Light and its value to you

The value of light and its effect on us is far greater than most people realize. Light plays a remarkable role for maintaining health and general well being. Light is as important a supplement as any vitamin, mineral, or anti-oxidant. Proper exposure to beneficial wavelengths of light is absolutely essential for health maintenance. You can learn how to make the better use of light in your life through a few simple lifestyle changes. 

Light is a powerful regulator of the human circadian system, our biological body clock. The circadian clock controls physiological changes that occur with the natural light-dark cycle of the day. Circadian rhythm disorders are among the major causes of sleep disruption and seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also called winter onset depression. You can learn more about circadian rhythms by visiting our sections on enhancing sleep, circadian rhythms, SAD, and our section on jet lag.

We are light-dependent beings. A lack of proper daily light levels will disrupt our internal body clock. The circadian body clock responds to a relatively narrow band of blue light known as the “action spectrum.” This blue light action spectrum, interestingly, correlates to the color of the blue sky. This blue light wavelength plays a major role in aligning and resetting the body clock through the control of release of hormones including the sleep hormone, melatonin.

We work in buildings using artificial light that disrupt our circadian rhythms. We drive cars with tinted glass that lowers the transmission of beneficial light. When in the outdoors, many of us wear sunglasses blocking beneficial light from entering the retina. The result; it significantly reduces the light frequencies that we need every day.

The best way to properly set your body clock is simply by getting natural light during the day. We are most sensitive to light in the early morning and late afternoon. Getting adequate light is relatively easy during much of the year.

First step, take off your sunglasses!

If you wear sunglasses often, you are depriving yourself of beneficial blue spectrum light. People are basically using sunglasses too often, not recognizing that it has an impact on health and well-being.

Many who work indoors put on sunglasses the moment they go out to compensate for the brightness. When light is blocked in this manner it is sending a signal to the brain that it is night or dusk causing melatonin to be released. This can easily result in circadian sleep disorders and can worsen winter depression.

Try this little experiment…  The next time it is nice outside, when you are in a natural setting such as a park or in the woods, pay attention to your mood and how you are feeling with and without your sunglasses. Pay attention and you may notice a subtle but obvious change in your mood. This will be more pronounced during the shorter days of the year.

It is important to condition yourself to take those sunglasses off when practical. It may be a little difficult at first as your eyes may need time to reacclimatize to natural light but you will desensitize rather quickly. Wearing a hat with a brim will help since direct sunlight is not required. Of course, there are times when sunglasses are quite important. You will want to continue to wear your sunglasses in very bright settings and when driving to reduce glare.

If you are in a work environment with minimal exposure to direct light, take your breaks outside even if it is just ten minutes. When you are outside during lunch or on weekends, especially when in a natural setting, you want to allow your eyes to receive that natural, blue sky light. When at work, it will help to be near a window, but often the glass is blocking the important part of the blue spectrum since many modern glass windows contain tint. 

insomnia help | help sleep and stress | improve sleep | melanopsin | melatonin | mind spa | mindspa | stress and sleep | sleep research | winter depression | winter blues | seasonal affective disorder | natural sleep remedies | better sleep | sads | Blue Light Research | sunglasses effect sleep | MindSpa News | Stress and Health | Circadian Rhythms

A sensible person might argue that at 74, Connie Berto should be enjoying the quiet luxuries of retirement, like afternoon naps and baking pies. But like most Americans, Berto has picked the rush of an active, nonstop lifestyle over peace and quiet.

“I’m always on the go, go, go,” said Berto, who lives in the Sleepy Hollow community in Marin County. “My husband and I have a lot of interests and volunteer work and grandchildren - 2-year-old twins that I babysit all the time. I have two horses in the backyard, and I do all the cleaning and the cooking myself.”

And don’t get her started on the holidays. “With five kids and their spouses and trying to get Christmas presents for everybody, well, we’re always on a tight schedule,” she said.

There’s no doubt, Berto said, that Americans are more stressed out than ever before. Doctors agree. In fact, they say, Americans are so riddled with stress these days that it’s making them sick.

An office worker develops a strange rash from the daily pressures of dealing with a demanding boss. A child complains of a stomachache from too much homework or grueling daily soccer practices. A teenager lives on coffee and energy drinks in order to squeeze in more time for social activities.

Chronic stress has been linked to depression, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, premature cell aging, and obesity and diabetes. It can cause hives and numbness, gastrointestinal problems and acne. It can make people more susceptible to the flu.

