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Posted: 5:14 AM Aug 13, 2007
Morning Medical Moment - Laser Bones
Broken bones can sideline anyone for at least a few months, or longer, but now a high tech device is helping heal broken bones and other injuries faster.
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Many professional sports teams already use it, and now this healing invention is helping the rest of us.
While Judi Charron was painting her kitchen last November, she fell off a stool and broke her wrist.
The break required a metal stabilizer that Judi was expected to wear for at least three months.
Twice a week her chiropractor, C.J. Valenti, used a cold laser on her wrist to stimulate healing.
"Due to that fact I got rid of that contraption I'd say at least six weeks ahead of schedule the doctor was very surprised,” says Charron.
No one's sure exactly why it works, but there are theories.
"What a cold laser does is simply increase the energy that a cell can produce and quite frankly the more energy a cell can produce, the faster the cells can heal,” says Valenti.
Erchonia is the first company that received FDA approval for using cold laser for accelerated healing.
"It doesn't make the bone heal anything physiologically faster than it could but what it really does is take away anything that would inhibit healing and takes those inhibitors out so that simply the bone can heal faster on its own,” says Valenti.
Valenti says the technology's been used in the states for about ten years but in Europe it's been used for three decades.
The laser has different frequency settings for bone and soft tissue. Valenti uses it almost every day in his practice.
"It doesn't hurt it's great and it helped heal me so fast,” says Charron.
She also credits the laser for getting her out of rehab six weeks earlier too.

