Can Light Therapy Improve Your
Sexual Functioning? New
Promising Data
Although we are still far from knowing exactly where and how the
pineal suppressive role is
exerted, the fact that the gland exerts an inhibitory
function on the reproductive axis is widely
accepted. In fact, the pineal seems to exert
its hormonal effect at different levels of the
reproductive axis, both at the
hypothalamic-pituitary level and at the gonadal level, where
melatonin receptors have also been
found.
Furthermore, melatonin appears to increase prolactin secretion,
which may contribute to
sexual dysfunction. Based on the observations mentioned
above a group of italian investigators
hypothesized that an inhibition of pineal
gland activity via a treatment with bright light could
favorably influence sexual
function and pilottested the usefulness of bright light therapy in a
small sample of 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. 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).
The findings of this study suggest a potentially
favorable effect of bright light therapy on
primary sexual dysfunctions. A larger study is now needed to confirm
these preliminary results
and to test whether bright light therapy may be of
help for the treatment of sexual dysfunctions
that are associated with certain
psychiatric illnesses, such as major depressive disorder, or
with medications that are prescribed
to treat those illnesses.
Courtesy of
http://www.sciencedaily.com
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