While many people associate winter with hot chocolate and cozy evenings by the fireplace, more and more people are experiencing the winter blues. In fact, approximately 1 in 20 people in the northern half of the U.S. live through short, dark days during winter, leaving them exposed to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). With this many people affected by SAD, it's important to understand what the disorder is, what symptoms to look out for, and how to treat (and prevent) the effects of SAD.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is a form of depression that affects people during the winter season. SAD is also known as "winter depression" since the symptoms are more prevalent during the winter months. However, those who experience SAD during the winter may have similar feelings during the summer as well. 

SAD is linked to a biochemical imbalance in the brain due to shorter daylight hours and less sunlight. This shift in the circadian rhythm can cause a disconnect resulting in SAD.

While some people may experience mild winter blues, those with SAD experience more severe symptoms affecting everyday life. Symptoms of SAD include:

• Feelings of despair, worthlessness, and guilt
• A frequent low mood
• Irritability
• A loss of pleasure and interest in everyday activities
• Sleeping longer than normal
• Struggling to get up in the morning
• Feeling lethargic and sleepy throughout the day
• Weight gain and carb cravings
  

For people with SAD, the hardest periods tend to be January and February; however, these symptoms can last for the better half of a year. The symptoms listed above show how distressing SAD symptoms can be in a person’s life. However, it can be treated non-pharmaceutically with the help of red light therapy. 

Does light therapy actually work for SAD?‍

The short answer, yes: light therapy is effective in treating seasonal affective disorder. During the winter season, it’s extremely challenging to get the natural light your body needs since the days are shorter and darker. In addition, the average American spends 90% of their time indoors, furthering the problem. This is where red light therapy comes into play. 

Red light therapy is a natural light treatment that sends red and near-infrared wavelengths deep into body tissues, positively affecting the mitochondria. Stimulating the cells increases ATP energy production, decreases inflammation, improves neuroplasticity, and boosts cerebral metabolism.

Two meta-analyses of randomized, controlled trials indicated that light therapy was effective in treating SAD. Another study found that over four weeks, 61% out of the 33 patients who underwent light therapy saw their symptoms vanish, in comparison to the 32 percent who received a placebo.

However, beyond the direct treatment of depression, light therapy helps with sleep disorders. Natural light treatment, like red light therapy, helps improve sleep as it increases the body’s natural production of melatonin. 

Red light therapy doesn’t simply treat symptoms, but it helps treat the root problem, which is a lack of natural light. The dark winter months are challenging for millions of Americans suffering from SAD. But, by receiving more natural light during the short and dark winter days, you can eliminate your symptoms, heal the problem, and feel like yourself again. 

Luckily, Kaiyan Medical produces MDSAP-certified and FDA-approved light therapy products and devices for your own at-home treatment or even for your patients. We've worked hard to provide solutions for both patients and healthcare practitioners, catering to various needs. Whether you're looking to private label your own light therapy devices or for home use, contact our team, as we would love to help you through your light therapy journey. 

The first formal description of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), the most well-known psychiatric condition associated with seasonality in humans, was introduced in the mid-1980s by Rosenthal, who described a group of 29 patients living in a temperate climate who experienced depressive episodes characterized by hypersomnia, hyperphagia, and weight gain in the fall or winter, and whose symptoms remitted by the next spring or summer.

SAD was incorporated into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders III-R when “seasonal pattern” was introduced as a specifier for Major Depression and Bipolar Disorders. Subsequent revision in DSM-IV described SAD as “a regular temporal relationship between the onset of Major Depressive Episodes in Bipolar I (BPI) or Bipolar II (BPII) Disorder or Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), recurrent, and a particular time of the year.”

Today, SAD, or MDD with seasonal pattern, is defined as recurrent episodes of major depression that meet the following criteria: at least two consecutive years where the onset and offset of depressive symptoms occur at characteristic times with no non-seasonal episodes, a temporal relationship between onset of symptoms and time of year, a temporal relationship between remission of symptoms and time of year, and an outnumbering of seasonal compared to non-seasonal episodes throughout the lifetime of the patient.

