exposure to light at night may cause depression
– commenting on an article from today’s Metro newspaper, page 37.
A new study suggests special cells in the eye respond to bright light, elevating stress hormone levels and affects the brain’s centres for mood, memory and learning.
This is not the first news on this topic, there has been talk for some time as modern LCD screens, and in fact more and more lighting products not computer related, use ultra white (6000K-plus virtually ‘full spectrum’) LEDs as their light source. The older screens used cold cathode tubes, and all? new laptops having a long battery life have LEDs now as they use so much less energy. These screens are also in computer LCDs, televisions, mobile phones, tablets and ereaders. To make it worse, how many of these devices would we routinely reach for if we cant sleep .. doh!
This is great is you suffer from SAD (you dont so much have to buy expensive daylight lamps), but it’s also known that if you cant sleep at night you need to avoid such white lights: I know of people who have to switch their day-lights off by 6pm or they feel wired all evening.
Gone are the days of cosy yellow tungsten lights (hello energy saving LED), but it does raise a worrying question: should we be exposed to this intense white light so much?
Of course, in many devices there is the option to turn down the brightness (or in ereaders to reverse the colours), and this makes a dramatic energy saving too. But many, the young especially, influenced by companies such as Apple (ok, prob not true, but had to mention them somewhere) are used to enjoying the strong vibrant colours of fully bright screens.
I shall be giving my evening activities some thought on this, but hopefully it wont keep me awake at nights. Perhaps start work earlier in the morning and avoid late nighters. Maybe the paper-publishing industry demise is further away than we thought.