The really frustrating part for doctors is that much of the stress patients experience is manufactured - the result of an increasingly connected society that has everyone expecting instant gratification, and instant results. Very few people are making the time to unplug and relax, even for just a few minutes every day.

Circadian Rhythms | Stress and Health

Monks spend years learning how to meditate. So can a machine induce similar levels of healthy calm in just 20 minutes? Simon Usborne plugs in

Published: 28 August 2007 - The Independent

Think of meditation and images of robed monks or hippies sitting in a pall of incense smoke spring to mind. But finding your inner peace doesn’t have to involve contorting your legs into the lotus position. If you’re a bit busy to spend years at a mountaintop monastery, there’s help at hand.   

“With only 15 or 20 minutes use of a meditation machine, you can start to achieve the same deep mental state as a Zen monk.” Really? That’s the claim made by Meditation UK, which sells an American machine called the MindSpa. The company’s website claims the MindSpa can improve memory, creativity, sleep patterns and emotional stability, lower blood pressure and increase brain function. I decide to put it to the test.

My £175 MindSpa Deluxe Package arrives the next day. After a quick flick through the manual, I don the sci-fi glasses and theadphones, and switch on the console. The first of the MindSpa’s 12 programmes, called alpha recharge, lasts just 10 minutes. “Try it in place of caffeine for a quick boost,” says the manual. I should come out of this feeling “calmer, more focused, and mentally recharged”. On a grey Thursday morning after a night on the wine, that sounds appealing.

MindSpa News | Stress and Health

By Merle Exit
EDGE New York City Contributor
Saturday Aug 18, 2007

Most of us have experienced at least one treatment at a spa- a place where we go in order to relax and rejuvenate our bodies. Massages, body wraps and facials are great for both the skin and stress, while pedicures and manicures lend themselves more toward looks. But are there treatments for the mind?I once heard someone give a description of the mind: “The mind is a linear arrangement of multi-sensory total records of successive moments of ’now’.” There’s no wonder that we are so… I can’t think of the word… wait! Let’s grab the MindSpa. Plug the blue light glasses and earphones into the unit and do an “Alpha Recharge,” a 10-minute program that, due to the light and sound tones, should both relax and wake up my brain. It says that I can control the brightness of the lights as well as the volume of the tones. Great. I’ll just close my eyes.Good. My mind feels much better. As I was saying… we are so engrossed with the idea that we are losing our memories that we tend to forget how much data our minds have absorbed over the years. Excuse me. I need to check my email… must forward this one. Hmm… did I send out my bills?Sorry, back to the article. It says here that the MindSpa, based upon solid scientific principle, “utilizes specifically tuned frequencies of light and gentle sound to shift the mind into one of two major states depending upon desired outcome: either a deeply relaxed state, also known as the alpha state, or the beta state; a state of cognitive stimulation and focus.”Now that’s what I need. I’m going to put the white light glasses on and remove the plastic piece that’s blocks the outside world. In other words, I’m keeping my eyes open so I can finish this article. This particular program says that it’s for mental sharpness and has been frequently used by people with ADD.What is the difference between the CrystalWhite and CalmBlue led glasses?

MindSpa News | Stress and Health | ADD /ADHD

“Once I reach Jordan, which is usually 5 p.m., I fight sleep really hard till 9 or 10 p.m.,” he explains. “The next two days are key. The first day around 11 a.m., I go out and walk in the sun for one hour minimum. The next day, I do the walk two hours earlier. I try to avoid light early in the day.”

This ritual, says Hattar, helps to fast-forward his circadian clock to Jordanian time. Now, instead of feeling fuzzy-headed and sluggish for a week, he feels like his normal self after two days. But that’s not the only time Hattar pays close attention to his body’s clock. He rises at 4:30 or 5 every morning and goes to sleep at 9:30 at night. On work days, Hatttar tries to take a walk every afternoon around the Homewood campus. He has changed all of the light bulbs in his home to low-intensity bulbs. “If you came to my house at night, you’d think I’m a cheap guy,” he says with a smile. All of these practices, he says, are intended to keep his body clock aligned with the clock of the external world, determined by when the spinning Earth countenances the sun.

