How Light Therapy Helps Depression, and Your Skin

You will probably be hearing a lot more about various forms of light therapy over the next few years as it steps more into mainstream medical use and becomes less known as sort of a “fringe” science as some look at it. 

You see, light can be incredibly healing, and also damaging, but the right types of light at the right concentrations can be therapeutic alternative ways to treat several disorders, including as a cosmetic skin treatment, and use as a defense against mood disorders and depression.

Let’s talk first about the medical uses for light therapy, as they apply to a patient’s mental health.  There is a well known documentation of a mood disorder called SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, which coincides with the winter months where there is not much sunlight available and the days are shorter while the night time darkness is longer. 

This results, for many, in a sort of cyclical depression in which they can’t seem to get out of a depressed and melancholy mood for those months, but once the spring and summer daylight hours change, their symptoms seem to get better.

Well, to simulate the daylight of spring and summer time, doctors created a treatment program for those affected with SAD where an LED light (Light Emitting Diode) box is used daily by the patient to simulate the lightness of day time, which is supposed to create a domino effect of dopamine and other chemical reactions in the body which help to elevate the mood. 

And the best part is it’s natural, there are no drugs with all those side effects and there are no chemical dependencies set up for a person to need drugs for the rest of their life with this method of treatment.  You’re essentially mimicking nature’s own natural mood booster, which is much more preferable than using chemicals to interfere with brain function to cause a similar effect.

This sort of light therapy has been known to help boost the mood, enhance your body’s circadian rhythm of sleeping and wakefulness at the proper times of day, and also to increase energy levels since mood and energy are closely related.  A lot of patients see success with this type of light therapy to treat their seasonal mood differences.  In fact, you don’t even have to be under a doctor’s care to get light therapy, as there are many different light therapy boxes that you can purchase for use in your own home.

Now, let’s talk about light therapy as it relates to cosmetic enhancement.  That’s right, light therapy in different forms than it comes for mood enhancement can be incredibly healing, correcting and soothing to the skin and it is used for skin problems ranging from acne and rosacea to aging and wrinkles.  As you can see, light therapy has quite a broad spectrum of uses, no pun intended.

Acne is one of the skin disorders that can be successfully treated using light therapy.  There is somewhat of an argument over what spectrum of light therapy is best, red or blue, for acne, but the general consensus is that blue light is better for acne healing and bacteria targeting while red light is better used for aging skin and can target wrinkles, fine lines, and age spots more effectively. 

There is even some argument that you should not mix the two (red and blue) because together they negate each other’s positive effects on the skin.  The idea with these therapies is that the time spent under the red of blue concentrated light helps to heal the skin, and generally helps to increase collagen production, which makes the skin heal faster and look younger, firmer and more toned, while also helping to fade away acne and wrinkles by plumping up the skin.

IPL is a form of concentrated light therapy that is popular in the treatment against aging and wrinkling that is gaining momentum now in dermatologist’s offices and spas around the US. 

It’s called Intense Pulsed Light therapy, and it uses intense, pulsated blasts of light that penetrate the skin’s epidermis and help increase collagen in a more dramatic fashion.  This sort of therapy can be used in combination with others such as chemical peels and microdermabrasion since light therapy is noninvasive and actually should help speed the recovery of the skin after skin treatments. 

Pulsed light therapies for the skin are becoming more and more popular as women and men opt for more natural skin care treatments that help them maintain their youthful looks without altering their faces, expressions, or symmetry as other procedures can do.