Mental health professionals have long wondered about the relationship between bright lights and sexual performance. An article published in Medical News Today June 15, 2009, “Can Light Therapy Improve Your Sexual Functioning? New Promising Data,” examines this issue. The findings of this research were published in the December 2008 issue of Child Development. The researchers studied, “….9 male patients with nonorganic sexual dysfunction. Subjects (age 39 - 60) were consecutively recruited in the outpatient clinic of the Urology Department of the University of Siena Medical Center on the basis of a diagnosis of primary (i.e. not due to another illness or to a medication or a drug of abuse) hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD, n = 2), sexual arousal disorder (SAD, n = 6), and orgasmic disorder (OD, n = 1) and the absence of a mood disorder, as assessed via the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview. Subjects were randomly assigned to active light treatment (ALT) or placebo light treatment (L-PBO) and assessed at baseline and after 2 weeks of ALT/L-PBO treatment via the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-Sexual Disorders (SCID-S) and via a sexual satisfaction self-report, which asked them to rate on a scale from 1 to 10 their level of sexual satisfaction. The ALT consisted of daily exposure to a white fluorescent light box (Super-Lite 3S, fitted with an ultraviolet filter and rated at 10,000 lx at a distance of 1 m from screen to cornea) for 30 min as soon as possible after awakening, between 7.00 a.m. and 8.00 a.m. The L-PBO was an identical light box fitted with a neutral density gel filter to reduce light exposure to 100 lx.” The results of this study were very interesting. “………After 2 weeks of treatment, 3 of the 5 patients randomized to ALT no longer met the SCID-S criteria for a sexual disorder whereas the sexual disorder was still present in all the 4 patients in the L-PBO group. A significant (p = 0.001) improvement in sexual satisfaction was observed in the ALT group, whereas no improvement was observed in the L-PBO group (p =0.39).” There are a number of important implications of this study. First, individuals who are experiencing sexual dysfunction should consult there health care provider to see if they are a candidate for light therapy. Second, mental health professionals who treat patients with sexual dysfunction should consider light therapy. Third, patients who are diagnosed with SADD should monitor their sexual functioning to determine if there has been any improvement. And, last of all, public health professionals should educate the public about the advantages of light therapy for the treatment of sexual dysfunction.
The Bottom Line: The results of this study suggest that individuals who have sexual dysfunction should light therapy as a possible treatment.
Reference: Original article
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