The sun is the basic source of full-spectrum light. It contains all possible wavelengths of light, from infrared to ultraviolet (UV). 

  The natural sunlight is the oldest form of light therapy. Numerous forms of light therapy are now also available, including full-spectrum light therapy, bright light therapy, various forms of UV light therapy, syntonic optometry, cold laser therapy, and colored light therapy. Electro-magnetic devices such as the Light Beam Generator and the MORA also use specific light frequencies in treatment.

 

  Sunlight and full-spectrum light can be applied to the skin in order to relieve hypertension, depression, insomnia, premenstrual syndrome, migraines, and carbohydrate cravings associated with metabolic imbalances. A ten-year epidemiological study conducted at Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, showed that exposure to full-spectrum light (including the ultraviolet frequency) is positively related to the prevention of breast, colon, and rectal cancers.

  In Russia, a full-spectrum lighting system was installed in factories where colds and sore throats had become commonplace among workers. This lowered the bacterial contamination of the air by 40 to 70 percent. Workers who did not receive the full-spectrum light were absent twice as many days as those who did.

  Dr. Ott and his associates, Lewis Mayron, Ph.D., Rick Nations, Ph.D., and Ellen L. Mayron, M.S., recently conducted the study, which has shown the effect of full-spectrum lighting in the classroom was tested on first grade students in Sarasota, Florida. Using four classrooms, two as a control with standard fluorescent lighting, and two outfitted with full-spectrum lights, the researchers tracked the students behavior levels for a full semester, using a hidden camera. As the result, they noted  that the students exposed to the full-spectrum lighting had a marked diminishment of hyperactivity, whereas those in the control classrooms actually became more hyperactive.

  The same study in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada, clearly showed that students in classrooms with full-spectrum light also had less absenteeism and a higher academic achievement record when compared with classes conducted under ordinary fluorescent lighting.

  SAD: Full-spectrum light and bright white light (often preferred because the additional UV light found in full-spectrum light is not necessary to achieve the antidepressant effect of the therapy, and can be harmful with protracted direct exposure to the eyes) are effective treatments for seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as the "winter blues." The symptoms of SAD are depression, excess sleeping and eating, a withdrawn feeling, and lowered sex drive. Today, it is being investigated by Charmane Eastman, Ph.D., Director of the Biological Rhythms Research Laboratory at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago.

  Melatonin levels are found to be very high in patients with SAD. Daily exposure to sunlight or to full-spectrum light has been known to eliminate SAD symptoms. In one study, SAD patients who took morning walks and received a minimum one hour of sunlight showed positive results.

  Light boxes are used in the majority of SAD cases. They measure two feet by two feet and enclose a full-spectrum light or bright white light that is angled toward the face. The patient sits about eighteen inches from the box, and without looking directly at the light, keeps the head and eyes toward the light while reading or doing other tasks. Most studies find that early morning sessions ranging from thirty minutes to two hours using varying intensities of light bring improvement within a week. 

 Jaundice: Light therapy is used to treat jaundice in newborn babies. In 1956 Sister Ward of Rochford General Hospital in England accidentally discovered the treatment. On warm summer days she would wheel the premature infants into the courtyard. One day a doctor came into the ward and noticed that an unclothed infant was pale yellow except for a bright yellow (heavily jaundiced) triangle across the abdomen. A few days later, laboratory tests on a blood specimen left on a windowsill showed a lower bilirubin (the pigment responsible for jaundice) level than when previously tested. These two events led to the discovery that sunlight was an effective therapy against jaundice. Today, newborns with jaundice are placed near a brightly lit window or, in extreme cases, under intense lights to correct the condition. Often an intense blue light is used since it has a higher luminosity than full-spectrum light.

 

  The body's internal clock, known as the circadian system, is regulated by the pineal gland. This gland is controlled by the presence or absence of external light, and serves to synchronize and coordinate the biological events of the body.

  Melatonin, the chief hormone of the pineal gland, is produced only during darkness. Its production is actually restrained by light. Melatonin has anodyne qualities and helps reduce anxiety, panic disorders, and migraines as well as inducing sleep. It is also thought to be a primary regulator of the immune system.

  Researchers have found that when a person ignores the twenty-four-hour dark-light cycle and keeps irregular hours of work and rest, the body's internal rhythms go awry. The number of hours one sleeps is less important than when one sleeps in respect to daylight.

