Red light therapy is a trending wellness service for a good reason. With its ability to tend to a variety of symptoms and conditions, it’s no wonder it’s becoming popular. Here, we’ll discuss how red light can be particularly beneficial for chronic mental health issues and migraines.
You’ve heard about the benefits of getting enough sunlight daily, from a boost in mood to improved vitamin D levels. However, have you heard of the benefits of red light therapy? While it’s being mentioned on social media more than ever before, some people are still unfamiliar with it or even in denial about its beneficial effects.
Red light therapy is more than just a growing trend or phase; it’s something which has been proven to be effective for a wide range of symptoms. In this article, we’ll talk about how red light exposure can be useful for both migraines and mental health disorders, which often play hand-in-hand.
Relaxes Overactive Nerves
Both migraines and mental health disorders can act on a neurological level. An overactive nervous system can lead to chronic pain, pain sensitivity, and hypersensitive emotional or mental reactions. With this said, it may trigger migraines, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and frequent feelings of overstimulation.
Red light therapy reverses overactive nerves by triggering the body’s parasympathetic nervous system to encourage a calm state. With increased blood flow, red light therapy also triggers the repair of overactive, damaged nerves. This way, the body can function in “rest and digest” rather than “fight or flight” mode.
Calms Tense Muscles
Tense muscles can lead to migraines, and mental health disorders like anxiety can lead to tense muscles. Knowing this, we can make the connection between mental health disorders and migraines.
Fortunately, red light therapy kills two birds with one stone by calming tense muscles caused by anxiety and stress, the same tense muscles which often lead to headaches like migraines. It achieves this by delivering more oxygen and other nutrients where they are needed the most while reducing lactic acid and other waste products.
Improves Sleep Quality
Lack of sleep can trigger or intensify both mental health symptoms and migraines. But not only is your length of sleep critical, but the quality of sleep you get each night matters, too. After all, sleep is when your body repairs itself, detoxes waste in the brain, and rebalances your parasympathetic nervous system – so make it count.
Red light therapy swoops in and saves the day. It can improve the quality of your sleep by improving melatonin production. Melatonin reduces the time it takes one to fall asleep, regulates the body’s natural circadian rhythm, and increases total sleep time while reducing the odds of one waking up in the night.
Reduces Inflammation
While inflammation is a natural reaction in the body, an uncontrolled activation of inflammation can be detrimental. In fact, inflammatory responses have been linked to both chronic migraines and mental health disorders.
Red light therapy can target inflammation directly by boosting cellular energy to help with tissue repair, reduce oxidative stress in the body, and decrease the presence of inflammatory markers like COX-2 enzymes and cytokines, which otherwise trigger migraines and mental health symptoms.
Are you ready to see for yourself how red light therapy can improve your mental health or migraine attacks? Contact Recovery Lab today to book your first session.
