Page 136 - Total War on PTSD

- Ana Maria Mihalcea, MD, Supervising physician, Mercy Blu Room Program Cynthia’s Story:
A pilot who served in Afghanistan, Cynthia returned home from the war and was struck by a pickup truck, suffering a traumatic brain injury. After trying physical and speech therapy, she started Blu Room treatments. “The Blu Room was very peaceful and therapeutic,” Cynthia said. She went three to four times per week for 20 sessions. “My short-term memory was coming back thanks to the Blu Room sessions.”
An brief overview of the science
The Blu Room is a patented technology that shields the user from the outside world. It provides an environment that induces a deep state of mental and physical tranquility. The room includes music to provide a relaxing — and for many people a therapeutic — effect on the individual within. Speaking as a former Top Gun fighter pilot, any treatment that includes music, relaxation, and soft lighting seems at first to be a bit too “touchy and feely” but there is plenty of evidence that the Blu Room’s high-tech combination of all those items helps a lot of people.
The Blu Room creates a novel atmosphere that insulates the user from the daily environment. It provides the user with an uplifting environment that can augment one’s state of creative focus. The room is a small octagon-shaped space about 12 feet across with a couch in the center. Highly polished mirrored stainless steel lines the interior walls, floor, and ceiling which give the room a high-tech look reflecting into forever. Blue LED lights illuminate the interior and non-visible ultraviolet phototherapy lamps stimulate some of the metabolic effects described below. Since the brain isn’t busy responding to the stimulus of the everyday environment, the mind is able to relax, free associate, or hold a relaxed state of focus without distractions (theta state).
The sun is an indispensable factor in regulating our genetic material, biological rhythms and, many biological processes via the skin and the eyes1. However with the emphasis
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