International Meeting Over; Back to Light and Dark!
After two weeks in London and Scotland, which included attending the International Society for Bipolar Disorders meeting in Edinburgh, I'm back to the computer. Interesting how life looks without one. Same as it used to look, frankly. Can't put one's thoughts immediately into print, is the big difference. So now I have a backlog of writing to put up.
I started with several changes/updates on my website. The page on Light and Dark: Therapy Implications is changing almost weekly with new information sent by readers. A collaboration is developing with the John Carroll University light engineers whose website, www.lowbluelights.com, presents their products for nearly eliminating exposure to blue light at night. (The reason for the emphasis on blue light is explained in my Light and Dark essay above.) They are research scientists, primarily, and so are already interested in helping get the idea of blue-blocking technology for bipolar disorder into testing.
I've advocated trying their lights and glasses even without such testing because the downside -- cost and risk -- is almost nil and the potential benefit is great. You'd have to be skeptical about that advocacy if I was selling the glasses, but I'm not: I have no connection with the sale of any such products.
Recent changes include a study the JCU researchers' website lists, which -- to my great surprise -- shows that this idea of blocking blue light at night has already been tested! Well, it was tested to the extent of showing that using a pair of glasses, such as the JCU team's website sells, does indeed change the sleep chemical melatonin, just as we would hope were this whole idea to really be true.Kayumov This study showed that wearing blue-blocking lenses allowed evening melatonin production to begin just when it should, and continue normally, when the person wearing them was exposed to moderately bright light at intervals between 8 pm and 8 am. In contrast, those who were randomly assigned to wear a clear lensed pair of glasses instead had substantial changes in their melatonin production. Since the onset of your own melatonin production is supposed to help get you to sleep, interfering with it means interfering with one of the main signals your body is using to know that it's time to be asleep.
The next step will be to see if people with bipolar disorder have improved sleep (easier to get to sleep, especially) if they wear the blue-blocking lenses. Several readers are already trying this and attempting to "serve as their own controls" by wearing the lenses for two weeks, then not wearing them, then wearing them again, charting information about their sleep all the while.
If you're going to do this yourself, make sure to include that step about charting. For an amazing tool to gather such information using your computer (if you're on it every day -- otherwise this would be a bit of a hassle), see www.chronorecord.org. Go to "Get Started", select the patient option; and when you get to the "referred by" box, enter Dr. Jim Phelps.
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I started with several changes/updates on my website. The page on Light and Dark: Therapy Implications is changing almost weekly with new information sent by readers. A collaboration is developing with the John Carroll University light engineers whose website, www.lowbluelights.com, presents their products for nearly eliminating exposure to blue light at night. (The reason for the emphasis on blue light is explained in my Light and Dark essay above.) They are research scientists, primarily, and so are already interested in helping get the idea of blue-blocking technology for bipolar disorder into testing.
I've advocated trying their lights and glasses even without such testing because the downside -- cost and risk -- is almost nil and the potential benefit is great. You'd have to be skeptical about that advocacy if I was selling the glasses, but I'm not: I have no connection with the sale of any such products.
Recent changes include a study the JCU researchers' website lists, which -- to my great surprise -- shows that this idea of blocking blue light at night has already been tested! Well, it was tested to the extent of showing that using a pair of glasses, such as the JCU team's website sells, does indeed change the sleep chemical melatonin, just as we would hope were this whole idea to really be true.Kayumov This study showed that wearing blue-blocking lenses allowed evening melatonin production to begin just when it should, and continue normally, when the person wearing them was exposed to moderately bright light at intervals between 8 pm and 8 am. In contrast, those who were randomly assigned to wear a clear lensed pair of glasses instead had substantial changes in their melatonin production. Since the onset of your own melatonin production is supposed to help get you to sleep, interfering with it means interfering with one of the main signals your body is using to know that it's time to be asleep.
The next step will be to see if people with bipolar disorder have improved sleep (easier to get to sleep, especially) if they wear the blue-blocking lenses. Several readers are already trying this and attempting to "serve as their own controls" by wearing the lenses for two weeks, then not wearing them, then wearing them again, charting information about their sleep all the while.
If you're going to do this yourself, make sure to include that step about charting. For an amazing tool to gather such information using your computer (if you're on it every day -- otherwise this would be a bit of a hassle), see www.chronorecord.org. Go to "Get Started", select the patient option; and when you get to the "referred by" box, enter Dr. Jim Phelps.
1 Comments:
I started using a sleep mask at night after reading this post and then reading the associated pages on the website. Too early to tell whether it affects mood cycling, but I'm definitely getting better sleep and waking up more cleanly in the mornings.
I've been looking for a chance to participate in useful research for a while. Thank you for passing along the chronorecord link. (If you run into other research-participation-type stuff, here's a vote for passing that along too.)
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