and then East Africa. And, yeah, conversations just started going from that point. Simon was looking for somebody to run the UK market and I was available. I was at that point where I’d grown the business so much that I didn’t need to be involved in it on a day-to-day basis and I think that’s the good thing about being an entrepreneur and being a businesswoman. You wanna build a business up so that your business generates income when you don’t physically have to be there. So yeah, Simon was looking for somebody to run the UK market, and it just happened, our paths crossed at the right time, and yeah, that’s how I joined. 

Chad Woolner: Really? That’s amazing. So what, what was it that I,  imagine that not many, clinic owners and operators would ever sort of make the gap between representing the, so you started off, in other words, you started off with the client and now you’re actually representing RC  to other providers. What was it, what was special about RCIA that made you even consider that opportunity of being not only a client but also working with Erchonia.

Vanessa Brown:  Yeah, I think it’s because it’s still a family business. Obviously Erchonia in the state is still family oriented. Obviously the company has grown so much over the last 26 years, but it is still a family orientated company. Coming from a family business myself, that’s a really important value that I feel when I look to go into partnership with a company. So that ethos resonates a lot with me and all of every single Erchonia doctor that uses the lasers thoroughly believes in what they do. You know, Erchonia is not the type of company that will pay doctors to say what they want them to, to stay at the end of the day. It’s all that belief that really comes from your own experience. So when I speak to other clinic owners in the UK, I can talk firsthand from my experience, and I know that the lasers deliver a, I haven’t seen anything that can deliver a result when it comes to fat loss, quite like the emeralds. Do you speak from your own personal experiences, firsthand results that you see?  and I think that that adds so much value. And that’s what I really enjoy. I really enjoy sharing my experience. I really enjoy teaching other clinics how they can integrate, let’s say, the emeralds into their practice and how they can make it a success because the technology is so great that so many more people need to have access to it. It’d be great if every single person had a handheld laser, but you know, it’s, it’s maybe. Feasible as we’d like it to be. But yeah, the technology speaks for itself and it’s, I just love every day talking about it because it just comes so naturally. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: That was one of the things that Simon had mentioned was the challenge in the European markets is they seem to be, way more flooded and inundated with, you know, he dubbed the Wild West, you know, even though it’s in the East  to US. Anyways, , you know, there were just so many different, you know, various. Technologies and products that were being presented, that it’s gotta be pretty exhausting for doctors to see all of this and, and try and make sense of all this. And so, for you, obviously that’s what drew you to Erchonia was the fact that it stood out above. A lot of these other technologies. The question I would have for you is, how do you help doctors kind of make that distinction? Cause that was one of the conversations and questions we had for Simon as well, is, you know, how are you able to really help convey that, to the doctors so that they don’t just lump this together and kind of put this in with all the Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve, I’ve seen this before. I’ve, I’ve done this before. Yeah. These things don’t work. You know, how is that being conveyed to them?

Vanessa Brown: Yeah, but it’s obviously just having an honest conversation with doctors that is so, so important. It’s like, let’s say if you listen to Trevor Barry, you listen to Dave Murphy, you listen to Rob Silverman, when they talk, they talk from their own clinical experience. So it’s not as if you are trying to, let’s say, sell something to somebody. Obviously being a businesswoman, that’s obviously what we’re born to do. You know, it’s a skill that we have. However, I always think you want to talk about how you’ve made it a success because then people will stay, okay, well that’s quite straightforward. This is the template of what I do, and then they can learn from that really. So that’s what I do, especially with a lot of the clinics in the UK. I talk to them about how we’ve integrated the laser into our practice, the different plans that we have, how they can make a serious return on investment, which is so important when you’re investing a lot of money into something. You want a quick return on investments and you wanna be confident in your investments. So I teach them that and I think that that’s so, so important. I always have Erchonia , especially in the UK. We’re not like other companies in the marketplace. We don’t wanna flood the market with so many different devices. We prefer to have real relationships with our doctors, real relationships with our clinics. And I think that’s what stands us out from the rest. Not only the fact that we have the most result driven technology with the highest level of scientific backing, and that, that for me is a big, big reason why I decided to join the company. You know, going from running your own business to working for a company is very different. So that was a big, big, kind of motivation for me. And, you know, you’ve got to get on with the people that you work with. You’ve got to enjoy where you work. And you know, Erchonia definitely delivers. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, that’s, that’s important. I was gonna say, I think I read in your bio that you guys at your clinic have over 1,505 star reviews. Is that correct? 

Vanessa Brown: We do, yes. So we have, yes, we have over 300 on Google alone and on our booking software. I believe it’s over 1,100. So far, so yeah, we do, we do have quite a lot of five star reviews. So again, the whole patient experience is very, very important for clinics because everyone can have a machine. Everyone can have a device that someone doesn’t come to your clinic just because of one device you have, right? It’s that full patient experience that you have. From, let’s say the moment you book an appointment, the moment you walk in through the front door, you see the receptionist, you speak to them before you actually even go in for your appointment, you know, when you have like a glass of water. It’s that full experience that, I think, sets you out from competition  and that’s how you’re gonna generate repeat business at the end of the day. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Well, and, and I think what you’re talking about. Hopefully, maybe tying this all together is when people invest in a piece of technology like this, I think they want to know and feel that they’re not just investing in the technology itself, but also they’re investing in those relationships that come naturally or should come naturally attached to that technology. Yeah. And as a result of kind of, again, what Erchonia has brought to the table in terms of that kind of family dynamic. I think that’s something really cool that doctors can, can feel a certain level of assurance and confidence in, you included, you know, is that the reason why I brought up the, the, the 1,505 star reviews is I think that says a lot, that speaks really loud to who they’re going to be getting involved with. You know, that, that you’re, that’s something we reiterate to doctors all the time. Both Dr. Wells and I are, we try and help them understand I’m, I’m full-time in practice myself, and so I want them to need them to know, like I’m right there in the trenches alongside you. I’m not simply, you know, this distantly removed consultant, but rather I’m involved in this as well as you are as well. And so I think that that bodes very well for their confidence in working with you and working with Erchonia. You know that when they invest, they’re gonna be involved with, and working with kind of, almost partnering with people that they know they can trust. 

Vanessa Brown: Yeah, definitely. You don’t really get that ethos with a lot of companies. And I was saying yesterday, just before we decided to film this pop podcast, I had an interview because I’m a finalist in a Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for women in the northwest of England.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Congratulations. 

Vanessa Brown: And I was, thank you so much. I was saying one of the things that I really love to do is to share my experiences with people and to, to help them get better in their own career and in their own professional development. That’s something that I really enjoy doing and I learn all the time from other clinics, like I go to clinics, I speak to other doctors, and I pick up tips and I think, well, that’s how we can improve our clinic. I’ll bring that back. You know, which is why I always think it’s so, so important to network with your peers, network with other doctors, network with other clinic owners, because you never know when you have a conversation with someone, what tip you may pick up. So that’s really useful. And I teach our doctors and clinics to do the same. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, that’s brilliant, brilliant insight. I wanted to switch gears a little bit, Vanessa, maybe, you can talk to how you’re using these lasers in your clinic with aesthetics. You mentioned body contouring, and we hear a lot about laser therapy for fat loss and body contouring, but what ways are you actually using this on patients?

Vanessa Brown: For what, like what types of conditions or what is the outcome? 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yes, that, that some of your patients are coming to see you for; 

Vanessa Brown: Okay, so we have the Emerald Laser and we have the E B R L laser, and we have the Accelerate laser as well. So we use the Emerald Laser as essentially our gold standard when it comes to fat loss. So anytime a patient comes in and they’re concerned with fat loss, you need to dubuque an area and you need to dubuque  it before you start sculpting it with other types of body contouring technologies that you’re likely to have in the clinic. So our Emerald Laser is our go-to for fat. It works extremely effectively, obviously because it’s a cold laser, there’s no downtime with the treatment, so patients don’t feel any discomfort. Typically with fat loss technologies, you are used to something being painful, uncomfortable. It’s not what you really want and you look forward to it if you have to have multiple sessions. So when you come into the Emerald Laser, it’s obviously a very pain-free treatment. And patients really look forward to coming for their next session. So we typically do two treatments a week for a period of either four or six weeks, depending on how much fat that patient has to lose. Obviously because the Emerald laser is FDA cleared for overall body circumference, BMI to 40, the larger the patients we find that they need, extra treatments obviously, cause there’s more factor breakdown.vSo we do different packages. We tend to do packages with six, um, eight or 10 treatments depending on the patient’s needs, their lifestyle. Um, so yeah, that’s typically how we use the ODE laser. Anyone who comes in for fat loss, and that’ll be used at the abdomen, thighs, the back, the arms, anywhere. We will always, always go to the Emerald Laser. Two deep broken areas and to break down the start, when we look at using, either the E V R L or the accelerate, which is obviously the 6 35 nanometer wavelength in the 4 0 5 nanometer wavelength, we basically use that for accelerated healing and pain management. We also, sometimes with the Emerald laser, we’ll treat the vagus nerve to add that extra element of health and wellness to the treatment plan. You know, if you’ve got a patient who, um, has a few different health conditions, you’d need to improve their overall health. And there’s nothing better obviously then let’s say the E V R L or the accelerator that will do that. And because of the power of the two, two wavelengths at 65 and 4 0 5 as well, 

Dr. Andrew Wells: So you, you mentioned that you con, sort of converted your family. More from, what is it, from a pain based clinic into aesthetics. Tell me about that, that transition. 

Vanessa Brown: Yeah, so it started off in 2009 as, um, a health and wellbeing clinic. So we, actually brought technology, ironically from the states as well. We used hydrotherapy beds, vibration were quite a big trend back in 2009, 2010, and we basically, It was more of a fitness clinic. However, my passion has always been kind of like aesthetics in beauty, but in result-driven obviously treatment. So then, naturally the business wanted to go through a stage of remodeling because obviously trends change in business. And this is another thing to really, really keep an eye out as an entrepreneur. You need to keep an eye on the latest trends and the latest technological advancements, because if you don’t keep up to date with that, you’re just gonna fall behind your competition. So the business came to a point where it needed to be restructured. I just graduated. I was a typical person that had just graduated. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. You know, I think everyone is usually in that same boat. Some people know from a young age. I was not one of those people. I always knew I wanted to be in business, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after you graduate and then as soon as you graduate, you’re like, okay, well what do I do now? So then naturally my mom was like, well, do you know what? This business needs to be structured. It needs to be. So then she was like, do you wanna take over the business? And I was like, look, I don’t really wanna work for anybody. I wanna be my own boss. Like, you know, you do, your mom’s, your mom, you don’t want her boss if you’re around at work. She was like, she was like, honestly, like, I will not be involved whatsoever. You do your thing, I will leave you to it. And then sort of after,  about a 10, 12 month period. Revenue massively increased. We rebranded, we started with one treatment room. Um, we now have nine treatment rooms in total. Wow. We’ve invested over 50,000 pounds in a refurbishment, and we have over probably 750,000 pounds worth equipment in that clinic, top end equipment, and obviously the econ lasers fall within that top end spectrum. The reason I mentioned the level of investment is because the level of investment in technology is important because there’s copycat devices out there that just do not work. So you can buy a machine for, let’s say, a fraction of the price, but it will not deliver the results to your patients. And your patients will then say, well, I went there and it didn’t. Business is word of mouth. If you do not have a good reputation, you cannot grow your business organically. It’s just a failure. So you have to invest in the right type of technology, and you have to do your research as to what the best technology is out there. And that’s, I suppose, why. The business continues to grow, even through the pandemic it grew. It’s because patients are looking for, they’re, they’re clever now. They wanna spend their hard-earned money on something that they know is gonna improve their life and improve their overall health. So they do their due diligence. So yeah, you’ve, you’ve got to invest in the best possible technology. Otherwise, at the end of the day, you’re letting your patients down. You may think you’re saving money in the short term, but you’re really not.

Dr. Andrew Wells : Yeah. I think a really important point that I should kind of reemphasize for doctors who are listening to this is that, I think very naturally they want to think in terms of reducing overhead and I would just simply echo exactly what you said. The one area that you shouldn’t be looking to cut corners on is the technology that you’re incorporating into your, into your practice, for the very reasons that you said, you know, and, and the thing is, is that I’ve seen.  Over the years being in practice, I’ve seen, you know, in various locations, in working with doctors, I call the clinics that do that churn and burn clinics because the only way that they can make a go of that, because they’re not delivering results, is they have to constantly.

You know, kind of burn out an area with their marketing and then, and then they basically take the carnival to the next town. Yeah. You know, and, and do that. What you’re talking about is a business model that has sustainable growth. You can, you don’t have to leave the area, so to speak, do the, do the walk of shame because you’re delivering what you’re, what you’re promising in essence, because you’ve invested in that technology, because you’re delivering results for people. And so there’s this just very natural kind of, You know, organic, expansion and growth that happens as a result of that because you, you know, that what you’ve, what you’ve put into it in terms of the investment, not just the money investment, but the time and education investment as well. It pays off naturally. So, that’s awesome. That’s a really important point that I hope doctors who are listening, clue into. I, I remember, Chad, we were, we were at a conference together. This was a while.  and I remember, you know, talking to other doctors at this conference and, and this was right when we started to first learn about Erchonia and I remember asking this other doctor who also runs a consulting business, I said, Hey, what do you think about Erchonia lasers? And I asked him that question because he also, in his company’s business advocates, a similar type of, actually I’ll say a technology that admits red light . So it’s not, not laser technology, but I said, Hey, what do you think about Erchonia? And he said, oh, don’t, yeah, don’t, don’t buy one of those. They’re too expensive. He’s like, I got better, I got a much better thing. And I know what he sells. He sells a device that he buys from China. White labels it and sells it to his doctors. And think about the reason I asked this guy this question. The interesting thing about his following is. Where they’re very much like you said Chad, they like the circus tent. Yes. They like, they get really hot on something on this opportunity and they market the heck out of it and it delivers Okay. Results or less than optimal results. I never hear, I never hear of like massive success stories out of that group or patients. You always hear about business success Yes, but not clinical success. Right. They sell the heck outta those things. Yes. And I think some docs, sometimes doctors get confused and I’m glad Vanessa’s bringing this up, is not to think so short term. . Well, yeah, I could. I could sell a patient on this thing that emits green light or this thing that emits red light. But if you’re not delivering the result, what you end up doing then is reinvesting a bunch of money on the next best thing, and then having to rebrand your clinic.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yes, set up your clinic again, spend more money on it with new equipment, and then you only have to go through like two cycles of that in your community before your community says. That location there, that clinic, whatever it’s called, not changing every, whatever it’s called this week, don’t trust them.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Right. You know what it’s like, it’s like if you, if you buy a car, right? And you buy like an old secondhand car that is not, you know, it’s probably not reliable. But you could either spend that money on a cheaper car or you could spend money on a brand new car. You are probably by the time you take it into the repair shop, by the time you have to spend so much money to constantly repair it, you are probably better just spending the money on a brand new car that’s more reliable. Will it be safe, will it deliver a result. We’ll literally get you from A to B. And it’s the same concept when it comes to investing in your. At the end of the day, it’s your business and it’s your reputation. You, you know, it’s your hard earned money. You want to be, providing your patients with the best because they don’t deserve any less. Right? And, and if you don’t provide your patients with the best, you’re gonna attract the wrong type of patients. That will just cause you so many problems that it’s probably not even worth you getting up in the morning to go to work. You know, like you just, you need to. Especially when you go into business, you need to have a vision of what type of establishment you wanna be, who’s your demographic, and who you want to target. And, I think that that’s very, very important and that that’s what’s really gonna answer a lot of questions. If you are in business at the moment, you’re thinking to expand or you’re thinking to even get into business, have a vision, and have a solid vision as the way you wanna be. I built up the business in five. and now it runs itself. But that’s hard work. It’s reputation, it’s investment. Everything is continuously invested back into the business because at the end of the day, if you, if you keep having to attract new patients, cause your patients won’t come back, it’s like having a bucket with holes in it.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Absolutely. And you keep putting water in it. It, it’s just, it’s, it’s not sustainable long. Especially if, you know, if you’re in a city where people know you, it’s not a small path. It’s not, you know, big or anything like that, so Yeah. You know, you, you’ve got your fundamentals right. Yeah. And I, and I think too, the order of priority is, is the key here. And what I mean by that is you didn’t first start off by saying, I wonder what technology can make me the most money first. And then maybe if it so happens to be helpful for patients, then we can talk about that as your first priority, your first line of order. How can I deliver the best possible result or solution for a particular patient problem and then work your way from there. It’s, you know, and, and, and that was kind of the same thing that we talked about in a previous episode. We talked about that whole idea that if you’ll put patients first and solve their problems, everything else downstream of that will. Work itself out, you know, it really, really will. The money will come, the success in business will come. But, you know, it’s obvious that what you’re talking about in everything that you’ve been saying, your priorities are in proper order there. First and foremost, you’re making sure that you’re doing what’s best for the patient, making sure that you’re really delivering not just an optimal result, but an optimal experience for the patients as well.

