Quote: (09-18-2014 07:37 AM)kbell Wrote:
I tried it this morning. 20 minutes. Very bright, almost feels like my eye is cooking if I don't angle my eye away somewhat. But i does perk you up. I have a dual screen setup with the one screen running the timer in the morning and the other with the browser. When you stop the timer you have to look at the light briefly which isn't pleasant.
kbell, that's a good start. The key is to do this consistently and correctly:
-- Do it same time every morning, not just occasionally; that is what is best for entrainment.
-- Make sure you're at 14'' from the Sunlight Jr. Don't look straight at it but let the light come across your eyes.
-- The duration should be closer to 30 minutes than 20 minutes. Probably 30 minutes exactly is best.
Quote: (09-18-2014 07:23 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:
Also peripherally related to thread-- clinical depression nearly _always_ manifests with some type of sleep disturbance-- often it's easy to go to sleep, but you have early awakening with sluggish feeling. Depression is typically worse in the morning.
Yes, exactly. There is almost no such thing as depression without sleep dysregulation of some kind.
Quote: (09-18-2014 07:23 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:
I have this Philips goLite which I really like, it's LEDs so it won't break, and it's compact. That's an iPad mini for size comparison.
IKE, I think you should look into getting one of the full spectrum ones, they are definitely superior to the blue light LED ones in a number of ways. It's true that the LED devices are smaller and more portable but full spectrum devices have the best track record and the most solid research supporting them, and as kbell noted there may be some problems with overexposure to pure blue light although that's not completely clear. I believe that full spectrum light boxes are the way to go.
Quote: (09-18-2014 05:14 AM)Chaos Wrote:
If my sleep doesn't improve within a week I'm ready to try this.
Even if I sleep between 6-9 hours I don't feel well rested.
I wake up with a very lazy mood and I need to push myself hard to get things going.
The optimal thing would be to have get a "get shit done" mood going on together with my morning coffee.
Chaos, I think you should
definitely do this and now is the time to do it as it's rapidly getting darker where you are. You'll kill a number of closely related birds with one stone: better sleep, better mood and reduced anxiety. It's even quite possible that if your digestive problems are essentially stress based rather than pathogen based (which is likely if to this point no one has been able to identify a pathogen) that these problems will more or less disappear after some time on correctly administered bright light therapy as the stress and anxiety are reduced.