Depression-Fighting SAD Lamps Aren't Just for Your Winter Blues | Hacker News Reader

Depression-Fighting SAD Lamps Aren't Just for Your Winter Blues

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105 pointssageabilly52 comments

In case anyone is curious — here is the lamp used in the study: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00PCN4UVU/ref=mp_s_a_1_1/184-...

My conjecture on why it works (for non-SAD cases of depression): People who are depressed are likely socially isolated (by choice, perhaps because of depression, or by circumstances, perhaps causing depression) and also physically isolated in homes or offices without good natural sunlight (again, the physical isolation may be a consequence of depression and wanting to be alone, or causal). I've spent several hours a day outdoors or in buildings (mainly a gym) with large windows providing lots of natural sunlight this year. I'm also in the best mood I've been in years. Of course, two factors have changed here for me: more light, more physical activity. Both are correlated with improving mood for people with depression, so I can't say which has had the greater effect for me.

a well balanced diet helps alleviate depression too.

too many weeks of staying cooped up in the basement eating pizza rolls will take its toll both physically and mentally

Should've mentioned that. I guess I made three major changes this year (my previous diet wasn't bad, but too large portion sizes).

I have heard this from a couple of people but I have never seen any studies to support this folk-medicine remedy for clinical depression. Do you have any literature pointers?

Well, pizza rolls in the basement have a terrible ratio of omega-3/omega-6 and no vitamin D, and omega-3 supplementation is quite effective against depression.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21939614

So there ya go.

That is for one supplement or for "a balanced diet"? Because the way I read that it seems I could eat whatever and take the fish oil supplement.

Sure, why not? You could always eat your ingredients instead of cooking too.

I am not trying to be rude but I really don't know what you are trying to say. Yes, if I understand the study you linked to, as long as i take the supplement or drizzle fish oil on my pizza I could eat a totally unbalanced diet of raw or cooked ingredients. But your original comment was about "a balanced diet" not the benefits of one very specific supplement?

I didn't make that comment, and I can't immediately provide proof of the health of a regular diet vs a bunch of supplements.

But they have a ton of sodium and not much fiber, so if anything you'd get pretty constipated.

Here's my "N=1" anecdote:

Not sure if I technically have SAD, but I definitely used to get depressed during winter in Chicago because the sun was NEVER out. Since moving to the Bay Area I've been noticeably happier.

Beyond that, I have two full-spectrum lamps at home. I used to use one last year on my desk at home, but haven't used them lately. My desk doesn't get a ton of natural light, so I've considered bringing one to the office since daylight savings makes it SOOO dark.

When I'm using the lamp, I experience a similar feeling to when I'm basking in sunlight. I feel like I am gaining energy rather than losing it. Sometimes it can be a bit bright, but the brightness doesn't hurt...it is just energizing.

Really hard to explain, and again, sample size of 1 here, but the lamps can help in some cases. When I used it most recently last winter on my desk at night after a long work day, it definitely helped. But I found that it made it more difficult to go to sleep, so instead I don't use it, have f.lux running, and just try to get outside into the natural sunlight when I can for a little bit when I can carve out some free time. I live in California so might as well take advantage of that right?

In the northern US states there is basically no reasonable behavior pattern that results in enough sun through the winter. By 4:30pm it's indistinguishable from 10:30pm. Most people's work and school schedules put the bulk of their free time in the afternoon and evening.

Skiing. The world needs more skiers.

Are there concrete characteristics to a SAD lamp? Could I achieve similar results if I fill a room with led bulbs?

Seems pretty easy to duplicate with LED bulbs with these characteristics: CRI: 85 or above Color Temp: 4000K About 70-80W of CFL, so that might be around 60W of LED. Using omnidirectional bulbs, perhaps 7-8 mounted near each other all shining to get the same 10,000LUX intensity at your face.

Thanks for the reply. I'm using about 250W of 5050 led ribbon to decorate my house for the holidays. The strips I've purchased look like they will blend into my crown moulding seamlessly. I think I will try and use an arduino to rig them up to slowly work their way to full brightness 15 minutes before my morning alarm. Something tells me I will wake up before the alarm goes off...

The color temperature used should probably be 5700K, as that closely resembles sunlight. Sunlight-like light can negatively affect your circadian rhythm (body always thinks it's day time), however.

You should look at the spectral power distribution. CRI (color rendering index) score and CCT (correlated color temperature) are pretty uninformative metrics.

