Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression
abcnews.go.com
abcnews.go.com
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 signal the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain with information about the amount of light they are receiving. The SCN controls circadian rhythms, and uses the changes in light as the day ends as reported by the ipRGCs to do things like to keep things that should be synchronized to the day/night cycle in sync.
Blue light in the evening can mess this up because it makes it look like it is still daylight, as far as far as the SCN can can tell from what it gets from the ipRGCs.
What I have not found anywhere is whether this is based on absolute or relative amount of blue light. Does the SCN look for blue light to fall below a certain fixed threshold, or does it do something like note the peak level of blue light during the day, and then look for the blue light to fall below a certain fraction of that?
The reason this matters is that more and more of our devices that we want to use in the evening supply blue light. We try to counter that by adding features that change the color spectrum in the evening to something with less blue. But that doesn't always work. Computers usually can do it, and often so can tablets and phones. I don't think many TVs have such a setting, though.
If the SCN works with absolute levels, fixing the devices (or wearing blue light filtering glasses) might be the only answer if you aren't able to stop using your devices in the evening.
But if it is based on relative levels, keyed off the peak daytime level...then instead of fixing all the devices it might be possible to address the problem by greatly boosting blue levels in the middle of the day, so that your evening device levels will be far enough down from the peak to not affect anything.
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 getting blue light during your circadian night (enough light can make it in through your eyelids to be a problem) -- this may screw up your sleep schedule.
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).
Even way more red light at the same time as some blue light in the evening, while it helps reduce the effect of the blue, isn't fully effective.
On the other hand with proper outdoor shutters or roller blinds[0] you can easily get a room pitch-black.
[0] https://www.schenk-sonnenschutztechnik.de/uploads/tx_frsuper...
The title of the video is wrong, by the way. It is not Rouladen, which would be a dish of filled rolled meat, but Rollladen. Rollladen is literally rolling shutter and it is really written with three l in a row.
[1] https://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2010/11/24/no-8-not-owning-...
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).
Mind you, most hotels here that expect foreign guests have blackout blinds or at least very heavy curtains,
I have blackout curtains nowadays, and I've also gotten used to the light somewhat, but I still miss proper rolling curtains that completely shut the light out.
Edit: I recently made the mistake (for a few months) of taking my medication before bed, rather than in the morning. This included vitamin D. Guess what happens when the body gets a dose of vitamin D at night? No quality sleep for you! So I certainly sympathize with the quest for quality sleep.
A quick skim makes it sound a bit more complicated, only working on people who already have depression. May answer the question though.
I just wonder about how actually natural a pitch black sleep is.
Werewolves, "lunatics", etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunatic
Just a speculation.
"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
But I'd think that humans have always had shelter. Or is there evidence of communities sleeping out in the open?
I just added this
[1] https://www.samaritans.org/
[2] https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
[3] https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/mental-health-and-suicide-report...
-a once depressed person whose recovery was delayed by the association described
A Phillips light-alarm clock does the other half of the job, now, for me.
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.
I can attest to these blackout covers making daytime sleep not hell. I don't even need zolpidem to fall asleep anymore.
> Our study has several potential limitations. First, participants were not randomly selected, possibly leading to selection bias. However, the parameters of BMI and estimated glomerular filtration rate were similar to corresponding national data in Japan and the follow-up rate was sufficiently high.
> Second, bedroom light intensity was measured without eye-level light meters, and sleep/awake status was measured only over 2 days.
If you get a sleep mask, be sure to look for one designed to not put pressure on your eyes, which are not hard to find if you seek it out. The cheap ones you get at pharmacies and dollar stores put direct pressure on the eyeballs and it's a wonder that anyone can tolerate them and are perhaps even harmful.
I started using these when I was a traveling consultant, and now use it only for travel, when taking an afternoon nap, or sleeping in (usually due to illness).
It's very comfortable. The nose bridge is padded. There are two straps, from the top and bottom of the sides, so you don't have a strap routing over the ear. I find it lets in the least amount of light of the masks I've tried precisely because of the comfort features. I don't have to try to arrange the mask in some contorted way to get comfort, so it can sit as intended and block light.
I bought some on Amazon and got a few different kinds (from the same listing, which is frustrating). All of them have a dome that bulges out over each eye. The most comfortable one I have looks like an eye bra, but unfortunately I can't find a place to order more.
It sounds like your mask is a bit better, and probably more expensive that the parent means. I've gotten such cheap masks as giveaways and the few I tried were indeed unbearable for sleeping as it felt like someone was crushing my face.
Sleep masks help a lot - but they aren't a full solution.
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.
In the case of this study, a figure at the end of the manuscript shows that most of the light exposure (averaged) happens in the hour after bed and hour before getting up, so that seems like a big clue that it isn't just a case of light at night (ideally they would divide light exposure into three segments and look at each). Also, the study started with people not showing depressive symptoms but it didn't consider if light exposure had changed and the study seems on the small (863 people) and short (median 2 year follow up) side if light (and whatever else) exposure had not changed. For that matter, it sounds like they only measured light exposure and sleep for two days and assume that is representative of the whole period.
