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LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

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Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#271

Post by nikitoci »

nikvdp wrote: post #203
londons_explore wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am disappointed that many phones/tablets don't go very dim. From flagship to cheap, it seems that if you're in a pitch black room and check the time on your phone, the light will illuminate the whole room, even on the dimmest setting. I actually modded my phone by putting a resistor in the LED backlight circuit, which divided the brightness by 1000 - and it was still plenty bright at night (human eyes are logarithm…

iOS actually has a hard to find setting that lets you make the screen super dim. It's been a lifesaver when using my phone in the evening. To enable it go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Zoom and then tap the Zoom toggle switch. Once that's enabled iOS will now bring up a super secret popup menu whenever you double tap the screen with three fingers. From the little popup menu go to Choose Filter -> Low Light and your…

You can also set Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility shortcut (at the bottom) -> Enable “Reduce white point”

Now you can triple-click lock button to make screen dimmer. I have been using this for ages, saves your eyes in the dark.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#273

Post by kelipso »

_dan wrote: post #223
londons_explore wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am disappointed that many phones/tablets don't go very dim. From flagship to cheap, it seems that if you're in a pitch black room and check the time on your phone, the light will illuminate the whole room, even on the dimmest setting. I actually modded my phone by putting a resistor in the LED backlight circuit, which divided the brightness by 1000 - and it was still plenty bright at night (human eyes are logarithm…

A Macbook's minimum brightness is quite bright. The thing that annoys me no end is that if you hit the "dim" button when it's at minimum brightness, it goes black - but fades out slowly and smoothly. So they're clearly capable of being dimmer, but Apple decided we're not allowed that.

On my Macbook Pro I can go smoothly all the way to black using the Display widget on the top right.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#274

Post by maxerickson »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #239
maxerickson wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it is probably adaptive vision. My Pixel 6 with an OLED screen doesn't work very good as a walking light in a dark room.

Also a Pixel owner - Try wiggling the light as you walk. Your motion sensing kicks in before either your focus or dark vision, and even if you can't "see" it, your brain can get enough information to let you navigate.

I pointed that out because it is pretty dim, I don't try very hard to use the screen as a light.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#275

Post by tzs »

nikvdp wrote: post #203
londons_explore wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am disappointed that many phones/tablets don't go very dim. From flagship to cheap, it seems that if you're in a pitch black room and check the time on your phone, the light will illuminate the whole room, even on the dimmest setting. I actually modded my phone by putting a resistor in the LED backlight circuit, which divided the brightness by 1000 - and it was still plenty bright at night (human eyes are logarithm…

iOS actually has a hard to find setting that lets you make the screen super dim. It's been a lifesaver when using my phone in the evening. To enable it go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Zoom and then tap the Zoom toggle switch. Once that's enabled iOS will now bring up a super secret popup menu whenever you double tap the screen with three fingers. From the little popup menu go to Choose Filter -> Low Light and your…

> Once that's enabled iOS will now bring up a super secret popup menu whenever you double tap the screen with three fingers.

On current iOS you don't need to be in zoom and double tap. The zoom filter is also available by tapping the "Zoom Filter" setting which is 6 items below the Zoom setting in Settings -> Accessibility -> Zoom. The double tap in zoom thing is there to make it easy to quickly change the filter while zoomed.

This and the white point setting void-pointer suggested are both controllable from Shortcuts.

There is a Zoom action that supports turning zoom on, off, or toggling it, a White Point action that supports turning it on or off, and a Brightness action that supports setting the brightness to a given percentage or asking for the brightness.

I just tried making two Shortcuts, "Low Light" and "Normal Light".

Low Light:

  Turn Zoom On
  Turn White Point On
  Set Brightness to 0%
"Hey Siri, Low Light" then works. It does leave you zoomed, so you need to cancel that, but then you are left at 0% brightness and whatever Zoom filter you have set is in effect. "Turn White Point On" will set the white point reduction to whatever percentage you have it set to in the Reduce White Point system settings.