Vanessa Brown: Yes. So that’s, that’s huge. And some doctors are, you know, some doctors are not business people. They haven’t, let’s say, got a degree in business, which is fine, or they may not, you know, be a natural born entrepreneur, but they, they just wanna set up their own business, which is fine. And I think what the great thing about Erchonia is the fact of the after, let’s say the after sales support, it’s not just the case of, you know, we’ll sell you a device, you get on with it. We will not get involved at that point. Erchonia really wants you to. Successful with your equipment. Because at the end of the day, the clinic’s success is a CO’s success. And I know myself in the UK that’s the ethos that I follow. And even my colleague like Penny over in the States, that’s what she does, um, on the West coast with all of her doctors. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Penny’s great. It’s about teaching them. Yeah, she’s fantastic. I spent a lot of time there in Arizona at the start of the year. So I’ll see you again. 

Vanessa Brown: Obviously I’m gonna go over in November, but it’s about, it’s about teaching you how to market yourself, how to be as successful as you can so you actually get a lot more added value,  for your investment as opposed to just buying a device Erchonia provide you with so many more materials that will actually help you grow as an individual, um, from a career point of view and as, and, you know, a personal point of view as. .

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, I, I would echo everything you just said. Uh, we literally just have experienced this firsthand in our clinic with adding, the FX 4 0 5 and the, serona we had at our open house two weeks ago had an overwhelming success as they, I’m guessing in England they would call that a smashing success.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Is that, is that the correct English first? That was probably.

Vanessa Brown: It was a smashing success and, look, and, and honestly, truly, I can say this, Largely due to just following the guidance and support that was provided by Ric the minute, the minute that the lasers. , they took us through a kind of whole onboarding experience, showing us kind of best practices from a clinical standpoint, best practices from a communication and marketing standpoint. And, we literally just tried as best we could to follow the instructions, and the guidance that they gave us. And the end result was just a, a, a really massive success with us. For our patients and for our practice. It’s been absolutely incredible and so can’t  echo that loud enough in terms of that.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah. I also, I know this podcast is called The Family Business, and this is gonna be really cheesy what I’m about to say, right? But I always say to doctors, you aren’t just buying into a piece of technology. You aren’t just buying a device. You know, you are literally buying into the full Erchonia family that we have. And I think that that resonated so nicely with me because of that family business element. And every single doctor that comes on, I want them to feel as part of the Erchonia family. You know, we do regular workshops, we do regular seminars. We’re keeping regular contact with our doctors and clinics, and we want them to feel part of everything that we’re doing. So it’s kind of like an extended family that you have as part of your business. Hence, I think why this podcast is, you know, named so perfectly as a family business. Yeah. Because yes, I come from a family business standpoint, but Erchonia is a family business and you are buying into a family business and that.

Dr. Chad Woolner: So what’s important, what is, that’s like real quick, what ACON needs to do is train all their sales reps that when they’re telling them about buying into the family business, they need to have like the Italian hand gestures when they say that. So that, so I reckon, you know, maybe after we wrap up with all the podcasts, maybe we should look at doing a Netflix series, like Erchonia, the ACON family business. That’s right. We’re giving, we’re giving them, you know, we’re gonna give Joseph some tips to the theme for next year’s All I think that’s right. Gonna  Joseph’s, Joseph’s gonna make an offer to doctors that they can’t refuse. That’ll be the tagline. Sorry, Andrew, what were you gonna say? You were gonna say something important. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, no, that was way more important than what I’m gonna say. . . I never, I never disagree with your family. . That’s right. That’s such a, you know, it’s interesting, Vanessa, you say that because at the end of the day, the laser is a tool and, and it’s interesting because you can put a tool in one person’s hands and another person’s hands, and they may do something completely different with it, or you may, and we see this sometimes in our functional medicine program or other programs. We, we’ve been a part. If you give somebody a tool without the necessary support, guidance, and, and wisdom that comes with being a part of a family or being a part of a group and an organization that provides that kind of support, I mean, after all, that’s what a family does, right? We support each other, we move each other forward, we celebrate wins, and we pick people up when they’re, when they’re having. And I think, that’s one of the things that we picked up on really quickly with RCIA that made a big impression on, on us was that everybody we talked to that represented Erchonia, who were very smart, they were very passionate, they were very serious about,all of the, the effort and work that’s gone into promoting this technology,, in healthcare. Because the more we learned about this and Simon. In our last episode this really absolutely belongs in, in almost every, if not every single type of healthcare environment across the world. Yeah. It, it, it, you can use it in dentistry, you can use it in podiatry, you can use it in chiropractic offices, you can use it for aesthetics. There’s so many things that the lasers do without side effects, with tremendous benefit that it’s like, why, why wouldn’t this be in the hands of every person? I mean, this. This is gonna be on my Christmas list is E V R L. I want one in my stocking for Christmas. Like everybody should have one of these. Cause there’s so many.

Dr. Chad Woolner:  I know, right? I was looking at, I was stocking Simon Reshot, his Facebook and he posted, he reposted some, some post I think it was,  Jerome, Roca’s wife maybe who had posted this, this bird flew into like a wall or something and the bird was sitting on the, on the ground and someone was lasering  bird. 50 minutes later the bird flew off. Yeah, like, it’s like you can you, and of course, like in veterinary practices as well, we’re gonna have actually a podcast coming up here and how you can use it in veterinary medicine. So,yeah, and, and if you don’t, if you, if you have the tool without the, .it doesn’t come across it. It’s way less powerful than it could be, even though the tool is the same thing. Right. It’s admitting the same light. And so I think that’s the thing that we, especially with this podcast, we want doctors to recognize, is that just beyond the tech, the technology and the lasers, there’s so much that docs can, can take advantage of, even if it’s from clinical protocols, business listening to people like, like you, I mean, the fact that you’re, you know, top, top five young entrepreneurs, like you have a lot of knowledge to share with doctors. 

Vanessa Brown: Yeah. And that’s so, so important. And doctors need that help because, like you mentioned, they don’t always have the business skills that they should have and need to have to run a successful practice.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Exactly. Exactly. And it’s all learning, you know,  I have listened to Tony Robbins and you learn from the best that is out there. I, I learn from the best. Business people that I know, because they always think you don’t, you know, business is about taking risks. It’s about making mistakes, but you wanna look at the people that are already extremely successful because if you learn from them directly, you cut out all the mistakes that they made. That’s exactly right. You kind of like back yourself and I think as well, like being in business, you need to continuously educate yourself. You need to continuously grow as an individual. So you know, you need to, you need to learn something the best and that Erchonia definitely, definitely attracts. Some of the best, practitioners and clinics and people that work within the company, in the industry. So, it’s a good company to be aligned with. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Definitely. Totally, totally agree. So Vanessa, for doctors who are listening to this, who would like to connect with you and maybe learn a little bit more, and in particular you being involved.

Vanessa Brown:  England, the UK. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: So this is any docs, but especially those UK docs. What would be some of the best ways that they could get a hold of you or, or kind of connect with you, start getting into your world? 

Vanessa Brown: Yeah, perfect. So you can feel free to message me. So my number is first 447 7 9 5 2 3 9 6 8. And my email is bbrown@erchonia.com. I’m on LinkedIn. So you can obviously reach out to me via that platform as well. Any questions, any guidance you need, um, you know, any tips as to how you wanna grow your business or learn more from me. Please feel free to reach out. I’m more than happy to help and like I said I enjoy sharing my wealth of knowledge. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Perfect. We’ll make sure we have that on the show notes as well so that docs can have access to that cuz I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of docs who will probably wanna pick your brain on a wide range of different, laser and or laser business related questions. So, Vanessa, it has been an absolute pleasure getting the chat with you and getting to know a little bit about  your business, your successes. Again, huge congratulations on the top female entrepreneur that is, absolutely incredible, that accomplishment. And I know that that was probably no small feat for you. I know that probably my guess represents decades worth of, uh, blood, sweat, and tears,in terms of what you’ve done there. So that’s huge. When is that, has that already taken place or is that getting ready to take place? 

Vanessa Brown: Yeah, it’s in September, so, I’ll keep everybody updated about that. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Awesome. And that’s there in, in the UK in, is that in London? In the uk? 

Vanessa Brown: Yes. No, it’s gonna, so the awards are the largest awards for females outside of London. Because, sometimes the north of England gets forgotten about and we focus it with the South, so, it’s nice to have something that, not separate us, but just sort of, acknowledges and all. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. . Well, that’s huge. Yeah. , so. Awesome. Awesome. Anything you want to add, Dr.Wells in closing? 

Dr. Andrew Wells: No, no. Thanks Vanessa, for being on the podcast. Really appreciate your knowledge and insights and. . Yeah. Thank you. 

Vanessa Brown: Yeah, you’re welcome. Thank you so much. Yeah. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Docs make sure to reach out to Vanessa if you have questions about anything she shared. She shared some really, really good insights that we’re woven in here, some real nuggets that I think could really benefit a lot of practitioners. And, it’s exciting to hear the things that are taking place, not just in the US, for us. You know, obviously in the US we focus a lot on the US but it’s really cool, having chatted with Simon and then now Vanessa. Hearing all the cool things that are happening literally throughout the world. And so we, we appreciate you, Vanessa. We appreciate all the hard work that you’re putting in over there and excited to hear more about your successes moving forward. Docs. We hope this has been incredibly valuable for you, and we will talk to you guys on the next episode. Have a good one.

[OUTRO]

Thanks for listening to the Laser Light Show. Be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about Erchonia Lasers, just head on over to erchonia.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources, including research, news, and links to upcoming live events, as well as ER’s e community, where you can access for free additional resources, including advanced training and business tools.

 

Again, thanks for listening. We will catch you on the next episode.

Podcast Episode #12: Lasers Across the Pond with Simon Ramshaw

In this episode, we speak with Simon Ramshaw, Managing Director of Erchonia Lasers for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Simon is leading the charge to make sure the amazing health benefits of Erchonia’s low-level laser therapy are accessible to health care providers across dozens of borders and different languages.

Linkedin Simon Ramshaw
Erchonia Lasers Website
Linkedin Erchonia Lasers

Transcript:

Dr. Chad Woolner: What’s going on everybody? Dr. Chad Woolner here with Dr. Andrew Wells and our good friend Simon Ramshaw, who is the director of Sales and marketing over in Europe for Erchonia Africa and the Middle East. And on today, episode 12, we’re gonna be talking about lasers across the pond. So let’s get started.

[INTRO]

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to laser light shows at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They would put on these amazing light shows with incredible designs, synced up to some of my favorite music from The Beatles to Pink Floyd, to Jimi Hendrix and Metallica. They were awesome. Little did I know then that lasers would have. Found affected my life decades later as a chiropractic physician. I have seen firsthand just how powerful laser therapy is at helping patients struggling with a wide range of health problems. As the leader in laser therapy, Erchonia has pioneered the field in obtaining 20 of the 23 total FDA clearances for therapeutic application of lasers.On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Walner. With my good friend, Dr. Andrew Wells, and welcome to the Laser Light Show.

Dr. Andrew Wells: All right, welcome to the show, Simon. It’s good to meet you. 

Simon Ramshaw: Hey, it’s nice to meet you too. I’ve heard a lot about you. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah. So, Simon, you are the regional director or, it’s more than a regional managing director. Yeah, managing director for all of Europe. Middle East and Africa, so that is correct. Yeah. So you just got four, four more continents to go to rule the world basically is what it 

Simon Ramshaw: Well, we’re going for world domination. So, yeah. That’s the master plan. Yeah, that’s the Dr. Evil plan.

Dr. Chad Woolner: You’re a lot closer than I am. That’s amazing. So, how long have you been with rc? 

Simon Ramshaw: Well, I, I got, I became involved with Erchonia back in 2012 with the actual technology. I had a company which unfortunately didn’t survive the recession in sort of 2008,9, 10. Um, and I had a lot of experience in the medical aesthetic market specializing in market launches and things like that. And I just liked the sound of their technology. You know, I thought the market was going more non. There’ll always be a place for surgery, but I thought, I thought that, doctors are gonna be looking for different options for their patients.I came across the, the Red Laser for fat loss, and contacted them because I wanted to represent them in, in Europe,  only to find out that another American organization had got involved. Okay. So I started off sort of being a consultant for them and trying to guide them into European territory, which can be full of potholes and a bit of a rollercoaster ride because of the amount of countries, the amount of different languages, different mentalities. So yeah, and unfortunately, the company decided not to listen and, within a year they went into chapter 11 bankruptcy. Which actually then was the important part. It got me into the introduction to Steve, and the guys, and a long story short. Yeah, we got on extremely well. We met them in Liverpool, in the UK in Liverpool, where the best soccer team in the world is from. And notice how I said soccer instead of Liverpool.

