Light Therapy For Depression
It may be just historical coincidental that light treatment was first identified as a treatment for depression, because many new applications are on the horizon. This will have wide implications for reducing the dependence on drugs in the future. But it needs a strenuous clinical research effort to build the efficacy of new applications - consider that it took fifteen years for the classic trials of intense light treatment to come to completion.
Studies of light therapy for depression haven’t been prohibited to depression.
There’s promising explanation that it could be efficacious in non seasonal depression also. A joint trial at Columbia varsity Medical Center and Wesleyan varsity suggests that patients with protracted depression - who have experienced almost no relief in years - answer as well to light care as do patients with depression.
Dr. Daniel Kripke of the college of California at San Diego compared a collection of placebo-controlled trials of intense light with mood suppressor drug trials, and found the improvement rates to be similar. One significant difference is that light appears to work inside one week, while medicines may take up to eight weeks to match the efficiency of light. Curiously light used with medication appears to be better than either one alone. Many Western western european surgeries have just started to administer light treatment alongside drug treatment. Another promising use of intense light is in the treating of symptoms related to PMS. Many health tests have been completed, focusing on light treatment in the luteal phase preceding menstruation, with heavy relief of premenstrual depression.
Not only has light treatment helped improve the mood of PMS sufferers, but it would appear to reduce the physical indications of “premenstrual tension.” Many women have made use of the care for no less than two years, with maintained positive answer. While an ideal dosing regimen still should be determined, light care stands as a choice especially for ladies who have not responded to drugs for PMS, or who’ve been worried by medicine complications and abandoned treatment due to this.
