1624: Let's Learn About Equine Laser Therapy

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Greetings, everyone.

Coach Jen here, and thanks for tuning in to Horse Tip Bailey, episode 1624.

This time, Dr. Wendy Ying sits down with HRN Founder Glen the Geek to explain laser therapy

and its many applications.

Today is something that we're going to talk about that isn't technically Chinese medicine,

but it's a piece of equipment that I use all the time in my practice, and it's a laser.

And Glen, you being a geek, do you know what laser stands for?

No.

I was trying to make something up, but I haven't even got anything.

It got nothing.

Well, Elle, you can guess that Elle stands for light, right?

So a laser is a concentrated beam of light of photons.

So it's light amplification by stimulated emission radiation.

Well.

I didn't know it had it.

I didn't know it meant anything.

Yeah, and it's actually just because it's, laser's actually came about in the 1960s.

So they actually haven't been around for very long, but that word has just, from sci-fi, movies,

and books and things, has just gotten into our colloquialism.

Thank you.

Just Star Trek.

Yeah.

You just Star Trek.

Laser beam.

So, but basically that's a whole mouthful of stuff, and what does that mean?

This means it's a concentrated beam of light, and many lasers are certain wavelengths.

And this is the part where I start to get lost to be honest with you.

No, you like this.

You're a science guy.

No, I meant the wavelengths.

That's the part where it confuses me.

Oh, the wavelength is easy to understand.

So, wavelength, you just imagine like a wiggly line, right?

Yeah.

And the number, like the wavelength, it's like the, the length of it, right?

It's easy to understand.

Look, I'm not explaining it very well.

But like say, for example, our visible spectrum of light is between like 400 and 600 nanometers.

Right?

Okay.

So, that is the wavelength.

And like gamma rays in space, you know, the gamma rays which change the, the David Banner into the incredible Hulk, those are really long waves from trough to trough.

That's why they can travel farther and they can penetrate farther.

So the longer your wavelength, the deeper they can penetrate.

Okay.

The shorter the wavelength, the, the, the leasing can penetrate.

And like UV light is short, infrared light is long.

So like the light from a light bulb is short.

Right.

It doesn't penetrate anything.

It's just.

Well, and also the light from a light bulb is visible.

Okay.

Right? It's in the visible spectrum.

So the lasers that we use in therapy are, are near infrared, meaning they're just outside of our visible spectrum.

And lasers also, the reason that they're, they can be cutting lasers versus therapeutic lasers, they're, they're on a different wavelength.

So the cutting lasers tend to excite the molecules of water in the tissue and that's what causes the cutting.

Okay.

Right.

So those are surgical lasers.

So the laser that I use is a, it has a different wavelength that just penetrates the tissue and it actually stimulates the, what they're called chromophores.

That means it's their, their, their pigmented structures in the cells.

So technically, then a treatment laser is going to have a, is going to have a longer wavelength than a cutting laser.

Well, the cutting laser actually has a longer wavelength.

Oh, okay.

Yep. I heard it backwards.

Okay.

Yeah.

But that's why I also have to be careful because the therapeutic benefits, they affect the inside of the cell, right?

But you have to be careful where you apply it.

You don't want to treat the eye.

Obviously, that's why we wear these dark glasses because it will penetrate.

There's all these pigmented structures in the eye, right?

You don't want to damage the back of your retina, which has some pigmentation.

So, and, and the cutting lasers, you have to make sure you have the right wavelength on your cutting laser because you don't want to, you don't want to damage the other tissues.

You just want to be right at that certain wavelength so that you can cut through the tissue.

And, and the depth of it, too, is that determined by the wavelength?

Otherwise, you're just cutting the thing in half.

Right. Yeah. You have to be very careful about the depth.

And that's how you, you can affect if the wattage, the power of your laser.

Okay.

There's all different types of lasers, too. There's the class.

And they're, they're based on class.

And it's kind of scary sometimes when you think about it.

But the class ratings are on how much you can damage somebody with your laser.

Right.

Right. That's like a, the laser that's in your CD player.

If we had CD players anymore, you know.

But, and then the class, too, is a little bit stronger.

Class 3, that's put into two different classes.

They're relatively safe. They don't penetrate that much.

They can't generate that much power.

They only go up to like 500 milliwatts of power or something.

And then the class 4 laser, which is what we use in medical therapy,

it generates more power.

They can go deeper into the tissue.

And so your treatment times are much shorter.

So, like technically, I could use a class 3 laser.

And that's what sometimes you see sold as like a handheld therapeutic laser.

Right.

But the thing is the treat horse is especially like to get to the depths that you need

and the, and the amount of tissue you have to treat.