  People who work in rotating shifts or at night have been shown to experience a higher incidence of heart disease, back pain, respiratory problems, ulcers, and sleep disorders. These people also have a higher rate of error and accidents and often experience a significant loss of alertness and ability to make decisions. Nevertheless, researchers are using carefully timed, high-intensity bright lighting (five to ten times brighter than ordinary room level), as well as the administration of melatonin to help shift workers adapt to their schedules.

  Travel between time zones often results in jet lag, a less serious, but often debilitating and disorienting condition caused by the upset of the body's internal clock. Melatonin, full-spectrum, and bright light therapies are being explored as useful antidotes. Some airports are now considering the installation of full-spectrum lights in their first class lounges to help passengers adapt to their destination time zones.

 

  Dr. Zimmerman says, that bright light therapy involves the use of bright white light ranging in intensity from 2,000 to 5,000 lux. While the intensity of this light therapy isn't near that of sunlight (50,000 lux), it is significantly higher than that of the average office and workspace (50 to 500 lux). Dr. Zimmerman adds that brighter lights in the workplace have been shown to reduce mistakes on the job, and drowsiness, especially among night shift workers. Bright light therapy is also used to treat SAD and the following conditions:

  Bulimia: Because of serotonin's involvement in appetite regulation, bright light therapy has proven helpful in cases of bulimia (bingeing on large amounts of food, followed by self-induced purging). Raymond W. Lam, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, says that during two weeks of bright light therapy, seventeen women, twenty to forty-five years old, experienced a 50 percent reduction in the number of binges and purges, as well as in their feelings of depression.

  Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome: Delayed sleep phase syndrome (falling asleep late (2:30-3:00 A.M.) may also be treated with bright light. Michael Terman, Ph.D., of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, New York says, people who have delayed sleep phase syndrome have seen it disappear for the first time in their lives using light therapy. By getting a dose of bright light in the morning, the day starts earlier and patients fall asleep earlier at night. Bright light early in the night works similarly for those who fall asleep early and wake early, allowing them to sleep later.

  Menstrual Cycles: Researchers two decades ago reported that a one-hundred-watt bedside light could shorten and regulate the menstrual cycles among women with long and irregular cycles. Daniel F. Kripke, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, states that more recently, they repeated this experiment and achieved the same result. This needs more research, but it offers intriguing implications for treating infertility and improving upon contraception.

 

 

  In the 1890s, Danish physician Niels Finsen noticed that tubercular lesions occurred usually during the winter but were very rare in the summer. He suspected a lack of sunlight to be the cause of the lesions and successfully treated skin tuberculosis with ultraviolet light. Dr. Finsen won the Nobel Prize in 1903 for his work, and was called  the "father of photobiology". Today, ultraviolet light therapies are used to treat diseases ranging from high cholesterol to premenstrual syndrome and cancer.

  UVA-1: According to Hugh McGrath, M.D., of Louisiana State University Medical Center, UVA-1 therapy isolates part of the UV-A wavelength, and is being used in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, a serious autoimmune disease known to damage the kidneys, skin, blood vessels, nervous system, and heart. Dr. McGrath points out that patients in one study had decreased joint pain, headaches, rashes, sleeplessness, and need for medication with the chief benefit being a decline in fatigue.

  Hemoirradiation: Also known as photophoresis, this therapy involves the removal of up to a pint of blood from the body, irradiating it with ultraviolet light, and reinjecting it. The absorbed light energy activates oxidation of the blood. (The process of hemooxidation therapy involves hemoirradiation of blood to which oxygen has been added.)

  In his practice, William Campbell Douglass, M.D., of Clayton, Georgia, uses an instrument called the Photolume to irradiate blood with ultraviolet light. Dr. Douglass, states, ultraviolet light can have the following physiological effects: calcium metabolism improves; body toxins become inert; bacteria are killed either directly or indirectly (by increased systemic resistance); chemical balances are restored; and oxygen absorption is increased. He has successfully used ultraviolet light therapy to treat infections, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, bronchial asthma, and symptoms of AIDS. His method has also been used to improve peripheral blood circulation in the treatment of blood poisoning.

  PUVA Light Therapy: In PUVA (psoralen UV-A) light therapy, patients are first given the light sensitive drug psoralen, and one to two hours later are exposed to full-body UV light. This approach is used to treat vitiligo, a depigmentation problem, and works by stimulating pigment-producing cells to come to the skin surface.

 According to Meyrick Peak, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at the Center of Mechanistic Biology and Biotechnology at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois,  psoriasis (a chronic skin disease) also responds to PUVA light therapy. The ultraviolet light used in treatment helps stop the disease cells from dividing, and can often result in dramatic cures.