Hattar, who holds joint appointments in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Biology Department and the School of Medicine’s Neuroscience Department, is an expert on this circadian clock, the master timekeeper we all have in our brain that governs our sleep and wake cycles and many other body fluctuations. He doesn’t study the circadian clock of people, though. He studies mice, in particular, the cells, genes, and neurochemicals that help to set the mouse’s biological clock. But his results and those of colleagues in the field who study people, he says, have caused him to rethink his own habits. So about four years ago, he adopted a more circadian clock-friendly lifestyle. He now feels better. Or at least, he adds, he believes he does.

Circadian Rhythms | Blue Light Research

“Once I reach Jordan, which is usually 5 p.m., I fight sleep really hard till 9 or 10 p.m.,” he explains. “The next two days are key. The first day around 11 a.m., I go out and walk in the sun for one hour minimum. The next day, I do the walk two hours earlier. I try to avoid light early in the day.”

This ritual, says Hattar, helps to fast-forward his circadian clock to Jordanian time. Now, instead of feeling fuzzy-headed and sluggish for a week, he feels like his normal self after two days. But that’s not the only time Hattar pays close attention to his body’s clock. He rises at 4:30 or 5 every morning and goes to sleep at 9:30 at night. On work days, Hatttar tries to take a walk every afternoon around the Homewood campus. He has changed all of the light bulbs in his home to low-intensity bulbs. “If you came to my house at night, you’d think I’m a cheap guy,” he says with a smile. All of these practices, he says, are intended to keep his body clock aligned with the clock of the external world, determined by when the spinning Earth countenances the sun.

Hattar, who holds joint appointments in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Biology Department and the School of Medicine’s Neuroscience Department, is an expert on this circadian clock, the master timekeeper we all have in our brain that governs our sleep and wake cycles and many other body fluctuations. He doesn’t study the circadian clock of people, though. He studies mice, in particular, the cells, genes, and neurochemicals that help to set the mouse’s biological clock. But his results and those of colleagues in the field who study people, he says, have caused him to rethink his own habits. So about four years ago, he adopted a more circadian clock-friendly lifestyle. He now feels better. Or at least, he adds, he believes he does.

For someone with such concerns, Hattar has the perfect office. Its two enormous windows, overlooking a lush bank of trees, flood the high-ceilinged room with natural light. On a recent morning this past summer, Hattar gazed out these windows in Mudd Hall, on the Homewood campus, before settling into a desk chair. “I feel sorry for people who work in cubicles,” he said. “The worst is when someone works in a cubicle all day away from natural light, and then goes home to a house illuminated with bright, artificial light.” That’s a recipe for disrupting your clock.

Studies have suggested that upsetting the clock’s natural cycle can have serious health consequences. Shift workers, for instance, an estimated 15 million Americans, have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, ulcers, and certain forms of cancer, according to Hattar’s colleague Steven Lockley, who studies sleep and circadian biology at Harvard Medical School.

Hattar’s own research explores another aspect of light’s influence on the biological clock. With a grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, he is using mouse models to study how a misaligned circadian clock might affect thinking, learning, memory, and mood.

It’s not just the frequent fliers or shift workers who might be affected, says Hattar. It’s also all those cubicle workers, the late-night Web surfers, the caffeinated go-getters, the kids who stay up late to blog and IM and channel surf — basically all those who push their circadian clock to its limits. And those numbers appear to be growing. In its annual polls of Americans’ sleep habits, the National Sleep Foundation has found that we’re getting less sleep than we used to. Between 2001 and 2005, the percentage of American adults getting at least eight hours of sleep per night dropped from 38 percent to 26 percent, while the number getting less than six hours rose from 13 percent to 16 percent. Many of us, says Hattar, may be feeling the effects, even though we don’t realize it.

“I believe that we have been so desensitized to light because we see it so much, we are not aware of what it’s doing to us,” says Hattar. “We in the industrial age of light are living under a continuous subtle jet lag because we are not doing what evolution intended.”

Electricity, the silicon chip, and satellite communications have given us super powers — the ability and the temptation to defy the sun. But when we can expose ourselves to light 24/7, we may have to face some consequences. We may eventually come crashing down from the heights of our super powers, just like the mortal Icarus, flying too close to the sun with his wings of wax.

While Hattar’s study could say something about health, he is, at heart, a basic scientist. In Jordan, he was raised in a Christian family and planned to become a priest. But by age 15, he had discovered a new passion — science, especially genetics. “I loved genetics the minute I heard about it,” says Hattar. “I love to be able to manipulate genes and see what happens when you change genes. You have such a powerful tool.”

