Talk:Light therapy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Complementary and Alternative Medicine Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject on Alternative Medicine. Please visit the project page for more details, or ask questions on talk.
Start This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.

Contents

[edit] Heliotherapy merge?

A new article has just been created called Heliotherapy. It appears to contain the same subject matter as Light therapy. If there is no qualitative difference between the two, I suggest merging the text of Heliotherapy into the text of this article. Or via a redirect, if there is no real difference. ... discospinster talk 02:47, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sunlight was long known to improve acne, and this was thought to be due to antibacterial and other effects of the ultraviolet spectrum; which cannot be used as a treatment due to long-term skin damage. However, artificial UV worked less well than sunlight Does sunlight improve or inhibit acne?

Only temporarily, then it comes back worse in (if the statistic I've heard is to be believed, and I have no reason to doubt it) 90% of cases.WolfKeeper 04:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Agreed

I started the section, but I agree it should be merged with Light Therapy as a separate section since it is a term that is being used more often. Heliotherapy more than not refers to the use of UV than other wavelengths, but this would just make it a sub of light therapy. Pharmboy 14:03, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] See also Photobiomodulation

It depends .... is it a photochemical effect ? or is it a heat therapy ? or is it an ancient therapy with no declared mechaniusm which my include either or both effects.

I think it may be both a Heat Therapy and Photobiomodulation

Perhaps the title should be changed from "Light Therapy" to "Light Therapies" or maybe even "Photomedicine" given the range of applcations

There is no one "Light Therapy", there are" Light Therapies"

The statement in the Heliotherapy page that the effect on Arthritis is due to heat is insufficient.

Heat is soothing and maybe effect blood supply (I'm not qualified to comment further)

But there are photochemical effects that cause a true anti inflammatory effect.

Academia salad 08:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heliotherapy merged, arthritis section removed

I redirected Heliotherapy and removed sections that require cites until I can do this properly. The whole article needs some cleaning up, but need to gather some data first.

[edit] Unreliable sources for blue light hazard

After reading the statement in the SAD section on blue light and ARMD, I clicked through to the sources. They appear to be on a commercial light therapy site that sells green-light devices (sunnexbiotech). Also, there were no authors or editors listed in the sources even though their referenced content clearly included interpretations of the research cited. I decided to remove links to those sources. Surely there must be some better sources that clearly make the argument for a link between exposure levels to certain wavelengths of blue light and ARMD? I'll look around and maybe add those later.

In the mean time, I kept the pubmed source on the blue-blocking glasses hypothesis, but moved it to the Safety section since it applies to more than just SAD treatment.

--Dave04 19:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External Links cleanup

I removed a "light therapy FAQ" external link that went to another commercial site (litebook). There are plenty of non-commercial, credible info sites out there that talk about light therapy for SAD. A quick Google search is all it takes. If someone feels like we need to link to one or more of them, by all means...

It appears that the advanthera (Acne/Anti-aging) site is also pitching their products, but I don't know enough about this to see if there are better non-commercial sources for the information that they provide, or if it's even necessary to provide it. Would someone else care to clarify or take action? --Dave04 19:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] cet.org

On 2007-06-21 Pharmboy removed the cet.org link, describing it as spam. I argue that cet.org is not spam and provides one of the few objective websites on light therapy. The center for environmental therapeutics (CET) is a charitable organisation staffed by volunteers from various academic institutions (you'll notice that the board of directors overlaps strongly with the authorship of the peer-reviewed journal articles in the article's reference list). I agree that their website design leaves something to be desired, and certainly could be mistaken for spam at a first glance, but I think this is just due to their lack of budget for spending on web design. It's true there is a commercial element in that they have decided to endorse specific models of light box, that they have reviewed for safety that and have been tested in clinical trials, and they do earn a commission for sales of these products which are made through them, but I don't believe that should be enough to consider this a spam link (and in any case the link in question was to a list of criteria that should guide any process of light box selection, not to the product page). The primary purpose of the cet.org website is to connect patients, researchers, clinicians, with up-to-date information on the latest research, clinical trials, etc, not to make money. In case you are wondering: I have no connection with cet.org other than I put the link there in the first place (and have donated money to them before). I am going to restore the link. lev 20:37, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I have checked out the site. My concerns are: a) they recommend only the products that they sell b) they make money on the products that they sell. Therefore it seems to me that the site is defacto advertising and commercial.WolfKeeper 20:51, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
First: thanks for reviewing this edit. My response to your points is:
a) They recommend at least one product that they don't sell -- the LightSource Model 978. Despite the way they have the website set up, I don't think the products they are selling are their own, rather it's more like an affiliate deal with the companies that make and sells them -- they say that you can order direct from those companies and mention that it is a "CET order" so the company will make a donation. Many many .orgs have similar affiliate deals (eg "buy this relevant book using our amazon affiliate link"). I agree that the cet.org website doesn't necessarily give this impression -- at first glance you could miss the unique "ask-the-doctor" section, their summaries of the research literature, their unique clinical resources (online self-assessment questionnaires, designed by Columbia University doctors and available nowhere else on the web), free journal reprints, etc. I'm sure a lot of potential visitors have taken a look and been put off, thinking that it's just another light box manufacturer's pseudo-scientific advertising website.
b) By definition they cannot be "commercial" since they are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Beyond that, some nonprofits have paid employees, etc, but cet.org states that it is entirely run by volunteers, as a public service. A previous version of their website (disable javascript to avoid immediate redirect to 404 page) explained their financial situation in more detail. WP:EL says to avoid "Links to sites that primarily exist to sell products or services" which I don't believe applies here -- if you think otherwise, please explore the site a bit further -- it's deeper than it at first appears (at the least you should look through the "ask the doctor" forum). I really think it's one of the most useful websites in the field, and it would be a shame to exclude them just because of appearances. According to the archived page I linked to above, they have (or had) annual expenses of $15000, and annual income of $4000, from publications, reprint permissions, and from the 10% commission they get on lightbox sales. The rest comes from donations and from a past grant. So, I hardly think you could say the website exists "primarily to sell products or services". I'm not going to reinstate the link myself, but I urge you to look more closely at the website and I think you'll see that it provides useful information that goes beyond what is currently in the article and beyond what will ever be in the article even if it were improved to featured-article quality, and although there are items for sale, that is certainly not the primary purpose of the website. lev 01:17, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Strength = intensity?

"However, the strength of light at a dermatologist clinic is likely to be of a much higher strength,..."

This sentence isn't good because of the repetition of the word "strength". I don't have the background to judge whether the word intensity would be better than strength, though I suspect it would.

Also it should probably be "a dermatologist's clinic" or "a dermatology clinic". Hordaland 08:36, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


Fixed, but it wasn't wrong so much because it repeated "strength," but because of the structure. Josh.anders (talk) 01:04, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-aging

Antiaging refers to activation of ATP, which cannot actually be activated (or deactivated). This makes the rest of the uncited section suspect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.52.215.17 (talk) 18:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removing sentence from SAD section:

"Other treatments are based upon infrared light exposure."

What "other" treatments? For SAD, or for something else? This sentence has no business being there unless it is explained. --Hordaland (talk) 15:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)