Does anyone use midday bright light therapy for bp?

[Avonlea18]

I use a Sunbox every day. Did you know there have been recent studies done on women with bipolar, in which bright light therapy ***done at midday, not early morning**** helped them with their symptoms.  (If the light therapy was used in the a.m., it did help some women with bipolar, but with others it made their symptoms worse! So  you've gotta be careful with this modality, just like with any other...)

I'm doing bright light therapy, despite having a 1 yr. old and a 3 yr. old after me all the time, and it is helping me.  I did bright therapy during my entire pregnancy with my first child, and even brought the light with me to the hospital when I went into labor....after she was born, I did *not* become acutely manic as I did after the birth of my second daughter.  I honestly feel that if I had done bright light therapy while pregnant with #2, it would have helped me avoid going into full-blown mania postpartum, and perhaps my bipolar disorder wouldn't have been activated at age 38. Of course that's just my theory, but I truly believe it and I would love to see studies done with antepartum women with bipolar and bright light therapy.

[Avonlea18]

It's actually not that hard to do right. Baby is sleeping and toddler is watching "Little Bear" on Noggin.  I'm sitting in front of my Sunbox lamp,just chillin online.  I'm doing it for 30-45 minutes (the study from the link posted above says ideally to do it for 45-60 minutes)

I feel really good doing this.  I'll report back here over the next few months and you know how it's going.

Thanks for reading

[Delusion]

They are like light box things if i remember that you put on a table or desk something like that and they give out more than one diffrent kind of light, perhaps ultra violet something like that..

I imagine it is tricky if you have kids!

[Avonlea18]

Yes, I agree it's incredibly difficult to do bright light therapy and live a life!  I have a 1 yr.old and 3 yr.old that makes it super-difficult, but I'm doing it anyway...I'm on a healing mission, you could say!  I printed out the study link info. and am bringing it to my pdoc today.

[Avonlea18]

Very encouraging and exciting!

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/01/04/bright-light-therapy-for-bipolar/1740.html

[Delusion]

Light is partially responsible for controlling our levels of melatonin and serotonin so i would agree it would show more promising results at midday rather than the morning.

Wish i had the time for it its supported in many studies involving unipolar depression and seasonal affective disorders.