January 22, 2015: Color Therapy by Mary R.

          Mary R., a regular attendee, at our meetings is a nurse who now practices acupuncture. She has been training herself in auricular acupuncture or auricular therapy, and has been trying to earn a certification in this area of treatment. But recently she became interested in color therapy. Mary was able to do some research from several books in order to present to us a summary of color therapy. These books were: 1) Discover Color Therapy: A First Step Handbook to Better Health by Helen Graham; 2) Colour Therapy: the Use of Colour for Health and Healing by Pauline Wills; and The Secret language of Color by Joann Eckstut and Arielle Eckstut.

     Mary related to us some of the fascinating things she learned about color, starting with how we see color with the eye and its rods and cones. She was surprised to learn that under water the number of colors visible gradually declines. For example at 30 feet below sea level, one can see yellow and blue, but as one goes deeper, only blue can be seen. Surprisingly a peacock shrimp has the most color receptors in its eyes. And yet human beings can see 10 million shades of color. Nocturnal animals have fewer photo receptors. Bats see only shades of grey, and no color. Dogs can't see green and red, but only in the yellow and blue range. To them grass is probably blue. Butterflies have more photo receptors than humans. Birds see all the colors but less so for blue. Snakes can see infra red.

     Color used as therapy is often called chromotherapy. It is thought that healing with color depends on the vibrational energy of the light waves in the various colors. In this practice, the New Agers utilize the chakras from ancient Hindu tradition but the New Age has applied colors to these chakras and this combination of color and traditional chakra practice are used together. 

     In color therapy, an analysis is done sometimes with a so called dousing utensil to determine what color a patient or client might need to improve their situation. Then the color that is needed is applied to the skin, sometimes over the wrist. This color's complementary color is also used. Sometimes colored silk is used and applied to the skin. Some therapist use a round lantern slide through which a light is passed. Those who write about color therapy state that the client's pulse responds to the colors that are correct for a person's therapy. There are also general rules for using color as therapy by these alternative practitioners. Red is the most commonly used. Orange seems to treat depression, gallbladder stones and muscle cramps. Green is used for detoxification, infection. Turquoise boosts the immune system. A typical prescription advises which colors to use and instructs the client to hold the color to the wrist under a light bulb, 2 times a day for perhaps 15 minutes for a period of 3 months.

     It should be noted that the use of color therapy or chromotherapy as it is sometimes called is a pseudoscience. There is no evidence of the type that medicine usually uses, for example double blind studies that show that any of these uses of color do anything to heal or treat disease. However, interior decorators have long thought that certain colors in our environment whether paint on the wall or rug on the floor or bursts of bright color within a more neutral room can have varying degrees of affect on emotions, state of relaxation or anxiety, and mood.

     The author questioned what the expectations of clients of color therapy were. I postulated that perhaps some of these clients are frustrated and have tried multiple different therapies without satisfaction. They may expect that some of the alternative types of treatment may have an effect. We also know that the so called placebo affect is very real and can be very strong. It is estimated that 30 to 40% of people can be subject to a relatively strong placebo affect.  John commented that studies have shown that people have a remarkable ability to self heal. A study suggested that healing of a medical problem starts even before the patient sees the doctor, once the patient has made the decision to seek care, suggesting that the patient starts to get better when they have given themselves permission to let self healing take place. As an MD, my view is that as long as alternative therapies do not hinder or delay standard medical treatment, there is no preclusion to using them. In other words if they help without side affects, let's use them. Of course the problem with any of these alternative treatment modalities which are unproven is the presence of charlatans who can do great harm of a financial kind as well as emotional damage. There is a need for careful scientific blinded studies to learn more about colors to justify the use of an alternative treatment like color therapy.

     Some members of the audience suggested that the use and success of these alternative therapies depends on perception. Indeed all our brains confabulate to make up for lacks in our sensory organs and their ability to perceive the world. Vision for example has been studied in detail and the presence of this confabulation in our brain to make up for imperfect and incomplete visualizations of the visual field has been proven.

     With further questioning, Mary did briefly talk about auricular therapy which she is trying to learn at this time. Briefly this is the application of needles or in some cases glass or metal rods to areas of the ear which correspond to ailing areas of the entire human body. Again I am not sure of the evidence for this type of treatment either, though traditional Chinese acupuncture seems to have some benefit for many people, though that benefit is poorly understood.

     Mary led us in an exercise during which we first practiced some guided relaxation techniques. Then we were asked to imagine a butterfly and to concentrate on its colors, then to imagine it flying to a place and to recall the color or colors of that place. Mary then said that the books she studied gave interpretations of the colors seen in this imagination exercise. Mary admitted that in the first case she did not like the predictions as applied to herself. She did not think that they applied well to her. In a second similar exercise she felt more accepting of the resultant interpretations.

     In my own research, I did find this Internet site. If you are interested in a much more thorough consideration of chromotherapy, access this site from the Journal of Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297510/


     In addition, a lot of research has been done in the last 2 decades about the affect of color on circadian rhythm and other physiological processes. I found this interesting article about research on blue light. As you can tell by perusing this site, a lot of complex research has been done in this area. Therefore it is not as far fetched to believe that other colors as well have affects on human behavior though perhaps not as intense an affect as blue.

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831986/