It sounds like the depression scale[1] was given at the beginning and end of the study and looking at number or duration of episodes could have a different result. Also, it isn't clear that depressive symptoms here necessarily correspond with depression or if they are signs of a sleep disorder.
All in all, this isn't a good study to look at individually.
[0] https://twin.sci-hub.tw/ef19202b216d8e1af61a7ced2510e060/oba...
[1] https://consultgeri.org/try-this/general-assessment/issue-4....
I am not going to be able to dig into the bibliography mentioned. I have been skimming titles and I am not swayed.
I used to be on a health list where abstracts were frequently posted. I stopped bothering to read the abstracts after speaking with a man with a PhD in chemistry who told me the abstracts frequently claim the opposite of the study.
A relative of mine works at the CDC and has had cancer multiple times. They used to bitch at me about the lack of good cancer studies. The detail I recall them lamenting was that basically you got dozens of variations on whatever the latest funding craze was because researchers could get money for that and maybe one out of a hundred studies was actually proposing a new idea, if that much.
I have read bad studies. I have participated in bad studies. I have been on health lists where people were asking for tips on how to qualify for studies as a means to get free treatment. It looked to me like a form of gaming the system in a way that would skew research results. I don't think they were up to anything nefarious. They just had serious health problems and we're desperate for help. But if you are getting tips for how to get into the study that you don't currently qualify for, I cannot help but think that will skew the study results.
I am generally a skeptical person anyway. But I am very leery of this kind of research.
They could reasonably do an intervention study that only reduces bedroom light to confirm if that corrects depression on subjects.
But isn't it a flaw of the study? It only shows correlation without causality. What if being exposed to light is correlated to some other factor that is responsible for increased depression? In this case, decreasing the amount of light won't decrease depression.
But yes, it’s possible that some other factor is responsible, such as living next to a busy road with lots of street lights.
> they only measured the lights that people already were exposed to
They're wrong about that. The intervention group could be advising people to avoid light, and having someone come to their house and install better shades and put tape on LEDs.
Much like they say red meat causes cancer, I don't think it's the red meat. I think it's how it's cooked. Red meat is usually barbecued and that char is what could be causing the cancer.
What? Anyway, this study has strict definitions of what "depression" is, and I doubt whatever you felt as a child would qualify.
>Much like they say red meat causes cancer, I don't think it's the red meat. I think it's how it's cooked. Red meat is usually barbecued and that char is what could be causing the cancer.
They say eating red meat may cause cancer. Even if your guess is true, they would still be right as red meat is often barbecued. And as a larger point, thinking something like this is true doesn't matter until you get evidence for it.
They would be right about red meat but the point would be lost if people begin switching to bbqing chicken and still get cancer.
>They would be right about red meat but the point would be lost if people begin switching to bbqing chicken and still get cancer.
The study was showing a link they found, they weren't giving a diet recommendation. But, it would only be lost if your guess was correct and everybody that made the switch barbecued as much chicken as they did beef. Otherwise, fewer people would develop cancer than if the scientific study had not been published.
Try thinking again: http://www.yourstylishlife.com/german-nobel-laureate-shocked...
I don't like sleeping with the lights on, but it became a necessity because I have frequent sleep terrors where I wake up confused in the middle of my room. A light helps me understand what's happening and where I am faster, and I don't collide into things as much. Sleep terrors are associated with some mental problems, so there would be a correlation between mental problems and the fact that people have the lights on too (considering I'm not the only one who does that), but both things are not causally connected.
Lol, everytime I see that domain all I can think of is it being the place where Infoseek went to die.
22. ▲ The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation (mosaicscience.com)
389 points by onuralp 1 day ago | flag | hide | 135 comments
Regarding light, if you want morning sunlight, motorized curtains with a timer are cheaper than moving.
1. I've never done this. Not as a child, not as a teen, and not as an adult. I'm nearly 40. I can get myself to wake between 9 and 10 with an alarm, 11 or noon without.
2. I live too far north for this to be reasonable. December days are around 4.5 hours long. Summer nights don't actually get dark here. The sun goes down and stays just below the horizon, so there is a few hours of twilight. You can read outside if the sky is clear.
Light can be measured, depression cannot. It barely even has a definition, let alone quantifiable rate. I'd sooner believe that auto-playing videos had a stronger link to depression than lux.
Random theory... Maybe depressed people are highly sensitive to the world's problems/suffering both in immediate and wider environment, their antennae picks up this instability that manifests as internal trauma, anxiety etc. Someone should do an experiment to see if isolation for a few weeks influences depression rate; avoidance of all news, no phone, no internet, no people. Get ready for "Study finds extreme boredom effective anti-depressant".