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  #1   ^
Old Sat, Nov-10-18, 02:29
Demi's Avatar
Demi Demi is offline
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Default Why you should ditch your addiction to junk light this winter

It's not just about the food we eat


Quote:
From The Telegraph
London, UK
10 November, 2018

Feeling gloomy? Why you should ditch your addiction to junk light this winter

If I were to offer you the choice between a bucket of deep-fried chicken or a slice of organic roast chicken, you would be pretty clear on what would be the healthy option. Omega-3s, organically grown, bioflavonoids, antioxidants… we understand how important food is to our health.

Yet when it comes to light, so many of us are on a junk diet, says Karl ~Ryberg, an architect and psychologist who studies photobiology, the effect of colours and light on humans and animals. Ryberg says whether it’s natural, daylight, moonlight, a red fire or blue screen glow, all light has an impact on our well-being.

He hails from Sweden, where there are marked light extremes between long summer days and dark winter nights, and where the impact of light on mood has been obvious to those who have lived there for generations.
It wasn’t until the Eighties that seasonal affective disorder (SAD) was medically proven and the rest of the world started to catch up. Yet Ryberg feels that too many of us are still in the dark on the subject. To rectify this, he has written a book, Light Your Life, to help people use light to boost their brain function, their mood, sleep ~pattern and overall well-being.

“My idea was to write a cookbook on how to feed your brain,” he explains. “Light for the brain is like food for the tummy. The brain eats light and the tummy eats chemicals, which we call food. So many people are completely ignorant; they make any kind of light salad and they end up with insomnia, migraines or vitamin D deficiency as a result.”

For Ryberg, the basis of a healthy light diet is a pyramid consisting of ~natural sunlight, a bit of moonlight and seeing the stars now and then. “That’s been feeding our biology for the last five million years. Our DNA is naturally coded to natural light and we don’t get enough of it.”
In the modern world we spend 90 per cent of our time indoors. Ryberg isn’t suggesting we go back to hunting and living in caves, but rather that we make the best of a bad situation.

Some artificial light sources are obviously worse than others; disco-style strobe lights can give people epileptic seizures, for instance. But even a computer screen will flicker imperceptibly. “If you shift your gaze quickly, the light is not stable. The brain is used to sunlight, which never flickers or pulsates,” says Ryberg. He explains that staring at a flickering computer screen will over-activate your brain, triggering hyperactivity and leaving you exhausted. “It’s like drinking Fanta that tastes like orange, but it is not,” he says.

The same goes for blue screen light from mobile phones, fluorescent tubes and even energy saving lamps. “Electric light is like canned food. It feeds your body but it doesn’t give you energy,” says Ryberg.

As winter nights grow longer, those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder may opt to use a special SAD lamp, to help trigger the release of the hormone serotonin, but Ryberg warns that many use fluorescent tubes. Instead, the best thing is to go out into daylight when you can, and get some fresh air at the same time. This is timely advice – research published this week found that Brits spend a total of just six hours a week outdoors in the winter months.

Ryberg draws a contrast between lux levels (the EU standard measurement of light intensity) for a good office desk (500 lux) and going outdoors on a bright sunny day (where you will get 100,000 lux). “That’s a vast difference! Even on a grey day you may get 5,000 lux. Ten times as much as in the office.”

Ever get a mid-afternoon slump? ~Ryberg says that when we use only electric light we starve our brains, leaving our chronobiology confused as to whether it’s day or night, and consequently whether we should be awake or asleep.
But activating our circadian rhythms not only means lots of sun, but also lots of dark at night, too. Practising good sleep hygiene means no screens in the bedroom, proper curtains and no bedside lamps.

However it’s worth noting that just like our diets, we all have different light needs. Young people need less than old people, women are also better at colour vision than men. Ultimately, our eyes use the fastest moving muscles in our body – muscles that we all too easily forget to exercise.

“When we sit indoors the eyes get lazy and slow, but you can train those muscles. A few ~minutes of eye yoga a day [moving your eyes in their full range of movement, without moving your head] while ~waiting for a train will keep your eyes fit.”