Dr. Andrew Wells: There you go. For all US

Simon Ramshaw: And obviously the Beatles, and we got on great. We had similar thoughts, and yeah, and, and the rest is sort of, history. We started a company in the UK, which was to service Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Um, so that we could be closer in time zone to a lot of our customers. And, we’ve just developed the company organically from there.

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s amazing. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: I have to imagine, like we, we have one regulatory agency really to worry about, is it, how, how complicated is it, is it to navigate all these different regulatory agencies in the three continents that you’re operating on? That must be, that must be, uh, a lot of red tape, I imagine.

Simon Ramshaw: Well, yeah. I mean, luckily we, we’ve got the skills of the Erchonia USA regulatory department, so anything that we, we don’t really want to do or that’s too complicated, we just passed it across to them. So it’s, it’s, it’s quite a good bit.

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s nice. Yeah. It makes it a lot easier, I guess. 

Simon Ramshaw: So, but, but on a serious note, Andrew, Europe is so under-regulated compared to the us. You know, you guys have your FDA clearances. I know there are some clearances that don’t have the right type of study, but Erchonia has their level one FDA cleared, plus placebo controlled, double blind, randomized multicenter studies in Europe together. CE marking. Really all you need to do is prove the safety of it. So we get absolutely catapulted by all sorts of technologies from China, from different places around the world, which don’t have the level of clinical evidence needed to really give the doctor and their patients the reassurance they need. So it’s been a little bit like the wild west to be fair, and, and when we get flooded, whereas in the US obviously, you know, it’s a little bit more cohesive. It’s a lot more, clinical and, and the efficacy has to be proved just as much as the safety. So yeah, we are hoping by the end of this year that we are going through the medical device regulatory process, which will mean that the market will be changing. And a lot of those technologies that I’ve ended up in Europe, ended up in doctor clinics, which didn’t have the necessary levels of clinical research. They won’t be able to sell ’em anymore unless they do so to prove the efficacy as well as the safety. So guys, that, that can’t come quick enough for us because, you know, as you know, we’ve got 20 US FDA market clearances, you know, and all of them are, are a level one gold standard clinical evidence. So I think it will filter away a lot of the technologies which aren’t that good or don’t have the clinical evidence to back themselves. A lot of the technologies that I’ve invested in proper research will be left, and that can only benefit the clinic and their patients. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah. You know, anytime I think of Europe, in terms of what’s going on, this was probably, I think, at least it had to have been about 10 or 15 years ago. I remember a patient of mine asking me had I heard about, PRP. And I’m like, you know, and I think I had vaguely heard about it and I remember she was saying, yeah, apparently several of the NBA superstars are flying over to Europe to have these various European doctors do PRP, because it, it wasn’t necessarily that, that popular or that much of a standard here in the us. And so I always tend to think of Europe, kind of ahead of the curve in terms of a lot of these different things, and maybe it’s because of that exactly what you said, that wild, wild west, kind of a double-edged sword in that sense that maybe in some instances some of the things that are happening are a little bit sketchy. But also one of the benefits is that you get some of these cutting edge treatments like PRP that are maybe a little bit further ahead in terms of what they’re doing. Do you see that being the with Erchonia and with the lasers and, that, you know, kind of being a little bit ahead of the curve there.

Simon Ramshaw: Um, no, uh, I don’t, to be fair,, Chad, the reason for that is obviously because we’re in America, we’ve gotta be very conscious, right, of the market clearances. And if we, frequently in Europe, a lot of, technologies can promote, any successes there. On social media or anywhere based on maybe some of their doctor experiences or clinical experiences. But as you know, in the US you can’t promote something unless you’ve got that specific FDA clearance to promote it. So it was a lot of change when we first came on board because we were used to being able to share a lot of information on social media and other platforms based on our experiences. But then we became a little bit more complicated because we had to be conscious that we were heavily linked in with what we’d say is the mothership in Erchonia USA. And we didn’t want to hinder any of their, chances of getting further FDA clearances, you know, and, and we’re talking about a lot of the neurological conditions and, you know, and another thing that, and it can be frustrating because we, we can see off-label treatments that can be done with the full range of Erchonia lasers. Right. And we wanna shout it from the rooftops, but we can’t because we’ve got to be sensitive to Right. So to answer your question, a lot of technologies I think have thrived over here because they didn’t have to have, you’ve gotta remember, you know, Erchonia spend nearly a million dollars on every FDA cleared study. And a lot of technologies that come about, these companies don’t have that level of finance at their disposal. So in Europe, they’ve been able to get one step ahead by promoting their technologies without having to have the cost, the studies that were needed. Right. But on the other side of the coin, I think it made a lot of other technologies jump on the bandwagon and sort of say, well, you know, we only want to be in the market for a couple of years. We want to get in and get out. We’ll just shove a shed load of money into the market and give people, you know, the impression that this thing is the best thing since Sliced bread, employee food sales reps, to come across it in a specific way. And doctors are a lot more cautious now because of that approach. Clinics have ended up in situations where a lot of the technologies they buy don’t do what they set on the tin. You know, they’re not as effective and, it becomes a bit of a catch 22. You know, clinics, a lot of the accountants are advising clinics to finance their purchases so they may end up with a specific technology that they’ve committed to a five year finance plan, and within two months they know that it’s not as good as what they thought it would be. And then it becomes a double edged sword. We need to make the finance payments but we’re stuck. But on the other side of the coin, we want our reputation in our clinic to remain intact, right? And we don’t want, we don’t want our patients suffering from bad results. So they end up having to write off normally the money that they paid because their reputation over the longer term is more important to them.

Dr. Andrew Wells:  That’s one of the things that drew us to Erchonia initially,, is that they had, number one, they were a company that had been in business for a long time. But number two, the big thing was, is they were the ones financing and doing the research and, as a clinitian, I’ve seen all kinds of lasers and what I call laser-like equipment and technology, which most of it like clearly is being manufactured in China. No defense to China, but who knows who’s manufacturing it, who knows what it’s actually putting out in it. It looks like a red light. Is that a laser? Is it LED? Like, you know, you don’t know. And, what is reassuring too is that Erchonia has staked the reputation,, and,  have done the hard work and paid the money to make this happen. And, you’re right, there’s two sides of that coin, right? It makes, when other parties jump on board, it makes the technology more known. It gets in more people’s hands, but you don’t know if it’s the authentic thing or not. And so, if I were gonna put a laser on my wife or my children or patients, I wanna know it’s actually the thing that it says it is. And that’s the one thing I think that gives a lot of doctors and a lot of patients reassurance. Yeah.In knowing that, it’s the real deal because I gotta imagine it’s probably pretty easy to fake, low level laser therapy with a red light or a, a violet light or an emerald light. Like I gotta imagine that that lends itself really well to being ripped it.

Simon Ramshaw: Yeah, it does. I mean, you know, it’s only a matter of time, you know, as, as you know, I specialize in market launches. So you try to give yourself potentially a five year window to do what you can with a specific technology, but then you achieve a certain level of success, you know, and again, like you said, no disrespect meant to the Chinese, but they have developed a bit of a reputation for, you know, waiting to see what comes to market and trying to copy it and bringing it out at a production of the price. You know, it’s not backed up by the necessary, safety information to show that it’s effective. And you know, with Erchonia, dozens of patents. So, you know, you can’t patent a wavelength of a laser, but you can patent how you deliver it. And, and through the, the length, coherent columned, monochromatic beams, you know, we’ve been able to patent that, which gives us a certain element. But then again, you know, I think with our Far East friends, sometimes that doesn’t matter and they know quite well that you know some companies don’t want to go through the whole core process and things like that. But, you know, Steven and the rest of the guys in Erchonia, you know, it’s very personal to them. As you know, from previous podcasts, they started the company because the father wasn’t well, and, and, Kevin was an engineer and they, you know , he, the dad found out that low level laser had very good healing properties and managed pain, and Kevin built up the laser. So I think because of their background, that’s one thing I really liked about them, cuz it, it, it, I think everybody loves a story. You know? And the story that I hated, I mean, you know, I, I said, I remember guys when I met Steve and, and Mark his brother in Liverpool in, in 2014, and I said, Steve, you’ve got some fantastic equipment. , you know, but a lot of the technologies in the market now are flooding the market with money to try to buy success. You know, have you thought about maybe going public with this, raising an IPO and, and developing, getting the funds that’s needed to get this fantastic technology and pretty much every clinic to give patients all around the world access to it? And, Steve came up with a very refreshing response and he said to me, Simon is family. If I went public, I’d be handing over the futures of my family and friends to somebody else who doesn’t even care about them. I want to keep in control of that and, and, you know, and, and provide a future for the people that are close to us. So the answer to your question, yes, I know we could likely become a lot more successful a lot quicker by doing it that way, but, you know, how, what price can you put on your principles and your morals? And, Steve’s one of my best friends to this day I’ve been across. Florida in May and Savannah, we went on a golfing trip up the coast and, you know, and, and they’ve got high moral turpitude and, and, and I think that means a lot in business. So whatever they say, it’s not a lie, it’s it’s truth. And you can tell with the emotion that it’s delivered. And, I got on board pretty quickly with a guy and I just felt their, their, their enthusiasm and their motivation and they wanna make a difference to people’s lives. Again, in Europe it can be very frustrating cuz we have, as you know, the national health. We have doctors that have reduced their surgeries by a high percentage since introducing low level lasers into their practice. You know, saved amputations, saved lives,, you know, and, and done a lot of good with it to my mind, and I’m very passionate about it, in the UK alone, it should be in every clinic, in every NHS practice, in every part of the country. But we’ve gotta jump through a lot of hoops to be able to get it into that and go through a lot of red tape, which defeats the object, the objects about patients. And I know it’s, it’s like a business. You’ve gotta be able to, you know, manage your money and it’s just a shame that sometimes bureaucracy and politics can get involved. You know, I think that’s what I was trying to say. That’s such, that’s such a heavy influence.

Dr. Andrew Wells: As you probably know here in the US, you know, it’s more, at least the general public is starting to become aware that our healthcare system is a massive for-profit machine. And it’s designed everywhere from the beginning of a, of a physician’s education all the way. How they do their exam process, how they do the diagnosis process, and then what treatments go with those diagnoses? And, it’s heavily, heavily, heavily, heavily skewed toward big pharma. And, the more, and the more the public becomes aware of this and conscious of it, the more, the more they start looking at other therapies that are often looked down upon and frowned upon because it’s not an evidence-based or science based approach. It’s what they claim. Right. 

Simon Ramshaw: It is, it’s what they claim. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: And, we’re starting, do you, do you see this? You sort of picked up on, on this, I think at the beginning of the podcast. Do you see this shift also happening in Europe? is it the same in the Middle East? Is it the same in Africa? Is there, is there such a, a fight against this, like over, over dominating industry of healthcare, that paradigm here in the US? 

Simon Ramshaw: No, not as much to be honest, out in the Middle East, and we’re sort of in the embryonic stages,in Africa. Yeah. Europe tends to be where it is a lot more complex. And you know, a lot of that is to do with, you know, the fact there’s so many countries, there’s 28 official languages. So you know, where we’ve just provided, for example, an Erchonia laser into Italy and we have to have the whole operations manual, translated into Italian. Certain countries in Europe, don’t speak the best English. So if you go to the Southern Mediterranean, we have to speak English without the principle they won’t. And again, we are lucky guys. You know, we as Brits, as Americans, you know, the majority of the world’s second language is English, which makes it a lot easier for us. So Northern Europe, Scandinavia and Netherlands, for example. Certain parts, the Flemish part of Belgium, Germany, you know, I think it’s even as basic.You know, they learn good English, not just at school, but they see a lot of American and British movies, and they have subtitles on them, so they still hear the voices. Whereas in the Southern Mediterranean, they dub the voices over so that it, you know, the lip sync, if you remember the old Western, the Clint Eastwood, you know, the Good to Bad and the Yogi for a few dollars more. You, I found myself a type of character. I kept looking at their lips and I couldn’t stop noticing that they weren’t saying the words that they were. But that hindered their ability to speak English, you know,  a little bit quicker. But yeah, I mean, you know, in the, in the national health in the UK for example, you know, I think if we had the type of process you guys have with the FDA, I don’t think we would have as many problems of getting into the national health because as I alluded to earlier, you guys aren’t flooded to the extent that we are. So the national health have to be extremely careful that they don’t take on a technology which doesn’t have the level of clinical backing. So I think this is why those processes are a lot more elongated. And you’ve gotta show extreme amounts of patients to get through it and, you know, fill out extreme amounts of paperwork because at the end of the day, they’re protecting the patient. So one hand I can see why, but on the other hand, when you’ve got such great technology and you’ve. The emotional side of the difference it can make to patients’ lives and potentially save the national health so much money, um, by not having to go through the surgical process. It, it’s frustrating at the same time, which you can probably detect in my voice as well. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: You know, for me, the thing that I can’t help but think of in this conversation with you.I think sometimes, and I’m speaking for both Andrew and myself, so if I’m wrong here, Andrew, correct me. But sometimes I think our vision for the impact that we wanna make in terms of providers and patients can be somewhat, not consciously or not intentionally, but somewhat limited. Right. I tend to think of, you know, my state or the country, the US and here we have, Erchonia has, you know, Literally a worldwide presence here. And so that’s gotta feel really cool for you to feel like you’re at the forefront of this kind of worldwide expansion. You know, all through Europe, multiple different countries there, Africa and, and, and the question that I would have, it’s kind of a broad question for you, but maybe this can be a jumping off point for us to kind of go deeper. What are some of the exciting cool things that you’re seeing in terms of this growth in, in Europe, in Africa, in the Middle East? maybe some stories that you’ve heard from providers with patients. What are some of the kind of exciting things you’re seeing happening in terms of this worldwide growth?

Simon Ramshaw:  Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, it does make us very proud.You know, I think, when I started dealing with the Erchonia US, I think. Maybe the competence in Europe has dwindled a little bit because there’s a reason why it’s a hard continent to be successful in, as I alluded to, right? Because of the amount of languages, right. And the different mentality. So, you know, I always used to go into a marketplace where I try to have around 70% of the infrastructure in the strategy the same, but have around 30% adaptable, specific to the mentalities and the culture of each. So if I go into Spain for example, with the same mentality as I would go into Sweden, I’d get thrown out and probably end up maimed  because they got that, you know, they got that manana sort of attitude, which is, doesn’t mean to be rude by that, but you know, in the Southern Mediterranean, they run things at a slightly slower pace. That’s what they say. . 

