I live in the upper midwest and, like many other places, don't get much light in the winter. I don't get much light in the summer turns out since I'm inside most of the day anyway, but winter feels worse. A couple years ago I was suggested a SAD lamp, and man did it make a difference. What I've learned this year though, is it isn't enough. It's a small square light that sits in the same place and only comes into your eye at a small angle.
Article[0] came up across a feed which was saying the same thing, and I said screw it, and got two 100W LED corn bulbs[1] that the article suggested, and boy did it make a difference. Literally came mid last week, and for the last 4 days, I've had more energy, better sleep, and felt better than I have in months, years even. Incredible difference for $60.
The corn bulbs are just like light bulbs so they fit into the same sockets (some are bigger, but get the ones that say E26). You can also get specific lamps to put them around. I also got some construction string lights[2] and hanging those on my wall. Makes it almost seem like I'm in a museum which is cool too.
My goal is to get some more lights and make my living / office area legit feel like I'm outside on a summer day. I have a lux meter coming today to be able to see and judge intensity. If it's too intense, I can turn them off like I'm going into the shade.
The importance of letting your body know when it's daytime and nighttime, which is talked about in the article, makes all parts of life better. Eat better, more energy to do things, less angry. Part of me disappointed I didn't know this before, but another part glad that I'm catching on now.
For sure. I'm in Wisconsin, and when I see maps about where Europe would be overlayed compared to the US in terms of latitude, it's a shock. I feel like we get such little light in the winter months, but turns out I live middle of France, while you in the UK is much further north.
This seems like an opportune moment to remind/notify any fellow UK dark-dwellers that the NHS recommends taking vitamin D supplements here in the winter.
I relocated to Redmond, WA for a few years to work at MSFT. Let me tell you, every winter there felt like a sadistic game show called "How Miserable Can You Get?" And boy, did I win!
Thankfully, the good ol' USA is a massive country, so I hit the eject button and moved to FL.
3154 hours of sun in FL compared to 2170 hours of sun in WA. Huuuuuuge difference in mental and physical aptitude. I feel more energetic. More focus, more workouts, more horny, less self loathing.
When I was at UW in the dorms I felt bad for the students who came from southeast US, they’d start school like end of September, and then leave beginning of June and go back home and essentially only get the worst of western Washington weather, and miss out on what is absolutely amazing weather and sunshine in the summer months.
If we only experienced western Washington for those months hardly anyone would stay, but those summer months are so incredible it makes it worth enduring the dreary gray for a good amount of people.
I'm in the PNW and the gray gloomy weather is a delight for me. I love mushroom foraging, love being surrounded by trees, the beautiful waterfalls, the wet hikes, the moss everywhere, the berry picking, everything! I used to live in a VERY sunny state, I found it depressing. Sun irritates me. I never realized how uncomfortable it made me until I moved to a rainy cloud region and felt at home for the first time. Really shows there's something for everyone!
I don't have SAD(at least to a degree I notice), but I do occasionally daydream of having something like this artificial sunlight in my windowless office at work. If only I had more space. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw
The glow lamp I have is ~4x4 inch square panel, and it can get decently bright where I can feel some energy in my eyes and a difference in mood. That's what I've used for the past couple years. The thing I found with it is that it's almost like an orb, where there's energy glowing from it, but the rest of the area is still dark.
With the corn bulbs, it blasts energy and more light all over, which makes a much bigger difference in vibe. I can't comment on the lux difference (I'm actually getting a lux meter today so I can get a better number in comparison), but with more light all over the room, I can feel much more energy overall.
LED light panels are the other thing I think you mention, and I haven't tested with those. I picked corn bulbs to try first. Compared to the marketed mood lamps, the bigger panels would also light the whole room for a better vibe.
I don't think there are dimmable LED type higher power bulbs or panels. On or off for them. I'm planning to get more lights, and then maybe see if there's a way to create shades to put over them to change the color and amount depending on day.
For now, I'm keeping the lamps powered until ~6pm, and then back to the old light I had before to get ready for sleep.
I vaguely recall a study long ago where they took 2 groups of prisoners of the most dangerous kind and did regular blood work on one group giving them vitamin supplements. After some months the guards chose to leave all the cell doors open, they were sitting in the hallway in groups playing board games, making music, singing, telling stories. The guards thought it was pretty funny. The other group was still doing their gang warfare, getting into fights, making primitive weapons and killing each other.
Lack of D wouldn't be good for the brain. Symptoms of Shortage could be bone pain, muscle weakness, fatigue, cardiovascular disease, asthma etc but those are things you would notice.
