Emerald Laser and the Wellness Side of Low Level Laser Therapy
Most clinics first hear about the Emerald Laser as a fat reduction device, and that’s fair enough. It’s the world’s first green laser FDA market cleared for overall body circumference reduction, and that’s what it’s sold and used for.
But Emerald belongs to a family of technology that’s been studied across medicine for a quarter of a century, and understanding that changes how practitioners talk about it. Professor Bob Khanna, who introduced Emerald in Sydney, describes it as his favourite fat reduction and wellness technology. The second half of that phrase is the part most clinics skip.
Here’s what sits underneath it.
Emerald is a cold laser, not a hot one
Low level laser therapy, sometimes called cold laser or photobiomodulation, works photochemically rather than thermally.
Hot lasers in medicine are used for surgical precision, cutting and ablating tissue. Cold lasers are used for healing precision. When Emerald’s ten 532nm green lasers meet the tissue, no heat is transferred. What happens instead is an interaction between the cells and the photons.
That distinction is why the treatment is painless, why nothing needs to touch the skin, and why treatments can run completely unattended with no downtime afterwards.
What the laser does inside the cell
The light is absorbed in the mitochondria, specifically by an enzyme called cytochrome C oxidase, which sits in the mitochondrial respiratory chain and acts as a photoacceptor.
Stimulating cytochrome C oxidase sets off a documented chain of events. Mitochondrial activity increases. ATP, NADH and RNA production increases. Cellular respiration increases. Nitric oxide synthase activity and nitric oxide production increase. Reactive oxygen species increase, and these have established roles in cell signalling, cell cycle progression, enzyme activation and the synthesis of proteins and nucleic acids.
The mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. Emerald gives them more to work with.
Put simply, the laser isn’t doing anything to the cell the cell couldn’t do on its own. It’s raising the cell’s capacity to do it.
Why the same technology appears across so much of medicine
Once you understand the mechanism, the breadth of Erchonia’s clearance history stops being surprising.
Erchonia has been researching low level laser therapy for around 25 years through extensive clinical studies and holds more than eighteen FDA market clearances. Only one of those is the fat reduction category the company created in 2010.
Erchonia lasers are used by practitioners in chiropractic, medical, dental, acupuncture, podiatry, osteopathic, veterinary and physiotherapy practice. The documented applications of LLLT as a technology include soft tissue injury, tendonitis, chronic back and neck pain, joint problems including osteoarthritis, reduction of inflammation, wound management including post surgical healing and diabetic ulceration, and stimulated nerve function.
The physiological effects described in the literature include accelerated cell growth and reproduction, faster wound healing through fibroblast stimulation, increased metabolic activity, reduced fibrous tissue formation, anti-inflammatory action, increased vascular activity stimulating lymph and blood circulation, and improved nerve conduction.
What makes Erchonia’s approach different
Plenty of devices claim to use low level laser therapy. Fewer have the research behind them.
Erchonia’s lasers are true lasers rather than LED arrays, and that distinction shows up in the trial data. In the sham controlled studies, the control groups were treated with LEDs, and the difference in outcome between the laser and LED groups is a large part of why the FDA clearance was granted.
Erchonia’s lasers are also programmable by frequency. Specific pulsation rates have been shown to produce different physiological responses at cell level, which is why the same underlying technology can be applied to such different clinical purposes with different protocols.
The company holds patents across the technology and has built its clinical evidence through double blind trials rather than case series or manufacturer studies. That’s an unusual standard in aesthetics, and it’s the reason practitioners from outside the aesthetic field take the technology seriously.
An important boundary
Emerald’s clearance in Australia is for overall body circumference reduction. That’s what it’s listed for, that’s what you treat for, and that’s what you claim.
Nothing above should be presented to a patient as evidence that Emerald treats pain, wounds, arthritis or any other condition. Those applications belong to the wider body of LLLT research and to other Erchonia devices with their own clearances.
What the wider evidence base does give you is context. This is not a technology invented last year for the aesthetics market. It’s a well documented modality with a long safety record and a mechanism understood at the level of the enzyme, applied here to a specific, cleared indication.
That’s a useful answer when a cautious patient asks whether it’s actually safe, and a useful reassurance for a practitioner deciding whether to put their name behind it.
What patients experience
The treatment itself is thirty minutes of lying still under the lasers. Nothing touching the skin, no heat, no pressure, no sensation to speak of. There’s no pain and no side effects during or after treatment, and no downtime at all.
For a patient who has been put off by other body contouring technologies, or who has had a treatment that hurt, that description does more work than any claim you could make.
Practitioners also notice that patients tend to come out of a course of Emerald treatments differently to how they came out of other courses. That’s anecdotal rather than a clinical claim, and it should be presented that way. But it’s consistent enough across clinics to be worth paying attention to.
The metabolic effect worth knowing
One finding from the research is particularly useful in consult.
The release of lipids following LLLT does not elevate plasma lipids. In a study treating the abdomen using the same protocol, serum triglycerides decreased in 16 of 19 treated subjects, and serum cholesterol decreased by an average of 18.8 mg/dL.
That matters for patients under medical management who will be asked about the treatment by their GP, and it matters for practitioners who want to be confident in what they’re putting patients through.
What this means in practice
Emerald sits in a clinic as a body contouring device. That’s its clearance and that’s its primary use.
But understanding that it’s a low level laser, and understanding what a low level laser does at cellular level, changes how confidently a practitioner can explain it, how they answer the safety question, and how seriously they take what patients report through a course.
The clinics getting the most out of Emerald are usually the ones whose practitioners understand the mechanism rather than just the marketing. Patients can tell the difference in a consult, and it converts better.
How practitioners use this in consult
None of this needs to be delivered as a lecture. But knowing it changes how the consult goes.
When a patient asks whether it’s safe, you have an answer that goes beyond reassurance. This is a modality with a 25 year research history, more than eighteen FDA market clearances across the technology, and a mechanism documented at the level of a named enzyme.
When a patient asks how it works, you can explain it in one sentence without overpromising. The laser gives the fat cell the energy to release what it’s holding, and the body clears it through the lymphatic system the way it clears everything else.
When a patient asks why it doesn’t hurt, the answer is simply that no heat is involved. It’s a photochemical effect, not a thermal one.
Practitioners who can hold that conversation convert better than those who can’t, and patients notice the difference between someone explaining a technology and someone reciting a benefit list.
See the technology in person
The mechanism is easier to understand when you’re standing next to the device watching a treatment run.
InnovaMed Aesthetics is the Australian and New Zealand distributor for Emerald by Erchonia. We run demonstrations for clinics, walk practitioners through the clinical research, and cover the treatment protocol, the training included and what the device costs to run.
To book a demonstration of the Emerald Laser or to learn more about the technology, get in touch through the contact form at innovamedaesthetics.com.au/contact-us or call 1300 653 522, and one of our team will organise a time to talk it through with you.
