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On our journey to learn about light and health, we discovered how powerful and healing sunlight can be. If natural light greatly impacts your health, it would make sense that artificial light does something to your body too, right? Yup, and unfortunately, the impacts are not great:
Sends mixed up signals. Your body depends on light to tell it what time of day and season it is, so that it can respond appropriately. Most modern LED lights will tell your body that it's high noon in the middle of the summer… even if dusk on a cold January evening. As you learned in the previous emails, this causes a lot of issues!
Emits blue light. Most modern LED light bulbs are mostly blue light, and entirely devoid of healing red light to balance it out. This is hard on our eyes, stops the production of melatonin (which begins in the morning!), increases stress and blood pressure, and is generally bad for cellular health.
Has a high flicker rate. Most LEDs have a high flicker rate, which is perceived subconsciously by your body as danger (anyone else feel a little unnerved by strobe lights?). This can put your body into a constant high-alert state. The high flicker rate is also bad for your eyes and can cause headaches in some.
Four Steps to Mitigate Artificial Light
Don't worry, we're not going to suggest that you live in a cave by candlelight and avoid all modern society. We're all about making things work for the real world!
Here's four simple changes you can make to protect your circadian rhythm and reduce the effects of artificial lighting.
Use blue blockers. To avoid confusing your body, use blue light blocking glasses after sunset and before sunrise. We like these! Keep lighting dim when you can.
Download blue light blocking software. Even during the day, devices emit harmful amounts of blue light. Download a blue blocking software, like Iris, to help protect your eyes. You can also change your screen settings to a red filter, which gets rid of all blue light. Using devices by an open window or outside is another way to reduce the effects of blue light.
Darken your sleep environment. According to circadian rhythm expert, Carrie Bennett, the goal is to not be able to see your hand in front of your face at night. This will allow for maximum melatonin production, which is so important for your health! Use black out curtains to keep blue light from entering your room. Rolled up towels or tape can help to get rid of openings between the curtains and the window. Search your room for any sources of light coming from devices and cover them up red electrical tape. If this seems like too much work, buy a good quality sleep mask and use that instead!
Switch your lightbulbs. Switch out your light bulbs to incandescents. These emit less blue light and more red light, plus don't have a high flicker rate. If incandescent light bulbs aren't available, try some specially made blue-light free, low flicker, LEDs like these. (Buyer beware: There are some LEDs called “edison-style” which make you think they are incandescent… but are actually LEDs in disguise!)
To learn more about light and circadian rhythms, check out the rest of our blog posts!
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