Get Your Lighting
We tend to think about light choices as a matter of personal taste, something that’s a part of the lamp-shopping checklist. Nonetheless, it ends up that the most essential lighting decisions have nothing to do with lamps. And light decisions can actually make or break your own family’s wellbeing, happiness and well-being.
Brighter Concepts Ltd
In fact, recent research has found that making the right lighting decisions in your house may even protect you and your loved ones from degraded eyesight, depression, weight gain, cancer and a host of different issues.
This ideabook contains bright suggestions for optimizing the lighting in your house, not just for aesthetics but for improving the overall quality of your family.
Glo – $84.99
First, the advantages of darkness
Multiple studies demonstrate that sleeping at a less-than-dark room can harm your wellbeing.
The American Medical Association last month issued a coverage advisement stating that “exposure to excessive light at nighttime, for example extended use of various electronic media, can disrupt sleep or aggravate sleep disorders, especially in children and teens” This is particularly true of devices that emit “blue” mild, such as TV screens and touch tablets. Also:
Researchers in the Ohio State University Medical Center found that sleeping in a dimly lit room can result in depression and weight reduction. Scientists at the University of Haifa in Israel found a “strong and clear” correlation between girls who reside in regions that aren’t dim at night into an increased risk of prostate cancer. University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers found that night-lights in children’s rooms may predispose them to myopia, or nearsightedness. To summarize all this research: Almost everybody is doing this wrong.
TV, video games and eBook reading before sleep are poor. Light coming in from outside at night is bad. Gadget lights on everything you own are poor. Night-lights are poor.
What should you do about all this lighting?
Block outdoor light with good sunglasses. Don’t read on a screen or watch TV just. If you’re going to use an ebook reader prior to bed, then choose the kind that requires an outside light source. Unplug or pay with electrical tape all those little status lights on electronic products.
If your kids truly require a night-light, then one option is a item that fades to black after the children are asleep. The Glo light from Boon (first picture) is an enjoyable option, for example. The light illuminates glow-in-the-dark balls, which can be removed and put into bed with the children if they need. They have a night-light, but only for a short moment. The balls fade gradually, allowing children to fall asleep with a mild but later sleep in darkness.
The bottom line is that the wellbeing and happiness of you and your loved ones will generally benefit by sleeping in total darkness, and it is very important to do as much as possible to darken rooms during sleep.
Ciralight Suntracker
Let there be light!
The previous section on sleeping in darkness is all on your eyes anticipating that a scarcity of light at night because of biological necessity. But the same goes for daytime. As your eyes expect darkness through the night, they expect sunlight during the day.
Australian National University scientists have explained radically divergent levels of childhood nearsightedness to the quantity of direct sunlight received by the kids. They found, by way of example, that almost 90 percent of kids in Singapore have myopia and invest an average of 30 minutes outside daily. Children in Australia, however, suffer with lower rates of myopia — just 10 percent — but spend an average of three hours outdoors every day.
Scientists feel that developing eyes young children want the body to produce dopamine, which is triggered by direct sunlight moving into the eyes.
Meanwhile, there’s an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency in part because people are not getting enough direct sunlight. As many as three-quarters of their adolescent and adult populations in the USA may be deficient in this vitamin. This is bad, because vitamin D deficiency has been linked with increased risk of diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson’s and other diseases.
Part of our sunlight lack is related to fear of skin cancer. However, what people should fear is any degree of sunburn. According to the vitamin D Council, your body gets all the exposure it needs for health long until the skin begins to redden. So getting sunlight in small, regular doses is healthier and less insecure than preventing the sun component of the year, then becoming sometimes sunburned.
The takeaway here is that the majority of people living outside the tropics are not getting enough sunshine. And the perfect way to acquire sunlight is in tiny doses quite frequently.
Allow the sun shine in
This truth can inform our decision making regarding house design and house investment.
By way of example, where to spend on house improvement? Retile the restroom or install skylights? Buy a costly new TV and home-entertainment system or playground equipment in the backyard? Replace a wall with drywall or floor-to-ceiling glass windows? Insert a pool table or a pool?
One intriguing possible update is a “smart” skylight known as the Ciralight Suntracker. With a normal skylight, a patch of sunlight will be cast on the ground or wall of your house, and moves throughout the afternoon as the sun moves. The Suntracker uses GPS, and mirrors track the sun throughout the day and bounce it directly down on a diffuser. As long as the sun is up, the skylight is catching all available sunlight and divides it into the house in a way that maximizes light. Many Ciralight clients are industrial or retail companies, however, the company also has house installation. The price is about $1,100 to accommodate a commercial unit for a home, and they are working on a 2-foot-square model for houses (price to be announced).
Science is telling us that light decisions can have far-ranging effects for our pleasure and well-being. Purchasing darker nights and sunnier days might be the brightest idea for the family’s wellbeing.
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