Dr. Chad Woolner: There’s exactly, there’s, there’s something, there’s something about the, the, the railroads or the, the schedule for the train In Italy, there’s some sort of cliche that’s there in terms of the train notoriously not being on time or something like that. I tend to hear. 

Simon Ramshaw: Well, it’d not be on time, but the infrastructure’s not there. So predominantly it’s quicker to drive  to actually get a train and, and especially with a lot of our Eastern European countries as well. You know, it was only really when the Iron Curtain came down in 1992 that they were able to actually change their infrastructure. So the interesting things when I visit some of the eastern European countries like Ukraine, which is in the rather unfortunate situation at the minute with with Russia, and where I was last week, Bucharest in Romania, is you can sort of like be higher in the city and look for one side and you see sort of the communist side, which looks a little bit run down.It needs a lot of it and then you can look to the other side and you can see what effect coming out of communism actually had on them by way of, you know, the freedom that they had and the creative license that they had. And it was sort of like one side, oh, the one size modern. So, you know, from that perspective, it’s very, humbling as well that we’re able to help a lot of these and give again, the patients the, their opportunity too. And, the clinics an opportunity to go down a different pathway. Yeah. So when it comes to the stories, I mean, guys that, you know, we could have the best technology in the world, which, you know, I know I’m biased, but I believe we do. But without the necessary levels of education and support, they’re never going to optimize how to get the most out of their investment.And this was the frustrating thing when we first came to Europe because their low level laser is very much a gray area.And the first chiropractic show, funnily enough, we went to, in the UK, I was on the stand with the rest of the team, and frequently we had a lot of your peers coming past and saying, no, no, we’ve got one of them. It’s okay. We’ve got one. And if we were lucky enough to get an opportunity to ask them what it was that they had, it was infrared or it was LED. I think a lot of them still think, and this is why we need to keep banging the German and educate you know, unbiased as well. We want to deliver a neutral education, so that they understand the different mechanisms of action and delivery mechanisms. So whichever one is the one that they want to go out and buy. They do it based on structural evidence rather than, you know, what they think, they know about it. We’ve come across situations where some of our researchers ended up on other, technologies, websites trying to give off the fact that the research is there. We’ve had some of our pictures with treating people on their website to try to give the impression that it’s Erchonia laser.So, yeah, it’s crazy. But, you know, we can obviously allude to a lot of the differences we’ve made with, we work at a cellular level as the advert said. We’re able to empower the human body to basically do what it should be doing, because most of us, I’m 51, nearly 52 now, do I recover as well from injury as I did when I was in my early twenties? Of course not. You know, the strains of life have had their toll on me. I went through a really deep mental health situation when my company went bankrupt and I got divorced and other things. And, you know, a lot of what life throws at us has an impact. No doubt. And one thing where we are making the difference from, we always just say the laser is just a transportation vehicle to get platonic energy into the body, to empower your body. You know, and once your body’s empowered, then it possesses the, the, you know, the skills to be able to heal itself from whatever, you know, the life control. Then whether can we cure COVID? Of course we can’t, but can we empower humans? So that it’s in a better position to respond to it. Yes. And we do that through mitochondrial action as you said before. And we’ve had instances with Erchonia in Sweden, where unfortunately a young lady was involved in a car accident and she lost the ability to walk and the ability to speak. And she started on the rehabilitation program. And by incorporating one of our lasers into the process, we were able to accelerate the whole process and give results that the doctors never thought they would see. And within three months, all of a sudden the patient was starting to mutter words. They were starting to you know, to have more movement, more freely. You know, I’m not saying it’s some sort of miracle, but you know, it was very humbling. And, and that was the first time it brought tears to my eyes because we were able to make a difference.You know, if you got the lasers and, and you weren’t provided with the support and the numerous webinars and seminars and educational forums that the Erchonia do, you wouldn’t have a clue how to really harness this technology in your clinic and optimize your patient’s results.So, you know, that was just one of many things. We had a doctor in Ireland. I think, was involved in a motorbike accident. And another one actually, he had, I think a garage door was pulled down on top of his leg and it, it created a, a fracture and, and, and, you know, a really what most people probably wouldn’t be able to look at without being sick. And, you know, he was worried that the lower limb would’ve to beated. You know, involved the laser in with the rehabilitation process and the healing process. And he still says to this day, he managed to save the patient’s leg by incorporating, you know, the laser in and that process. So, you know, all of these things I’m just repeating from the clinic’s perspective. It’s off-label. It’s not something that we can talk about generally, but it’s refreshing to hear some of our clinicians talk about. . 

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s amazing. One of the things that Steve Shanks mentioned, I think maybe Chad, correct me if I’m wrong, I think it was Steve who said a laser can do anything that a pharmaceutical drug can do, but without all the side effects. And I think it was really, better, yeah, it can do better than what a pharmaceutical does without the side effects. And I think that that’s one of the really neat things about laser therapy when you’relooking at going into all these different countries and all these different cultures and all these different places. Correct me if I’m wrong, Simon, but laser technology, I gotta imagine is impressive to just about any person in any place. And there’s some, there’s some fundamental understanding of that the body can heal itself and we’re gonna use light as the catalyst to help improve that. There’s, I gotta imagine that crosses like almost all, all culture lines and country lines and, and understanding with that, just really simple light laser therapy, light therapy to help the body heal.

Simon Ramshaw: Yeah, I agree. But I also think, you know, there is a, there’s a lot of, again, as I said, gray areas with regard to the goal post and how far you can specifically get and, you know, Erchonia keeps applying and keep pushing the boundaries and everything that they specifically do. And I’ve gotta be careful, I suppose what I say, so I don’t insult too many people. But, you know, I think a lot of us as human beings, sometimes we can be open. And I know I try and my team try, every clinic we go to, we try to put ourselves in a position like we own that clinic. What would we do for our patients? How would we give our patients the best success rate? And we try to give our advice to the client, like, you know, we, we actually, you know, open the clinic, but there are a lot of people that think they know what non-thermal, low level laser but they don’t, they just look at it as a whole. They don’t really understand the effect it can have on a cellular level. And there’s some top doctors I know of in the industry that know that can’t possibly work. And when our guys look, you know, we owe it to our patients to be as open-minded as what, what we possibly can. And we are talking about evolution, we’re talking about pushing the boundaries. And as clinicians, we have to be open-minded as to what is out there and do our necessary due diligence and our research. What it is and whether it can improve the treatments we give to our patients. But unfortunately there still are people that are a little bit closed off. And I personally find it very hard to understand because guys, it’s about the patients, right? It’s about giving you patience for the best possible treatment that they can have and, you know, big times change and 20 years time will be talking about something different. You know, non-thermal, low level lasers has been around for such a long time, and I think some still look at it like it’s witchcraft. You know, I’ve been in a room where, you know, the range of motion has been zero because they’ve had inflammation on the nerve root, which has enabled disabled their range of motion. And you know, you do a 32nd treatment with the laser and all of a sudden they can reach a book of their head where they couldn’t go past their shoulder and see some of the expressions, like, guys, what have you done to mean? It’s like, it’s some sort of Harry Potter type stuff. , you know, uh, on one hand a lot of our distribution partners call the EVRL, the red and violet, like the magic wand. But it’s good to hear, but also it makes it sound mystical and Right. Somatic clinicians are very literal rather than the other way around. So, you know it. Yeah. I I think it’s, you know, we have our, but we, we are only gonna grow through education and, and, you know, telling a lot of clinicians and practitioners be open. You know, your patients deserve it. You want to provide them with the best possible. Whether you think the best possible is somebody else’s technology, no problem.But be open-minded as to the different mechanisms of action. Learn about these different delivery mechanisms and what works best and how it works and, and, and provide your patients with. Well guys, you know, I decided not to take this on, but I know. 

Dr. Chad Woolner:  I can’t help but think we keep circling around this, this concept that seems to be, to some extent, one way or another, the linchpin behind continued growth and ultimately helping more patients. And it, you just said it, it’s this idea of education and so I’m interested to hear what you’re seeing. I mean, obviously Erchonia is really doing a phenomenal job in terms of virtual opportunities for education. So whether a doctor is in England or in Africa, in Europe, so long as they have an internet connection, they can tune into a lot of the virtual training that Erchonia is providing. But in terms of in-person training, are you seeing growth and expansion? There are doctors responding well to education opportunities throughout Europe and Africa?

Simon Ramshaw: Chad. I think, I think as time’s moving on, it’s getting better and better. Again, I think because over here I, we discussed, we alluded to before, the amount of technologies that flood this market that aren’t effective.I think it makes a lot of doctors and practitioners very guarded. We’ve all got up before and we’ve spent X amount of, of thousand and it hasn’t delivered, which makes them very defensive. We obviously talk in a big way about the FDA studies, the quality of them, their gold standard, and some buy into that. You know, we’ve got Dr. Mun Asam in the UK who runs the Dr. MediSpa clinic in Knightsbridge, near herds, in Mali bone in London, and also in ethics. And, you know, he was blown away by the Erchonia’s research. He got the lasers in and he bought a second Erchonia laser two months later, you know, patients are coming in, they don’t just see here iImprovement in fat loss, which is what we are there to do. But the patients are feeling more, more energetic, they’re feeling healthier, they’re sleeping better.You know, the how that the lasers actually help with. So I think we’re pushing the boundaries in that respect by way of working in harmony with the human body rather than destruction. So there’s a lot of technology there, which causes it an area, and obviously we all know about this, creates the fibroblast activity and, you know get the body’s system to respond and to heal. But we don’t know sometimes what the long term effects of that can be. You know, we’re only seeing now a lot of technologies which destroy the fat cell and the research coming out that wants everyone’s fat cell that you destroy, 10 more regrowth in other parts of the body. You know, like the Linda Evangelistic of this world have been in the press, you know, being very vocal about it and affecting her confidence and, and, and things like that. So, you know, I think from our perspective, we will carry on growing, but we need to keep banging the drum with education.We are lucky, as you alluded to that, Erchonia got a great virtual, education site, the platform. We’ve had visits I’ve organized for Dr. Rob Silverman. He’s been across here several times to do lectures. Dr. Trevor Barry’s come across. We’ve had, you know, Dr. Kurt Ge done webinars for us as well. Rob Silverman’s coming over in September to participate in Swiss Chiropractic event in Logano, Trevor Barry’s coming across to participate in the European chiropractic lectures in Netherlands. So we need the support of our US guys because, you know, you guys have. You’ve been, you’re more experienced. You’ve been using the lasers for longer. You know, Dr. Eric Reese is also across, he’s got a clinic in Minnesota and you know, he’s proving he’s a modern demand by supporting his wife on a, a two year senior management place placement she’s got in the UK. So he’s moved across the pond, he even knows what football, proper football is now. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: I, I, I was just gonna say, I was gonna give you a great marketing strategy and it’s no coincidence that Liverpool, which is the best football club in the world, also has the same color scheme as Erchonia. So next time Il watch a football match. I wanna see, cause I know you’re a mover and a shaker, Simon in Liverpool. So I wanna see you in the sidelines with the Erchonia laser and their red light treating, all the football athletes. That’s the quickest way to get to the hearts and minds of, uh,  people in Europe.

Simon Ramshaw: Well, we’ve already started targeting the major sports clubs and, Manchester United are the arch enemy of Liverpool, and they also play in red. So I’ve said to, Vanessa, who’s my UK sales and operations manager. I said, put it in any club, but don’t put it in Manchester United no doubt. Don’t wanna improve their performance. We’re quite happy on a downward spiral at the minute, and we want that to continue  that’s, but, but yeah guys, I mean, you know, we’d, we’d be, we’d be arrogant, we’d be naive if we didn’t feel as though we needed the, the experience and the knowledge of our US team and, and we need to develop our Rob Silverman’s, our own, Trevor Barry’s, and Eric Reeses, who are helping us deliver a lot of this education over this side of the pond. And, yeah, I think that will definitely help us and it’ll help us nurture our own doctors who have the necessary level of experience then educate. Vanessa’s been trying to target Liverpool and if they’re listening to this podcast, guys, if Moala gets injured for six months, we can get ’em back after three . 

Dr. Andrew Wells: There you go. I love that. here you go. Yeah, you can’t say any more than that, can you?

Simon Ramshaw: But look, at the end of the day guys, I think COVID’s  had a big effect on the whole world. And I definitely think it’s changed the mentality of doctors, probably not just in Europe, but in the Middle East, but also in the US as well. And I think patients now are looking at, technologies that can maybe have a health wellness SL on it as well as, you know, getting results. So clinics we are finding over here, guys are diversifying. They’re not just resting on the lot of what they do. They’re looking at what else we can add to the arm of our clinic and, provide for our patients to give them, you know, better efficacy. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah. And, and I think to that end as, perhaps cliche, as it might sound, it’s true. I don’t think there has been a better time for a physician to start incorporating, or at the very least start looking into, low level laser technology as a potential addition to what they’re doing in their practices for those very reasons that you’re talking about, that people are really, truly this you know, one of the positive, effects or consequences of these past two years with COVID and everything is that really, truly people, many more people have opened their eyes to better, safer alternatives to most of the conventional approaches. And so that’s been a really, something that has happened as a result of it. So, and, and you’re right again at the forefront of that opportunity there. So it’s gotta be really, really exciting to see that taking place. So,, Simon, for, for docs in Europe who is the obesity pandemic, what’s that now?

Simon Ramshaw: Sorry. I was gonna say, of course, you know, we’re in the middle of an obesity pandemic, which was accentuated by the right COVID, you know, we’re the only technology in this market, which has a US FDA market clearance up to 40 BMI for overall Erchonia reduction. So we can, we can not only help the patients by way of how they look, but we can help them feel healthier and, you know, potentially look at things like the, the doctors can look at cholesterols and diabetes and, you know, in other aspects and, and, um, create a, a what we get better.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Absolutely, I was gonna say Simon, for, for docs who are listening to this, who are in Europe and, and they’d like to learn more and maybe connect with you and or the European or Middle Eastern or African, division of Erchonia, where would you recommend they connect with you? 

Simon Ramshaw: Well, obviously, you know, we have a very close connection with our American colleagues, so anything that comes into the American office is handed over to us. But because Erchonia is a little bit differently because of the different mentalities. We have our own website, which is www.dconea.com. We have Erchonia laser.co.uk if they want to look more into fat loss. We have our own YouTube channel with a wide variety of, different educational PR related videos.Guys, you know, you, you, you’ve gotta be able to make money as well. So sure it runs hand in hand with creating a healing or a fat loss platform. We all aspire to, you know, that hammock somewhere on the Maldives, one day, Which, we can then enjoy the rest of our lives and watch endless amounts of football either side, golf, tennis, which wimbledon’s on at the minute as well. You know, we’ve got a, we’ve got a Brit in the semi-finals as well, guys, so , so yeah, reach out to us at any of those, platforms. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: We’ll make sure we have links, obviously. Yeah, we’ll have links here in the notes, in the show notes for docs. Cuz definitely in, we’re starting to see a lot more movement in terms of, downloads for the podcast in other, other continents besides just the US So that’s, that’s always exciting for us to.

