Jill Laroussini is a clinical nurse specialist at Balance Being Wellness Center with a passion for light therapy.
“I’m all about the light," Laroussini said whoco-created 'Ready 4 the Return' in 2005 — a prevention initiative to offer body and mind healing using guided imagery, aromatherapy and light touch therapies to soldiers after returning from war.
Laroussini says she uses light to help the body reconnect to a deep ‘rest-digest-heal’ parasympathetic state, explaining that the therapy counters the jacked-up, sympathetic triggers caused by trauma, compassion fatigue or the general hiccups of life.
The New Orleans native has presented her findings and the importance of light therapy to the American Holistic Nurses Association and the American Holistic Medical Association in Louisiana.
In her semiretirement from teaching community health nursing at UL Lafayette for 17 years, Laroussini works as a sexual assault nurse examiner in Lafayette.
How did light therapy become such a large part of your life?
My son was inLittle League. He had Osgood-Schlatter disease, an inflammatory process of the knees where pain doesn't stop until your growth plates close.
We had gone to two different orthopedists and to physical therapy twice. He was still taking a lot of ibuprofen and coming inside to put ice on his knees.
I decided to invest in this set of lights and put it on his knees seven times in 10 days.
I would holler, “Hey, come on in, get some light!”
And after a while he said, “Well, they don't hurt anymore.”
Here's a condition where doctors said he would be in pain until his growth plates close. His dad is 6’5. They showed me the X-rays. There was a lot of space to grow.
I just wanted something that would help my son not be in pain— and this helped.
I was the Little League nurse for a couple of regional tournaments in Texas. I would “light up” the pitcher, the catcher and my son to keep those kids in the game.
What is photobiomodulation (light therapy), and how does it work?
How does the body get better? You deliver good nutrients through the blood supply.
The light— red light and infrared light at a particular wavelength— gets the body to “gas off.” Your blood vessels open up, and you can deliver the nutrients.
When you have an injury, you can have swelling that has to be mucked up by the lymphatic system. Light opens up those systems and helps byproducts of the immune system to move on. It supports the body's natural processes for healing.
They had five different names for light therapy. But everybody has settled on photobiomodulation— photo being light, bio being the body, and modulating meaning we can upregulate or downregulate for a variety of things.
What are the different types of light therapy? How are they used and what are the risks of using it?
Blue light travels about four millimeters. Red light travels about 10 to 12 millimeters. And infrared travels up to 100 millimeters.
It penetrates the skin, the muscles and sometimes down to the bone.
Dermatology and esthetic spas use a lot of light for increasing collagen and removing dark spots. That’s green light.
Blue light speeds up detoxification of cells. It's most valuable for skin and for fighting infection.
Red light is known for the stimulation of ATP production (think of ATP as a cell's energy currency).
Infrared light is known for going deeper to help the body recover muscle spasms, muscle injury, inflammation— that could include bone issues.
You wouldn't want to put infrared light over your eyes, and you wouldn't want to put any light over a medicinal patch. You really need to know what you're doing.
Everybody's different, but most pain issues are a result of injury to the tissue or inflammation. The body knows how to heal. This is just one of many tools to use.
What are the origins of light therapy?
NASA decided they wanted to use lights in space to grow plants. They noticed somebody who was tending to the plants had a wound that was healing quicker.
It was as early as 1980 that they were using light therapy to help astronauts maintain muscle and bone mass and treat chronic wounds.
Tell me about your time at 'Ready 4 the Return' working with veterans and law enforcement on alternative forms of therapy.
We came up with 'Ready 4 the Return' to educate folks about other modalities that are outside of talk therapy that can be useful.
We set up our massage tables and provided 20-minute sessions blending guided imagery with aromatherapy and healing touch.
We realized soldiers and law enforcement were jacked up on adrenaline for a reason. They are trained to run into the fire or fight and to rescue people. You can't really stop those pathways, but you can counter them.
That's what we did with hands-on therapy— reconnecting energy flow so that the body would remember the parasympathetic nervous system (‘rest-digest-heal’).
I treated a fellow who had a gasoline burn on his leg. I think I got light on it on days one, two and three. Then we skipped days four, five and six because he went back to work.
At the time I went to see him on day six or seven, it was quite healed up.
If there's anything that hurts — a janky knee, ankle or an old scar— you can "experience the light."
What technologies or research are you interested in as light therapy becomes a more studied phenomenon?
There are a number of doctors who are looking into light gizmos for emotions. There's a doctor at Harvard that came up with a battery-operated headband. It was helping people reduce depression— and it's rechargeable.
Australia and New Zealand are doing studies to show how “lighting up” before and after weight lifting and exercising was helpful for the recovery. You could do more reps and recover quicker.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
For more Louisiana Health news, subscribe to our digital newsletterhere.