I definitely suffered bone pain, muscle weakness and fatigue, even while trying to work out every day. I can't speak for the cardiovascular issues. No asthma. I did try to maintain a low-carb diet for the 10 years I was locked up to try to balance things out.
It is legal in the US to utilize solitary confinement methods that are implemented 24 hours a day. [1] There are facilities without windows and some keep the lights on all day and night in their solitary confinement units. [2]
In a recent story, D3f4ult discussed that this happened to him for a year and he was given 24/7 isolation for one year. [2]
Prior comments from the person suggest Cook County and Illinois within the USA, all in pre-trail as a result of not being wealthy enough to foot a bail bond.
USA. Many county and federal jails are built right in the center of dense populated areas like downtowns. They don't want you looking out, they don't want you looking in. Also, they are very space restricted as they cannot grow in any direction, so space for recreation is not available.
I once had to do a deposition with a warden, so I asked him straight out how they got away with this. His answer was "math". Basically he said "Look, jails are short term facilities, the average stay here is 30 days. Nobody is going to come to harm in 30 days."
The problem with the word "average" is that it is very misleading. When say 50% of those arrested are able to bail out within hours, that brings the average down considerably, compared to the other significant part of the population who have been in there up to 11 years waiting for trial.
downvoted for what? He could be working there, or served by hacking and want to talk about it. If people post they were in jail in a post about "sunlight during the day", the "in jail for what?" should be expected..
>... circadian rhythms are the 24-hour changes in our physiology that synchronize with the day-night cycle and modulate when we are hungry, sleepy, want sex and have asthma attacks or a fever in the afternoon.
Is this about that circadian rhythm line? It look true, if not under-stated. Shift between nights and days was one of the major constant things throughout the evolution of life. And the influence of this rhythm goes deeper than just physiology - it reaches a molecular level. Almost every cell in the body has a mechanism for keeping internal time of the day [1]. And they are kept in synch through suprachiasmatic nucleus, mainly via the light through the retina, changes in temperature, and food intake [2].
It is so prevalent, that even small things, like your sense of smell or which nasal side is more active and which one is congested falls under circadian regulation [3].
I doubt it's that the circadian rhythm is news to the person you're replying to, but rather that that line is fairly badly written, particularly the "want sex and have asthma attacks or a fever in the afternoon" part.
Summarizing:
> [They] are the [...] changes [...] that [...] modulate when we [...] have asthma attacks or a fever in the afternoon.
Quote from my mom in social media a few weeks ago: "How does the November cactus know that it's November?" with a picture of the flowering cactus. We don't have a true Arctic night at these latitudes, but thanks to the mountains it's close.
> Question. During your Nobel Prize acceptance speech, you mentioned that 50% of our genes were regulated by circadian rhythms, but in your talk you said that it is at least 70%?
> Answer. I have updated the figure due to new research done over the past six years. The 50% figure came from research in rodents, but in 2019 there was a large study done on baboons, the first in primates, and [the figure] went to 70%.
I took these figures to also apply to the relevance of the title, which is a quote from the article?
That's how circadian rhythms work, and all of the above are true. The author just picked some more unusual/funny/jarring examples after the staples "hungy and sleepy" to drive his point and give some fun to the article.
I don't know about asthma attacks, but body temperature is linked to the circadian rhythm (your body temperature is lower during the night). Fevers being influenced by it sounds plausible.
Adding this to my collection of reasons why remote work is better. My home office has direct sunlight from 10:00-16:00 every day of the year. I've never been to a commercial office that comes close.
You mean why work from home is better _for you_. Can't imagine most people have uninterrupted access to sunlight throughout the day. If we're using personal experiences, I certainly have never lived in a house or apartment where any of the rooms had that luxury.
I've never lived in a house or flat where the rooms didn't have a window. I wonder if that's a regulation here (France), that wouldn't surprise me. Also, the labor law mandates windows and as much natural light as possible in offices.
Absolutely. I've been working flex hours for 12 years, and from home for 6 years, and I live in northern europe.
So every winter I actually take a long 2 hour walk during lunch to get some sun. Then I work later once the sun has set.
This should be the standard for all office workers in northern latitudes. But we're so stuck in our ways that we use the same work schedule all year even though the weather is clearly different.
A large fraction of UV radiation is blocked even by single pane glass.
If the 'health' benefit or bio signal for this effect, requires UV radiation then there is very little that can substitute being outside for 1 or 2 hours a day depending on the season.
