How Light Therapy Can Help You Feel More Rested

According to the American Sleep Association, nearly 70 million adults in the US have some kind of sleep disorder, insomnia being the most common one. It’s no surprise that drowsy driving alone is responsible for more than 1500 fatalities every year.

Millions of people are suffering from sleep issues and it is affecting their quality of life in multiple ways. Do you also find yourself unable to sleep? Do you often wake up feeling just as restless and tired as you were the night before?

If quality sleep seems to elude you, bright light therapy might be an option worth looking into.

How to Wake Up Refreshed and Energized Every Day

Light therapy helps the body get back to its natural biological clock, i.e., circadian rhythms. As a result, people who experienced disrupted sleep or insomnia, return to their healthy sleeping patterns. Circadian rhythm is the natural wake-and-sleep cycle of your body, and once it is regulated, you may not even need an alarm clock to wake up anymore.

All of us have a built-in biological clock that makes sure we stay awake and fall asleep at the right times. Human beings naturally tend to stay awake during the day and fall asleep when it is dark outside. Your body also uses external cues, like the amount of light entering through your eyes, to determine what time of the day it is. 

In other words, light tells your body whether it is time for bed or not. Your body associates darkness with sleepiness and bright light with mental alertness.

How to Use Light Therapy?

So, if you stay up later every night and then wake up later every morning, your wake-sleep times shift much later into the day. This causes the “delayed sleep phase syndrome” in some people, where they can only fall asleep in the early hours of the morning. And when you have a job to go to, and you need to wake up early, it sets you up for extreme sleep deprivation.

Using light therapy can help you wake up at a reasonable time and feel more alert in the morning. It also automatically reduces your alertness in the evening so your body knows it’s time to fall asleep.

When undergoing light therapy, a level of 10,000 lux is ideal to mimic the brightness of natural sunlight. This will lead your brain to believe that you sitting in daytime sunlight, leading your body to produce higher serotonin and vitamin D levels. 

You need to engage with this light as soon as you wake up and for at least 30 minutes a day. Once you start to sit beneath the artificial light every day, your brain will be tricked into thinking it’s a sunny day out – even if you are currently experiencing the 60-days night in Alaska! 

This will reset your body’s circadian rhythm, and help you fall asleep at night easily and stay asleep for 8-9 hours. You’ll wake feeling more rejuvenated and refreshed in the morning.

Proven Efficacy

The Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine seems to agree. In a recent study, the university researchers demonstrated that bright light therapy increased the amount of time a person in bed stays asleep. The study indicated that people who underwent light therapy experienced better sleep, even three weeks after they stopped doing the therapy.

The National Sleep Foundation has also recommended light therapy for sleep disorders in shift workers, aging adults, and people who are jet-lagged. Whatever might be the reason for your sleep deprivation and poor sleep patterns, using light therapy can leave you feeling refreshed and energetic in the mornings.

Light therapy treatments are a time-tested way to support better mood and enhance your well-being. Choose Feel Bright Light, a treatment owned and invented by a medical doctor who is an authority and pioneer in the field of light therapy. Visit our products page to discover the wonder of Feel Bright Light for yourself or call us toll-free at 207-935-1256.