You'd have to be there for like 20 minutes on a point.

And, and who has time for that?

We're, today we're talking about proud flesh.

And let's just remind everybody what proud flesh is.

And then we'll talk about how, how, how you treat it with the laser.

Okay. Yeah. So proud flesh is granulation tissue in horses.

Right. So horses, when they get a big wound.

And you know, you sometimes see horses that have like this big chunk out of their body

and think, oh my god, how is that going to happen?

In horses, they do produce a lot of granulation tissue

to fill in these deep wounds.

And so that's a normal healing process of horses.

However, proud flesh is when it overgrows

and then the skin can't grow on top of it.

So it has a very increased blood supply.

It's a lot of like undifferentiated cells.

Right. It's just a lot of fibroblasts.

It's hard and bumpy.

It just looks gross.

But it's not a lot of organization there.

So it's basically like a scaffold for the other, the skin and the collagen

and everything to grow back in.

So with the laser, what we do is the laser increases, like I said,

it stimulates the mitochondria of the cells.

So it increases the energy in this, that's the little engine inside the cell.

So it increases the metabolism of the cell so that the wound healing can happen faster.

Usually they say it's about 30% faster in most wounds when you treat it with the laser,

with enough photons.

So that's another thing you have to do.

You have to make sure you're getting enough light therapy there to institute it change.

So what it does is it breaks down those the hard crunchy cells.

And then it allows it to heal again better in a more uniform manner.

Yeah, technically it's not breaking down those those bad cells.

Okay.

It's stimulating the body's immune system, right?

Your white blood cells to chomp up those bad cells.

And then the good cells can come in the epithelium, which is the skin can come in faster.

So if you have like a big huge hunk of proud flesh, that's actually like a big cauliflower mat

that's way above your skin.

Because a lot of times you get proud flesh can get can overgrow from flies or a lot of motion.

So if you have one on a join or something, sometimes that gets too severe.

Then that would do well with debridement.

So surgically cutting off a lot of that extra granulation tissue.

And like I said before, it doesn't have any nerves in it.

It's just a lot of fiberglass and blood cells and blood vascularization.

So you can cut that off, then laser it, and then you'll have a nice wound contracture.

So when you do this with the laser, you said it doesn't have nerve cells.

Does it hurt the horse at all? Is there any pain involved?

There's not any pain involved, but one of the things you have to be careful with the laser is it does generate heat in the body.

So you'll have to keep it moving all the time.

You know, so I kind of wave the laser over the area.

And I make sure that the skin is not getting too hot.

And is this one of the best treatments for a proud flesh?

It is one of the best treatments.

In the past, we had used like caustic agents like copper sulfate or granulex spray.

Have you ever used the granulex?

Years ago.

Yeah, and the thing is about the caustic agents, they do work and they do to bribe the tissue.

But don't get them on anything around it.

It damages the new baby cell coming in there.

So the thing that's good about the laser is that it can, it helps the immune system get rid of the proud flesh,

but it also supports the new epithelium coming in.

And then another thing I would do with the laser too is I would also use it.

I use it all the time for acupuncture.

Really?

Yeah.

So I would also support the immune system or whatever the underlying causes with acupuncture points.

Like say, this proud flesh is on a certain meridian.

I might treat the beginning and end of both those meridians to help to help that body stay in balance.

And the reason that I like acupuncture, laser treatments is less painful.

Like some horses don't like needles.

And you know, if you've been treating this proud flesh for like, you know, two months before you call your vet,

you know this horse is like, he doesn't want to be touched there.

Yeah, sick of you by this point.

Sick of everything.

If I'm parents, wave a wave around.

And so they don't even feel like it's a treatment.

It's a very non-painful treatment.

And with the laser, you can also go very deep.

So if I have to do any points in the in the hind end of the horse, you know, sometimes I use a six inch needle to get in there around the hip area.

But with the laser, I can actually get in deep there without having to put the giant needle in.

Six inch needle?

Yep.

Oh.

Yeah, I would go screaming the other way if I was the horse.

I know.

And sometimes with my squeamish patients, yes.

The laser is better than the six inch needle.

Do you have more trouble with the owners wanting to pass out than the horses?

Sometimes I do.

Especially like I talked about before the hemal acupuncture that we do with non-swetting the most.

So that is usually very dramatic.

And if I have any owners that don't like blood, I tell them maybe to go get a coffee.

But laser has really been an important therapy in my practice.

And, you know, I think it really even knows a very modern treatment.

I think that it goes very well with my philosophy of whole body healing.

Great. Well, that's laser treatment for proud flesh.

Thank you, Dr. Ying, for joining us again and for finally getting back to work.

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