Battling SAD with circadian lighting
SAD stands for seasonal affective disorder. It’s a type of depression that comes as the winter closes in and we naturally retreat inside.
According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, three in every 100 people in the UK experience winter depression that affects their day-to-day life.
Whilst 97 in 100 of us won’t experience significant depression during the colder months, many of us feel niggles of the winter blues as the sun rises later and sets earlier. We can be less inclined to move our bodies, feel like we want to sleep for longer, or generally just feel a bit glum.
The main contributor to SAD is widely considered to be our lack of sunlight exposure during winter. There are naturally fewer hours of daylight, and many of us spend the limited time when the sun is out inside at our workplaces.
Not getting enough bright light in our eyes can cause a “misfiring of the circadian rhythm”, Dr Laurence Wainwright, a psychiatry academic at Oxford University explained to Sky News. That’s why we feel so ‘off’ sometimes from November to February (let’s not even talk about everything that contributes to the January blues).
When we don’t get enough sunlight during the day, our bodies get confused about when it’s time to be awake and when it’s time to sleep. That’s the ‘misfiring’ referenced by Dr Wainwright, and it’s why we feel more sluggish when darkness seems to dominate our days.
So what can we do about it? How can we regulate our circadian rhythms to make us more resilient to the winter blues?
Circadian rhythms are our body’s natural 24-hour cycles. They’re our internal clock that regulates our processes around the rhythm of night and day, dictating patterns like our sleep-wake cycle, hormone releases, and temperature regulation.
A regulated circadian rhythm also has a huge part to play in our stress levels and overall feeling of wellness. The idea of spending a quarter of the year in darkness (or more than that if you’re in the UK or Ireland) is appealing to no one, so we need all the support we can get to feel well as winter closes in.
Light therapy is a common treatment for regulating our circadian rhythms. That involves strategically exposing ourselves to light and darkness in a way that mimics the natural patterns of the sun. Light therapy can alter our melatonin production and help our bodies naturally regulate when we rise for the day and when we go to bed.
Light therapy can be done with lightboxes (including at your local library if you live in Northern Ireland). Or, if you’re in the position to do so, you can build light therapy into the bones of your home with circadian lighting.
Circadian lighting is artificial lighting designed around the natural patterns of sunlight. It’s essentially hands-off light therapy.
When it’s built into your home by design, lamps, spotlights, and LED strips change colour temperature throughout the day to mimic the sun’s tones and brightness.
That’s bright and blue-toned in the morning, natural in the afternoon, and dimmer and warmer in the evening. Like the sun, your lighting moves from promoting wakefulness through a cycle to preparing your body to slow down and sleep. And as with the sun, we don’t even register that it’s happening.
When we combine smart technology with circadian lighting, it’s even easier to regulate our bodies without putting in extra effort. Timers can schedule both when the lights come on, and at what temperature, transitioning these from one to another without any intervention from us. It’s not the sun, but it follows its rhythm.
Combining this lighting consistency with good habits like proper sleep hygiene can be transformative for how we feel day-to-day.
And there’s no reason this kind of lighting design has to be confined to the home. We recently suggested circadian lighting as a solution to a large airport in the UK, to enhance passengers’ feelings of wellness during journeys that can often be stressful. Offices can also swap harsh cold rectangles to softer alternatives that promote employee wellbeing and stave off the dreaded 3pm slump.
The more natural, subtle ways we can introduce light into our lives during the winter, the less effort we’ll have to put in to maintain our wellbeing. We’ll feel happier, prioritise our health more easily, and probably be more productive as a result.
That’s not to say that we’ll never feel sad, or that circadian lighting can cure SAD completely, but there are steps we can take to enhance our lives when times feel tough.
Combining circadian lighting with other smart technology systems like heating and audio can create even better, personalised toolkits for battling the winter blues. That’s temperatures set just right, birdsong scheduled with an alarm clock, and absolutely no need to go near ‘the big light’ at all - ever.
We’re not scientists, and we’re also not lighting designers. What we are is a group of smart technology experts seeking to make your life easier and support you in creating the life you want for yourself at home and at work.
If you want to talk about how we can help you, you can talk to us about designing smart technology systems that are right for your life at info@epitomeliving.com.
Oh, and remember to take your vitamin D!