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For decades, the topic of mental illness was taboo and generally brushed under the rug. Many people were ashamed to speak out about their mental illness and kept their experiences to themselves. Over the past couple of years, mental health has become at the forefront of public discussion, with more people sharing their experiences and outwardly looking for support.
In the United States alone, almost half of adults (46.6%) will experience a mental illness during their lifetime. Globally, it's estimated that at least 10 percent of the world's population suffer from some type of mental disorder. These numbers hold significant meaning.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental illness accounts for 30% of non-fatal diseases and 10% of overall disease worldwide. This is huge. But let’s take a closer look.For the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on a specific mental disorder: bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder is a neurobiological brain disorder that affects approximately 2.3 million Americans today. The disease causes extreme shifts in mood, concentration, and energy levels. These mood shifts can range from very "up," irritable, or energized behavior (manic episodes) to very "down," sad and hopeless behavior (depressive episodes).
There are three types of bipolar disorder:
Aside from the extreme mood swings, bipolar disorder can affect different areas of the body. Since it primarily affects the brain, it can include:
However, bipolar disorder can also cause major depression, specifically during periods of extended low-periods. Depression is a medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, think, and act. It takes away the ability to experience pleasure, causing severe sadness, decreased appetite, low self-esteem, and irritability. Severe depression can even cause hallucinations or delusions.
While treatment for bipolar depression is typically mood stabilizers, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety medication, light therapy can help as a non-pharmaceutical option.
Light therapy treatment in bipolar depression has demonstrated significant effects in treating this mental illness, specifically during depressive periods. One study showed that 67% of patients who were given bright light therapy experienced a full response and remission compared to the 33% who were given a placebo.
But how does light therapy and bipolar function together? Well, for one, light therapy majorly improves the circadian system. Our circadian rhythms, our 24 biological clocks, are severely disrupted in bipolar disorder. However, manipulating the circadian rhythm via light therapy can help decrease sleep deprivation and improve deep sleep. By improving one’s sleep, and receiving the right amounts of red light, light therapy has positive effects on mood, mental and physical well-being.
Light therapy also increases cell turnover rate, which helps people operate better at a fundamental level. Having healthy, happy cells is key in optimal mental and physical health.
Naturally, light therapy isn't a stand-alone solution for bipolar disorder. This treatment can be combined with bipolar medication and therapy. However, with the help of light therapy, patients may be able to lower their dose of medication than otherwise needed.
At Kaiyan, we're proud to produce MDA-certified and FDA-approved light therapy devices that help people live more balanced and healthy lives. If you've been looking to treat your patients with non-pharmaceutical and non-invasive treatment options for bipolar depression, light therapy is the perfect solution.
Not only has light therapy shown significant effects on reducing the symptoms of bipolar disorder and depression, but all of Kaiyan's devices are ideal for at-home or in-clinic treatments to improve one's well-being and quality of life.
If you're interested in learning more about light therapy for personal use or for your business, please reach out to our team.
It’s common knowledge that as we age, our normal brain function gets disrupted. We tend to find it harder to recall information, memorize names, and respond with reason. The decline of our mental acuity causes these commonplace mental problems. Contrary to popular belief, aging is not the sole culprit for mental deterioration. Many factors, such as aging, lifestyle changes, and environmental stress, contribute to the decline of mental acuity.
As cognitive decline progresses, significant mental changes can result in disorders such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease. While these can be common aspects of life, they aren’t inevitable. Many medical experts believe that there are many lifestyle changes that you can take to prevent the degradation of Mental Acuity.
What is Mental Acuity?
Mental acuity is known as the sharpness of the mind. It involves our cognitive ability to concentrate, process, understand, reason, and memorize. On the other hand, intelligence means the extent to which our brains absorb and process a specific amount of information at a given amount of time. Mental acuity is a natural and essential aspect of our brain health and is not a measure of how “smart” we are.
Mental acuity allows us to perform daily activities effectively and efficiently. When our cognitive ability functions well, we’re more capable of doing things without damage or conflict.
