Color Therapy - Treatment at home or in your practice..

How the Treatments Are Done?

Seasonal Affective Disorder Treated With Pure White Light

Bright light therapy is the treatment of choice for seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The "white" lights used in these treatments match the radiation you would get from natural sunlight shortly after sunrise or before sunset, but do not contain any ultraviolet wavelengths. To receive any benefit from this therapy, you must keep your eyes open during the entire session Treatment Time: Ranges from 15 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the brightness of the light source.

Treatment Frequency: Therapy usually begins in the fall and lasts until early spring. It is best to have your sessions in the early morning or at dusk. One session per day is usually sufficient, although some therapists recommend twice-daily sessions for the first few days, or until your condition improves. You can probably ake an occasional day off without any problem.

If you are receiving light therapy for skin conditions such as psoriasis or vitiligo, your doctor will probably give you a drug called psoralen 1 or 2 hours before your session. During therapy, your entire body will be exposed to ultraviolet light. A series of 30 sessions is usually required over a period of 10 weeks. (A similar approach to skin cancer, using light-activated drugs, is currently under investigation.) For jaundice in newborns, intense full-spectrum light (or sunlight) is the recommended treatment. Full-spectrum lights, which are now being installed in many offices, factories, and other workplaces, have also been recommended for ailments ranging from migraines to premenstrual syndrome, but have yet to be conclusively proven effective for anything but jaundice. In one form of therapy, the practitioner directs light at a specific part of your body with a quartz-tipped "crystal flashlight." In another, you sit under a bulb that diffuses colored light around you.

Each session will last approximately 25 minutes. The time needed for other forms of light therapy varies widely. For localized pain, one practitioner recommends 2 five-minute applications of red light to the site, followed by 10 to 15 seconds of light on the area around it. You'll receive 2 or 3 treatments daily for the first week, Therapy with Light then twice daily sessions for a second week.

Other Conditions

What the Treatment Hopes to Accomplish.

Light has been used as a medicine for millennia. In the 6th century BC, Charaka, an Indian physician, treated a number of diseases with sunlight. Hippocrates and other ancient Greek physicians had their patients recuperate in roofless buildings, where they could soak up the rays of the sun. By the 1890s, European sanatoriums were prescribing incandescent electric "light baths" to treat many physical and psychological conditions, and Niels Finsen, a Danish physician, was using ultraviolet light to treat tuberculosis.

Light therapy as we know it today appeared in the 1980s, when doctors realized that people deprived of light sometimes developed symptoms such as depression, lethargy, inability to concentrate, and difficulty sleeping. Researchers speculated that the problems stemmed from a disruption of the patient's circadian rhythm, an internal 24-hour "dark-light cycle clock" that governs the timing of hormone production, sleep, body temperature, and other functions.

Circadian rhythm is regulated by the pineal gland, which, in turn, is controlled by the presence or absence of external light. During the first hours of darkness, the pineal gland produces the hormone melatonin, a substance that promotes sleep and, according to some researchers, may even strengthen the immune system. When you disturb the circadian rhythm by sleeping during the day, traveling across time zones, or getting insufficient exposure to light, your health begins to suffer. The two most striking examples of the phenomenon are jet lag and seasonal
affective disorder (SAD).

SAD strikes 4 to 6 of every 100 people, most of them women over 20 years of age, although children also develop the disorder. The victims, who usually live in northern climates, generally feel fine during the spring, summer, and early fall, when the days are long, but become sleepy, gain weight, crave carbohydrates, and grow unhappy as the days get shorter. Some develop insomnia, lose their sex drive, grow irritable and moody, and find it impossible to complete tasks. Children may become hyperactive or have problems learning and concentrating. To reset the body's internal clock, researchers tried giving SAD patients regular doses of full-spectrum or bright white light from late autumn to early spring. They speculated that the extra light would suppress overproduction of melatonin (the suspected cause of SAD) and keep the melatonin cycle "in time with the real world." This theory was never substantiated, but the success of the treatments for whatever reason was indisputable.

Other experiments with light therapy have not, unfortunately, worked out as well. Light has been tried for a wide variety of ailments. Colored light can eliminate problems in different parts of the body for example, that flashing opaque white or violet light can reduce stress and relieve pain; or that red light can remedy ailments ranging from endocrine problems to depression, impotence, headaches, stomach aches, and diabetes. Colored beams
striking the eyes are supposed to regulate various body functions by stimulating
corresponding areas of the brain.

Indication Colour Duration (min.) Notes
(according to Woelfe, extract)

Loss of weight red + green 30 Expose stomach
Numbness of limbs red 40
Abscesses blue 30 With red as soon as apyetous
Nightmares red 30 Stomach area
Lack of appetite red + yellow 20 Stomach area
Arteriosclerosis, heart blue 30 Heart area
Arteriosclerosis, brain blue 30 Skull
Asthma green + red 30 Chest, shoulder
Ophthalmia blue 30 Closed eyes
Barbers' rash blue + red 20
Ulcus cruris blue + red 40 With red as soon as apyetous
Chlorosis red 30 Whole body exposure
Congestion blue 20
Bronchitis green 30 Chest/back
Enteritis yellow 40 Diet
Suppuration blue 30
Epilepsy yellow (blue) 20 Before going to bed
Obesity blue 30 Blue sweat baths
Arthritis green 30
Thymopathy red 30 Whole body exposure
Gout green 40
Hair loss red 30
Haemorrhoids blue 30 Yellow on lower abdomen
Skin disorders red 20
Heart disease blue 30 Whole body exposure
Lumbago red + green 30
Laryngopathy red 30
Whooping-cough green 30
Periostitis blue 30
Headache blue 30
Goitre blue 30
Paralysis of limbs red 40
Liver disease yellow 30
Gastroenteritis yellow 30 Blue if in pain
Measles red 20
Nervous disorders green 300