 

So, 

 

Simon Ramshaw: I was just briefly on a holiday in Portugal with my other half recently, cuz it was her 40th birthday. And I sat around on the beach listening, then Steven Travis and then Trevor Barry could get,and you know, and Jerome Ruka and the rest of the guys. So, yeah, that is my bedtime reading at the minute.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Well, hopefully, other docs are doing the same. It’s been a lot of fun for us getting to chat with, all the ERIA folks, um, and all the various experts. It’s been, it’s been a, I feel kind of spoiled because I feel like, this is kind of a direct download to some of the brightest minds. Andrew and I kind of get to download all this wonderful information. And, so I feel like we’re getting like the fast track, so to speak, in terms of learning a lot of the science and, and know-how. Anything you want to add to this, Andrew? 

Dr. Andrew Wells: No, I just want to thank, Simon for giving us his time and shine some light on what’s happening in the middle part of the world. And, I have no doubt this will help hopefully a lot of docs understand whether they’re in Africa or Europe, Middle East, what differences it can make for their patients, what difference this can make for their practice. And also just start reading and researching, listening, watching YouTube videos, and just getting educated on what this technology is and what it does and what an amazing opportunity that this presents a way to help, obviously help more people but differentiate what you’re doing in your clinic for your patients compared to what everyone else is doing, cuz this is absolutely where the puck is headed in terms of the future of healthcare. Whether you get on board now, or get on board 10 years from now, this is where healthcare is headed.So, it’s, it’s time. Docs know about what we’re doing here at Erchonia.. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, absolutely. 

Simon Ramshaw: I agree completely. Before we go, I just say without the type of thing that you guys are doing and this sort of platform, we wouldn’t be able to get out to as many people and to educate them. So you guys are doing a great job. I look forward to seeing it. I think it’s entertaining as well as educational, which I think keeps people’s interest and, and that’s doubting you guys. So, thank you as well.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Thank you my  friend. Appreciate it. And, my wife and I are making plans to hopefully head on over that way next year. So, if we’re in your neck of the woods, we’ll definitely have to connect, becauseI have not yet been to England nor any of Europe, and so I’m really looking forward to it. My brother and I. Oh, actually I should say my brothers, my nephew and my father are right now hiking the Camino de Santiago Trail in Spain. And so they’re doing that whole 500 mile trek there. So that’s cool to see all their pictures and stuff. So it’s, I’m kind of just a, just a wee bit jealous and hopefully we could do something like that.

Simon Ramshaw: God, we will be more than happy to lead you astray. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: There we go . That’d be amazing. Absolutely. We will, we will take you up on that. So, again, Simon, it’s been a pleasure. We appreciate you and we appreciate all, all that you’re doing to really, truly help expand this. At the end of the day, it really truly is about benefiting patients and helping them and providing them better, safer alternatives. And so we appreciate you being kind of the tip of the spear in that of really starting to, to move this all throughout Europe and other countries and continents I should say. So, thanks again for taking time outta your schedule docs. We hope that this has been valuable for you and we will see you guys on the next episode. Have a good one.

[OUTRO]

Thanks for listening to The Laser Light Show. Be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about Erchnoia lasers, just head on over to Erchonia.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources including research news and links to upcoming live events, as well as Erchonia’s e-community where you can access for free additional resources including advanced training and business tools. Again, thanks for listening and we will catch you on the next episode.

4 Reasons Why Low Level Laser Therapy Saves Practices Money

With the cost of healthcare rising, small practices in particular have to be more frugal than ever. That’s why it pays to know how profitable low-level laser treatments (LLLT) can be.

They can be big money-savers—not just for your practice, but for your patients as well. Now that more studies are showing the efficacy of Low Level Laser Treatments, there’s no better time to take advantage of this non-invasive, drug-free tissue repair technology.

Here are five reasons why this type of treatment saves practices money:

1. Insurance Companies Love It

In today’s healthcare environment, every penny counts. As a practice owner, you know that you need to do everything you can to keep your overhead low and keep your patients happy. The good news is that low-level laser laser therapy helps you do both.

Why Low Level Laser Therapy Saves Practices Money

Insurance companies are always looking for ways to make their clients happier. They want to see your patients happy, and they want you to be happy. With LLLT, you can show them that you’re helping your patients get better faster and saving them money. They’ll be more likely to approve reimbursement for the cost of your treatments.

2. Less Time Spent With Patients

Low-level laser therapy also helps reduce the amount of time it takes for patients to get better. With traditional therapies such as physical therapy or chiropractic care, patients often need several sessions per week over an extended period before they start feeling better. The process of LLLT is requires less time per patient. This efficiency is good for both the patient and the client, and in some cases, LLLT has the potential to be more effective. This may result in less sessions needed and a faster road to recovery.

3. Facility Upgrades Are Minimal

If you’re upgrading or growing your practice, it may require adding more space for office visits, therapy sessions, and waiting rooms.  Success can sometimes lead to growing pains like the cost that comes with facility upgrades. Generally, low-level laser therapy can be performed easily in any office space with little or no modification required. It doesn’t require expensive equipment replacement or repair. Many doctors choose low-level laser therapy because of its affordability and ease of use.

4. Boosts Patient Satisfaction

Studies have shown that patients who received low-level laser therapy treatments were more likely to report less pain and stiffness, improved range of motion, and increased function than those who did not receive the treatment for symptoms such as chronic neck and shoulder pain and aid to liposuction and reduction of pain associated with surgery. This can lead to increased patient satisfaction, which can translate into more repeat business for your practice.

cold laser therapy device treating woman's neck

Bottom-line

With the cost of healthcare increasing and the number of health plans that cover expensive chiropractic treatments decreasing, the use of LLLT is becoming a viable option for patients and doctors. In this way, LLLT has truly becoming one of the safest, least expensive, and effective methods of pain relief.

For many patients, LLLT is the best option for managing pain without the use of opioids and long therapy sessions to see results. Both by keeping patients out of unnecessary appointments and by allowing you to spend more time focusing on the treatment plan at hand, it’s not hard to see why decision makers in clinics are turning to this technology.

Related Reading: Why you Should Use Low-Level Lasers for Chronic Pain at Your Practice

Contact Us

How Erchonia Low Level Laser Therapy Works

Podcast Episode #11: Lasers in Podiatry with Dr. Chris Bromley

We sit down with Dr. Chris Bromley to discuss how he has used lasers to significantly improve clinical outcomes for podiatric patients. We cover everything from neuropathy, onychomycosis, post-surgical protocols, and sports injuries.

Linkedin Dr. Christopher Kent Bromley
Delray Beach Podiatry
https://carepics.com/carepics-hires-dr-christopher-bromley-d-p-m-as-president/

Transcript:

Dr. Chad Woolner: What’s going on everybody? Dr. Chad Wooler here with Dr. Andrew Wells, and today we have a special guest with us, Dr. Christopher Bramley. He is a podiatrist, and today we are gonna be talking about lasers in podiatry. So let’s get to it.

[INTRO]

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to laser light shows at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They would put on these amazing light shows with incredible designs, synced up to some of my favorite music from The Beatles to Pink Floyd, to Jimi Hendrix and Metallica. They were awesome. Little did I know then that lasers would have. Found affected my life decades later as a chiropractic physician. I have seen firsthand just how powerful laser therapy is at helping patients struggling with a wide range of health problems. As the leader in laser therapy, Erchonia has pioneered the field in obtaining 20 of the 23 total FDA clearances for therapeutic application of lasers.On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Walner. With my good friend, Dr. Andrew Wells, and welcome to the Laser Light Show.

 

Dr. Chad Woolner: All right, everybody, welcome to the show and a special welcome to Dr. Bromley. Welcome to the show, Dr. Bromley. Thank you Andrew and Chad for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. So I wanna start the show off real quick by kind of putting you on the spot for just a second and letting you know I have a little bit of a bias towards podiatrists. My dad, who is a retired registered nurse from over 30 years ago, told me. He said, if you’re ever gonna have any doctor, Do any work whatsoever, ankle or foot below, he says, do not ever let any doctor look at that ankle or foot other than a podiatrist. He said, podiatrists are like artists. He’s what he said. He said, they are just like the most incredible miracle workers when it comes to anything related to feet. And I was like, you know, and, and I knew that, but it was just like, From coming from my father with such high praise, and he’s like, I’ve worked with all sorts of doctors. He said, I’ve worked with orthopods and I’ve worked with, you know, other, you know, various doctors. And then I, he said, and I’ve worked with, a lot of podiatrists as well. And he says there is a clear distinction, hands down. He says, no one, uh, can, can manage foot and ankle problems like a podiatrist can. And since then, . We have a very, very close family friend of ours down in Arizona who’s a podiatrist. We’ve visited him and he’s done some work for my wife with some toe issues she’s had. And my son, he’s my son, is really an avid athlete, particularly track. And so as you can imagine, he’s got all sorts of ingrown toenail issues that have been taken care of by this  friend of ours who’s a podiatrist and my bias is a favorable bias towards pi podiatrists. We don’t often hear bias in a, in a positive light, but that’s my  kind of background with podiatry I have. I just think podiatrists are the coolest when it comes to you know the echelon of doctors there at the top as far as in, in my book as far as I’m concerned. So, there you go. 

 

Dr. Chris Bromley Great. I have the same love affair with chiropractic. So, my soulmate in life, my sister in life, my best friend forever, is a world renowned chiropractor by the name of Dr. Caroline Milia. And as I said earlier to Andrew, she converted me over from the dark side. When I graduated from medical school and I completed my residency at Johns Hopkins, when I went into practice, she said, okay, now I’m gonna tell you all the things you really need to know, and you need to forget. Everything you learned from Big Pharma, and let me show you how to integrate nutrition and, and a better understanding of biomechanics in reference to the entire body, gave me an understanding and, and a love and appreciation, for what chiropractic can do for me and my patients. And I always had a very. Good relationship between my chiropractic colleagues because I, you know, every one of them, I literally saw a patient this morning who was here for neuropathy and we were talking about her low back and the radiculopathy. And I said, well, who’s your chiropractor and what are they doing for you? And I literally wrote a prescription for her to go back, because, you know, you, you can take really good care of the lower extremity. You know, sort of, my practice is knee down here in Florida, but without the rest of the body being in tune, I’m just swimming up. 

Dr. Chad Woolner:  Right. That’s a great point. 

Dr. Chris Bromley: It’s funny, it’s funny in healthcare how we end up getting so segmented into our specialties and, and sometimes it seems like, and oftentimes I think to the patient, it seems like these body parts are not interconnected. They live on their own little island on their own. And what a podiatrist does, has no. No effect on what a chiropractor would do, or, a cardiologist or a neurologist. Like, it’s like somehow our body is kind of, is this weird amalgamation of, of parts that all kind of do their own thing. But I think sometimes we forget that every body part affects the other one.

Dr. Andrew Wells:  Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I wanted to set the stage, uh, Dr. Brownley, can you give us a little bit of, uh, a background on who you are, what you’ve done? Because I think this is important and I know a little bit about your background. We just chatted before we started recording this podcast, and I want doctors to understand why, what you’ve done, because I can tell just behind your bio, you’re a very forward thinking podiatrist. And when we’re talking about laser therapy,  I want other doctors and also especially other podiatrists, to understand what, what your experience has been, professional experience, where you are now in your career. Because I think that’s important in what we’re gonna talk about. So maybe let’s start there. How did, uh, tell us about your, what you’ve been doing over the last, couple decades in practice? 

Dr. Chris Bromley: Yeah, so I, it’s, it actually starts, I mean, I grew up in the ski and sporting good business. My parents had a chain of  very successful ski and sporting groups. I grew up in sports as an athlete, and I knew growing up in the retail business, I didn’t wanna be in the retail business. And I bonded myself to a podiatrist who became my mentor. I had foot injuries very similar to Chad’s son, and, and we became good friends and I, I really liked what he was doing in podiatry and, and he would let me scrub into surgery and he was doing biomechanics. He was taking care of infants and old folks. And I knew very young, probably 12 years old, that I wanted to be a physician. And I spent time in orthopedics in high school and,  because they were miserable, they were unhappy. They were putting plates and screws, but that’s really all they had. They had their cortisone shot or that was it. They didn’t have anything else. And, and my, and my evolution of understanding nutrition and medicine and athletics sort of drew me into podiatry. And after completing my podiatry education in Cleveland, I went to Baltimore where I did a foot and ankle, surgical residency. I got to worked at Shock Trauma and Johns Hopkins and I went back to New York to practice, and as I said earlier, my best friend in the whole world who’s a world renowned chiropractor, said, let me, let me, you know, come and let me teach you. And, and so from the beginning of my practice in 1992, I started to change. I started to evolve as a practitioner and started to talk to my patients about nutrition and, and talk to them about, you know, what they are doing with the rest of their body. And it really, my practice sort of even in the early years where I was sort of resisting, you know, why are we writing antibiotics for things that don’t need antibiotics? And why are we writing for NSAIDs to suppress the body’s natural healing quality? And why are we giving cortisone shots and, and how can we avoid surgery? Although I love to do surgery, there are so many, so many things that you can do. About biomechanically driven. So that’s sort of the, the soul of my, of my practice is sort of always looking to be progressive, looking to incorporate nutrition, well, health and, and, and biomechanics and, and, The subject today about sort of cold laser or low level laser in podiatry was the genesis of that.I was seeing a college athlete with a nasty ankle sprain. You know, I, and I hate the word sprain cuz we use it all the time. It’s like the word concussion.You know, concussion is a traumatic brain injury. We just use the word concussion over and over. So we think it’s not a big deal. Sprain is the same way. It’s a torn ligament, one or more. So I was treating this young man. I got a call that afternoon from Dr. Meliz and she said, do you trust me? And I said, yeah. She goes, well, I’m gonna laser your patient and um, and I’m gonna send them back to you. I said, you’re gonna what? She goes, do you trust me? I said, yeah. She goes, laser the patient. So I forget about it. A week later I go in and, and I walk in the room and there’s the kid sitting there with all of the bandages and, and soft cast off. So I literally backed out of it. Looked at the number on the door. I figured I’m in the wrong room. . . So I, I looked and, and I went back in the room and I sat down and I, and I go, how are you doing? He goes, oh, doc, I’m doing great. My ankle moves. I wanna go back and play soccer. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa. Top of the brakes. I said a week ago, you have a torn ligament. This is what I go, no, no. I’ve been seeing Dr. Lisia. I saw her every day this week. She lasered my ankle. I’m feeling great. I want to get out. , so, well, let’s just, let me get you a brace and let me talk to Dria. So I called at the end of the day. I called her up. I said, what the hell did you do to my patient? She goes, she’s laughing at me. She goes, well, it’s easier for me to show you and you’re overdue for an adjustment. Come to my office on the way home. So I go there and she’s got one of these early RCIA lasers, right? It looks, you know, it’s about this big and it’s got this little thing and I’m laying on the thing and I’ve got some neck pain and she’s doing the laser and she’s doing some manipulation. And I said, well, tell me about this. And she goes, well, she starts to tell me the next day I called Steve Shanks from RC in Texas and I was on a plane a week later and I flew to their headquarters and I became a disciple of the technology. And back then, this is. Around maybe 2000, 2001. There, there wasn’t a great database of evidence-based medicine showing what lasers can do or can’t do. So, you know, you’re sort of starting it with blind faith and, you know, and, and incorporating the laser into your practice. And it was all part of that paradigm shift for me, which is to get away from medications and shots that are going to suppress the body’s ability and to, and to inc. photo bios simulation, which is what lasers do, right, and at a cellular basis, and how we could learn to incorporate the low level laser, what we call cold laser into the practice of medicine. And that was really how I got started. And it’s been a big part of my practice. And I love to teach and speak and, and, and bring and try to bring other podiatrists and other doctors over from the dark.