What are the symptoms of a Deteriorating Mental Acuity?
Some signs of a deteriorating cognitive ability may be subtle. However, when left untreated could progress over time to more serious mental disorders. According to the National Institute on Aging, 8 out of 10 people who experience amnestic mild cognitive impairment develop into having Alzheimer’s disease.
Here are some early symptoms of a deteriorating mental acuity:
How to Improve Mental Acuity
Prevention is better than cure when it comes to developing chronic brain disorders. Here’s how you can take your brain health into your own hands by observing these lifestyle habits:
Getting enough nutrition is the key to ensure mental sharpness. Making sure you eat a well-balanced diet can help your body supply enough nutrients to your brain. Omega 3 Fatty Acids are essential nutrients that help build and restore brain cells. The brain also needs antioxidants to prevent inflammation.
Excessive intake of toxins such as alcohol and drug can depreciate your mental ability. Experts agree that poor gut health also results in a weakened immune system. As a result, it weakens your body’s inflammatory response. A poor inflammatory response causes mental disorders such as schizophrenia and dementia.
Irregular sleep patterns and sleep deprivation disrupt your body’s circadian rhythm that can lead to short-term mental problems as well as long-term chronic health problems.
Your body’s circadian rhythm is a natural body clock that controls your sleep-wake schedule as well as your digestive patterns. When you’re sleep-deprived, these rhythms get disturbed. As a result, you experience headaches, mood swings, and difficulty to focus and recall information. Aside from these unwanted effects, not having enough sleep also negatively impacts your overall brain health.
Exercise isn’t just for physical and aesthetic purposes. It also affects brain function in multiple ways. When you exercise, your body pumps more oxygen into your brain through an increased heart rate. Exercise allows your body to release hormones that are vital in nourishing your brain cells. It also promotes growth factors in your brain to assist in the growth of neuronal connections.
A study at the University of Georgia shows that a 20-minute exercise daily can improve memory retention and information processing. Many experts agree that a sedentary lifestyle may accelerate your way into cognitive decline.
Red Light therapy is a more modern approach to non-invasive and low-risk medical treatments. It is a form of photobiomodulation that allows light to change human cells' physiology that causes a wide range of benefits such as biological balance and cellular energy.
Kaiyan Medical is one of the pioneers of Red light therapy that uses red wavelengths to deliver benefits to the skin and near-infrared lights to penetrate deeper within the skin’s surface. This dual technology allows for better absorption and effectiveness of the benefits of Red light therapy.
As near-infrared wavelengths penetrate the brain’s cellular system, it promotes energy production by stimulating the mitochondria. It also prevents stress by keeping away oxidative stress. Thus, it delivers multiple benefits such as better blood flow, faster cell regeneration, and improved healing.
A study shows that red light therapy has significantly improved brain function when given to patients with cognitive dysfunction. All these benefits are vital in promoting and maintaining a healthy mental acuity. Red light therapy delivers all these cellular benefits to promote better sleep quality and a more balanced circadian clock.
As you maintain these lifestyle changes, you can experience a more improved brain function and better brain health. Now you can defy all odds and allow your brain to perform at its peak by having a healthy lifestyle and a balanced body.
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Like any other organ or part of the human body, the brain, too, is susceptible to injuries or declining functions, especially as we grow older. A healthy diet, physical exercise, and improving your blood pressure, blood sugar, or blood cholesterol levels are some of the ways through which you can maintain a healthier, younger brain.
The brain can suffer from numerous disorders that can be divided into:
Mentally stimulating activities are vital to keeping the brain young. Different brain activities, such as solving puzzles, math problems, or anything that may require at least some cognitive effort, contributes to the maintenance of the brain’s neural plasticity.
Neural plasticity is the ability of the central nervous system (CNS) to adapt to changes in the environment, aging, trauma, or injuries. It’s an important brain process in which neural networks work together to build a more resilient nervous system and maintain its proper functioning.