The CCT just tells you (approximately) how the relative excitation of short vs. medium/long cones in the eye from a particular lamp compares to that of a black body radiator, and the color rendering index tells you how whether a particular set of paint chips looks roughly the same under your lamp as it would look under either daylight or an incandescent bulb (or some value based on linearly interpolating between the two, depending on color temperature). To judge color differences, the CRI takes cone responses and multiplies by a matrix (chromatic adaptation transform), and then uses a standard color difference formula.

Most of the so-called “full spectrum lamps” have a spectrum nothing at all like sunlight. It’s not at all clear what kind of spectrum would help fight seasonal depression, but I suspect you want a bit of near ultraviolet radiation, which wouldn’t be measured by either CCT or CRI.

When I was researching them (several years ago now) the only key thing that everyone agreed on is that they have to be really honkin' bright, with 10000 lux at 2 feet being the standard. You'll need even brighter bulbs for your scheme, since you'll be placing them further away. It's an inverse square relationship, so at 6 feet you'll need a 9x as bright bulb.

Inverse square applies to a light emanating perfectly spherically that isn't bouncing from anything else. If your room doesn't have dark walls, you will need much less than the inverse square law would suggest.

Similarly, if you apply the "inverse square" law to sound waves as if they are emanating in a perfect sphere from our mouths, it's pretty easy to show that you'll never hear anybody very well, even shouting at the top of their lungs, from even a few dozen feet away. However, between the fact that our voices are partially directional and the fact that we pretty much always have a floor of some kind and are often in rooms that provide even greater constraints, we are rarely in situations where inverse square actually applies to our audio.

Some people like to use blue LEDs. I have 36 1W blue LEDs (0.2W each of actual light output) shining up at my white ceiling and it seems to work just fine.

My target brightness was 0.2W per square metre. That's based on a classic melatonin suppression study. More energy did not cause a significant amount of extra melatonin suppression. Unfortunately my brightness distribution is rather poor.

The blue light is on for 12 minutes every 2 hours during the day.

You need a full spectrum light bulb, regular light bulbs won't do anything for you.

You need 10'000 [insert correct unit here]* and to be quite close (about 20 to 30 centimeters) for 30 minutes.

It should be done in the morning, or else it could affect your sleep pattern.

* I'm not sure if it's lux or lumen or candela, sorry

Question: can you make your own lamp with a, say, 100W LED array? I'm just thinking of a DIY option...

If your concern is about the prices, you can find very reasonably priced lamps by Verilux on Amazon. Got mine for under $150, but there are ones even cheaper.

If you're simply trying to get an Open Source/DIY project together, power to you!

An aside: I'm very grateful for my light box. I have S.A.D. as well as 2 anxiety disorders. Really helps me out and would recommend a box to anyone that is on the fence or unaware of their existence!

Or just buy one of these: http://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3332_60/golite-blu-energy-l...

They are quite compact, and do what they are supposed to do. You can even use them in the office while you are working.

Can you do this with LEDs? I thought the point was broad spectrum output more typical of incandescence.

Yes. What matters is brightness and temperature (should include 5700K).

I have one on my desk. I turn it on when I sit down for work in the morning, hitting the timer to run for 45 minutes. There is a marked improvement in my wakefulness, mood, and productivity. I don't care if it's a placebo or not, Dumbo's Magic Feather is good enough for me.

I've always spent a lot of money, floor space, and electricity for high-wattage lamps and never regretted it. My living room has 4 IKEA lamps and a halogen torchiere.

Do any HN'ers have experience with the SAD lamp available from Costco?

I have the rechargeable variant of the Philips Golite, which looks like the same model that Costco sells. I like it overall, but the big problem I have with it is that the battery doesn't hold a charge if you keep it in its case for any longer than about a week.

Does anyone have any anecdotal evidence on the effect of dark and light editor themes on mood?

I mainly use X-on-black themes because they give me a wider gamut of useful colors for syntax-highlighting.

Hard to say from your comment what you are doing, but I've struggled quite a bit with getting good colours for both dark and light themes while working on agnostic [1]. Obviously, if you are using 256 colour scheme, then you can choose whatever colours you like. But if you are using a 16 colour scheme there are some significant issues you have to keep in mind.

Colours 0-7 are "normal" colours. Colours 8-15 are "bright" colours. Unfortunately, back in the old days when bold wasn't supported on terminals, they decided that bold should be implemented with "bright" colours. So now, any time you use bold, there are applications that force the colour to be the bright version (i.e., even if you tell it to use colour 6, it will actually use colour 14 if you specify bold as well).

