Lights to Help With Sleeping

There may be more to a good night's sleep than a very dark room. In fact, light may play a role -- if it's the right kind. NASA research on insomnia involving crews on the space shuttle and the International Space Station suggests that exposure to light in particular wavelengths may aid the sleep process by resetting the body's clock to its natural sleep schedule.

Turn Out the Lights

• The clock in our brain can become scrambled by bright artificial light all day and night, diluting the natural light/dark stimulus. When an indoor lifestyle bombards us with light at all times, bedtime isn't obvious to our inner clock. Our sleep center no longer knows what time it is, particularly as we age and light signals in particular wavelengths are not as well-absorbed by the retina. This affects production of the hormone melatonin, which induces drowsiness at bedtime and maintains sleep at deep restorative levels.

Get The Blues

• Exposure during the day to light in the blue wavelengths most closely resembles natural outdoor daytime light and reprograms our inner timekeeping mechanism to sense the difference between day and night more accurately. Balancing daytime blue light therapy with toned-down lights in the evening resets our circadian rhythms to the natural 24-hour schedule.

After Midnight

• Studies at the Lighting Research Center of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, showed that elderly patients exposed to daytime blue light therapy were found asleep 90 percent of the time between midnight and 6 a.m. vs. only 67 percent of the time for a control group exposed to red light as a placebo.

Commercial Blue Light Therapy

• Major lighting manufacturers market blue lights for sleep therapy. Consumers, however, need to be informed about the possible hazards of prolonged blue light exposure. It is not recommended for individuals diagnosed with macular degeneration. Also, though it is less time-consuming than bright white light therapy for seasonal affective disorder, blue light therapy requires a substantial amount of daily exposure -- at least 45 continuous minutes, preferably during the morning hours. Patients with a busy daytime schedule that begins early may find it difficult to commit the time for the required exposure.