The first placebo-controlled study to demonstrate some of the benefits of Light Therapy treatments on the human brain was performed in 2013. Multiple improvements were observed among participants who received Light Therapy compared to the placebo group. Light therapy participants experienced:
In a more recent study effort, researchers treated older adults who were at risk of cognitive decline with Light Therapy. A positive neurocognitive effect was observed among the participants in this study, all of whom aged between 49 and 90. Some of the participants also struggled with cognitive decline due to vascular disease, however, Light Therapy was effective regardless of the nature of their cognitive decline.
As Light Therapy helped the elderly participants boost cognitive scores, researchers on the team were also able to observe their increased brain waves power (alpha, beta, and gamma brain waves in their resting state).
Combating age-related cognitive decline with Light Therapy has been in the focus of another recent study, published in February 2019. This study examined the frontal brain functions among elderly men. Frontal brain functions are key to directing behavior. The participants were divided into two groups, treatment, and placebo. Those who received treatment indeed showed improved cognitive performance following the treatment. These results demonstrate that Light Therapy can really work in a safe manner to treat age-related cognitive decline.
As of 2017, we also know that Light Therapy can improve the brain’s executive function. This is your ability to manage time, pay attention, change focus, plan, organize, multitask, remember details, or avoid saying the wrong thing at the wrong time3. In other words, the ability to create and meet goals.
As research further suggests, Light Therapy helped study participants to better perform in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST)4. This is a neurophysiological test where the task-takers are asked to match a set of cards presented to them, in an attempt to assess their ability to demonstrate cognitive flexibility–a key process in cognitive ability. They are not told how to match the cards, but only if their particular match is correct or not. The WCST is a clinical way to measure the brain’s executive function. Those participants who received Light Therapy made fewer errors on the task and demonstrated improved set-shifting ability compared to the control group.
Such results suggest that Light Therapy improves the brain’s executive function and may have intriguing potentials for treating or preventing deficits resulting both from aging or neuropsychological disorders which include conditions such as epilepsy, stroke, migraines, brain tumors, dementia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s among others.
In 2017, scientists tested 118 people to see if Light Therapy can have a meaningful impact on their learning abilities. In a similar fashion to previous research, the participants were divided into treatment and placebo groups. Light Therapy showed that the treatment group improved their learning capabilities.
During the trial, the Light Therapy device was directed at the lateral prefrontal cortex of participants, and following treatments, they experienced faster and better rule-based learning5. So, imagine having all participants been bartenders demanded to know the exact ingredients of Mojito, Bloody Mary, Margarita, and other essential cocktails. This Light Therapy treatment would have aided their ability to remember all the ingredients needed for fashioning each drink, adding each ingredient in the desired sequence, or remember who on the table ordered a stronger Bloody Mary. We demonstrate this type of ability through our brain’s rule-based learning capacity.
Different life events may inhibit our brain’s ability to learn. Aging certainly is one of them. Other reasons may include extended exposures to pesticides or neurotoxins, which impair the mitochondria in brain cells. Since Light Therapy kind of “exercises” the mitochondria and prompts the brain to forge new neural networks, the process itself acts as a cognitive rehabilitation6. Which also leads us to the next section.
Cognitive decline may occur due to traumatic brain injuries, too. A person who suffers from one may face memory or concentration problems, mood swings, depression, anxiety, or speech problems among other TBI manifestations. What gives hope is another batch of studies that attests to the positive cognitive benefits among TBI patients from receiving Light Therapy.
Light Therapy has been shown to stimulate the growth of new nerve tissue and synapses in damaged brain cells, thus improving the cognitive brain functions of those patients who not only suffer from TBI but also from Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The latter is a degenerative brain disease prevalent among athletes and military veterans or anyone who presents with a history of repetitive brain trauma.
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https://brainworksneurotherapy.com/what-are-brainwaves
https://concussionfoundation.org/CTE-resources/what-is-CT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Card_Sorting_Test.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