Pathophysiology of SAD

To date, the pathophysiology of SAD is unclear. Early research into the mechanism of SAD focused on day length or photoperiod. This hypothesis posited that shorter days in winter, possibly mediated by a longer duration of nocturnal melatonin secretion, leads to depressed mood in susceptible individuals. To date, there is little data to support this hypothesis. Furthermore, given that bright light in the evening has not been as effective as that given in the morning, it now seems unlikely that the photoperiod is the underlying pathological mechanism of SAD.

Although some animal studies have implicated a direct effect of light on the midbrain (Miller, Miller, Obermeyer, Behan, & Benca, 1999; Miller, Obermeyer, Behan, & Benca, 1998), the most prominent hypothesis driving human studies involves disruption of circadian rhythms. Research on the role of serotonin is also active.

Circadian Rhythm

A circadian rhythm refers to the approximately 24-hour cycle of physiological processes present in humans and other animals. This cycle is governed via clock gene expression by the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the master pacemaker located within the anterior hypothalamus. Though the SCN endogenously generates circadian oscillations, SCN endogenously generates circadian oscillations, and they need to be entrained to the 24-hour day by external cues. Light exposure is the most important synchronizing agent of endogenous circadian rhythms.

Downstream of the SCN, a collection of systemically active neurohumoral networks transduce circadian information to the rest of the body. For instance, via projections to the hypothalamus's paraventricular nucleus, the activation of the SCN leads to autonomic changes, including cardiovascular modulation, and together the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems collaborate to affect systemic changes. Thus, the SCN receives information about the external day-night cycle directly through retinofugal pathways and indirectly through neuromodulatory signaling. Circadian information is then relayed systemically through neurohumoral networks.

The current primary hypothesis for the pathophysiology of SAD, known as the “phase-shift hypothesis,” posits that there is an optimal relationship in the alignment of the sleep-wake cycle and the endogenous circadian rhythm. During the fall and winter, as day length shortens, the circadian rhythm begins to drift later concerning clock time and the sleep-wake cycle. This phase delay is hypothesized to bring about mood symptoms. A pulse of morning bright light generates a circadian phase advance, which is thought to correct the discordance between sleep and circadian phase, thereby ameliorating depressive symptoms. However, the phase-shift hypothesis would predict that the amount of phase correction required for each patient would depend on an individual’s PAD, which has not yet been proven.

Serotonin

Several studies have also proposed that serotonin is implicated in the pathophysiology of SAD, as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) appear to be effective in the treatment of SAD. Supporting this hypothesis, one study used Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging to look at binding probability at synaptic serotonin transporters in 88 normal individuals living in the temperate climate of Toronto, Canada (Praschak-Rieder, Willeit, Wilson, Houle, & Meyer, 2008). The binding probability was increased during fall and winter compared to warmer months, thus eliciting an inverse correlation between binding potential and sunlight durationsunlight duration. Of note, the largest difference in transporter binding was found in the mesencephalon, a finding consistent with animal studies demonstrating the importance of direct effects of light to the midbrain on behavior. If increased transporter activity indicated greater reuptake of serotonin during the fall/winter, and if this resulted in a lower density of cleft serotonin, then the seasonal variation in transporter activity (i.e., higher transporter efficiency in the winter) would seem to leave susceptible individuals particularly prone to mood symptoms during the darker seasons. Moreover, following BLT and during periods of remission in the summer months, the synaptic transporter activity was shown to be reduced to control levels in these patients.

Eating Disorders

BLT has also been investigated to a lesser extent in eating disorders. Because binge eating episodes have been observed to increase in fall and winter in some patients, BLT has been examined as a treatment modality for anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). Thus, BLT's effects on patients with eating disorders remain enigmatic. Additional studies, including larger, randomized, blinded, and controlled trials, are needed to elucidate further the role of BLT in treating this patient population. Further research might also determine whether BLT would be a useful treatment in Binge-Eating Disorder, a diagnosis new to DSM-5.

