Light has a strong influence over the timing of your circadian rhythm remember
light triggers the shutdown of melatonin in your brain so we can use this to our
advantage when trying to regulate sleep problems or reset your body clock
exposure to bright light is most effective for people who develop a
circadian rhythm-like disturbance like delayed sleep phase disorder for example
or advanced phase sleep disorder. But light therapy can also be helpful for
restoring normal sleeping patterns to people with jetlag and shift work sleep
disorder. Sunlight is the best type of light to trigger a resetting of your
internal clock but sun lights not always available for the purposes of treatment
so fortunately there are commercially produced light boxes available they're
pretty small very portable and these boxes are designed to mimic the
wavelength of sunlight without the harmful ultraviolet effects and
similarly there are commercially available light blocking glasses that
work the opposite of a light box. Remember light wakes you up and the dark
makes you sleepy the glasses block the light that triggers wakefulness these
are helpful for shift workers who need to sleep during the day or people who
can't fall asleep in the early evening due to a disturbance in their body clock
so let's take an example look at an example of how light therapy works
Milton has always considered himself to be a night owl for as long as he can
remember he's never been able to fall asleep prior to midnight. Going to bed
late worked fine when Milton worked as an information technology specialist
providing computer support and was a job he could easily do from home.
Now Milton has a job where he has to report each morning at 8:30. He has a 30
minute commute which means he has to be out of bed by 7:30 at the latest but he
just can't scramble out of bed at his latest because he has to help the kids
get ready in the mornings. So Milton must get up at 6:30 a.m.
Milton believed that after a few days of waking up at 6:30 he'd naturally fall
asleep at a time that allowed him to get the 7 hours of sleep his body needed
Milton who was used to falling asleep between 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning. He
got up with an alarm at 6:30 but after a few days of this he was he still
wasn't falling asleep before midnight so Milton has delayed sleep phase disorder
meaning that he doesn't even begin to get drowsy until the early morning hours
and even when he attempts to force himself to fall asleep earlier and
abides by proper sleep hygiene rules, he still feels wired. So Milton uses the
light box for 30 minutes each morning as soon as he wakes up. The light sends a
signal to his brain that resets his clock at the beginning of the day
another problem Milton had was that he and his family had gotten into the habit
of eating dinner on their deck in the evenings. And Milton would then throw the
football in the backyard with his son after dinner. Because Milton is a night
owl, this late exposure to sunlight only serve to perpetuate his problem of being
awake longer than he wanted to be in the evenings so to help with this he wore
blue light blocking glasses in the early evening after he got home from work.
So if your problem is falling asleep too late and you want to move up your bed
time use a light box for 15 to 45 minutes within the first hour of waking up.
Don't look directly at the light keep it at like an arm's distance about 45
degrees to your eyes so that your eyes still see the light but you're not
looking directly at it. Because these these boxes are portable
you can move around with them get yourself ready in the morning prop it up
brush your teeth so you don't have to be fixed and sitting in some position for
fifteen or thirty minutes every single morning you can move around with it.
So I wanted to show you an example of a light box
this is Philips go light and as you can see I just wanted to show you the size
of it it's very small can fit in your hand you can as I mentioned before kind
of walk around with it because it's portable and you basically they're very
easy to use you just you can turn it on on the side it's very bright
I don't want to blow out the camera turning it around but I will ah but it's
a very easy to use there you know I've seen them anywhere from $100 to $200
that's when I looked a while ago they may have even gone down since then and
very readily available as I mentioned this is Philips go light but there's
lots of different brands, Litebook also sells one I got this one off of Amazon
actually I got it from the Philips rep at a psychiatric meeting but they are
available on amazon.com as well. If you're spending a lot of time outside
before bed especially in the summer time consider wearing blue light blocking
glasses similar to these. These are an example of blue light blocking glasses
they have orange, well they're specially designed lenses but it ends up being
that their orange lenses to block the blue light these are an example of ones
that you could use over your glasses because they're very they fit over
glasses like this if you had glasses already. If you don't wear glasses this
particular brand and I I'll have a reference to it they also
have regular ones and these just fit like regular sunglasses and this is what
you would you say if you're lying in bed reading your iPad or on some other
electronic device to reduce the amount of blue light that your eyes are seeing
that could interfere with your sleep and decrease your your melatonin secretion
they feel weird walking around your house with these glasses on sunglasses
on in the house but they are very effective. So this is what Milton could
wear say in the evenings sitting out on the deck or so so that he's reducing his
blue light exposure. These glasses can be very useful in the summer time because
if you're spending a lot of time outside in the summers later in the evening the
sun exposure is like getting light therapy at night and it can actually
push back your bedtime by pushing back your melatonin release making it harder
for you to fall asleep. So what if you have the opposite problem of falling
asleep too early or advanced phase sleep disorder. In this case you could expose
yourself to bright light about 3 to 4 hours before your desired bedtime so if
you want to go to bed around 11:00pm then use the light box around 7 or 8
Bright light therapy has not been shown to have any major side effects though some
people have reported minor side effects including eye irritation, dryness, headache
nausea, dryness of the skin and to reduce the chances of experiencing these side
effects it's recommended that you begin light therapy slowly and consult your
doctor before use and what I mean by slowly is don't start out with 45
minutes of exposure try 15 to begin with. The following people should avoid it
entirely or use it only under a physician's direction. That would be
anyone with skin or eyes that are highly sensitive to light, anyone taking
medications that increase the risk for photosensitivity.
People suffering from bipolar disorder because in this case bright light