Normal Light:

  Turn Zoom Off
  Turn White Point Off
  Set Brightness to
That does what you'd expect. Siri asks you what brightness you want from 0 to 1. You can change that to a specific percentage if you don't want to be prompted.

PS: This only fully works on iOS. On iPadOS zoom filters only work while actually zooming, and then only apply to what is shown in the zoom rectangle. On iOS the zoom filter applies when zoom is enabled regardless of whether or not you are actually zoomed.

The white point reduction does work on iPadOS so you do get some lowering of minimum brightness but not as much as on iOS when you can use both.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#276

Post by JohnFen »

abakker wrote: post #255
kule wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been a while since I used a MacBook but can't you do Shift+Opt (or just Opt?) Brightness+/- for an incremental change still? Works with volume too.

I love apple devices, but man, these undocumented things make me question whose team their UI people are on. It doesn't feel like they're on my team.

The lack of discoverability isn't just limited to Apple. It's endemic. And I've heard multiple UX people claim that it's not a bad thing.

I disagree with that opinion, though. I think it's one of the worst aspects of modern UI design.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#277

Post by mihaaly »

karmaMeansCool wrote: post #15

There are also probably very personal and biological variables involved too that the post doesn't mention. I stare into monitors and phones all day long. Every light in the house is full-blown LED. I can't help but fall asleep at 20:00 in an led lit room watching led TVs, while my led phone drops onto the floor after I've fallen asleep. I've been in an extreme LED environment for over a decade and never have problems…

I can sleep in a sunny day outside at noon (lots of blue light around) like a baby! : )

(which was very handy living 5 years at the polar circle. the only off thing was discovering a ca 26 hours daily cycle of mine in a long stretch of solitary work and lots of food at home, when I did not have to sync my activities with any single human being for more than a week during a summer)

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#278

Post by neodon »

moremetadata wrote: post #174
wonnage wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really turned off by how there’s zero critical consideration of their quoted research. They’re just hammering you over the head with quantity. Sleep is like diet where there’s virtually no scientific consensus on even the most basic things. Plenty of studies which conclude “more research is needed”, though. That leaves people free to cherry pick and go deep into the weeds with crazy the-world-is-falling theories.…

>’m really turned off by how there’s zero critical consideration of their quoted research I can take a variety of stimulants which would normally keep me up all night, but 5mg of Vit K2-MK4 removes enough of the calcium from my bloodstream so that it can't amplify the effects of the catecholamines and I'm asleep within 30mins, its actually better than taking melatonin or anti-histamines. I've been more alert and obse…

That's interesting! Can you provide some links to evidence regarding Vit K2-MK4, its effects on calcium in the bloodstream, and how that inhibits the effects of catecholamines and leads to sleep induction?

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#280

Post by moremetadata »

neodon wrote: post #278
moremetadata wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>’m really turned off by how there’s zero critical consideration of their quoted research I can take a variety of stimulants which would normally keep me up all night, but 5mg of Vit K2-MK4 removes enough of the calcium from my bloodstream so that it can't amplify the effects of the catecholamines and I'm asleep within 30mins, its actually better than taking melatonin or anti-histamines. I've been more alert and obse…

That's interesting! Can you provide some links to evidence regarding Vit K2-MK4, its effects on calcium in the bloodstream, and how that inhibits the effects of catecholamines and leads to sleep induction?

Vit K2-MK4 Osteoblasts better than Vit K1 in my experience, ie 50mg of K1 is nowhere near as good as 5mg K2-MK4. Calcium amplifies the effects of the catecholamines which probably explains why tea drinkers prefer hard water. Military also give out tea, during and after a exercise. High Vit A and Vit D can also lead to hypercalcemia which makes you feel good. https://scholar.google.com/

Remember Thomas Pynchon and be mindful of the fact that search engines wont always give you the studies you are looking for, so you have to go back and perform the same search's weeks and months later.

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