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Re: Light therapy for depression. Wow! A miracle

Posted by sukarno on February 12, 2008, at 3:42:54

In reply to Re: Light therapy for depression. Wow! A miracle » sukarno, posted by clipper40 on February 11, 2008, at 16:19:58


> How long did you have the irritability? Did your mood lift along with the irritability? How long after that did things change so that you felt good instead of irritable?

Hi! :-) Oh, I felt irritable and jittery before the mood lifted. I was in a mixed state for a day or two where I felt more energy but was still irritable and could still cry. However, by day 3 or 4 I felt a distinct antidepressant effect and the irritability began to fade. So, first the irritability came and when my mood lifted, my mood became more stabilized.

That said, I did use it too much, because yesterday I began to feel overstimulated and irritable again and actually experienced shortness of breath along with sweating...felt like a major panic attack. I took my fourth tablet of Valium that day (that's unusual because I usually only have to take 3 a day and that's more than enough) and it stopped that. I woke up this morning with eyestrain but no jitters.

I've been sitting in front of the lightbox at a distance of only 1 foot, which is far too close and was looking too closely at it, although not directly.

I'm going to skip today and then try either an hour at 2 or 3 feet of distance or 30 minutes at 2 feet to see what happens.

I don't feel irritable or depressed today and it's been the monsoon season over here with rainy, cloudy days for months (Indonesia).

You might want to give it a try again with only 15 minutes to start out @ 2 feet. I was too aggressive with it and that's probably why I had the bad experience last night. It seems like a cumulative effect...sorta like a long half-life drug. You take more and it has a delayed effect.

When I used light therapy in 1999 it took a few weeks to get an effect from it, but when it worked....WOW. My depression was history and my agoraphobia began to decrease without making any effort to combat agoraphobia on my own. Anxiety decreased too. The psychiatrist said that once I am used to the light treatment (in 1999) that I should increase the use gradually up to 1 hour twice a day and take a walk at noon for 30 minutes to an hour. He said, "That will knock your panic attacks down to nothing!" I didn't do the walking at noon like he said, but the panic attacks pretty much disappeared.

Please do give it a try. It can take a long time to work (a few weeks) and the reason it worked so quickly for me could be because I'm on an antidepressant already. There are some studies out there that show that light therapy is more efficacious when used in combination with antidepressants, but I've used it without antidepressants in the past and I was just fine. :-)

I hope you can try it again and keep us posted! :-)

Paul


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