At first, his passions seemed to conflict. But when Hattar learned of the work of the pioneering geneticist Gregor Mendel, and learned that Mendel had been an Augustinian monk, he thought that he, too, could pursue both vocations.

Today, Hattar does not wear a clerical collar or monk’s habit, but T-shirt and casual pants — the uniform of an academic scientist. He did his doctoral studies at the University of Houston, where he focused on circadian biology. He was intrigued, he says, by the idea that different events happened in a plant, animal, or cell depending on the time of day. In his own research, Hattar found that light could activate different genes depending on whether it was morning, afternoon, or evening.

People have a circadian clock. So do mice, sea slugs, fruit flies, dandelions, the fungus Neurospora, certain bacteria, and almost all other organisms. In people, the master clock also imparts structure to the body’s operations. In early morning, body temperature ebbs. Soon the stress hormone cortisol surges, insulin is produced at its maximum rate, and testosterone (in men) peaks. Other factors, hormones, and enzymes fluctuate throughout the day, and by around 9 p.m., the sleep hormone melatonin begins to flow. So though you might think you are a free agent who can improvise your schedule as you like, when it comes to human biology, free will is something of a mirage.

By the time Hattar entered the circadian biology field, scientists had found that the master clock resided in a V-shaped cluster of cells in the brain’s hypothalamus, near where the optic nerve enters the base of the brain. They named the cluster the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). Researchers had also observed that each person’s SCN beats out a slightly different length of day. So my clock might revolve once every 23.5 hours, while yours might repeat every 25 hours. If left to its own devices, each person’s clock would “free-cycle” on its own idiosyncratic schedule. That doesn’t happen, though, because the sun (or another form of light) resets, or “entrains,” the clock every day to the 24-hour world clock.

But questions remained, including one that would eventually intrigue Hattar: What mechanism did the clock use to detect light? In other words, how did the clock “know” whether it was night or day, dusk or dawn? Until then, scientists had largely assumed that the mechanism was the same as that used for vision. In that case, the eye’s retina detects light through the use of photoreceptors. These light-sensitive cells convert incoming light energy into nerve impulses that travel to the brain’s visual centers.

For decades, scientists had held that the retina contained just two types of photoreceptors: rods, which sense very low levels of light, and cones, which distinguish different colors of light. The retina’s multilayered structure also harbored other types of cells, including a family called ganglion cells, but none of those responded to light, according to this model.

However, research findings from several arenas were leading some scientists to question whether this model explained everything about the retina and the circadian clock. One finding came from studies of people who are totally blind, many of whom have a history of sleeping problems. For example, Suzanne Erb, blind since infancy and now enrolled in a research study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, says that she has had problems sleeping for as long as she can remember. When she was a child, she’d toss and turn in bed for an hour or two until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Then she’d pull Heidi, Little Women, or another novel from its hiding place under her covers. Long into the night and often until dawn, she would read, her small fingers sailing over the Braille letters on the pages. The following day, her body would ache for sleep. “You’re turning your days into nights,” her mother told her.

In the 1990s, Harvard sleep medicine specialist Charles Czeisler began studying totally blind people. Most, he found, had sleeping problems like Erb’s, suggestive of a circadian rhythm disorder. But some did not. That observation was puzzling because if rods and cones were the path to the circadian clock, then everyone who lacked them should have circadian clock disorders. But here were some totally blind people who appeared not to have such problems.

Five years later Hattar still sounds wondrous when he talks about his results and their implication that we “see” light in more ways than one. While the first pathway involves our conscious — we see the result — the second is subconscious — we do not realize that light is entraining our master clock. Hattar says he is fascinated by these differences. Why are there two pathways? Our visual system reveals whether it is night or day, so why doesn’t that information get communicated to the clock? Why does the brain have a separate pathway to let it know the level of lighting?

In 2004 Hattar began his own lab at Homewood. And while such intellectual questions continue to intrigue him, he is also pursuing studies that may have practical applications in medicine. Namely, he’d like to know how melanopsin and the circadian clock affect health and well-being. Does disrupting this system jeopardize health?

To study such questions Hattar used genetic techniques to generate a mouse that lacks melanopsin cells. In theory, these animals would be able to see but would not be able to detect light to set their circadian clock. Such an animal could serve as a model for studying situations in which the daily clock is desynchronized, as occurs in jet lag and shift work.

