\nWhat is something you can do for your mania that doesn’t involve medication? I’ve talked in a previous video about using bright light therapy for bipolar disorder. But this would be for the depressed phase of the illness. You wouldn’t...\nWhat is something you can do for your mania that doesn’t involve medication? I’ve talked in a previous video about using bright light therapy for bipolar disorder. But this would be for the depressed phase of the illness. You wouldn’t want to use a light box during mania.
Typically during a manic or hypomanic episode you have a decreased need for sleep. Some people may only sleep a couple of hours and feel fine. Or some people can go a day or two without sleeping at all. But sleep deprivation fuels mania and makes it ramp up to become out of control. So increasing your sleep is a priority.
A treatment that’s gaining some traction as far as people recommending it is dark therapy. Dark therapy works the opposite of bright light therapy. You wear glasses with amber colored lenses that block the blue light from sunlight. Blue light from sunlight blocks melatonin. When you have no melatonin, your body thinks it daylight. When the sun goes down or you put on the glasses, you get melatonin release and your body thinks it’s nighttime.
Here’s why this works. It works because of a photoreceptor in your eye called melanopsin. This receptor detects light but it doesn’t help you see because it's not connected to the visual cortex, which is the part of your brain that controls your vision. Instead the nerve endings are connected to the part of your brain that controls your biologic clock called the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
Furthermore, this receptor is selectively sensitive to short-wavelength light., In this case that’s wavelengths around 480 nanometers which corresponds to blue light. So Blue light activates the receptor and causes the pineal gland to stop producing melatonin. As long as you’re exposed to daylight and in some cases blue light from devices, you melatonin is shut off.
Now here is how the glasses fit in. The blue light blocking glasses have an amber colored lens that blocks the blue light that you see. So when you put them on, its as if you're walking around in complete darkness. Visually, you still see the light. but because your brain isn't seeing the blue light, you mind and body thinks it’s nighttime.
Then you get the release of melatonin. The protocol for dark therapy is to wear the glasses from 6pm to 8am. If you work late, you should wear them before you leave work if you can do it discreetly. This becomes even more important in the spring and summer when we have longer days.
If you like wearing the glasses, more is not better. You don’t really want to wear them longer than the recommended 14 hours. Wearing them for longer can disrupt your circadian rhythm and worsen your mood. Because remember, while you’re wearing them, it’s like you’re walking around in the dark. You don’t want your body to think you’re in the dark all day and all night. And by the way, the glasses don’t make you sleepy at least not immediately. But they help restore your sleep schedule to sleeping soundly in the evening.\n
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