The anti-ageing laser that lights up your arm
It looks alarming. But, as ANNA PURSGLOVE finds, it actually works
Over the past five years there has been an explosion in the use of cosmetic lasers.
The dental industry reports that the demand for laser teeth whitening is increasing by 40 per cent a year, and that’s before you get to the lasers for skin plumping, sun damage, hair and spider vein removal. In short, when life drags you down, fight back with a beam of photons.
Now there’s a new laser in town, and it’s not for the faint-hearted: please welcome the intravenous laser.
Yes, you heard that right. This is a laser fired into a vein through a cannula and — I’m promised — is particularly good for hard-to- deal with aches and pains. The kind of thing we put up with, down another painkiller for and chalk up to middle age.
I have a niggling shoulder injury which I’m keen to pit against the Iv laser. Sustained a couple of years ago during an enthusiastic flirtation with high-intensity interval fitness training, it means I can’t reach back for things behind me easily, nor lie on my righthand side for too long without pain radiating down my arm and up my neck.
I’ve tried physiotherapy and osteopathy. I’ve experimented with targeted exercises and complete rest. According to various experts the problem is bicep tendonitis. It’s tricky to treat and requires a long resting period. Could a laser be the answer?
I’m at the elixir Clinic in Central London to find out. Cannula already inserted (big needle, I feel duty-bound to warn you) I’m waiting to be hooked up to the laser and have time to mull over my 11-year-old son’s prediction: ‘It’s gonna be sooo cool, mum. I reckon your eyes will light up like Zuul from Ghostbusters!’
Mahi Aramideh, elixir’s director and co-founder, and member of the royal College of Nursing and the Nursing and Midwifery Council, laughs a tinkling laugh. ‘Yes,’ she says.
I shoot up in the chair, then lie down quickly as I remember I’m attached to a laser. ‘How much? Are we talking faint phosphorescence or full Christmas tree?’ MAHI
assures me that only a portion of the vein will light up and explains that she will be using two different lasers, both of which will deliver light straight into my bloodstream.
The first will be red light, the primary benefits of which are to strengthen the immune system, increase cell activity and regenerate damaged tissues.
The red laser is also good, Mahi says, for boosting circulation, a key factor in healing tissue damage.
Next is blue light, with antiinflammatory and anti-bacterial effects. It is good for pain relief and accelerates wound healing, too. It also, coincidentally, has anti-ageing effects, as it encourages the growth of mitochondria which power cells.
All good with me. If I lose the shoulder pain and a few wrinkles to boot, I won’t complain.
Mahi adds that many clients like to mix the laser with one of elixir’s Iv vitamin infusions, as the effect of the laser magnifies the benefits of the infusion. ‘It’s such a pronounced effect that I wouldn’t even give you our most potent infusion with a laser,’ she adds. ‘You’d be bouncing off the walls. You wouldn’t sleep.’
I’m so busy pondering the potential for a less painful shoulder and a smoother face that I don’t notice the laser being turned on. I look down to see my arm glowing gently crimson.
While faintly disconcerting, it is not painful. Mahi explains that this is because it is a low-level or ‘ soft’ laser. Developed in Germany and approved for use there since 2005, low-level laser therapy (LLLT) is all about regeneration. While surgical lasers damage tissue (hence the pain), soft lasers are pain-free.
There are green and yellow lasers, too (but not at elixir). Green, apparently, is credited with improving oxygen uptake and yellow can have antidepressant effects by enhancing serotonin production.
research is also being done on the use of Iv lasers to help with conditions including fibromyalgia, rheumatism, MS, tinnitus and Lyme disease.
After being red-lasered for 20 minutes, Mahi switches to the blue one. For some reason, the blue light travels through my skin much more dramatically and my arm lights up above the elbow. I look like a nightclub.
Mahi closes the blinds — partly so the photographer and I can marvel at my glowing limb, but also so I can relax. I even momentarily fall asleep. ForTY
minutes later the treatment is done. Mahi says I may feel a benefit after a few days, and the treatment can be performed up to twice a week (but with a price tag of £250 a treatment, that may be tricky).
It is the middle of the following week when I realise there is something different about my right shoulder. It is still weak from two years of under-use, but while helping my eight-yearold into her school uniform I have absent-mindedly reached behind me for a hair brush.
This is not an action I could have performed ten days earlier without turning my whole body round. I tentatively try one of the stretches my physio prescribed to increase the flexibility of my shoulder tendon.
Standing next to a wall, I slide my hand out behind me so that my palm is flat on the wall and my shoulder joint is touching the wall, too. It doesn’t hurt!
This is the first time in two years I’ve been able to extend my arm back without a shooting pain in my shoulder.
As for wrinkles around my eyes and mouth, I can’t detect much improvement, but three or four nights of pain-free sleep may knock off a few of my 44 years.
There’s nothing more antiageing than the spring in my step that comes with knowing my shoulder is on the mend.
The 11-year- old, meanwhile, says that if I see Mahi again, he’s coming with me. ‘It’s oK mum, I know the password to your phone so I looked at the photographs,’ he says (we’ll need to discuss the sanctity of passwords at some point). He tells me reassuringly, ‘I was wrong — you didn’t look like Zuul from Ghostbusters. You looked like the Tardis. Cool!’