 

Dr. Andrew Wells: See, that’s the thing I think is an interesting point in this, is that you’re, you’re very much an outlier, meaning I, I know so many doctors who are so afraid to do anything different than what they were taught in school or what their colleagues are doing for lots of different reasons. Either they don’t wanna be perceived as weird or like the quack doctor who’s trying these things that aren’t especially 15 years ago when he didn’t have the clearances, FDA clearances and the research to support it. What, I guess, what would you say to B before you even ask that question? 

Dr. Chad Woolner:I, I want to interject something there , to that, to your point, Andrew, I, I couldn’t help but think that that story could have gone completely a different way. You know, some doctors, if they hear. You know, their reaction could have been, what the heck do you think you’re doing? This is my patient. I’m gonna treat ’em the way, you know, this is not the way that, this is not the standard of care. And, and gotten offended and or had their ego hurt or bruised even after seeing what you saw. You know, we see that sometimes some doctors where it’s like literally right before them eyes wide open, they see what happened and they still deny it for, for whatever reason, insecurity, ego, this, that or the other. And so I just wanted to point that out, that that story says every bit as much, if not more about your character. Exactly. You being a forward thinking doctor. Exactly what Andrew’s saying as much as it does the power of, of, of the lasers and whatnot. So anyways, continue. Andrew, I just wanted to interject that point. . Great point. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah. Yeah. I love that point. And I, I guess, um, Dr. Bromley, what would you tell your colleagues who, um, are maybe afraid to, to venture off what they would consider like the beaten path, either for fear of board reaction or colleague reaction or a patient reaction? What would you say to a doctor like that who’s just kind of doing the conventional pediatric or pod podia. I can’t ever get that right. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: I think it’s pediatric, right? Correct. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Pediatric. Pediatric, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. What, what would you say to someone like that, you know, this, this term has really been overused improperly the last two years, but follow the science.

Dr. Chris Bromley: Right. When I left, when I. You know, training in residency in 1992, we knew that at then that anti-inflammatories anset, which was sort of the gold standard, and it still is in some people’s practice. Somebody comes in with some sort of injury. What do you do? You were trained to write a prescription for an anset. And you gave that to the patient. Now, we knew back then that they were maybe not so good for your stomach. You could get a, you could get an upset stomach or an ulcer. We know now that they are really bad for you, that they suppress your body’s first phase of healing is the inflammation phase. So if you take an anti-inflammatory, You are actually suppressing the body’s natural ability to heal itself. In addition to that, we know that NSAIDs are really bad, not only for your GI tract, they’re really bad for your heart. You know that the increased risk of heart attack at stroke, I mean, they took Vioxx off the market way back when because people were dying. So the use of NSAID. It’s really, really fallen out of favor. And really you, there’s, I haven’t written for one. There’s no reason to write for one. You know, and the same thing has happened. What are the other tools that you had in, in podiatry for an injury? You had a cortisone shot. Well, cortisone is worse than an asset because it causes atrophy and it causes the body’s local ability to heal, to be suppressed. And if you’re, if. Really bad at it. And you put the injection into a, into a ligament, into a structure and you don’t know what you’re doing. You can cause it to rupture. You can cause it to make the injury worse. You know, the example would be somebody comes in with an Achilles pain and some well-meaning doctor injects cortisone into the Achilles center and it causes interruption. So these things still happen and I think the evolution of practice to my colleagues would be like, You know, watch, watch podcasts, listen to podcasts, listen to what, what’s happening, what is cutting edge, what is, what is happening around you? And incorporate that. We said earlier, and Andrew and I are talking, when I give a, I give a lot of lecture talks to podiatrists about, you know, regenerative medicine and, and, and cellular based products. And, and I say to them, look at the beginning of every lecture, every. You are going to see two providers before you. They saw Dr. Google and Dr. Webb, MD and they’ve read online thanks to the internet, what is the standard of care and what is new for their deformity before they, before they even see you. So if you’re a practitioner and you’re stuck, In what you learned in medical school or residency, and you’re still doing that. You are out, you’re obsolete, and, and the patients will not only not come back to you, they will go online and eviscerate you in reference to their reviews. So it behooves you as a physician, I don’t care what specialty, dentist, optometry, chiropractic, orthopedics, you have to, you have to modernize yourself and stay up to date with what is the most modern treatment for you. Obsolete. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah. Patients nowadays, patients nowadays are, are in the history of the world. Ne have never been more well-read and or well-educated in terms of these things. And so, gone are the days where you can wing it, so to speak. You know, you have to, you have to know these things. You have to be up to date for sure. What were you gonna say, Dr. Wells? , 

Dr. Andrew Wells: Maybe Chad, you can reference the study, but, uh, there’s a study that says that it takes 17 years on average for new research to actually reach a certain field. And I think that number is incredible. 17 years. Yeah. Before, yeah. Yeah. 

Dr. Chris Bromley: Something is studying. It actually reaches a doctor’s, reaches, reaches uh, um, clinical procedures inside an office. And that’s like. Two thirds of somebody’s career if you’re practicing for, you know, 30 years. I find that our industry, the healthcare industry, is oftentimes incredibly slow to pivot and to change. If you’re following the standard track, however, there are an incredible number of doctors and providers and physicians that are, like you said, read , have, have an open mind and, and actually look. Things that are researched and we will talk maybe a little bit about some of the research and clearances that RC has for what they’re doing. Um, not just anecdotal evidence for how things work, but actual research that’s there, it’s there if you want to, if you wanna, if you’re open to it, you look for it, you read it, it’s all over the place. And just follow those guidelines. And I just find that that’s, that’s kind of fascinating. It takes that much time on average for, for these therapies sometimes to reach, to reach people. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Well, and, and I think this goes back to kind of what you had alluded to earlier, Andrew, is the fact.Far too often there is this like compartmentalization that takes place in terms of specialties and disciplines.And that can be for a number of different factors, ego, significance, whatever you wanna call it. Ignorance, all of the above, you know? And I think these things only contribute to that 17 year lag. That was a study. I was just pulling it up. It was done in England, is what, here’s where it was done. And it wasn’t, it was Let me see here. It wasn’t a study, it was a, it was a review that was done, Institute of Public Health, university of Cambridge. It said that the title of it says enough. It says the answer is 17 years. What is the question? Understanding time lags in translational research. And so the whole idea being that, again, you have all this great information, but how does it actually translate? And so you’ve got all these different factors. Unfortunately, it is all at play that, you know, like we said, that this compartmentalization or segmentation if you will, um, various bureaucratic reasons why as well, various special interest groups, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, The thing is it, it’s, it’s doctors like you who are kind of blazing those trails. You know, thankfully you’ve got other podiatrists who can basically take their lead from you, you know, in that sense. And, and not just podiatrists for that matter. I think doctors in general can look at that kind of mindset. That very forward thinking mindset. And I would say that it seems apparent that your motivation is for what’s best for the patient, is really at the end of the day, what’s driving that. And I think that’s something that can only be respected and admired and I, I’m always, maybe this sounds a little bit too kumbaya, but I, I really do believe it.  When you focus on what’s best for the patient, all the other good stuff, the financial stuff and all that will work itself out. You know, I, I’m confident that your practice is not struggling financially, economically. You’re doing just fine and you’re also helping a lot of patients and getting probably great clinical results, is my guess, correct.

Dr.Andrew Wells: I 100% agree. I, I couldn’t agree with you more. My philosophy, and I learned this as a child, is to live, right. Things go right. Um, I, you know, too often I’m having conversations with physicians. Um, Particularly Apathetic. They worry. They’re like, well, in the very beginning they’re like, well, is it covered by insurance?

Dr. Chris Bromley: God no, no, thank God, and they go, what do you mean? I go, I go. It’s very simple. You explain the value, you give the patient a, you know, a, you know, a try on the laser, and you explain to them very simply, look, it’s gonna take six laser treatments for this to make a difference. At the end of six, we’ll reevaluate. If for any reason you’re not happy, I’m gonna give you six more on. . And if at the end of that you still don’t notice a difference and you are unhappy, I will give you your money back and patients a hundred percent of the time go, no problem. Let it. It is all in. You have to believe in your heart. Like you, you, I’m sure both of you as physicians, understand if you believe what you’re doing in your heart is the right thing and you can, you become very believable. You can engage with the patient. The patient understands. They understand you. They believe. They believe, and they trust you. If you are that. And you do that in incorporating this technology into your practice. It’s very easy. When I talk to patients all the time, they’ll give you an example. I have a patient here this morning who has been seen by five other podiatrists for six months for heel pain. At no time during those six month treatments did anybody ever ultrasound the patient to show him what his lenar fascia looked like. I was able to do that. Explain and show him his unaffected versus his affected side. Show him the difference and then say, look. You have three options. Ignoring it, hoping it’s gonna go away. Popular but not effective. Option two, we need to get the fascia to heal. That’s gonna require more blood flow, more collagen. And the way that we do that is we incorporate cellular based healing. We incorporate using a laser to get the heel to start to heal, to stimulate. The healing at a cellular basis, that photo bio simulation. And at the same time, I’m gonna get you into a better shoe, a nice orthotic, which is flexible. I’m going to, and, and, and, and I said, or we could, we could just do surgery, which I would not recommend because it’s an invasive procedure. It’s a new injury. It may or may not help, but it has risks associated. So which would you like to do? And a hundred percent of the time, basically I’ll go with option.  and then we said, okay, let’s do the first laser today and then I’ll, you’re gonna come in three times this week and three times next week and we’ll re ultrasound and, and because we use technology like ultrasound in this type of injury, I can show them the injured area of the fascia, that hypoechoic area, that black hole or that tear.I can show them that they are starting to heal. I’m using objective data to show the response, not just that they’re feeling better, but I’m showing them the difference. And then they buy in and then they tell their friends that.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Dr. Bromley, amazing and you should go to him. It’s just, I don’t have to advertise because the patients, you know, they like that and they, and they want to and they want to come in and then they’ll send their children or their mother, and then it’s just a, when you do progressive medicine like this, it is,  an amazing, adrenaline shot to your practice. Yeah. You know, I, I’m reminded of in school when we were learning about plantar fasciitis, I remember them talking about how that term is somewhat of a mis. In reality, it very quickly shifts from an IIS to an osis. And the problem there is, is that the standard management strategy is not only ineffective, but it’s counterproductive. Because if we’re talking about for, for those who are listening, if, because, cuz I’ve, I’ve found that a lot of non physicians have been listening to this podcast, which is really, really cool. IIS means inflammatory osis means, and, and please correct me, Dr. Bromley, if I’m speaking out of turn here in terms of this, because obviously you’re, you’re the plantar fasciitis expert more so than we are. But it shifts from being inflammatory to then all of a sudden neurotic or degenerative. And so,you bring in, my guess is that cortisone injections are somewhat of a standard of care for plantar fasciitis or, or fascist, which imagine exactly what you just said there about, about the rupture issue. Knowing that cortisone deteriorates the tissue. And so, yeah, it, it, the, the management of this, or at least your strategy, makes all the difference when you understand kind of histologically what’s actually happening to that tissue. It’s, it’s not, it’s no longer an inflammatory issue or insights for that matter, right. The very two kinds of standards that you’re talking about don’t make any sort of sense when you understand phys, you know, pathophysiologically, what’s actually happening to that tissue. And so maybe that’s a, maybe that’s a good jumping off point in terms of, cuz I’m, I’m assuming that, that, like you said, lasers are kind of standard go-to for you in terms of plantar fasciitis or fascist cases. Maybe for those, listen explain the rationale why you would use a laser for somebody who’s struggling with heel pain, p plantar fasciitis, fascist. 

