Light Therapy at the Student Health Center

Trafton B.

March 4, 2011 - 5:40 PM

Amidst the whirlwind of winter term's conclusion, I've actually decided to look into a topic that I've been curious about since I set foot on the soggy soils of Eugene, OR. Do the rainy weather and cloudy skies actually have an effect on peoples' morale? I know I've talked about the Week 8 blues, which is where there's a noticeably dull feeling on campus because students are burnt out on school, but there's still three full weeks left. What about the winter time blues, though?

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression or the winter blues, is a mood disorder in which people, who have normal mental health throughout most of the year experience depressive symptoms during the same time each year, most commonly in the winter. Symptoms can include depression, anxiety, loss of energy, oversleeping, difficulty concentrating and processing information, etc. [Source: www.mayoclinic.com].

Now, I've never been one to hypochondriacs that spends his time searching for new diseases they might be suffering from. I've been wondering about this topic so long, that and I'm just as curious to learn about the disorder as I am about learning whether or not I'm affected by it. In fact that's exactly what I told Dr. Heiman at the University Health Center last week. Low and behold, after I told him my story, he suggested I try light therapy.

Light therapy is a common treatment for SAD where the patient will sit a few feet away from a specialized full-spectrum light or light box. Light therapy mimics outdoor light and appears to cause a change in brain chemicals linked to mood. Sounds kind of cool, huh? What's even cooler is that the Health Center already has a couple of these light boxes, and I'm testing them out. The photo above is a photo from the Daily Emerald a couple of weeks ago showing one student in the Health Center's light room. 

For the past week, I've been going about my normal day - classes, meetings, homework, work-work, and so forth - except every morning I set aside one hour to sit in the light room at the Health Center, normally from 10:00 to 11:00 AM.

It's actually really awesome. First of all, I have one hour each morning where I can just do whatever work I have to get done, so just have that routine to fall into has made this experiment worth it already. Actually, I originally figured I'd just end up writing this blog post sometime during that hour-long period, but as I mentioned in the last post, I have a few other priorities to take care of first. This week's big project was preparing for a CPW Team Solid Waste presentation, which went spectacularly well this morning in case you were wondering.

Back to the real topic, though, I honestly feel like this light therapy is working. I've felt great all week long. I've had a whole bunch of work to get done, but I haven't reached any point where I've felt unmotivated or anxious or exhausted. I've actually had a few meetings late afternoon meetings this week where my teammates will say something like, "Guys, I've had a really long day and I'm pretty tired, so I'll warn you now that I might not be very helpful during this meeting." Meanwhile, I'm sitting on the other side of the table ready and eager to get some work done. It's funny because I used to say those sorts of things all the time.

It's difficult to compare my mood and energy levels now to last week because, well, I can't just look back in time and remember how I felt on a certain day. Also, as Gayle, the nurse that's been monitoring my progress throughout the week mentioned, it's been fairly sunny over the past few weeks so it wouldn't be a completely fair or accurate comparison.

I'm continuing with the light therapy sessions throughout next week, so I'll keep you posted on how that works out. I'm a little nervous because I won't have any sessions over the weekend, so we'll see if there's any change in my temperament while I'm away from this routine.

It's a busy time of the quarter, and technically speaking I just added one more thing to my schedule. Somehow this doesn't feel like an assignment though. It's feels more like an activity that has given me time rather than taken it away from me. I could use a few more of those kinds of activities I feel.

Photo courtesy of Oregon Daily Emerald.