  Warwick L. Morrison, M.D., Associate Professor of Dermatology at Johns Hopkins University adds  that in study settings, 90 to 95 percent of psoriasis patients respond favorably, with the treatment usually involving thirty PUVA sessions spanning ten weeks.

 

  Ultraviolet light from the sun can be divided into three types of rays: UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C, depending upon the wavelength.

  Although there is some difference of opinion concerning the three types, generally UV-C is thought of as the most harmful, but because very little of it penetrates the ozone layer, it is not considered dangerous. UV-A penetrates the skin (responsible for slow tanning), but because it has the longest wavelength, it is considered the least harmful.

  According to most sources, UV-B poses the greatest danger to humans. UV-B easily penetrates the skin, is responsible for sunburn, and can damage the eyes. Similarly, UV-B reflected from snow can burn the cornea, causing snow blindness. UV-B reflected from the sand and water is responsible for burning the skin more than the direct UV-B rays from the sun. Too much exposure of the eyes to UV-B can result in cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye, so the eyes should always be protected in strong sunlight. Chronic exposure of the eyes to UV-B is also responsible for retinal damage, pterygium (abnormal growths on the cornea), and activation of ocular herpes.

 

 Dr. Peak says that in photodynamic therapy, dyes that absorb light are absorbed by tumors then exposed to specific types of light. Light photons are absorbed by the pigment of the dye, which becomes chemically reactive and causes the cancer cells to die. This therapy has been used in China for over twenty years and has been very successful in eliminating some types of tumors. 

  Nicholas J. Lowe, M.D., Clinical Professor of Dermatology at the UCLA School of Medicine, and Director of the Skin Research Foundation of California, mentions that today photodynamic therapy is being tested for basal and squamous cell cancers (skin cancers). However, the concern with some of these treatments is unwanted phytotoxicity-some treatments are likely to make the patient sensitive to sunlight for long periods of time.

  Warren Grundfest, M.D., of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, is using a type of photodynamic therapy called light-activated chemotherapy to treat patients with lung and bladder cancer.

  Dr. Grundfest reports that they use light to cause a chemical change in the drug. Because it is located only in the cancer tissue, or predominantly in the cancer tissue, it causes only the cancer cells to die. Dr. Grundfest adds that after eighteen months of treatment bladder tumors showed an 85 percent successful response.

 

  Syntonic therapy applies colored light directly into the eyes to augment the control centers of the brain that regulate various functions of the body. For example, in the 1930s Harry Riley Spitler, M.D., D.O.S., M.S., Ph.D., founder of the College of Syntonic Optometry, in Fall River, Massachusetts, had shown   that focusing blue light into the eyes reduces inflammation and pain.

  Solomon Slobins, O.D., Director of the College of Syntonic Optometry, uses an instrument developed by Dr. Downing, called the Lumatron Light Stimulator, for visual evaluation, increasing the visual fields (peripheral vision), relieving headaches, and treating traumatic brain injuries.

  The Lumatron emits eleven pure wave bands of biologically active light, ranging through the spectrum from ruby to violet. This light is focused into the eyes where it travels to the brain and activates the autonomic nervous system to regulate disruptions in the system, thereby triggering the curing process. Patients sit in a darkened room in front of the Lumatron for about twenty-five minutes while it bathes their eyes with the appropriate colored light, emitted at a rate of two to sixteen flashes per second. This exposure is normally found to be immediately soothing, with a lessening of symptoms within a few days.

 

  There is an evidence that different colors of light have different effects on the body. In 1942, the Russian scientist S. V. Krakov demonstrated that red light stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, while white and blue light stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. Earlier experiments revealed that certain colors stimulate hormone production, while other colors restrain it. Specific colors can also have an effect on specific diseases. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was noted that symptoms of acute eruptive diseases such as smallpox and measles were relieved when patients were put in a room with red windows. Melancholiacs also recovered after a few hours in such rooms.

  Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., of Springfield, Missouri, uses flashing bright lights and colored lights to treat pain and depression. According to Dr. Shealy, these treatments have been shown to change neurochemical production in the brain and this may account for their positive effects. Dr. Shealy believes the brain has specific responses to different frequencies of flashing light and the different frequencies of various colors. He says that sleep problems can often be cured in one day by this method, but mood alteration usually takes one to two weeks of treatments. Dr. Shealy believes that it is the relaxation induced by these methods that is responsible for the effects seen in patients suffering from pain. He considers that tension is a primary factor in 100 percent of pain and once you relax the tension, the pain eases.

