Light Therapy
Hi, all welcome back to my blog. I hope everyone had a great weekend. Welcome back to my mental health awareness series. I’m going to be sticking with the therapy and treatment topic. I feel like there are so many options available but they’re not all commonly known.I’ve been doing a lot of research and I found some great treatments that are highly recommended for improving your mental health. I wanna go into detail with some of these.
This week I want to talk about Light Therapy.
Light Therapy is known as phototherapy which consisted of being exposed to artificial light sources. This treatment is recommended for major depression with seasonal patterns (SAD)(Seasonal affective disorder) This type of depression is quite common and often goes undiagnosed. Its also used to treat sleep disorders and other types of depression.
So I want to go through what the treatment is, how it works and what the side effected are to give a better understanding.
How it works:
What happens in a session is, you’ll sit near a light box which emits strong light, the standard output is between 2500 and 10,000 lux.
How it works is the exposer to the light will affect melatonin and serotonin change in your brain. Melatonin and Serotonin are both hormones that regulate human function ie: sleep, mood, appetite. High Serotonin levels increase happiness and relaxation its known as the feel-good hormone. Melatonin is known as the sleep hormone a deficiency causes sleeplessness.
So Light Therapy works to increase your Serotonin and Melatonin levels, improving your mood and reducing your symptoms or SAD ( Seasonal Affective disorder).
The sessions are 10-15 minutes long depending on how you handle the treatment and the strength of the light. The more powerful the light the shorter the session.
Obviously, there are pros and cons to everything:
PROS: Noninvasive, Safe, Convenient and Few mild side effects.
CONS: Heahachs, dry eyes and noise, insomnia and fatigue
Most of the side effects can be dealt with by changing the duration and intensity of each session. People usually start this treatment in the autumn when the evenings start getting darker as it’s around this time people suffer seasonal affective disorder.
If you suffer from sensitive skin, and eye condition or have a history of cancer (skin) and your considering this treatment you should consult your doctor first.
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