 

Dr. Chris Bromley: Take your. . Well, I, to your point, Chad, I think that I, and one of the lectures I give is, there’s no such thing as pan fasciitis. You just don’t have an ultrasound and don’t know there’s a tear. Right. So when I, when I talk to an orthopedist and I talk to a podiatrist, I, I implore them. I, you know, because I have a big, you know, sports practice and we’re looking at musculoskeletal injuries, the time I have a, I have an ultrasound in. So short of taking an x-ray for a fracture of bony pathology, which we do, the ultrasound is really the best tool in my toolbox. And then you can accurately assess, and to your point, the plantar fascia doesn’t get an I. It doesn’t, it’s not like, it’s not like a tendon, it’s not like a muscle. It doesn’t get this sort of, you can see inflammation, but it’s actually a breakdown within the structure of the planet fascia. The planet fascia really. In the body, one of the, one of the, one of the pieces of our body that’s under the most stress, you know, every heel strike, every toe off the plantar fascia is part of that windlass mechanism. Back to the gastroc soleus backed all the way back to the hamstrings, back to the hip, and the low back. So that, that kinetic chain, the weak link between the very powerful. And the, and the leg muscles. The weak link is the planter fashion, and it does tear, uh, at insertion. It can tear and, and ult approximately optic calcan and what we do in our practice is, number one, make an accurate diagnosis is that, you know, you have to rule out things. So they have, you know, some other problem that could be sort of disguised as, as heel pain may not always be a plantar fe injury, may be, um, a tarsal tunnel and may be a pinched nerve, or it may be a stress fracture, it may be a tumor, could be a cyst, could be lots of things. So accurate diagnosis is super important. We see healing pain in kids, which we know is not Plano fascia. It’s a phos. And we, look at our practice at this,, we tell the patient what’s wrong, and they say, look, again, same speech, ignoring it, hoping it’s gonna go away. Here are the conservative things. Here are the surgical things you can do. Let’s start conservative. And what we wanna do is incorporate the discussion about what their body needs, you know, taking care of the underlying cause. How did you get here? Well, you walk around your house here in Delray Beach, barefoot, and you’ve got tile floors and, and you don’t stretch and you have crappy shoe gear. So you’ve gotta assess, mechanically, what’s going on with the patient. And then what we wanna do, every patient wants the pain to go away. . So how do I do that? Well, I do that by incorporating lasers into their protocol. I, we, we bring the laser in, we bring the FX 35 in. We start, you know, we give them a handout, it explains, we come back in and then we start to do what we do so well. And our specialty is to address biomechanics. I might be using some kinesio tape. We’ll get them an impression or a scan for an orthotic and give them a rec, send them to the shoe store, you know, get ’em in a nice Hoka. , you know, get ’em nice bionics or something to wear around the house so they’re not re keep injuring it. And then we see them back after their fifth or sixth laser, which is typically what we do three times a week, like Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then we see them back and, and invariably the patients will say, you know, my pain was a 10 out of 10. On day one, it’s now, uh, five out of 10 or three out of 10, it’s gonna take time, and then you reevaluate them and you can show them the healing. And lasers really can be used for anything that you want to do in your podiatry practice or in your chiropractic practice where you’re trying to give patients what they need. They need relief from the pain they need.  get the body to heal itself, which is all about vascular flow and collagen. And we’re gonna use the laser to stimulate the body. The term we use is photobiostimulation. We’re on a cellular basis. Every, every cell in your body has mitochondria. Mitochondria produces a t p. That is the fuel. So we wanna use this cellular based healing, and we can set the laser in a, in such a way, depending on what we’re treating. So the setting for pain. And to increase blood flow for a plant of fascia is different than a setting that would be for arthritic pain. Maybe somebody has, great toe uh, limitation with what we call, how it rgis or osteoarthritis. So that bone pain is a different setting than we would be setting in the laser for a soft tissue injury and would be different than the patient who comes in and says, you know, I’ve been diabetic for, for 10 years and my blood sugars are here. My A1C is. Uh, and I have this neuropathy.  in the, in, in podiatry and in medicine. What do doctors do? They prescribe drugs that are, are bandaids that are there to make the patient forget that they have this neuropathy and they, and the drugs they’re prescribing amitriptyline, um, you know, all these different drugs have no benefits at all. They don’t fix the neuropathy. The neuropathy you have in your feet is because you’ve had elevated blood sugar that causes the smallest blood vessels you have to die off. And then the nerves that provide sensation, not. So we use the laser technology to increase the neuro transmission to increase the blood flow in these, in the lower extremity. At the same time, we say, by the way, your blood sugar can’t be 300, your A1C can’t be 10. You need to get that under control with a proper diet. And oh, by the way, I’m going to prescribe a number of supplements for you, you know, b6, , and b12, as well as other supplements to nourish your nervous system back to health. But again, The, when you listen to any of, if you read or watch any of the commercials for Cymbalta, Lyrica, all this stuff that’s on the, the, at the very end when the lawyer does their speak, they talk about, you know, it could result in suicide, death, depression. You don’t want any of those drugs. But other than that, it’s great. Yeah. It’s, you know, you know, you gotta, you gotta think outside the box and, and side effects from medications are real. There’s never been a side effect I’ve ever had from a low level laser other than the patient getting better very quickly. It’s really, it’s really that sort of work across my, the lasers that we have in this practice here in Florida, it has its own. It’s like having another associate in your office. It has its own schedule. You know, patients are coming in, they’re, you’re, they’re seeing the laser and then they see us for follow up. It’s really been a blessing, you know, to me to have that tool in my toolbox. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s amazing. On, on that note, maybe, and maybe we should have started here. What, maybe can you just list off what types of conditions you’re using this laser for? What types of patients you’re. I’m looking at your laser now. I’m picturing it as having a face and an associate name and  maybe, maybe, uh, lighten docs. Like, what are you actually using this for? 

Dr. Chris Bromley: I used to say, you can use it for everything in your practice other than fungal toenails.Now, I can’t say that because, but almost three years ago now, Corne got the Lunula laser approved. Phonic myosis, which I love. It works amazing. Uh, I use it for everything. So, the typical podiatry patient will come. Then, you know, we’re using it for all of the M S K complaints. So patients come in with, you know, plantar fascial pain. You know, they’ve got, you know, ligament injuries, sprains, strains, fractures, all of my surgery patients, patients that we couldn’t heal conservatively, they come in for cold laser every week as part of their healing protocol, and we see much less pain. We, we, we’ve eliminated the use of narcotics. After surgery, which I’ve been doing for probably 10 years, using laser and, and combinations of long acting locales, I haven’t prescribed a narcotic after surgery in 10 years. There’s no reason to. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Wow.

Dr. Chris Bromley:  So we’ve been helping fight the opioid crisis that way, and I’ve been teaching other doctors how to do that. Uh, we use it for neuropathy, so our diabetic patients who have, uh, burning neuropathy that are very painful, keeping them up at night. There’s some compounding that we prescribe for them for creams, but we also use the laser to restructure the way their nervous system’s working patients who have loss of sensation, again, the loss of sensation is due to the death of the C fibers. So using the, the B sticks, nine, E 12 in the conjunction laser gets those c fibers to regrowth much faster. Pretty much the only thing that we don’t use co laser for is  sort of maybe somebody has a tine, like an athlete’s foot, or maybe they have a wart. I haven’t found that. Warts. Those are really the two things like, you know, superficial, um, Uh, fungal infections and warts. So the only thing I really haven’t, been able to figure out how to use a, a laser for, but again, uh, if I did a laser, uh, maybe if I did an excision of a, of a, a work where we surgically removed it, I would use the laser. After that, very successfully, to help increase the healing, to decrease this scar tissue. I love using lasers. In my pediatric practice. I have a large pediatric practice. We see a lot of young athletes who come in with injuries. Again, we’re treating them for their biomechanical stuff, but we’re also using lasers and, and the kids, the kids feel very cool. And one of the PowerPoints I give, there’s a wonderful picture of my daughter, who’s now almost 18, who was an avid lacrosse player, and she’s sitting in my, with her glasses, through protective glasses on lasers. Her heel, for her for a pitis is I’m fixing dinner. So she’s one of the pictures in my slide present. I said, are you smarter than, I think she was, I think she was eight or nine at the time. I’m like, are you smarter than an eight year old? 

Dr. Andrew Wells:  I love it. That’s something, something I wanna cue doctors into. Um, that, that you mentioned, I think is worth kind of connecting some dots on. One of the things we have a program, Dr.Wells and I, we have a program teaching doctors, uh, how to help patients with chronic health issues. And one of the terms that we use to help our doctors kind of wrap their heads around the ideal standard of what we want them to think of themselves and what they’re doing. As you know, some doctors will think of themselves as chiropractors or podiatrists. Medical doctors or osteopaths, some will think of themselves as healthcare professionals. Some will think of themselves as like coaches or whatever the term that we use that we always repeat for them is we want them to think of themselves first and foremost as solutions curators, that they’re curating solutions for people. And the thing that was really cool about what you were talking about is you’re describing how you’re using these lasers, you’re not simply having patients come in and be like, okay, press the button. That’s that. That’s done. But rather what you’re doing is you’re fitting these lasers into a comprehensive solution.

Dr. Chad Woolner: You know, you talked about that example of the, uh, was it the Delray Beach, uh, pl uh, barefoot Walker on the tile, you know, the, uh, whoever that patient is that, but it wasn’t just laser and then that’s it. Even though the laser is incredibly powerful, I think. That doctors need to clue into a far greater strategy. And I think anyone and everyone, Erchonia would say the same thing is what you want to do is you want to create a total solution for them. And so you talked about nutrition, you talked about orthotics, you talked about doing a biomechanical assessment and addressing what that, and that solution might include other providers potentially, you know, obviously mechanically above the knee, hip, and pelvis. My guess is you’re probably sending a lot of these folks over. To your friend who’s the chiropractor, to, to address those issues as well, to some extent, right? But the, but the point is this, is that at the end of the day, again, it goes back to what is going to be best for the patient. And when you curate a total solution, what that’s going to do for the patient is that’s going to surprise, surprise, or not surprise, solve the problem, right? And when you solve problems for people, Better, obviously clinical results, obviously problem solved, but then as a result of that too, those people are more than likely going to then be referred to as a natural outgrowth. I’m guessing, I could be wrong, but I’m guessing a substantial amount of your practice is driven by referrals.

Dr. Chris Bromley: Correct.  A hundred percent. You know, people have lots of choices and, you know, people look at online reviews. Um, you know, I remember one when I, when my, my youngest son was 10. I remember one day I came home and I said to myself, You know, you’re, you’re recommended by all the breastfeeding moms on Facebook as the podiatrist. Everybody should say . Oh my God, I didn’t know that was a thing. She goes, oh no. I was on the, I was on the breastfeeding mom Facebook thing today, and everybody’s saying, who should you see as a foot doctor? And they, all the moms, are recommending you. That’s amazing. Oh, that’s a good thing. So, right. You know, the internet is a wonderful thing. And I, and I think. You know, this podcast is a perfect example of how you are leveraging technology and doing this podcasting, using this medium to advance. You know, the, your mission, which is to elevate the level of care for everybody. And I think that that’s why they share that common mission. You know, I believe that continuing medical education should be something you’re doing every day. You know, you should be listening to things and reading things and, and learning from, from our, from our colleagues in all specialties. I tell podiatrists all the time, I do quite a bit of lecturing and different disciplines, and I say, you should go to conferences. Don’t just go to a podiatry meeting, go to a chiropractic meeting, go to a vascular meeting, go to a dermatologic, or go to a wound care meeting. Learn from your colleagues. I learned about pedal access, which is the restoration of blood flow into the foot. Almost 10 years ago I was lecturing at a Chicago vascular conference, about wound care. And I was just sitting there listening to whatever the cutting edge vascular treatment was, and I didn’t know that didn’t exist in my location, New York and I, and that just helped me learn, and I think that. You know, our goal, I’m, I’m sure the three of us share that. Our goal is to, we want to be able to bring the very best care to our patients, but also to our colleagues, so that they can, they can raise their level of care.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Absolutely. Well said. Yeah, that’s exactly right. , Dr. Bramley. If there are podiatrists listening to this podcast and like, wow, I’d love to follow Dr. Bramley and what he’s doing and, and, and maybe, um, use you as kind of a lighthouse for information. Are there any ways that they can follow you? Are there any events that you do in terms of speaking events and lectures, that they can, they can, be a part of?

Dr. Chris Bromley: Sure. Well, the number one, the number one way that they could listen to me talk about these types of topics is there’s a company called  present podiatry, which is the largest meeting company, um, in podiatry. They have a really great resource. I go to a lot of their lectures. Full disclosure, I own no stock in the company.I do, I do chair meetings for them, but you can, podiatrists can go and, and be, become a member of that particular database. And they can see, you know, 20, 30, 40 lectures that I’ve done. Uh, and to be able to see those, uh, meetings where we, where we go and do cutting edge stuff. We, you know, the problem with podiatry education is, um, the meetings that we’ve done in the past used to be the same guy given the same lecture year after year, after year. And it was really boring. So when I go to meetings, I want to talk. Something that’s cutting edge. How do we incorporate the use of low level laser Veronica Mycosis, or how do we incorporate it? You know, what, what’s going on, for nutrition? What’s going on? How do we, how do we advance the practice? I gave a lecture thanks to Dr. Melissa years ago about the standard process. And talking about whole food nutrition and, and things like that. So the podiatrist can make, there are YouTube videos available, but present really has the largest database of stuff that I’ve, that I’ve taught, or, and then we do one hour. And, and as, as well as full day learning events all the time. So that’s always available and, and I would encourage anybody who listens to this, you can find me, by googling me. Feel free to call me, email me, text me. You know, it gives me no greater pleasure  than to help my colleagues.

Dr. Chad Woolner: It’s apparent that you’re very passionate about not only helping patients, but helping other doctors as well. And that’s, you can’t help, but number one, respect that. But also it’s, it’s, your energy is very contagious, and so it’s exciting to see your passion and excitement for this. Uh, it’s been a ton of fun chatting with you about this. So, um, any final thoughts in closing for doctors, lasers, words of wisdom insights you’ve learned over the years.

Dr. Chris Bromley: I think that, uh, my words of wisdom would be that if you incorporate this type of technology and a regenerative approach to healing into your practice, it’s gonna bring new energy and new life to your practice, which is going to make you as a practitioner more energized. So by, by stepping outside your comfort zone, by incorporating, you know, wellness and that concept of being a curator of, of the solutions being that person is going to be, bring more reward to you and your practice. So think outside the box. Take a step maybe in, in a direction you didn’t think you were gonna do, and, and let us help you incorporate this into your practice, which you’ll, you’ll bring you years of, of reward.

Dr. Chad Woolner: You I would simply, I think that’s a great place to close and I appreciate that. That really was incredible words of wisdom there because, Um, I think a lot of doctors for various reasons, um, find themselves, myself included, to some degree, getting caught up in the motions of the day-to-day minutia. And sometimes we can just get in these, in these kinds of ruts or these patterns and to a certain degree, sometimes that kind of zest or passion or excitement in practice can kind of diminish like the volume knob gets turned down a little bit there and so I think that’s incredible. And again, very insightful, very wise to kind of think about it through that lens of, you know, trying to focus on the cutting edge, whatever that is, to really get the very best results. And in turn, cuz we’ve seen that, honestly, we haven’t had the lasers in our practice terribly long, but in the short period of time that we’ve incorporated them, We have definitely seen an elevation in our excitement and our passion with the patients. Uh, it’s just, it’s very contagious in that sense. And so it’s been really, really exciting. I think that’s spot on what you just shared there. So, any final thoughts, Andrew you wanted to bring up?

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, I just wanna say, Dr.Remley, thanks so much for being a guest on the podcast. I, I’ve found this, um, really entertaining and you, you, bring, uh, a lot of, like Chad mentioned, a lot of really good energy to this topic and I hope, um, docs listening to this will be inspired and hopefully. Well, because you learn more, read more, follow you, and maybe get not only more information to help more people, but also like Chad mentioned too, just more excitement about being in practice and doing what we do and helping, helping other people get healthy.

Dr. Chris Bromley: Yeah. Again, thank you for having me. I, and I’ll come back anytime you want to talk about anything please feel free to reach out. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: We definitely will. For sure. So, docs, thanks for listening. I hope you guys have enjoyed it as much as we have.It’s been awesome getting to sit down for a minute and chat with Dr. Bromley. If you wanna learn more about him, what we’ll do and what and what he’s doing, we’ll make sure to put links in the show notes to him and thanks for listening to Docs. We’ll talk to you guys on the next show. 