If we are talking about humans and the hormones associated with the 24-hour sleep/wake cycle, they are largely influenced by blue light which is in the visible spectrum. It's part of why screens without orange-shifting software will tend to keep you wide awake at night.
Interestingly, red wave (IR) light appears to influence cortisol levels but not melatonin. [1] IR also makes it through windows as any cat can attest.
Getting outside for an hour or two as often as possible, regardless of the season, is probably a good idea, but it doesn't appear to be strictly necessary for modulating circadian rhythms.
I used to work in an office block. I had a corner desk on the southwest of the building overlooking a park, with floor to ceiling glass.
It was miserable. The direct light was blinding during the summer,and during the winter the sun didn't clear the top of the window so I got direct light straight at either me or my screens. I tried every orientation.
COVID solved that problem but the next step was blackout blinds, which defeats the purpose a little
I never heard this before: "Plants produce toxins to avoid being eaten, such as psoralen, which is abundant in celery. Snacking at night introduces toxins that, at that hour, our repair systems are not ready to eliminate. There is also speculation that the major epidemic of epithelial cancers, such as colon cancer, in the U.S. is because of this."
These "toxin" phytochemicals are often very healthy for humans in the levels found in typical foods and weird keto/carnivore diet nuts try to overstate their negative effects and minimize the positive ones. For example psoralen has "antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects" [1].
All vegetables we eat have toxins in them and it's precisely these toxins that benefit most of us when eaten periodically. Eaten daily, vegetable meals are probably unhealthy, just as eating meat daily is probably unhealthy. Mediterranean peoples figured this out a long time ago and expressed these findings in religious rituals and texts, with designated feasting and fasting periods, where a feast means lots of meat and cheese and wine, while a fast means humble meals consisting of bread and vegetables and water.
I'd imagine Northern Europeans would benefit from a similar arrangement, though they're likely better adapted to a different periodicity of feasting and fasting, given the climate and the longer periods where fresh food is unavailable.
There’s a major epidemic of a specific kind of cancer, specifically in the US, because of this - as in, other countries don’t eat celery? Or don’t eat food later at night before sleeping?
Food science is crazy and unreliable (difficult to perform relevant research, many confounding factors, often sponsored by groups with questionable motives, etc). But food anecdata seems just as crazy.
Don’t we? I could be wrong but my understanding is that the glymphatic system works very well during sleep. Basically excretory process of the central nervous system
No, we don't have a definitive answer. We are very good at describing what happens when we sleep and what goes wrong when we don't, and so there are a number of theories as to why we sleep. But a definitive answer? There isn't one (yet). Here is the most likely theory according to Wikipedia:
>The essential function of sleep may be its restorative effect on the brain: "Sleep is of the brain, by the brain and for the brain."[95] This theory is strengthened by the fact that sleep is observed to be a necessary behavior across most of the animal kingdom, including some of the least evolved animals which have no need for other functions of sleep, such as memory consolidation or dreaming.
What is being awake for? When we sleep and dream we connect with some kind of other dimension, incredible places. Animals seem to do as well. Maybe being awake just has the purpose of nourishing the body so that we can sleep, with sleep and dreaming being the meaning of life?
Or it is to conserve energy during the time that we are on the dark side of this spinning globe, since it is difficult to see in the dark.
We have good hints at the reasons : to repair cellular damage caused by reactive oxygen species. Clues pointing in this direction: animals without sleep survive with antixoydants and melatonine evolved as one.
I'm not a native English speaker yet I have objections with the use of "adapted" in this sentence
The Earth had been spinning on its axis for a billion years when the first living beings appeared. Since then, we have adapted to alternate between light and darkness.
You adapt when the environment was in a state A and changes to state B while you are already there. When you start from "scratch" in a specific stable environment, you develop/grow in that environment, not adapt. Or not ?
Ah that makes sense then! So in this context it is used in the same sense as evolve. Thanks that not only makes sense but lead me to search with both terms and get this
LUCA[1] almost certainly didn't care about day/night cycles, so it seems accurate. And even if it had, the ways in which a modern mammal with a central nervous system cares are new changes brought on by the day-night cycle. An organism if an organism is changing in ways that are caused by the a specific environment, it's still adapting to the environment even if the environment isn't continuing to change.
Isn't that change/evolution though ? If the environment didn't change - talking about the very specific attribute of earth axes rotation - is it correct to use "adapt" ?
"Adapt" is perfectly valid here. After all, the beings have changed (evolved). It doesn't matter whether the environment has. Which is also the case - not just the seasons but also huge climate changes and the mass extinctions.
