Using Light Therapy for Depression

Depression is one of the few disorders that can be treated successfully, and it responds well to it. But to find out which type of treatment works best is difficult, especially one that is new to the market such as light therapy for depression. But there are many medical conditions similar to depression, and medications can cause the symptoms of depression–fatigue, loss of pleasure, or sadness. And for a fact depression will not leave until the actual problem is not only identified but treated correctly.

Conventional methods for treating depression include psychotherapy, electroconvulsive or ECT therapy, and antidepressant drugs. The medical field recognizes that treatments for depression can vary, depending on its severity and its cause. Both holistic practitioners and traditional medical physicians agree that for extremely serious depressions, light therapy for depression should be considered as a complementary treatment as compared to the conventional ones.

These complementary conditions considered acceptable for light therapy for depression would be seasonal depression or seasonal affective disorders, not major or chronic depressions such as manic depression or manor depressive disorders. But there are several other conditions, including the light therapy for depression of SAD, that accept light therapy as an excellent treatment–early morning insomnia, productivity enhancement, night-owl insomnia, jet lag, late-shift drowsiness, bulimia, lupus, nonseasonal depression, or even prolonged menstrual cycles.

A lot of the early research on light therapy for depression has been inadequately funded, which has led to its lack of research at the very beginning. Also the studies had lots of flaws in its design problems, which caused them to be weak in their quality.

But research in Canada has completed one of the most recent studies that says light therapy for depression is just as effective of a treatment as medications, and is considered to be the safest treatment for bipolar depression. And not only is it effective, it is cheaper than traditional medication and treatments, in addition to being much safer with fewer side effects. Almost all of antidepressant treatments, except lithium, have the ability to make the condition of bipolar disorder much worse than without them, forcing an increase of subtle “manic side” symptoms.

When applying light therapy for depression treatments for winter depression or season affective disorder, light therapy originally started out with early morning treatments. But recent results have demonstrated how light therapy treats depression is still unknown, and is very much unestablished in its results. Recent studies have shown us that research in light therapy may occur in the evenings or other times with just as good of results.

Light Therapy

Light therapy is a rather complicated alternative medicinal field in itself, and is considered a vibrational medicine that uses acupuncture points, meridians, chakras, reflex zones, and many other areas to alter unbalanced frequencies in the body.

Based on scientific principles, light therapy can also be considered a form of energy medicine in addition to the vibrational medicine. It pulsates to a particular frequency that can be restored through resonant vibration, in order to achieve balance in the system. This balance is constantly seeking to reassert itself from an unbalanced state, through its own wisdom and intelligent form whenever light therapy is brought into play.

The body’s systems when it goes through some sort of crisis or trauma can not correct itself on its own, at least whenever a psychotic registration occurs. What consist in the makeup of the system of the body are the physical, the mental, the spiritual, and the emotional levels–all of which can be influenced by the application of light therapy. And since light therapy consists of vibration and resonance, the different areas of the body’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects have the ability to resonant to the many different vibrational frequencies.

In light therapy, the five physical senses are stimulated by vibration and resonance. This stimulation occurs with touch, color, light, sound, aroma, sacred geometry, and the use of crystals and gems. Receiving this stimulation can occur as an individual unit or as a total process, creating a balance in the system’s physical aspect. When an imbalance begins to occur, the body becomes deficient or completely overwhelmed by any amount of the senses–one or as a group.

By realizing that the body requires a balanced stimulus effecting the body, the senses can be approached on a steady and regular basis by utilizing the senses through processes–such as light therapy. Only then can healthy restoration begin to occur with deep changes toward a balanced system in the body.

Light therapy is important, as our bodies require light on a daily basis. The full spectrum of light influences the entire body to maintain its health, in a world where society is continuously blocking this light by staying indoors or deflecting the many forms of the light spectrum through the use of sun screen, sunglasses, or contacts. Seeing as light enters our body 90% of the time through the eyes, the skin, and the chakras, it is important to receive this light spectrum in order to stimulate the endocrine system, the immune system, and the body’s organs. As little as two hours of indirect sunlight offer the visible light spectrum, infrared, and ultraviolet light for a marked emotional well being and healthy body.