 

[OUTRO]

Thanks for listening to the Laser Light Show. Be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about RCIA Lasers, just head on over to rcia.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources, including research, news, and links to upcoming live events, as well as ER’s e community, where you can access for free additional resources, including advanced training and business tools.

 

Again, thanks for listening. We will catch you on the next episode.

The Best Ways to Treat Chronic Back Pain Without Surgery

Roughly 80% of people will experience back pain at some point in their life according to the National Institutes of Health. While many will undergo surgery to treat their chronic back pain, there is no guarantee that surgery will resolve your symptoms. 

In fact, these surgeries can sometimes make your pain worse. Overall, there are many reasons to consider non-surgical treatments to manage chronic back pain. Read on to learn more about non-invasive treatment options for chronic back pain.

Common Causes of Chronic Back Pain

Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts for 3 months or more. Chronic back pain is usually a result of growing older. However, it can also be the result of overuse or an injury. Specific causes of chronic back pain are typically one of the following:

common types of back pain

  • Arthritis of the spine — the gradual thinning of the cartilage inside the spine
  • Spinal stenosis — narrowing of the spinal canal that may lead to nerve pain
  • Disc problems, such as a herniated or bulging disc
  • Myofascial pain syndrome — unexplained muscle pain and tenderness

Much of our pain and tenderness is also caused by inflammation or swelling. Inflammation is our body’s response to injury or infection and can be recognized by redness, heat, swelling, and tenderness around injury or infection. This protective collection of fluid brings increased blood flow and white blood cells. In addition to the natural compression it provides, this increased blood will aid in the healing process. However, this inflammation can be painful and severely limit motion. This can be a problem if the body overreacts to injury, which can be often. 

Non-invasive Treatment for Chronic Back Pain

Lifestyle Changes

Most back pain issues stem from a minor injury or chronic stress on the muscles, both from everyday activities. Therefore, the easiest way to treat it is to make lifestyle adjustments. One-time injuries can be hard to foresee, but avoiding situations where the muscles in your back experience chronic stress can prevent most pain. 

Correcting posture and wearing supportive footwear over something like heels or thin-soled sandals can do wonders for maintaining the alignment of your legs, hips, and back. This in turn will help keep your back muscles operating as intended and in the healthiest way possible.

Additionally, increased activity and changes in diet can help fight inflammation associated with chronic back pain. The idea of exercise while you’re in pain may seem inadvisable, but engaging in light to moderate activity can help increase blood flow, release pain-relieving endorphins, and restore range of motion. 

Foods high in trans fat, refined sugars, and processed food can be highly inflammatory and should be avoided. To eat an anti-inflammatory diet, we recommend prioritizing foods such as:  

  • Brightly-colored fruits and vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, oranges, strawberries, and tomatoes
  • Fatty fish, such as salmon, sardines, and mackerel
  • Green, leafy vegetables, including spinach, kale, collards, and broccoli
  • Healthy, monounsaturated fats, such as avocado, olive oil, and canola oil
  • Nuts, including almonds and walnuts
  • Seeds, such as chia, sunflower, and pumpkin 

However, it’s important to note that severe chronic back pain may not be fully managed by these lifestyle changes.  Depending on the cause and severity of your pain, you may need to employ additional treatment measures in tandem to these changes in lifestyle in order to treat chronic back pain without surgery. 

Physical Therapy

Physical therapy is commonly used after injury, but it can also help in alleviating pain caused by daily tasks. During physical therapy, you will work with a specialized physical therapist to improve your strength and flexibility through easy stretches and exercises. These simple activities can help you retrain your posture and fortify the area specific to your injury. The goal of physical therapy is to not only heal from the current injury, but also prevent injury in the future.

Laser Therapy

Another non-surgical treatment option to consider is laser therapy for chronic back pain. How laser therapy machines work is by emitting photons or particles of light carrying electromagnetic radiation, which are then absorbed by your cells. These photons provide your cells with a boost of energy, allowing them to optimize their performance and aid in healing. 

low level laser therapy for chronic back pain

In addition to giving your cells an energy boost, low-light laser therapy improves circulation and speeds up tissue healing. Only cells and tissues that are normally dormant absorb the light energy emitted by a low-light laser therapy device, and it does not affect healthy cells. We recommend talking to a laser therapy provider to see if low-light laser therapy is right for you and your chronic back pain.

Find a Laser Provider

Prescriptive Aids 

Some chronic back pain can be appropriately managed by daily medicine or regular injections. Anti-inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxants and other medications can be useful for treating chronic back pain. Injections can include nerve blocks, epidural steroids, and sacroiliac joint injections among others.

Massage Therapy 

If your chronic back pain is the result of an injured or strained muscle, massage therapy may be the treatment option for you. Regular massages can help increase blood flow and stretch muscles into releasing tension. Since it’s also a popular method for stress relief, you may find it aids in easing your chronic pain by managing your stress.

Chiropractor

While you might think of the chiropractor as someone who makes your bones crack, these health and wellness professionals actually focus on re-aligning your body. This alignment involves using the hands to adjust, massage, or stimulate the spine or other body parts. The popping noise often heard after adjustment is the gas escaping from between your joints after pressure is released. 

Acupuncture  

Lastly, acupuncture is an alternative treatment for back pain. Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine. It involves inserting very thin needles at strategic points across your body. The thought is that these needles – most of which you would not feel – will help balance the flow of energy known as chi. Western medicine agrees the points where needles are inserted help stimulate nerves, muscles, and connective tissue. This would act as a natural painkiller.

The majority of the population has or will experience back pain at some point in their lives. When pain occurs, there are a multitude of non-surgical treatment options to choose from. We recommend talking with a medical professional about your chronic pain symptoms to determine which treatment option is best for you.

Related Reading: How Does Laser Therapy Work for Pain?

 

How to Reduce the Need to Prescribe Opioids for Back Pain

Opioids are a family of medications commonly prescribed to treat back pain. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, a rise in opioid prescriptions has led to a rise in misuse, addiction, and overdoses. As a result, physicians have been tasked with weighing the possible benefits of opioid use against its risks. What is required is effective non-opioid alternatives that have an acceptable low-risk profile, like Low-Level Laser Therapy (LLLT), to treat musculoskeletal pain.

Apart from the LLLT and opiate pain medications, other therapies include steroid injections, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and surgery. However, patients should be aware of the specific risks associated with each approach. This article teaches how to reduce opioids prescriptions for back pain by using LLLT and other alternatives.

What are Opioids and How Do They Work

Also known as narcotics, opioids are medications prescribed by physicians to treat severe or chronic pain. They are commonly used by patients experiencing acute postoperative pain, people with chronic back aches or headaches, and those having severe pain due to cancer. Doctors can recommend opioids to children and adults who have suffered severe injuries after a fall, car accident, and other incidents.

opioids

How do these medications work? Opioids attach to opioid receptors in the brain, gut, spinal cord, and other body parts and block pain messages sent via the spinal cord to the brain. While they relieve pain, increased use of opioids can have serious risks and lead to addiction.

In most cases, opioids are taken in pill form, but they can also be taken as lollipops or lozenges. Doctors may also administer them through IV, injection, or a patch placed on the patient’s skin. Because of their side effects, opioids should be used only under a doctor’s supervision.

Different Types of Opioids and Potential Side Effects

There are many types of opioids that doctors prescribe. They come in different names, including:

  • Morphine
  • Codeine
  • Fentanyl
  • Hydrocodone
  • Oxycodone
  • Oxymorphone

They are sold under different brand names like Percocet, Palladone, OxyContin, and Vicodin. Sleepiness, nausea, and constipation are commonly reported opioid side effects. However, there are other life-threatening side effects of an opioid overdose that should be reported to a physician as soon as possible. They include:

  • Slowed heart rate
  • Loss of consciousness
  • Shallow breathing

Addiction can also occur after prolonged use of opioids and patients may find themselves taking more drugs to relieve the pain.

Low-Level Laser Therapy as an Alternative to Prescribing Opioids for Back Pain

The majority of people have experienced back pain at some point in their lives and some of them end up developing chronic back pain. In search of a cost-effective and safe treatment that can reduce opioid prescription for back pain, LLLT was developed and is being used by various specialties worldwide.

low back pain laser treatment

What is LLLT?

Also known as Low-Level Laser Therapy or Photobiomodulation, Low-Level Laser Therapy is a low-intensity light therapy that causes biochemical changes within body cells. It is a non-invasive low-light treatment with no sound, heat, or vibration.

LLLT is likened to the photosynthesis process in plants, where cellular photoreceptors absorb photons and trigger chemical changes. Many physiotherapists use LLLT to treat lower back pain. Different wavelength lasers (varying from 632 to 904 nm) are used to treat musculoskeletal pain. These wavelengths can penetrate soft or hard tissue and skin to treat inflammation, pain, and tissue repair.

laser therapy treatment for neck pain

Potential LLLT Benefits

Low-Level Laser Therapy is one of the best options that can provide pain reduction or relief, especially for patients seeking treatment that does not require surgery or medication. Since the therapy is a non-invasive procedure, it doesn’t require prolonged recovery. LLLT addresses several orthopedic conditions and promotes faster healing. Also, there are no severe side effects associated with LLLT when used appropriately by a doctor.

While LLLT is a non-invasive procedure and promotes faster healing, patients may take a series of treatments to get total relief. The number of treatments can range from 8 to 30, depending on the duration and severity of the pain.

Other Alternative Treatments for Back Pain

Apart from LLLT, other alternatives to opioid use for back pain relief are available. Non-opioid drugs that are available by prescription or over the counter include acetaminophen (Tylenol), aspirin (Bayer), ibuprofen (Motrin), and steroids. Patients who want to avoid the side effects of opioids may prefer using these drugs.

Also, a doctor may recommend other non-drug therapies that can be effective alone or in combination with pain relief drugs. These therapies include:

Physical therapy

A physician or a physical therapist specializing in rehabilitation and physical medicine may recommend an exercise program to help decrease back pain and improve your overall health. Deep muscle massage, whirlpools, and ultrasound may help relieve pain too. Motor control exercise helps restore, control, coordinate, and strengthen muscles supporting and controlling the spine.

back pain treatment

Acupuncture

Patients have reported finding pain relief in acupuncture, where thin needles are inserted at different spots in the skin to interrupt pain signals. The therapy is well-tolerated with less serious side effects.

Surgery

Surgery may be the next option for severe back pain that persists for six to twelve weeks of other nonsurgical treatments. In rare cases, an immediate surgery procedure is performed for low back pain.

A doctor may recommend a decompression surgical procedure to alleviate back pain due to pinched nerves. Surgery may be performed if the patient is unable or has limited ability to function normally in everyday life.

Injections

Back pain injections help treat inflammation and spinal stenosis. Also, physicians use injections to treat other back pain types. They may use nerve block injections, discography, or epidural injections.

In pain management, clinicians may recommend the use of opioids. While the safest possible treatment is to stop opioid prescription for back pain, abrupt cessation of opioid medication can also have adverse effects on the patient. Patient safety should be the top consideration in treatment procedures, and doctors should focus on other alternatives to an opioid prescription for back pain.

Related Reading: Laser Therapy and Chiropractic Care: How They Work Together

Find a ProviderBecome a Provider

How Erchonia Low Level Laser Therapy Works

Visible vs. Infrared Lasers

There is so much misinformation about the science of low-level lasers and how manufacturers have manipulated the science to gain a sales advantage – it is hard to separate fact from fiction. One example is; that longer wavelengths penetrate deeper. However, this “marketing claim” is backed by no clinical research and goes against the established physics of light. Published literature demonstrates that depending on the laser wavelength either a photochemical or photophysical reaction will occur.

Photochemical

The first law of Photochemistry states, that the energy in the photon (electron volt or EV) has to be absorbed by the cell to create a photochemical effect in the body. Photochemical reactions in tissue only occurs with visible light, this is well known and has been published in many papers and scientific journals. Visible light (400nm – 660nm) has sufficient energy to displace electrons in atoms to a higher energy state, without causing ionization. Once the energy inside the cell is absorbed the cell then uses what energy it needs then passes the excess energy to the next cell. The more energy (ev) the photon has the more energy it has the pass on to the next cell, then the next to create a stronger photochemical effect. For this reason, high energy photons from visible light are capable of creating greater systemic effects than longer wavelengths, since the initial electron charge is higher the more transfer of elections is possible

The easiest way to understand how photochemistry works would be to look at biochemistry or how drugs work. If you are taking 200mg of a drug like an NSAID you swallow the pill, it enters your stomach and after your stomach starts to break down the drug it starts a biochemical response that reduces inflammation. There is a therapeutic dose that is most optimal, by increasing the dose all you are doing is increasing milligrams and the side effects. Biochemical responses are not natural, unlike laser light which is natural and with visible light there are no known side effects.  Each wavelength of visible light (red, blue, green) will produce a distinct photochemical effect, through similar, if not the same biological pathways of pharmaceutical drugs. Published research from The University of Chicago Illinois (UCSD) and other Universities using the Erchonia laser, that depending on the condition there is a peak wavelength absorption for simulating the desired biological pathways such as reducing apoptosis, necrosis, TNF-a, mitochondria production, stem cells, nerve regeneration, immune function, etc. 

Infrared Lasers (Photophysical Effects)

Infrared Light (IR) is not energetic enough to initiate photochemical processes, instead, the result of infrared absorption is heat formation due to a increase in molecular vibrational activity, this is referred to photophysical effect. For direct photochemistry to occur, it is reported the (eV) must be 1.7eV, equal to 730nm. In fact, since the photon energy is so low in the IR wavelengths, the light is strongly absorbed by water molecules leading to superficial heating of the skin (Georgia State University), which is contrary to the propaganda that manufacturers state that these wavelengths penetrate deeper than visible light.

The longer the wavelength 730nm-12,000nm the less energy (ev) in the photon.  By increasing the laser power all you are doing is shooting out less energetic (ev) photons. Again, the shorter the wavelength the more energy the photon, when you get below 380nm there is so much energy in the photon that the body does not absorb the energy and the photons bounce off the bone which is how x-rays work. These lower wavelengths are so energetic they are referred to as ionizing radiation and due to the high energy photons, they can cause cancer. 

Infrared lasers are absorbed by the water in the upper layers of the tissue, the water starts vibrating and slowly starts a warming reaction by the cells vibrating in humans and plants. By increasing the power of the laser all you are doing is heating the tissue faster.  Tissue ablation works by increasing power in microseconds to the point where you are killing the upper layers of the dermis (apoptosis) for skin rejuvenation. Increasing power does not increase how far the laser penetrates unless you are measuring how deep the heating of the tissue will reach. 

Contact our Erchonia team if you would like more information on low level laser therapy.

Find a ProviderBecome a Provider

How Erchonia Low Level Laser Therapy Works