Hattar and graduate student Cara Altimus have put the animals through a battery of tests to determine whether the mice behave as predicted. Since a lab mouse spends most of its waking hours on an activity wheel, wheel-running serves as a proxy for an animal’s sleep/wake cycle. When the lights are on, a normal mouse sleeps. (Mice are nocturnal.) When the lights are turned off, a normal mouse will hop on its wheel and start running. If an animal cannot tell the difference between light and dark, it follows a sleep/wake schedule governed solely by its internal clock. Researchers use computer-generated records of each mouse’s wheel-running activity to see whether an animal entrains to light cues or simply follows its internal rhythms.

“It’s very clear,” says Altimus. “Dramatic.” The mice can see, but they cannot “see” light to set their circadian clock.

The researchers are now in the process of conducting a whole new series of tests on the mice to gauge their cognitive abilities and anxiety levels. Impairments in the animals would support the hypothesis that compromising the circadian clock can also compromise learning, memory, or even mental health. Because they have not yet published the results of those studies, Hattar is not willing to discuss them in detail. He will say, however, that they are “impressive.” His studies, he believes, will support the idea that misaligning the daily clock can lead to serious consequences, including subtle learning deficits. It’s a bold idea, he admits. “I’m putting it out there to be challenged,” says Hattar. “But I really believe it.”

Nothing he’s seen so far in his or colleagues’ results has persuaded him to stop his regular habit of rising before dawn, going to sleep early, and keeping his lights dim in the evening. If anything, his results have made him more concerned about the harm that irregular exposure to light might cause.

“I may be ‘placebo-ing’ myself,” says Hattar. He’s aware that the improvements he’s felt in his own health and spirit might just be comparable to taking a sugar pill. Likewise, he cannot yet say just how much harm might come to any of us from our light-filled environments. “Here is where I need to be careful,” he says. “You look at Americans. There are so many insomniacs. Stress levels are high. Many factors could be affecting us — our food, many environmental factors. But I know that no matter how upset I am, when I go into the sun, I feel better.”

Freelancer Melissa Hendricks teaches nonfiction writing in the Johns Hopkins Master of Arts in Writing program.

How to Improve Sleep Quality

High stress levels and lack of adequate natural light are two of the major causes of sleep disruption. MindSpa is helping thousands of people obtain high quality sleep by addressing these issues. We make a simple promise to you. When used as suggested on a regular basis, we guarantee you will experience an improved quality of sleep in less than 90 days or your money back.

Good quality sleep is essential to our mental health and physical well being. A lack of deep sleep can lead to reduced concentration and memory functions, mood alterations, depression and fatigue. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that sleeping less than seven and a half hours a day may be associated with a greater risk for heart disease, hypertension and other serious health-related issues.

Additional recent studies shows most of us suffer from occasional sleep disorders. For some it is a chronic problem. There are steps you can take to help you get healthy amounts of restorative, regenerative, deep sleep on a consistent basis

Stress & Anxiety

Many sleep issues are stress related. When stressed, we tend to create mental loops. This is most noticeable in the quiet of the night when our inner dialog takes over. It is during these quiet periods our mind tends to get stuck on problems commonly related to finances, work, health, or relationships making quality sleep difficult to attain. We have all experienced these high-intensity “mental loops” at different times. In the morning we wake up feeling exhausted, anxious and agitated. Stress-caused sleep disruption can result on seriously impacting our decision making abilities and our physical functioning.

Brainwave Activity

Think of brainwaves like ocean waves. They are measured on two scales; height and frequency of the waves. Normal beta brainwave activity is associated with the regular, active thinking process. When we are stressed, mental loops will cause our mind to shift to a high “beta” activity state.

As we explain on our Brainwave States section, high amplitude, fast beta brainwave activity generally reflects a state of heightened anxiety or stress accompanied by feelings of agitation and discomfort due to mental over-activity. This is associated with what is commonly known as the fight or flight state. When the high amplitude beta state is maintained for extended periods it leaves us feeling drained of energy and over time can erode our physical and emotional well-being resulting in a variety health issues.

Using MindSpa’s relaxation programs can significantly help to reduce undesirable high amplitude beta activity in just a few weeks. Many report experiencing immediate effectiveness. When you encounter common stress producing situations you will be better able to maintain an inner calmness with enhanced control of your life. Conversely, when you feel like you need a quick pick up, or when you just do not feel as mentally sharp as you would like to feel, MindSpa can help here as well.

Brainwave states | Circadian Rhythms | sleep disorders | Chronotherapy