“By that time it was just for general well-being, being more rooted and also treating the prenatal stress that I received from my mother when she was pregnant with me,” Loughery said.

Acupuncture, in Loughery’s opinion, is more relaxing than a massage. With the light work, she said, she’s “surprised that it’s just as relaxing as having needles.”

Sometimes Loughery is so relaxed that she falls asleep during her treatments. “I feel so refreshed when I wake up, or the treatment is over,” she said.

Loughery sees Althen every week, and she also brings her 4-year-old daughter, Taryn, in for light treatment to help treat the prenatal stress her daughter experienced while she was pregnant.

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“The whole entire experience she loves. And it’s very calming and relaxing,” Loughery said, adding that her daughter is calmer and less prone to temper tantrums since she started treatment.

Sternberger said she sees light therapy as a growing field for both patients and practitioners. She calls light the 21st-century medicine.

“I feel it has a place alongside traditional medicine,” she said. “For many people nowadays having choices is important, because not everybody can tolerate all the treatments out there.” 

 

History of healing light


Colorpuncture is just one of the latest ways in which light has been used to heal. Let’s take a look back at a few of the other instances throughout history when light’s healing powers were documented:

Ancient Greece: In Heliopolis, the Greek city of the sun, healing temples were created to break up sunlight into spectra, with each color in the spectrum used to treat different medical issues.

1877: English scientists Arthur Downes and Thomas Blunt discovered sunlight can destroy harmful bacteria.

1903: Niels Ryberg Finsen won a Nobel Prize for his use of concentrated light rays to treat lupus vulgaris, a form of tuberculosis that produces lesions on the skin.

1920: Dinshah Ghadiali introduced a healing system called Spectro-Chrome that used colored lights.

1958: Dr. R.J. Cremer, a British physician, published research showing phototherapy, a colored light therapy, treats infant jaundice, a liver disorder that causes yellowing of the skin.

1984: Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal of the National Institutes of Mental Health published research naming Seasonal Affective Disorder (seasonal depression), his conclusion that less light in the winter causes the condition, and a treatment regimen of light therapy.

2000: Doctors at the Medical College of Wisconsin discovered that LED technology (light-emitting diode), originally developed for NASA to research plant growth in space, helps heal wounds such as diabetic skin ulcers, serious burns and oral sores caused by chemotherapy and radiation.