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Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

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Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#91

Post by jpalomaki »

maxander wrote: post #68
sitkack wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ikea also has a great assortment of easy to install blackout shades, http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70349252/

What we ought to have is a blackout shade that will automatically roll down at night and back up in the morning, when we want sunlight to start waking us up.

Look for motorized roller curtain. I have those in two bedrooms. They are actually very convenient, even though I just have the remote control and not any automation. DIY persons can also find instructions for getting the shades from IKEA and motors from Ebay.

Mine are using motors/control from Somfy. Those have at least worked flawlessly for several years.

For the roller curtains there are also models which have "things" on the sides where the curtain slides in. This blocks the light that would otherwise shine in from there. If this is not an option, should look for curtain which is dark from the outside. This should also help a little bit.

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#92

Post by chrisper »

lhnz wrote: post #61

I currently sleep in a room with zero natural light. I can't tell you whether this makes me more or less likely to be depressed (I think it pales in comparison to other things in my life), however I do always keep a low light on -- without this, it would be very difficult to find my bearings when I wake up. Also, it is extremely difficult to wake up when it's completely pitch-black.

Get a wake up light.

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#93

Post by Herodotus38 »

schiffern wrote: post #62
Herodotus38 wrote: post #44

In prehistoric times, before shelter was common, would a half or full moon cause the same effect? I just wonder about how actually natural a pitch black sleep is.

>I just wonder about how actually natural a pitch black sleep is. "Pitch black" is another thing entirely, but the moon is much dimmer than the light levels this study reports as causing depression (5 lux). And it's pretty dim (equivalent to stray light from a streetlamp). >The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on its phase, but even the full Moon typically provides only about 0.05–0.1 lux illumination…

Thanks for putting it into perspective. 5 lux is quite a lot to me.

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#94

Post by stordoff »

GoToRO wrote: post #7

What I don't like are the "solutions" they propose: noise? use earplugs, light? use curtains. Well I will not be able to sleep if I have something in my ears and if you pull the curtains then you can no longer wake up naturally with the Sun. How about changing your lifestyle so that you can have silence and dark during the night and light in the morning without any "devices". You might have to quit your job :)

According to [1], the difference between between winter and summer where I live is rather severe -- varying from 12 hours night and 7.5 hours daylight in winter to zero hours of night (I've read outside with no artificial light in those conditions - there's still quite a lot of light) and 17 hours of daylight in summer. Sunrise varies from 4:30am to 8:30am. I'm not sure most lifestyles can manage that sort of swing through the year.

[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/sheffield

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#95

Post by stordoff »

RoboTeddy wrote: post #74
tzs wrote: post #40

Sort of OT, but this reminds me of a question I've not been able to find an answer for on blue light and sleep. (OT because the article says nothing about blue light). One way light affects sleep is via the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). These are a third kind of photoreceptor in our retinas, distinct from the more well known rods and cones. These are most sensitive to blue light. They…

IIRC from reading papers, there seems to be a dose-response effect, both w.r.t intensity and match to peak sensitive wavelength (~465nm). Even green light has some effect. Avoiding blue light at night after you go to sleep is definitely an under-appreciated problem, especially for folks that stay up late. If you have a habit of going to bed at 2:30am, and the sun rises at 5:30am and comes in your window, you're getti…

Anecdotally, I know the amount of light that comes in between the window sill and the curtain can throw off my sleep schedule - I tend to feel most alert around 1am, so I'm a late sleeper, and when the sun rises early (~4:30am in summer around here) I tend to feel unrested or I'm woken after only an hour or two's sleep (and can't get back to sleep even after getting rid of the light). Putting the curtain up on the window sill to block the light completely gets rid of that effect.

Oddly artificial light (even with bulbs on the blue-end of the spectrum) tends not to do the same -- if I'm woken for other reasons and use artificial lights and displays then try to get back to sleep, or leave lights on in the room, it's usually not an issue. No idea if that's some sort of dose-response effect or a reaction to the sun cycling rather than being constant (or even placebo potentially).

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#96

Post by DoreenMichele »

Nomentatus wrote: post #81
DoreenMichele wrote: post #60

Light does not happen by magic and tends to not occur alone. I would be very leery of asserting cause and effect here.

There's a very long bibliography stretching back more than a decade and including at least one mouse model of depression. It's not just one study.

I am not readily finding this bibliography. If you would be so kind as to link to it (and perhaps copy/paste if it is paywalled.)

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#97

Post by tincholio »

davidw wrote: post #38

One thing I miss from Italy are real shutters: https://blog.therealitaly.com/2007/08/09/window-technology/

I grew up sleeping in pitch black darkness, and having lived now for a while in the Nordics, where summer nights are light and curtains are mediocre at best, I can share that feeling.

I wonder if the higher rates of depression here may have something to do with this (interestingly, I remember reading somewhere that suicides in the Nordics peak in Springtime).

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#98

Post by syrkis »

tincholio wrote: post #97
davidw wrote: post #38

One thing I miss from Italy are real shutters: https://blog.therealitaly.com/2007/08/09/window-technology/

I grew up sleeping in pitch black darkness, and having lived now for a while in the Nordics, where summer nights are light and curtains are mediocre at best, I can share that feeling. I wonder if the higher rates of depression here may have something to do with this (interestingly, I remember reading somewhere that suicides in the Nordics peak in Springtime).

Second that! Curtains in Copenhagen don't blind, they blur. I think part of the reason for the spike in suicide in springtime is the hope that "things-will-be-better-in-the-light" being broken. The third monday of January has a spike in suicide as well, on account of the New Year not bring the prosperity that the excitement of december had you believe. Psychiatrists supposedly call that day blue monday.

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#99

Post by bonniemuffin »

Izkata wrote: post #50
bonniemuffin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like giving half the people blackout curtains and then monitoring depression levels would be perfectly ethical, since it's expected to improve their life, if anything.

The problem with that is the placebo effect..

There are ways to set it up with an alternate/sham treatment for the control group (maybe some nice pictures to hang on the wall--something equally decorative but not light-blocking). It's not perfect because there's no way to make it fully blinded, but the results would still be a substantial improvement over the existing observational study discussed in the article here.

Re: Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression

#100

Post by Nomentatus »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #96
Nomentatus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very long bibliography stretching back more than a decade and including at least one mouse model of depression. It's not just one study.

I am not readily finding this bibliography. If you would be so kind as to link to it (and perhaps copy/paste if it is paywalled.)

pubmed dot com

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=light+depression

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ipRGCs+depression

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