When Kristin Tokarsky first set her bright light box on her desk at work, her colleagues thought it a bit strange. But puzzlement over the box, which Kristin, 31, would switch on twice a day to take in the light's white glow, soon gave way to believing in its effects.
"Before bright light therapy, I'd constantly have to remind myself to focus. It would take me twice as long as anyone else to do tasks at work," says Kristin, who was suffering from the side-effects of antidepressant medications. Now she can concentrate better, and the light also helps boost her overall energy.
Light therapy for sleep, seasonal, and nonseasonal depression
What might surprise you is that Kristin is using light therapy for something other than seasonal affective disorder (SAD), the condition most commonly associated with light therapy, in which depression is triggered by the lack of daylight during the winter months.
Kristin's story is just one example of how light therapy can help treat a number of conditions, such as sleep disorders, nonseasonal depression, premenstrual syndrome and even bulimia.
How light therapy helps
In sleep disorders, for instance, studies found that in early morning awakening insomnia, bright light therapy helped people wake later and increase total sleep time. One American study found that in patients with depression, the combination of light therapy and antidepressants sped up improvements over taking medications alone (and lowered the chance of side-effects).
A SAD study showed light therapy was actually an equal form of treatment to antidepressants. In a small study of people with bulimia, light therapy (along with medication and psychotherapy) lowered the number of binges per week by 10 per cent, and it also significantly improved mood.
The lowdown on light
"We don't know exactly how light therapy works," says Dr. Raymond Lam, a professor of psychiatry and head of the division of clinical neuroscience at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "But there are a couple of major theories." The leading one is the role of the hormone melatonin on our circadian cycles. Melatonin helps trigger the sleep cycle once darkness sets in, and it helps our system slow our body's functions down as we snooze. If your body is short of melatonin, you won't log the deep sleep your body needs, which can lead to depression and irritability.
Light is a factor because exposure to it slows down the production of melatonin. Scientists figure by using light to put the brakes on melatonin in the morning, your body clock will be reset so you have proper levels of it at night.
"So the theory is that people with winter depression, for example, don't synchronize their internal clock properly with the changing levels of light from summer to winter," says Lam. "The other theory," he adds, "is that light switches our brain's neurotransmitters, which control mood, sleep and appetite, on and off." Depression, poor appetite, low energy and insomnia can also be related to those neurotransmitter levels.
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