Ryberg would like to see all of us considering what our own light prescription might be. “Not only will you have more energy, sleep better and feel happier, you might live longer too.”

Light Your Life: The Art of Using Light for Health and Happiness by Karl Ryberg

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Your-L.../dp/B071PF3NBT/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Your.../dp/B071PF3NBT/



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-...k-light-winter/
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  #2   ^
Old Tue, Nov-20-18, 20:51
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rightnow rightnow is offline
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Default

Thanks Demi. I agree -- light is a nutrient.

PJ
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  #3   ^
Old Wed, Nov-21-18, 08:07
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s93uv3h s93uv3h is offline
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i'm always aware of blue light exposure in the hours before bedtime. wear my blue blocker glasses at least an hour before bed. and i try to get my 10,000 lux during the day to help sleep that night.
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Old Wed, Nov-21-18, 10:16
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by s93uv3h
i'm always aware of blue light exposure in the hours before bedtime. wear my blue blocker glasses at least an hour before bed. and i try to get my 10,000 lux during the day to help sleep that night.


Mr WereBear got me a Kindle, which has noticeably easy light for reading myself to sleep, a lifelong habit. I also have a lightbox, which I need to bring to work.

I DO get out in the winter, and usually our Alpine climate gives me more sunny days than my previous place of residence, which had a shorter winter, but far more cloud cover. Got into snowshoeing with a pair of garage sale finds, but they fell apart last year, and I should invest in a new pair. Plenty of great hiking within five minutes of home.

I also wear a sleep mask. Understanding light (via Dr. Jack "Madman" Kruse) has been instrumental in what recovering I am managing.
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  #5   ^
Old Sun, Nov-25-18, 00:28
rightnow's Avatar
rightnow rightnow is offline
Every moment is NOW.
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Plan: LC (ketogenic)
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Default

How would one know how many Lux they got per day? My brain almost collapsed trying to figure out how that would be calculated. I have grow room lights, so I'm familiar with Lux, I am just not familiar with how a human would manage knowing how much they were getting, from like... the sky, and open windows, and such.

PJ


(As a point of humor I even have a luxmeter! Still... that can measure the lux at any given moment but I'm sure there has to be some kind of duration involved for human skin.)
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  #6   ^
Old Mon, Nov-26-18, 12:13
Zei Zei is offline
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I'll say up front I don't know how to measure lux or how long an exposure is needed but wanted to toss in, just for anyone who might benefit from knowing, that it's the light entering your eyes being referred to, as opposed to light containing UVB wavelength making vitamin D by shining on your skin typically in summer, as most places farther from the equator don't have much if any UVB wavelength in winter. Two different things. So for those concerned, get those eyeballs outside catching rays even if they're the only thing exposed to sun on a freezy winter day.
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  #7   ^
Old Mon, Nov-26-18, 12:46
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is online now
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To cmplicate matters further..... when I visited the eye doctor 2 weeks ago, I asked about sunglasses etc, and he said the suns rays dont make it to the back of the eye with or without........then what is the push for glasses that automatically switch to sunglasses???

Im totally confused at this point.
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  #8   ^
Old Sat, Dec-01-18, 12:17
Zei Zei is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms Arielle
To cmplicate matters further..... when I visited the eye doctor 2 weeks ago, I asked about sunglasses etc, and he said the suns rays dont make it to the back of the eye with or without........then what is the push for glasses that automatically switch to sunglasses???

Im totally confused at this point.

I don't know which sun rays your doctor meant. Mine wants me to keep out ultraviolet light she considers damaging like "sunburning" the back of your eyes. Poly-carbonate plastic from which prescription eye glass lenses are typically made is always UV-blocking, clear nor not. I think sunglasses are a personal preference thing. If worn, they should always for eye safety be made of some UV-blocking material because the dark lens opens up the eye to get more light, which would otherwise mean more ultraviolet radiation than wearing no glasses at all. Even cheap dollar store pairs labelled UVA/UVB blocking might do the job.
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