Email a Friend
Print Article
SAD: Seeing the Light
Anxiety, as I've said before, is one of the "ugly twins" and its twin is depression. Both, it appears may be affected by our exposure to sunlight and this has proven to be an important key to treatment of a particular problem, Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. While I'm glad to see that specialized lights can provide relief for some patients with this disorder, I wondered if the researchers should be studying the effects of sunlight or specialized lights on anxiety.
If serotonin is the neurotransmitter involved in depression and SSRI meds are used for both depression and panic disorder, a form of anxiety, doesn't it seem logical that researchers should be evaluating anxiety or panic and light therapy?
In fact, to satisfy myself, I did a search on "serotonin and anxiety" and found 3,746 citations in the professional literature on PubMed. So, what about studies of light therapy and anxiety, I thought?
A team of researchers at Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia (The Lancet, Dec. 7, 2002, p. 1840) found that serotonin levels plummeted in the brains of research subjects between June and August (which corresponds to Australia's winter). Also, serotonin levels "were higher on bright days no matter what the time of year..."
I wasn't interested in how mice or other animals responded to light therapy because not everything translates directly into human use, so I skipped those studies. We know that birds have a special light sensor in the front of their heads that tells them when it's time to migrate. We have a similar structure, but we don't migrate and corporate America and everyone else is very happy about that.
Most studies dealt with depression of the SAD type or other, including PMS, where light therapy was considered something to be explored (Journal of. Clinical Psychiatry, 2000; 61 Suppl 12:22-7). An article in the Journal of Affective Disorders, 1994, June: 31(2): 75-80, found that there was seasonality in panic disorder and suggested that light therapy might be an effective treatment for some patients.
So, is light therapy something to be further explored for those with anxiety and panic in addition to depression? The research seems to be looking in that direction, but we need more evidence.
Related Topics: How Light Therapy Works, Unraveling the Sun's Role in Depression
If serotonin is the neurotransmitter involved in depression and SSRI meds are used for both depression and panic disorder, a form of anxiety, doesn't it seem logical that researchers should be evaluating anxiety or panic and light therapy?
In fact, to satisfy myself, I did a search on "serotonin and anxiety" and found 3,746 citations in the professional literature on PubMed. So, what about studies of light therapy and anxiety, I thought?
A team of researchers at Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia (The Lancet, Dec. 7, 2002, p. 1840) found that serotonin levels plummeted in the brains of research subjects between June and August (which corresponds to Australia's winter). Also, serotonin levels "were higher on bright days no matter what the time of year..."
I wasn't interested in how mice or other animals responded to light therapy because not everything translates directly into human use, so I skipped those studies. We know that birds have a special light sensor in the front of their heads that tells them when it's time to migrate. We have a similar structure, but we don't migrate and corporate America and everyone else is very happy about that.
Most studies dealt with depression of the SAD type or other, including PMS, where light therapy was considered something to be explored (Journal of. Clinical Psychiatry, 2000; 61 Suppl 12:22-7). An article in the Journal of Affective Disorders, 1994, June: 31(2): 75-80, found that there was seasonality in panic disorder and suggested that light therapy might be an effective treatment for some patients.
So, is light therapy something to be further explored for those with anxiety and panic in addition to depression? The research seems to be looking in that direction, but we need more evidence.
Related Topics: How Light Therapy Works, Unraveling the Sun's Role in Depression
Tags:
