Effects of far-infrared radiation lamp therapy on recovery from muscle damage induced by eccentric exercise

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated the effects of a far-infrared radiation (FIR) lamp therapy on changes in muscle damage and proprioception markers after maximal eccentric exercise of the elbow flexors (EF: Study 1) and the knee flexors (KF: Study 2) in comparison to a sham treatment condition. In each study, 24 healthy sedentary women were assigned to a FIR or a sham treatment group (n = 12/group). They performed 72 maximal EF eccentric contractions (Study 1) or 100 maximal KF eccentric contractions (Study 2) with their non-dominant limbs. They received a 30-min FIR (wavelength: 8–14 µm) or sham treatment at 1, 25, 49, 73 and 97 h post-exercise to the exercised muscles. Maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVC) torque, muscle soreness, plasma creatine kinase activity, and proprioception assessed by position sense, joint reaction angle, and force match were measured before, and 0.5, 24, 48, 72, 96 and 120 h post-exercise. The outcome measures showed significant changes (P < 0.05) at 0.5-hour post-exercise (before treatment) similarly (P > 0.05) between the conditions in both studies. However, changes in all measures at 24–120 h post-exercise were smaller (P < 0.05) for the FIR than sham condition in both studies. For example, MVC torque returned to the baseline by 72 h post-exercise for the FIR condition in both studies, but was still 19 ± 6% (Study 1) or 17 ± 12% (Study 2) lower than the baseline at 120 h post-exercise for the sham condition. These results suggested that the FIR lamp therapy was effective for accelerating recovery from muscle damage.

Highlights

• FIR lamp therapy was effective for recovering muscle strength and proprioception 1–3 days faster to the baseline.

• FIR lamp therapy was effective for attenuating muscle soreness by 55–60%, and reducing peak plasma CK activity by 45–89%.

• The effects of the FIR lamp therapy appear to be greater than other therapeutic interventions for eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage that have been investigated previously.

KEYWORDS:

• Lengthening muscle contraction
• delayed onset muscle soreness
• proprioception

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Mr. Chung-Chan Hsieh, Ms. Xin-Rou Li and Ms. Yong-Yu Guo for they assistance in the data collection. The authors also would like to thank the study participants, and Professor Kuo-Wei Tseng (PT, PhD) for providing the far-infrared radiation and sham treatments to the participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology [grant number MOST 108-2410-H-003-116-MY3 & 111-2410-H-003-147-MY3] and the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in TAIWAN. However, the funding organisations played no roles in the design of the study, and collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data and in writing the manuscript.