Adult ADHD

Additionally, BLT has been studied in the context of adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), where, in addition to normal ADHD symptoms, patients often have depressed mood and difficulties falling asleep, awakening on time, and maintaining arousal (Brown & McMullen, 2001). These symptoms are indicative of a possible delay in the circadian rhythm. A case report of symptom improvement following BLT in a child with ADHD who displayed signs of delayed sleep phase also supports the idea that BLT may be useful in treating symptoms of ADHD (Gruber, Grizenko, & Joober, 2007). Whether the pathways that subserve the improvement of mood symptoms in response to BLT are the same pathways that underlie the seemingly beneficial effects of BLT in ADHD remains to be studied. While these results are promising, further studies, preferably in randomized, blinded, and controlled studies will need to be performed.

Finally

A significant immediate reduction of depression scores with light treatment can be identified after 20 minutes and reaches the maximum at 40 minutes, with no additional benefit at 60 minutes. The rate of change is steepest during the first 20 minutes of light as compared with longer intervals. Comparing the clinical impact of these durations of administration may yield different results when measured after several daily sessions. The overnight effect on circadian rhythms and sleep was not assessed in our study and is thought to impact mood regulation in SAD. Larger, prospective, controlled, and hypothesis-driven studies in more naturalistic conditions would be desirable to replicate our study results and our study results and analyze the temporal dynamic of the persistence of the immediate mood-improvement effects. Besides, in larger samples, one could define early responders and nonresponders, analyze genetic (e.g., melanopsin related genes), demographic (children, adolescents, adults, elderly, gender), physiological (e.g., pupillary responses), and clinical (e.g., abundant atypical symptoms) predictors for early response. If proven effective and efficacious, shorter exposures to bright light could become a feasible and broadly employed intervention for immediate mood improvement as an early step on the road toward full antidepressant response and remission.

Have you heard of summertime sadness before? Better yet, have you experienced it yourself? 

Many of us might assume that seasonal affective disorder is a condition that only happens during the gloomy winter months. However, it can actually happen any time of the year. Before we go into more detail, it’s important to know what seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is. 

The American Psychiatric Association refers to seasonal affective disorder as a form of depression. People who experience SAD experience frequent mood changes and symptoms that are similar to depression. While SAD typically occurs during the fall and winter months due to the lack of sunlight, this condition can occur year-round. Usually, the hardest months for people who have SAD are between January and February. 

While SAD is known as the “winter blues,” the symptoms can greatly affect one’s everyday life. Symptoms can include:

• Fatigue
• Difficulties concentrating and thinking
• Weight gain
• Thoughts of suicide or death
• Change in sleep pattern, oversleeping
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
• Feelings of sadness
• Loss of interest in hobbies and activities
  

As we said before, seasonal affective disorder doesn’t only happen during the winter and fall seasons, though. It can also occur during the spring and summer months. We refer to this as reverse seasonal affective disorder. Clinical psychologist  Dr. Meghan Marcum, chief psychologist at premier mental health treatment facility A Mission for Michael says, "about one in 10 cases of the Seasonal Affective Disorder are contributed to the summer months (or winter, for those living in the southern hemisphere). 

Certain aspects of the summer contribute to reverse seasonal affective disorder, including the lack of routine, fear of missing out, financial issues around traveling, increased alcohol consumption, and body image concerns. These propel the symptoms of reverse SAD and can significantly affect someone struggling with the stated symptoms. 

While people worldwide suffer from reverse seasonal affective disorder, light therapy has been able to alleviate seasonal affective disorder symptoms and bring back the sunlight in people’s lives – literally. 

Light therapy and seasonal affective disorder

If you’ve been wondering, “Does red light therapy help seasonal affective disorder?” then we have the answer for you. 

The answer is, ‘Yes!’ Light therapy and seasonal affective disorder are a great match to help move forward from the condition and go back to living a healthy and happy life. 

Red light therapy for seasonal depression works very specifically by focusing on the body’s circadian rhythm, also known as our sleep-wake cycle. It’s the body’s natural cycle that functions on a 24-hour basis. When experiencing SAD, the body isn’t living in its typical sleep-wake cycle. In other words, it’s out of sync. Light therapy helps aid the body’s melatonin and serotonin production. Melatonin helps the body control the sleep-wake cycle, and serotonin regulates your mood by transmitting signals in your brain. 

One study found that light therapy in relation to SAD shows extremely promising results, particularly with symptoms such as delayed circadian phase and depression. With an MDA-approved and FDA-certified red light therapy device, you can focus on reducing your SAD symptoms from the comfort of your home. By sitting in front of the light therapy device in the morning and night, you can regulate your sleep-wake cycle and begin to heal from within. 

