Foot and ankle pain can have numerous causes, which makes getting an accurate diagnosis and having wide-ranging treatment options essential to securing a successful recovery. When painful podiatric problems disrupt your daily routine and conservative approaches fail to deliver the desired results, you need access to the latest, most effective interventions. Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place.
Michigan Foot & Ankle Specialists offer comprehensive care, personalized treatment plans, and advanced technologies like Multiwave Locked System (MLS) laser therapy for foot pain. This revolutionary procedure stimulates the body’s natural healing processes, leading to a faster, more comfortable recovery.
Here’s what you should know about our podiatric laser therapy, its benefits, and how our experienced Dearborn podiatrist, Dr. Alexander Thomas, uses it to help Metro Detroit-area patients get back on their feet.
What Is MLS Laser Therapy?
First, let’s clear up a common misconception. Though the word “laser” often brings to mind powerful sci-fi or comic book weapons that melt steel or thwart secret agents, that’s not what you’ll find at our Dearborn podiatry office. Our advanced laser therapy doesn’t burn skin or reduce supervillains to piles of ash—it uses a multiwave locked system (MLS) of specially attuned light energy wavelengths to penetrate deep into the tissue at the injury site, triggering a cascade of beneficial effects. For example, it can:
- Speed up metabolism, stimulating faster and more efficient repair of damaged tissues.
- Improve circulation, carrying nutrients and growth factors to the treatment site.
- Construct new capillary routes, giving cells better access to your blood supply.
- Drain away excess fluids, reducing swelling.
- Block local nerves to decrease signal transmission, reducing pain.
What’s truly impressive is that these benefits are all part of the body’s natural healing responses and recovery system. Laser therapy helps patients heal without drugs, uncomfortable procedures, or extended downtime.
Advanced Laser Therapy Treats Wide-Ranging Podiatric Conditions
Dr. Thomas addresses numerous conditions with laser therapy at Michigan Foot & Ankle Specialists. The innovative treatment boasts high success rates, particularly for soft tissue injuries and patients who’ve tried other, more conservative therapies without results. We often recommend MLS laser therapy to treat foot or ankle issues like:
- Plantar fasciitis. Resulting from an inflamed plantar fascia—the thick band of tissue that runs along the bottom of your feet, connecting the heel bone and toes—plantar fasciitis is an overuse or repetitive stress injury. It causes sharp, stabbing heel pain, which is most noticeable during your morning steps or when resuming activity after resting.
- Achilles tendinitis. When the Achilles tendon—the thick band of tissue that connects your calf muscles and heel bone—becomes inflamed, symptoms include pain or tenderness in the back of the heel or calf, swelling, and stiffness, most problematic in the morning.
- Peripheral neuropathy. Nerve damage in the feet can cause numbness or tingling, burning or stabbing pain, muscle cramps or weakness, heat or cold sensitivity, and balance issues.
- Neuromas. The thickening of the tissue surrounding a nerve that leads between your toes, neuromas can cause a sharp, burning pain in the ball of the foot and numbness in affected toes. Sometimes, a neuroma can feel like standing on a pebble or an uncomfortable wrinkle in your sock.
- Arthritis. Podiatric arthritis can lead to symptoms like redness, warmth, tenderness, pain, stiffness, and reduced mobility.
- Diabetic ulcers and other foot wounds. When poor circulation, peripheral neuropathy, and other health conditions lead to slow-healing wounds, we offer expert care to jumpstart the healing process and reduce your risk of complications.
Laser therapy effectively improves or resolves both acute and chronic conditions. It can also aid your post-operative recovery, helping the surgical site heal faster with less pain, swelling, and scarring. After a thorough examination, Dr. Thomas can help determine if this cutting-edge, noninvasive treatment is right for you.
Quick and Convenient Sessions That Fit Your Busy Schedule
Unlike surgery, which can require you to take time off work and undergo a lengthy recovery, laser therapy is a series of 15-to 30-minute sessions that we schedule over the course of weeks or months, depending on the size, severity, and location of the treatment area. This advanced therapy requires no special preparation and is painless, with most patients feeling only a mild warmth where we direct the laser. After the session, you can drive yourself home and go about your day without restriction. The number of sessions needed to achieve optimal varies. However, patients often report feeling positive effects after the first treatment, which grows with each successive session. In other words, you’ll feel better as your treatment progresses.