Light has a long history in medicine.
Niels Ryberg was awarded the Nobel prize (medicine and physiology) in 1903 for treating patients with light (red and blue).
In the 1960’s lasers (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) became available.
Made in 1960 by Theodore H. Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, (Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow developed the original theories) lasers (and the parts to make them) became more readily available and then more mainstream in both medicine and health.
Mester et al. (1968) published an article that showed laser light (at low doses) increased hair growth at an accelerated rate, and promoted wound healing (but they started off looking at tumor removal). This observation was termed “laser biostimulation.”
Although often referred to as laser therapy (or a similar term) the origins of lasers for medical uses began with, and have expanded back to, the use of light to treat patients.
So almost by accident the field of ‘phototherapy’ was born and then started to mature.
Over the decades this type of treatment has been referred to by many names:
LLLT (Low-level laser therapy)
AKA:
- LPLT (low-power laser therapy)
- Soft laser therapy
- Low-intensity laser therapy
- Low-energy laser therapy
- Cold laser therapy
- Bio-stimulation laser therapy
- Photo-biotherapy
- Therapeutic laser
- (MIRE) Monochromatic infrared light energy
- Laser acupuncture (when applied to acupuncture points) Transcranial photobiomodulation (when applied to the head)
- (NILT) near-infrared laser therapy
Photobiomodulation (recently)
Like many products lasers have been applied (at various power levels) to just about any problem you could think of from arthritis to stopping smoking.
As there are many parameters that can be altered (wavelength, energy, fluence, power, irradiance, pulse mode, treatment duration, repetition just to name a few) studies have yielded variable results.
As you would expect it worked for some things and not for others.