Spiritual Healing & Harry Edwards (4)

excitability, mild nausea, and mild burning of the eyes. These typically are go after a few days and/or by temporarily adjusting the distance one sits from their light.
An interesting measurement was taken of the amount of lux which was present in an typical office with florescent lighting – the meter used read about 170 lux, which is highly problematic when an average sunny day is between 5000 � lux but can be up to 100000lux.
Some people ask can just replacing my ordinary bulbs with full spectrum ones cure me.

Interestingly for the majority of people afflicted with seasonal affective disorder Medical research indicates the therapeutic effect comes from the high intensity of light. This high intensity, generally ten to twenty times brighter than regular room light, stimulates the brain to produce the chemical changes responsible for the antidepressant effect. Also, most incandescents are bright enough to be harmful.
See the research here with all sorts of people

http://www.phothera.com/ptref.html
where they are
Treating people with light therapy on people who have alcohol problems, Eating disorders, winter depression, sleep disorders, obesity, Bulimia, anorexic nervosa, general food intake and sad, Alzheimer’s, Behavioral problems with elderly people, Suicidal tendencies are also explored and make interesting reading.

The symptoms of SAD usually recur regularly each winter, starting between September and November and continuing until March or April.
Sleeping problems - Usually desire to oversleep and difficulty staying awake but, in some cases, disturbed sleep and early morning wakening

Lethargy- Feelings of fatigue and inability to carry out normal routine

Overeating – A real craving for carbohydrates and sweet foods, usually resulting in weight gain

Depression- Feelings of misery, guilt and loss of self-esteem, sometimes hopelessness and despair, sometimes apathy and loss of feelings
Anxiety Tension and inability to tolerate stress

Mood changes - In some sufferers, extremes of mood and short periods of hypomania (overactivity) in spring and autumn.

Treatment

Some light boxes emit higher intensity of light, up to 10,000 lux, which can cut treatment time down to half an hour a day. According to some researchers the light has to be full spectrum fluorescent lighting. Although there is evidence it seems for using high intensity florescent lighting. This could be a crucial factor and caution is recommended here as fluorescent lighting has shown to be problematic in a lot of situations.
Light boxes are not available on the NHS and have to be bought from specialist retailers; and start at less than £100.
Apparently you can try before you buy; several companies offer a home trial or hire scheme.

Interesting feedback

A doctor had a patient with severe SAD who was from a psychiatric hospital interested. The patient in question was a woman who was about 35. She was an emergency admission because she had tried to commit suicide. He hadn’t realized until then that SAD could be so life threatening. He found out that she suffered SAD every winter, but was able to hang on until her kids' February holiday from school when the family took a vacation in sunny Florida, which immediately lifted her spirits. Apparently this year the February' vacation didn't come until the first week of March. She couldn't hold out any longer.

Another patient aged Male mid-20s was admitted to this same hospital year after year, generally for several months at a time so severe was his depression. He always came in about the same time of year, usually late September, then mysteriously got well and was fine to go in about Feb/March .He tells us that at other times of the year, he was just fine. Light therapy was used. Staff noticed that he became more sociable. Later he paid better attention to personal hygiene, caring to change his clothes, to bathe himself and to shave. There is a further report of music then coming from his room indicating a better mood.

In another study some people can become more vulnerable to feelings of aloneness and other sad thoughts because of the decreasing hours of daylight and that it is the shorter day's length which sets the stage for depression. Scientists. In a now classical research paper authored by Norman Rosenthal and his colleagues found they could predict how many of the people they studied would develop SAD symptoms on the basis of how brief the daylight hours were. As daylight began noticeably decreasing in September, some people were affected. By the time the days bracketing the winter solstice came, almost everyone in the study group was affected. Then, as the season moved away from the solstice toward spring with lengthening daylight hours, the number of affected people began to decline. By the end of May, almost everyone was back to their old selves, some unfortunately even switching into what psychiatrists call mania.
To make sure that this association between change in mood and amount of light was more than just mere coincidence, the next step was to supply light to see if it they could reverse the SAD mood. They used two different kinds of light; just to make sure the extra attention paid to the SAD patients wasn't what helped resolve the depression. The dimmer, yellow light they used had no effect. However, the brighter light with a frequency spectrum more or less simulating the frequencies in sunlight, produced a marked change in mood in most (but not all) the patients who received that treatment. Their mood lightened, as it were, with the administration of light.

Researchers at medical centers and clinics in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asian and Australia have had much success with light therapy in many thousands of patients

with clear histories of SAD for at least several years. Marked improvement is usually observed within four or five days, if not sooner and symptoms often return in about the same amount of time when the lights are withdrawn. Some people take longer than the usual few days to respond to light. It is therefore worth persevering for a week or two before concluding that light therapy doesn’t work for you. Most users maintain a consistent daily schedule of light exposures beginning -as needed - in fall or winter and usually continuing until spring, when outdoor light becomes sufficient to maintain good mood and high energy. Some people can skip treatments for one to three days, occasionally longer, without ill effect, but most start to slump quickly when treatment is interrupted.

The first demonstration of clinical effect was in the early 1980’s. Soon after, several research centers initiated clinical trials, and more than 2,500 SAD patients have been studied to date. The method has also been used in private practices, in most cases by psychiatrists, but also by family doctors, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers and nurses. The number of clinicians offering light therapy is increasing dramatically year by year, though compared to drug treatments or psychotherapy, the method is not yet in widespread use.

See another interesting article with ABC news -
http://archive.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/InYourHead/allinyourhead_13.html