Portable light therapy device and LED

Field Review, Brief Background And Products

A portable light therapy device is most applied to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. But there's more to light devices used for mental wellness and skin health especially since the dawn of bright LED.

Therapy Devices Used

Many types of light applications are being tested and - increasingly - used. Among them are light visors, overhead light diffuser with a dawn/dusk simulation controller, various low dose light and intense bright lights.

Devices Used
Polar light therapy
Color light therapy
Other light treatments
Related Articles, Resources
Related Products

Dawn simulation for instance is very very simple with a device that has a plug for your socket and and socket for your side table lamp.

Light Box for Winter blues - seasonal depression

This kind of therapy is being used to treat a special and fairly debilitating condition. When someone develops an intolerance to the lack of natural light it is usually reoccuring every winter (and very rarely at summer too.) The condition is variously called winter blues, winter depression or SAD -- which is short for Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Self help: Find out if you have SAD. Here is a carefully constructed self-assessment questionnaire:
http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/academic/counseling/sad.aspx

But if still in doubt, you will find it very useful to make the much needed (and often overlooked) distinction from plain depression.
http://www.lumie.com/help/quick-guides/sad

Bottom line, don't rush to treatment, unless you really need to have it. Even so, always consult your physician, before you start the procedure, as there are some known side effects that can set in initially before treatment becomes effective.

Light therapy for treating SAD is a very complex and multi-pronged area of intense research. On the surface, you are usually given buying choices for products that are already on shelf.

But I recommend you look beyond statements and labels and conduct your own research. For instance the role of blue-violet and red (IR) in helping the treatment by setting your body thermostat are somewhat disputed. They may even turn out to be complementary.

That said, many ultimately end up curing SAD with such portable light therapy as a light box treatment that uses LED or fluorescent light but also using herbal supplements such as St John’s Wort.

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Polarised Halogen Handheld Light Therapy

Leddies family possession: polarised light therapy device - hand-held rich halogen light yellow filtered

Find the Bioptron polarised and color therapy hendhelds

There is also very good portable therapy with polarised colored halogen light. This one I own uses warm yellow full spectrum light.

Now, polarised light means that the 3D light waves are narrowed into one 2D plane with the help of polar filters - bit like on the lens of your camera.

This neat little hand-held device is often used in my family and even passed around to friends. It heals scar tissue, and some other minor skin irregularities (not acne though.)

Color Therapy

Then there is color therapy (or chromotherapy.) This treatment uses various light colors associated with various treatments and even states of mind - amazing really. An offshoot of this a treatment the ancient Japanese devised. Theirs was a method of drinking water to treat an ailment -- where water was previously treated by light rays of a certain carefully chosen color. Not all chromotherapy devices are portable, some needs large or fixed equipments, such as a shower system combined with color changing bright LED light.

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Other therapies. But DON't forget Natural sunlight

Then there is light force therapy, skin therapy and of course the all-important most broad-spectrum light -- sunlight that is just free and happens to be most portable of all.

You can do it wherever you go. If you ask me, I often do sun therapy. I bathe my eyes in indirect sunlight for relief. The UV content it has - and of course applied in moderation - helps regenerating my vision after too long streaches of work in the dimmed computer room ... I've found somewhere that always wearing sun-glasses when out is not conducive to good vision.

So there you have it. Most everything in a nutshell I collected about portable light therapy devices, treatments and applications that I review in more detail in the following pages.

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