  Dr. Shealy has found that photo-stimulation with flashing opaque white or violet lights induces relaxation, reducing stress and chronic pain.  He says, photo-stimulation, or brain wave synchronization, has been used as a tool to assist relaxation and the induction of hypnosis since 1948. It has been used with the EEG (electroencephalogram) as an addition to the diagnosis of epilepsy.

  Another method of colored light therapy known as monochromatic red light therapy is used to treat a range of problems, including shoulder pain, endocrine problems, dysmenorrhea, diabetes, gastrointestinal problems, depression, impotence, and frigidity. Gerald Hall, D.C., of El Paso, Texas, uses monochromatic red light therapy to treat the acupoints of the ear as well as points elsewhere on the body.

  Ray Fisch, Ph.D., C.H., of Los Angeles, uses monochromatic red light therapy for headaches (applying the light across the brow), arthritis, allergies, sore throats, sinus problems, stress reduction, and wound healing. The red light is also used to acupressure points or to sites of localized pain. For localized pain such as tendinitis, two five-minute applications directly to the painful area are followed by ten to fifteen seconds to the surrounding area. This is followed by a gentle massage of the area. Treatment is repeated two to three times a day for a week, then twice a day for a week followed by once a day for another week.  Dr. Fisch states that there are virtually no side effects to this treatment, and it can be done at home.

 

  According to Marvin Prescott, D.M.D., of Los Angeles, cold laser therapy, sometimes referred to as soft or low-level laser therapy, uses a beam of low-intensity laser light to initiate a series of enzymatic reactions and bioelectric events that stimulate the natural curing process at the cellular level. Dr. Prescott says that cold laser therapy has been successfully applied to pain control, orthopedic myofascial syndrome (inflammation of the muscles and their surrounding membranes), neurology, trauma, dermatology, and dentistry. And besides, the effects on microcirculation, increased synthesis of collagen in the skin, production of neurotransmitters, and pain relief have all been documented.

  Cold laser therapy is often used in patients who do not like the needles used in traditional acupuncture. John Diamond, M.D., of Reno, Nevada, uses cold laser therapy to treat pain, particularly in children, who are often afraid of acupuncture. He finds it very useful for back pain, bursitis, and tendinitis, and uses it to treat chronic problems, in conjunction with homeopathy, herbs, and nutrients.

  Dennis Tucker, Ph.D., L.Ac., of Nevada City, California, uses cold laser therapy to stimulate acupuncture points as an aid to healing wounds, and to reduce inflammation and balance the energy flow in the acupuncture meridians. Dr. Tucker also finds cold laser therapy very effective in treating infections under teeth. Cold laser therapy is applicable with little prior knowledge, either by a health provider or by self-application, with no demonstrable side effects when used properly. With the development of microelectronics, pen-sized, low-level laser instruments are now available.

 

  When light rays strike the retina of the eye, they are converted into nerve currents, sometimes termed photocurrents. By measuring the amount of light-generated photocurrents traveling from the retina to the higher brain centers and then comparing them to symptoms of patients, John Downing, O.D., Ph.D., Director of the Light Therapy Department at the Preventive Medical Center of Marin in San Rafael, California, has found many people to have a decreased level of photocurrent transmission. This condition, termed photocurrent deficit, can cause diminished brain function, and can lead to numerous symptoms. 

Among these are:

Learning disabilities	Sleeping problems	Night blindness
Poor memory	Poor self-esteem	Fear and anxiety
Poor concentration	Mood swings	Hyperactivity
Mental fogginess	Seasonal affective disorder	Fatigue
Poor physical coordination and performance	Depression	Headaches
Light sensitivity	Poor peripheral vision

 

  Dr. Downing has found that stimulation by way of the eyes with the appropriate colored light can increase the ability of the neurovisual pathways to transmit photocurrents to the higher brain centers and thus significantly reduce or expel this photocurrent deficiency.

  To administer this therapy, Dr. Downing developed the Lumatron Light Stimulator, a device that focuses light of various colors into the eye to trigger the curing process.

  A thirty-five-year-old woman who was involved in an auto accident suffered pains in the face and head, was mentally sluggish, confused, and severely fatigued. Dr. Downing treated her with forty sessions of indigo and violet light. The pains disappeared, the mental sluggishness and confusion cleared, and her energy returned to the point where she needed only five hours sleep a night instead of ten, reports Dr. Downing.