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Photobiomodulation and Sports: Results of a Narrative Review

Benefits of photobiomodulation (PBM) have been known for several decades. More recently, PBM applied in sports offers a special chance to support the modeling of the performance and recovery. Increasingly complex physical activities and fierce competition in the world of sports generate a state of p...

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Autores principales: Ailioaie, Laura Marinela, Litscher, Gerhard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706093/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34947870
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life11121339
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author Ailioaie, Laura Marinela
Litscher, Gerhard
author_facet Ailioaie, Laura Marinela
Litscher, Gerhard
author_sort Ailioaie, Laura Marinela
collection PubMed
description Benefits of photobiomodulation (PBM) have been known for several decades. More recently, PBM applied in sports offers a special chance to support the modeling of the performance and recovery. Increasingly complex physical activities and fierce competition in the world of sports generate a state of psycho-emotional and physical stress that can induce chronic fatigue syndrome, failure in physical training, predisposition to muscle damage, physical and emotional exhaustion etc., for which PBM could be an excellent solution. To evaluate and identify all risk factors and the influence of PBM on health and performance in sport and for a better understanding of its effects, we did a search for “Photobiomodulation and Sports” on PubMed, to update the PBM science applied in sports, and we retained for analysis the articles published from 2014 to date. The term “PBM” is recent, and we did not include previous studies with “low level laser therapy” or “LLLT” before 2014. In the present research, PBM has been shown to have valuable protective and ergogenic effects in 25 human studies, being the key to success for high performance and recovery, facts supported also by 22 animal studies. PBM applied creatively and targeted depending on sport and size of the level of physical effort could perfectly modulate the mitochondrial activity and thus lead to remarkable improvements in performance. PBM with no conclusive results or without effects from this review (14 studies from a total of 39 on humans) was analyzed and we found the motivations of the authors from the perspective of multiple causes related to technological limitations, participants, the protocols for physical activity, the devices, techniques and PBM parameters. In the near future, dose–response experiments on physical activity should be designed and correlated with PBM dose–response studies, so that quantification of PBM parameters to allow the energy, metabolic, immune, and neuro-endocrine modulation, perfectly coupled with the level of training. There is an urgent need to continuously improve PBM devices, delivery methods, and protocols in new ingenious future sports trials. Latest innovations and nanotechnologies applied to perform intracellular signaling analysis, while examining extracellular targets, coupled with 3D and 4D sports motion analysis and other high-tech devices, can be a challenge to learn how to maximize PBM efficiency while achieving unprecedented sports performance and thus fulfilling the dream of millions of elite athletes.
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spelling pubmed-87060932021-12-25 Photobiomodulation and Sports: Results of a Narrative Review Ailioaie, Laura Marinela Litscher, Gerhard Life (Basel) Review Benefits of photobiomodulation (PBM) have been known for several decades. More recently, PBM applied in sports offers a special chance to support the modeling of the performance and recovery. Increasingly complex physical activities and fierce competition in the world of sports generate a state of psycho-emotional and physical stress that can induce chronic fatigue syndrome, failure in physical training, predisposition to muscle damage, physical and emotional exhaustion etc., for which PBM could be an excellent solution. To evaluate and identify all risk factors and the influence of PBM on health and performance in sport and for a better understanding of its effects, we did a search for “Photobiomodulation and Sports” on PubMed, to update the PBM science applied in sports, and we retained for analysis the articles published from 2014 to date. The term “PBM” is recent, and we did not include previous studies with “low level laser therapy” or “LLLT” before 2014. In the present research, PBM has been shown to have valuable protective and ergogenic effects in 25 human studies, being the key to success for high performance and recovery, facts supported also by 22 animal studies. PBM applied creatively and targeted depending on sport and size of the level of physical effort could perfectly modulate the mitochondrial activity and thus lead to remarkable improvements in performance. PBM with no conclusive results or without effects from this review (14 studies from a total of 39 on humans) was analyzed and we found the motivations of the authors from the perspective of multiple causes related to technological limitations, participants, the protocols for physical activity, the devices, techniques and PBM parameters. In the near future, dose–response experiments on physical activity should be designed and correlated with PBM dose–response studies, so that quantification of PBM parameters to allow the energy, metabolic, immune, and neuro-endocrine modulation, perfectly coupled with the level of training. There is an urgent need to continuously improve PBM devices, delivery methods, and protocols in new ingenious future sports trials. Latest innovations and nanotechnologies applied to perform intracellular signaling analysis, while examining extracellular targets, coupled with 3D and 4D sports motion analysis and other high-tech devices, can be a challenge to learn how to maximize PBM efficiency while achieving unprecedented sports performance and thus fulfilling the dream of millions of elite athletes. MDPI 2021-12-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8706093/ /pubmed/34947870 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life11121339 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Ailioaie, Laura Marinela
Litscher, Gerhard
Photobiomodulation and Sports: Results of a Narrative Review
title Photobiomodulation and Sports: Results of a Narrative Review
title_full Photobiomodulation and Sports: Results of a Narrative Review
title_fullStr Photobiomodulation and Sports: Results of a Narrative Review
title_full_unstemmed Photobiomodulation and Sports: Results of a Narrative Review
title_short Photobiomodulation and Sports: Results of a Narrative Review
title_sort photobiomodulation and sports: results of a narrative review
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706093/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34947870
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life11121339
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