For light themes, this is a significant problem because most colour palattes actually put the bright (i.e. lighter) colours in the "bright" colour section. This means that basically every time you use bold, there will be very little contrast -- making light themes practically useless. You can't just change the palette either, because then your non-bold characters will have poor contrast.

What agnostic does is to use colours 8-15 as "normal" colours and 0-7 as "bright" colours. This way, when you use bold it actually uses the colour you intended. Then you can adjust the palatte in your terminal app to use whatever colours you want. Agnostic is also designed so that it doesn't completely suck with standard palattes (like the Xwindows/iTerm default, Tango, Solarized Dark) because it is designed to be a pair programming theme. It works best if you make your own palette, though.

Saying all that, there should be no reason you can't set up a good light theme with whatever colours you like, but you will probably have to do the same kind of thing as agnostic if you want to support bold well.

[1] - https://github.com/ygt-mikekchar/agnostic

I recently switched from all solarized-dark to all solarized-light. I definitely like the look of solarized-dark better but, (extremely anecdotal here) my eyes feel happier with light.

I cycle through light and dark variants of https://github.com/chriskempson/base16

Would like to try.. any damage possible to eyes or skin?

If this works, then you need to elevate your vitamin D (should ideally be between 40 and 60 ng/ml) and serotonin levels.

Vitamin D:

- 3000-5000 IU vitamin D3

- 1000mcg vitamin K2 MK-4

- 100mcg vitamin K2 MK-7 (to direct calcium away from soft tissue)

- 200-400mg Magnesium Glycinate.

Serotonin:

- 500-1500mg L-Tryptophan

(or if that doesn't work...)

- 300mg 5-HTP

- 3000mg L-Tyrosine (to counter lowered absorption caused by 5-HTP)

- 400mg EGCG (helps prevent 5-HTP from becoming serotonin in the intestines).

If depression isn't seasonal, then there are other supplements that may work (any of the following):

- Tianeptine Sulfate

- Memantine

- N-Acetyl Semax

- Fasoracetam

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/201/5/360.short

"Participants with low 25(OH)D levels (n = 230) at baseline were more depressed (P<0.05) than participants with high 25(OH)D levels (n = 114). In the intervention study no significant effect of high-dose vitamin D was found on depressive symptom scores when compared with placebo."

So it seems unlikely the cause is low vitamin D. Also, a sunlamp won't increase your vitamin D. More likely it is the normalizing effect of sunlight on the body clock.

Also, no supplement is going to increase serotonin levels in your brain. Your brain already has sufficient raw materials to generate as much serotonin as is required. That's just simplistic and wrong-headed nonsense, based on a lack of understanding about how the brain works.

If the depression is seasonal, as is usually the case when SAD lamps are used, then it is very likely due to low vitamin D levels. Also, L-Tryptophan -> 5-HTP -> (crossed blood brain barrier) -> serotonin.

Did you notice how the comments had links to more information from sources more reputable than xyz@HN? If you genuinely want to help people and are providing sound medical advice you should include the scientific literature supporting your statement; otherwise you are simply peddling false hope at best.

You should never get your hopes up. If it ends up working, then you can be happy.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10888476

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi...

> gives anti-depression advice

> "You should never get your hopes up"

/facepalm

Parent's just meeting people where they're at, no? ;)

That is an uncontrolled trial. However I did some more searches, and there do appear to be some trials showing improvement with vitamin D supplementation compared to placebo. However vitamin D wouldn't explain how a light box improves depression (as it won't affect vitamin D).

Probably the best option is to get out into the sunlight and get the sun on your skin, if the sun is high enough.

Light and Vitamin D could have independent mechanisms of action.

I was under the impression that light boxes worked by causing vitamin D synthesis in the skin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D#Synthesis_in_the_ski...

No, they don't produce enough UV.

Please don't do this!

EGCG can cause hepatatoxicity and liver failure:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/lt.21021/asset/...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2905152/

Obviously this doesn't occur until much higher dosages are taken (unless a genetic anomaly is present, or the batch of EGCG being used is low-quality). That said, you can always take L-Tryptophan rather than 5-HTP.

Also, St. John's Wort and 5-HTP have both been clinically proven to be as effective as SSRIs in alleviating/eliminating depression. This makes them the superior choice, as their side effects are much fewer and milder.

http://examine.com/supplements/Green+Tea+Catechins/#summary1...

Are there studies that there is a realistically reachable level of toxicity just by drinking tea, green or fermented? The latter study doesn't seem to say, and the former link just gives me "Forbidden".

Better living through chemistry, I always say.

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