At Kayian, we’re one step ahead and have produced MDA-certified and FDA-approved light therapy devices that are ideal for at-home or clinical use. Whether you’re looking to private label your own light therapy products or to relieve your own symptoms from the comfort of your home, contact our team for more information. We would love to get you started on your light therapy journey. 

The life of a college student is taxing, to say the least. It's likely the first time you're doing something on your own, and are responsible for yourself, your schedule and lifestyle. For some, this is the most liberating time; for others, it’s incredibly overwhelming. However, there's a general agreement that college students all go through difficult times. 

Whether still living with parents or sharing a dorm or space with roommates, college students are immersed in an entirely new life experience. Classes are challenging and students struggle with getting their work done while maintaining a social life, and perhaps a job. The level of pressure to succeed is very demanding, and this can cause negatively associated thoughts, leading to stress. Eating habits change and alter, usually for the worst, not to mention that the new sense of freedom can be chaotic for many young adults. 

Taking care of yourself is the number one priority, and when learning to deal with the new load of responsibility, college students often get sidetracked. Health and self-care get only an ounce of attention and not nearly as much as it should. While many students think it takes a lot of effort, just starting small shows results. 

Stress is the precursor of everything in our body, and leads to all sorts of illness and disorders. It's pretty common for college students to experience stress; more than 40% of students claimed to have experienced above-average stress levels, with it getting worse during exam periods and the winter season, when even more time is spent indoors. All of this, compounded by a pandemic and social distancing, makes for extremely challenging circumstances for college students today.

Now, colleges such as the University of Iowa are turning to light therapy to help get students the light they need to continue thriving. 

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a mood disorder that occurs annually, generally in fall and early winter, and ends in sunnier and warmer months of spring and early summer. However, it’s worth noting that it’s not a perfect formula; there have been reported cases of the opposite, where a person starts experiencing the disorder spring or summer, and it only ends with the arrival of fall/winter. 

SAD can affect 11 million people in the U.S. each year, and 25 million more may have a milder form of the same disorder, also known as winter blues. Depression and anxiety affect 40 million adults in America, while only 36.9% receive the proper care for these mental health conditions. 

And, SAD’s symptoms can look and feel much like depression. It causes you to sleep more and gives you symptoms that look like other disorders such as chronic fatigue syndrome, under-active thyroid, low blood sugar, viral illnesses, or other mood disorders.

Seasonal affective disorder is linked to a lack of sunlight. The winter days are shorter, and that itself our circadian rhythm, or internal body clock. Everyone has a specific sensitivity to sunlight, and our bodies take a cue from the morning sunlight each day. In the winter time, the lack of sunlight creates perfect circumstances to experience SAD.

Light therapy, by definition, gives you a healthy supply of what you lack in winter months, often leading to SAD. But light therapy is much more than that. Light therapy’s uses and benefits are many, so while treating SAD, you could also be treating other problems you may not even know of – it’s like killing multiple birds with one stone, and that stone happens to be safe, non-invasive, and non-pharmaceutical.

Light therapy mimics the positive effects produced by exposure to the sun. It reproduces the effects the sun provides us with, and can solve numerous symptoms of SAD through the use of ultraviolet rays. You may be wondering if red light therapy is safe for skin: yes, it is entirely safe. Specifically, with Kayian's light therapy devices, which are FDA-approved and MDASAP-certified.

With light therapy, you're able to stimulate your cells into rejuvenation. The light works directly at the cellular level and triggers the reproduction of ATP, the fuel our system needs to function properly. 

Light therapy helps with SAD by causing our brain to believe it's getting more sunlight. Even though the light is fabricated, it's still light. We still reap all of the benefits as we do from sun exposure. Melatonin and serotonin are what affects the impact; they too, are triggered by our light therapy devices, which is what battles SAD. 

The scientific evidence on light therapy and SAD says that even within the first hour, you may experience positive results. With daily use of light therapy, thousands of people have overcome the debilitating symptoms of SAD and other disorders, and now even college students can turn to the holistic treatment to replenish the light they’re lacking. For more information, contact our team.