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Light and aromatherapy can ease the sleeplessness and agitation common among patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, British researchers said Tuesday, August 19, 2003.

”(Alzheimer's) patients who sat in front of a bright light box for two hours each morning for two weeks slept longer and more deeply than people who sat in front of a dim light for the same period of time,” Harry Allen of the Manchester Royal Infirmary in England told a medical conference on the elderly.

Light therapy improved patients’ sleep quality most during the winter months, when there was less daylight, Allen told the Congress of the International Psychogeriatric Association.

The patients’ tossing and turning was measured with a wristwatch-like device called an “actigraph.” An alternative to buying a “light box,” which costs around $150, was to plan patient activities during the brightest parts of the day and position them facing a bright window when indoors, Allen said.

“Most of us have had the experience of feeling our mood improve when we are exposed to bright sunlight,” Allen said. ”Too often we shut people with dementia up in dark rooms with little opportunity to see the sun or other bright light, which can make their symptoms worse.”

In a four-week study of how aromatherapy can affect elderly dementia patients, roughly one-third suffered fewer bouts of agitation when they were rubbed with a lemon balm compared to one in 10 who showed improvement when rubbed with an odorless sunflower oil.

“Patients exposed to lemon balm also showed significant improvements in the quality of life, including a decrease in social withdrawal and an increase in constructive activities,” study leader Clive Ballard of the University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne told the conference.