Reader Phil left this comment on my earlier post Light and Dark, in response to Hank Roberts who’s been sharing valuable info, like a link to the Center for Environmental Therapeutics on light therapy and negative ions for depression. Phil’s comment:
This DESPERATELY needs to be more widely talked about, and tried. I followed Hank’s directions- and for the first time in 15 years, I am able to sleep without medication. Do you understand how astonishing that is?
What happened 15 years ago? I installed a compact fluorescent bulb as my bed/reading lamp. It’s unplugged now; currently using amber LEDs, which are plenty bright for reading.
My exact situation- for 15 years, I’d take diphenhydramine at bedtime- and have to read for 2-3 HOURS before I could drop off to sleep. Without the diphenhydramine- I’d wake up at 1 or 2; and be totally unable to get back to sleep. Devastating.
Literally- I am now UNABLE to keep my eyes open more than 15 minutes after getting into bed- with the amber LED’s. No matter how exciting the book. Hank. It’s changed my life.
Hank clarified further in another comment:
Winter depression (my issue, not my spouse’s) has long been treated with bright lights; Brainerd et al. (2001) found the receptor that controls melatonin and circadian timing is sensitive only to a narrow blue-green band. You _need_ that band for treating winter depression. E.g. the light from sunnexbiotech.com. The farther blue (higher energy photons) may put some people at risk for eye damage. That’s a good reason _not_ to use bright _blue_ light for winter depression. Lots of info on that. [Note: it can also trigger mania in bipolar disorder.]
But blocking all the blue isn’t a good idea either! E.g. 2006 JOURNAL OF CATARACT AND REFRACTIVE SURGERY SYMPOSIUM … increase of alertness under blue light exposure… There’s a big spike of blue light in ordinary white fluorescent lights (see links in earlier posts to LEDMuseum spectra pages); that may be a problem for sleep. Some researchers recommend using no-blue lights for the late evening hours, e.g. LowBlueLights.com.
I’ve seen (can’t find at the moment!) other reports that it’s the ratio of blue to yellow that determines the suppression of the melatonin/circadian clock. As always – I’m just reading and pointing; I’m no expert, not qualified to give any advice beyond “this worked for me so far” — I encourage anyone looking into this to be careful, do your own reading (Google Scholar or a good reference librarian will help) and remember it’s an area where what’s known is changing fast.
Indeed it is, Hank, and thank you for keeping on top of it! Dr. Jim Phelps also maintains a page on the subject: Bipolar Disorder, Light, and Darkness: Treatment Implications.
Read my earlier posts with the many informative comments at Light and Dark, and Lighting. Feel free to share your experiences, too!
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Links to This Article
From Psych Central's World of Psychology:
Relaxing Sleep - World of Psychology (7/5/2007)
Relaxing Sleep | Psychology source (7/13/2007)
One Comment to
“Lighting the Way”
In the above, there’s a mangled link for
“… increase of alertness under blue light exposure…”
Correct link is:
http://www.escrs.org/EVENTS/06LONDON/sessiondetails.asp?id=146&category=Free&sessiondate=10/09/2006
This is what’s there; remember this is a study looking at cataract implants (whether they should block blue light; conclusion is probably not; normal aging of the normal lens also blocks blue light, which I do wonder about.
(Cognitive decline? could it be just loss of enough blue light in elderly people who don’t get much daylight outdoors anyhow?).
On rereading it, I think this is important.
What we do at home; we have the low-blue GE ‘Buglight’ compact fluorescents as general evening house lighting; we have the pure amber LEDs as bedroom light for the last reading of the day.
If we had a TV it’d have a big yellow Rosco gel over it for evenings; both our laptops do have the yellow gels, flipped up for daytime and down for evening use.
ABSTRACT:
Blue-light filtering IOLs: Between retinal protection and reduced mental effiency? First results of a pilot study
Purpose: Blue-light filtering IOLs were originally developed to provide retinal protection among cataract patients. Very short wavelength (blue) light is maximally effective at affecting the circadian system. We under-took a pilot study to determine if exposure to blue light could have a positive impact on mental effi-ciency.
Setting: Eye Clinic Minden, Germany and University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Germany.
Methods: Investigation of literature and published data, first results of a pilot study with 44 test subjects each with light exposure of conventional room light, blue light and yellow light, measurement of the speed of information processing, the basis of fluid intelligence performance.
Results: Clinical research has shown that blue light is crucial in modulating sleep-wake patterns and influencing alertness. Consistent with these results we found even under low blue-light conditions that the feeling of alertness (Wilcoxon test, exact, one sided, P = 0.023) as well as the speed of information processing (p = 0.020) increased significantly compared to yellow-light exposure. The increase of alertness under blue light exposure correlated significantly with the rise of the information processing speed (rho = 0.34; p = 0.016, one sided). Conclusion: It is to be feared that blue-light filtering IOLs would negatively affect the feeling of alertness and mental fitness due to the general reduction in light transmission and the specific strong absorption of blue light.
K. Gerstmeyer, S. Lehrl, S. Bleich, GERMANY
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 6 Jul 2007