If you listen to enough Huberman Labs podcasts you'll hear him talk about the importance of getting some direct sunlight in the morning on a daily basis. Here's one example: https://youtu.be/UF0nqolsNZc
Also in the anecdotes folder, saw a sleep specialist with my (young adult) child and he stressed the importance of getting daily sunlight exposure.
Ah yes the "People living in California forgetting the rest of the work isn't like California" phenomenon - I would love to get sunlight every day but living in the UK that just isn't viable. Sunlight into my eyeballs within 15 minutes of waking up? Forget about it between October and March.
Further evidence to me that humans weren't supposed to stray far from the equator and that I was born in the wrong climate (yes I am working on moving south)
I live in Norway. My sunrises are a little after 9:30. IN a couple weeks, it'll be a half an hour later. Sunset is before 3 in the afternoon. If you wake up late enough and get lucky enough not to have cloud cover, you can get some weak sunlight that won't be enough to give vitamin D even if you could spend enough time outside without long sleeves on.
Realistically, folks aren't getting sun in the morning.
I'm not looking to move south, though. I moved up here for marriage and the weather has just been a nice benefit.
Whenever people talk about the benefits of direct sunlight, those wavelengths make it through clouds (just to a lesser degree). Whereas 5-10 minutes morning exposure is plenty without clouds, it is recommended to increase to 15-20 minutes during cloud cover. In both cases, face towards (but don't look directly at) the sun for the best effect.
This got to me too. I moved from NY to Paris and the fact that the days are so short in winter doesn't make up for the fact that they are quite long in the summer. I wake up at 6 and there is no sunlight until 8 these days. Even moving to the south of France wouldn't help much.
Readit News
Article[0] came up across a feed which was saying the same thing, and I said screw it, and got two 100W LED corn bulbs[1] that the article suggested, and boy did it make a difference. Literally came mid last week, and for the last 4 days, I've had more energy, better sleep, and felt better than I have in months, years even. Incredible difference for $60.
The corn bulbs are just like light bulbs so they fit into the same sockets (some are bigger, but get the ones that say E26). You can also get specific lamps to put them around. I also got some construction string lights[2] and hanging those on my wall. Makes it almost seem like I'm in a museum which is cool too.
My goal is to get some more lights and make my living / office area legit feel like I'm outside on a summer day. I have a lux meter coming today to be able to see and judge intensity. If it's too intense, I can turn them off like I'm going into the shade.
The importance of letting your body know when it's daytime and nighttime, which is talked about in the article, makes all parts of life better. Eat better, more energy to do things, less angry. Part of me disappointed I didn't know this before, but another part glad that I'm catching on now.
[0] https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZHMD5ZL [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5X7XLRQ
Not to one-up here, but the UK gets around 60 hours on sunshine across the whole of November, compared to Minnesota at about 115.
Europe north of the Mediterranean is gloomy beyond basically anywhere populated in North America.
Not because the people were brilliant. Simply because they were forced inside and had lots of time to think.
Thankfully, the good ol' USA is a massive country, so I hit the eject button and moved to FL.
3154 hours of sun in FL compared to 2170 hours of sun in WA. Huuuuuuge difference in mental and physical aptitude. I feel more energetic. More focus, more workouts, more horny, less self loathing.
https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-sun...
If we only experienced western Washington for those months hardly anyone would stay, but those summer months are so incredible it makes it worth enduring the dreary gray for a good amount of people.
Compared to 1403 hours here in London :(
Is there any >=100W (actual, not equivalent) sunlight-like bulb available that is dimmable and programmable via ZigBee or other means?
With the corn bulbs, it blasts energy and more light all over, which makes a much bigger difference in vibe. I can't comment on the lux difference (I'm actually getting a lux meter today so I can get a better number in comparison), but with more light all over the room, I can feel much more energy overall.
LED light panels are the other thing I think you mention, and I haven't tested with those. I picked corn bulbs to try first. Compared to the marketed mood lamps, the bigger panels would also light the whole room for a better vibe.
I don't think there are dimmable LED type higher power bulbs or panels. On or off for them. I'm planning to get more lights, and then maybe see if there's a way to create shades to put over them to change the color and amount depending on day.
For now, I'm keeping the lamps powered until ~6pm, and then back to the old light I had before to get ready for sleep.
Lack of D wouldn't be good for the brain. Symptoms of Shortage could be bone pain, muscle weakness, fatigue, cardiovascular disease, asthma etc but those are things you would notice.
