One small study of 36 women and 15 men found that the sleep quality of a group exposed to bright light was no different from that of a group exposed to dim light.
Light is important for your body to naturally produce a hormone called melatonin that helps regulate your body clock. Spending time outside will give your body the light it needs to do this.
This information is for women who have postnatal depression. It tells you about light therapy, a treatment used for postnatal depression. It is based on the best and most up-to-date research.
Does it work?
We don't know. There hasn't been any good research on this kind of therapy in women with postnatal depression.
What is it?
Light therapy means being exposed to a special light (called a high-intensity fluorescent lamp). This light is brighter than indoor light. But it is not as bright as direct sunlight. Usually, you sit in front of this bright light for at least 30 minutes each morning. This therapy is most often used to treat a kind of depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD for short). Some people get this condition during autumn and winter, when the days get shorter.
How can it help?
We don't know if this therapy can help postnatal depression. There hasn't been any good research that looks at how well this treatment works for postnatal depression.
How does it work?
Light therapy has been shown to work well for SAD and even for regular depression (depression that you can get at any time).
No one knows exactly how light therapy works. But it may affect chemicals in your brain called neurotransmitters (these chemicals carry messages between your brain cells). In particular, light therapy could raise the level of the neurotransmitter serotonin. That could improve your mood.
Can it be harmful?
When you first start light therapy, certain mild side effects are possible. These include headaches and eye and vision problems. But they probably won't last long or make you stop the therapy.
How good is the research on light therapy?
There hasn't been any good research to show that light therapy works for postnatal depression. There have been studies in just two individual women with postnatal depression. (This kind of study is called a case study.) These studies showed that the women were less depressed after four weeks of light therapy for 30 minutes a day. But we need larger, better studies before we can say if light therapy works for postnatal depression.