Tag Archives: sleep

The sky is more than pretty

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Blue light apparently delivers the wavelengths needed to regulate our circadian rythmns, according to research described in Science Daily.

Blue sky is a mixture of wavelengths dominated by short wavelength light that gives a blue visual sensation. According to Mark Rea, Ph.D., LRC director, the circadian system is essentially a blue sky detector.

“Blue sky is ideal for stimulating the circadian system because it’s the right color and intensity, and it’s on at the correct time for the right duration — the entire day,” said Rea.

LRC is the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

They performed a study in which they exposed elderly people to blue light, and found that the subjects slept more between midnight and 6 a.m.

We’re not meant to be indoors all day. No wonder so many of us aren’t getting enough sleep.

I wonder, also, about the effect of wearing sunglasses . . .

We need to sleep on this

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An article in the San Francisco Chronicle by David Lazarus reports that, according to the National Institutes of Health, more than 70 million Americans are affected by “sleep troubles.”

Variety of causes, blah blah blah, use of sleeping pills doubling — well, I could have predicted that.

Here’s my curmudgeonly opinion. Either sleep is a priority, or it isn’t. And obviously it’s not much of a priority for contemporary Americans. (I don’t mean parents with kids under three. You’re hereby exempt from my scolding. Please stop reading this now and go grab a nap.) So of course people have problems with it.

IMO, people tend to think of sleep as a negative space — as an emptiness between what we “really” do and who we really are. Dreams are dismissed as “unreal” or inconsequential. I.e. a waste of time.

Fine. But if that’s as important as it is, no wonder we find it increasingly elusive . . .