In a recent story, D3f4ult discussed that this happened to him for a year and he was given 24/7 isolation for one year. [2]
[1]: https://solitarywatch.org/facts/faq/ [2]: https://journalistsresource.org/home/solitary-confinement-re... [3]: https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/139/
I once had to do a deposition with a warden, so I asked him straight out how they got away with this. His answer was "math". Basically he said "Look, jails are short term facilities, the average stay here is 30 days. Nobody is going to come to harm in 30 days."
The problem with the word "average" is that it is very misleading. When say 50% of those arrested are able to bail out within hours, that brings the average down considerably, compared to the other significant part of the population who have been in there up to 11 years waiting for trial.
Deleted Comment
Also, what?
>... circadian rhythms are the 24-hour changes in our physiology that synchronize with the day-night cycle and modulate when we are hungry, sleepy, want sex and have asthma attacks or a fever in the afternoon.
Is this about that circadian rhythm line? It look true, if not under-stated. Shift between nights and days was one of the major constant things throughout the evolution of life. And the influence of this rhythm goes deeper than just physiology - it reaches a molecular level. Almost every cell in the body has a mechanism for keeping internal time of the day [1]. And they are kept in synch through suprachiasmatic nucleus, mainly via the light through the retina, changes in temperature, and food intake [2].
It is so prevalent, that even small things, like your sense of smell or which nasal side is more active and which one is congested falls under circadian regulation [3].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_clock
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle
Summarizing:
> [They] are the [...] changes [...] that [...] modulate when we [...] have asthma attacks or a fever in the afternoon.
That does not read clearly to me!
In the article it reads:
> Question. During your Nobel Prize acceptance speech, you mentioned that 50% of our genes were regulated by circadian rhythms, but in your talk you said that it is at least 70%?
> Answer. I have updated the figure due to new research done over the past six years. The 50% figure came from research in rodents, but in 2019 there was a large study done on baboons, the first in primates, and [the figure] went to 70%.
I took these figures to also apply to the relevance of the title, which is a quote from the article?
That's how circadian rhythms work, and all of the above are true. The author just picked some more unusual/funny/jarring examples after the staples "hungy and sleepy" to drive his point and give some fun to the article.
So every winter I actually take a long 2 hour walk during lunch to get some sun. Then I work later once the sun has set.
This should be the standard for all office workers in northern latitudes. But we're so stuck in our ways that we use the same work schedule all year even though the weather is clearly different.
If the 'health' benefit or bio signal for this effect, requires UV radiation then there is very little that can substitute being outside for 1 or 2 hours a day depending on the season.
Interestingly, red wave (IR) light appears to influence cortisol levels but not melatonin. [1] IR also makes it through windows as any cat can attest.
Getting outside for an hour or two as often as possible, regardless of the season, is probably a good idea, but it doesn't appear to be strictly necessary for modulating circadian rhythms.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2905913/
It was miserable. The direct light was blinding during the summer,and during the winter the sun didn't clear the top of the window so I got direct light straight at either me or my screens. I tried every orientation.
COVID solved that problem but the next step was blackout blinds, which defeats the purpose a little
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.5715...
I'd imagine Northern Europeans would benefit from a similar arrangement, though they're likely better adapted to a different periodicity of feasting and fasting, given the climate and the longer periods where fresh food is unavailable.
Do you eat fibre? Or do you shit literal bricks?
What to do ? Eliminate plants and meat? Just eat oreos?
>The essential function of sleep may be its restorative effect on the brain: "Sleep is of the brain, by the brain and for the brain."[95] This theory is strengthened by the fact that sleep is observed to be a necessary behavior across most of the animal kingdom, including some of the least evolved animals which have no need for other functions of sleep, such as memory consolidation or dreaming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep
Or it is to conserve energy during the time that we are on the dark side of this spinning globe, since it is difficult to see in the dark.
Deleted Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/adaptation...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor
State A: No Earth
State B: Earth.
Thus, we adapted to Earth.
Also in the anecdotes folder, saw a sleep specialist with my (young adult) child and he stressed the importance of getting daily sunlight exposure.
Further evidence to me that humans weren't supposed to stray far from the equator and that I was born in the wrong climate (yes I am working on moving south)
Realistically, folks aren't getting sun in the morning.
I'm not looking to move south, though. I moved up here for marriage and the weather has just been a nice benefit.
Think outside the box, wake up at noon.
Living in the southern hemisphere it's hot here at the moment and were keeping an eye on the bushfire reports.