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Light Therapy
Jun. 17th, 2010 11:31 amI've known for a year or two that my sleep patterns match those described in Wikipedia in its article about Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, and yesterday I saw an article crossposted by a friend about using light therapy to treat it. I can't afford the high intensity lamps mentioned in that article, but I figured I could easily try the free parts of the plan.
So yesterday I installed xflux on my desktop and bedroom computers so that after dark blues will get progressively replaced by reds. It doesn't seem to make it any harder to surf the net, although it does make watching videos on the bedroom computer a bit odd. Still, I find it easy enough to ignore the red tinting after a few minutes of watching a video. That may be because of my red-green color blindness that has trained me to ignore strange-seeming colors, I dunno. I also wonder a bit if color blindness will affect how well this therapy works, but since it seems to be based on red and blue, and I can see those just fine, I'm not too concerned. (And I'm not even sure if the circadian synchronization mechanism works via the cones and rods. It may be a skin thing).
It didn't noticeably help me sleep last night, but there were mitigating circumstances. I had only been awake 12 hours when I went to bed, plus I was having both sinus problems and some stomach upset. Still, I fell asleep around 4:00 am rather than the 7:00 am I half expected, so maybe it did some good.
I went to bed with the blinds up in the bedroom but having the light wake me up at 7:00 am was not a good part of the plan (at least not today, with only 3 hours sleep), so I closed them again and napped until 10:00 am. Then I went on the back porch with a cup of coffee to get my 30 minutes of intense sunlight. I actually only stayed out about 15 minutes though, because my pasty-white skin was starting to complain and a sunburn won't help me sleep. Provided we have enough non-rainy days in a row to try this, I'll soon get up to the full 30 minutes. Plus, if I can manage to get to the point where I'm regularly waking up at 7:00 or 8:00 am, the sunlight at that time streams directly into my office, so I can easily get my dose of sun while surfing the net. (alas the wifi on my laptop is dead, otherwise taking it out onto the porch could also be a good option).
Anyway, we'll see how it goes.
So yesterday I installed xflux on my desktop and bedroom computers so that after dark blues will get progressively replaced by reds. It doesn't seem to make it any harder to surf the net, although it does make watching videos on the bedroom computer a bit odd. Still, I find it easy enough to ignore the red tinting after a few minutes of watching a video. That may be because of my red-green color blindness that has trained me to ignore strange-seeming colors, I dunno. I also wonder a bit if color blindness will affect how well this therapy works, but since it seems to be based on red and blue, and I can see those just fine, I'm not too concerned. (And I'm not even sure if the circadian synchronization mechanism works via the cones and rods. It may be a skin thing).
It didn't noticeably help me sleep last night, but there were mitigating circumstances. I had only been awake 12 hours when I went to bed, plus I was having both sinus problems and some stomach upset. Still, I fell asleep around 4:00 am rather than the 7:00 am I half expected, so maybe it did some good.
I went to bed with the blinds up in the bedroom but having the light wake me up at 7:00 am was not a good part of the plan (at least not today, with only 3 hours sleep), so I closed them again and napped until 10:00 am. Then I went on the back porch with a cup of coffee to get my 30 minutes of intense sunlight. I actually only stayed out about 15 minutes though, because my pasty-white skin was starting to complain and a sunburn won't help me sleep. Provided we have enough non-rainy days in a row to try this, I'll soon get up to the full 30 minutes. Plus, if I can manage to get to the point where I'm regularly waking up at 7:00 or 8:00 am, the sunlight at that time streams directly into my office, so I can easily get my dose of sun while surfing the net. (alas the wifi on my laptop is dead, otherwise taking it out onto the porch could also be a good option).
Anyway, we'll see how it goes.
