I suspect many blogs are being updated for the first time in a long while today in the Northeast as many of us are sitting at home in a 24″-30″ snow storm — grateful for Internet access, electricity, and heat.
I talked with one of my near neighbors in Baltimore, naturopathic doctor Janine Martin, a few weeks ago about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) lightboxes. She mentioned that they may in fact be useful for yet another purpose — recovery from stress. Apparently stress can damage the body’s natural sleep cycle rhythms. Lightboxes may be useful in resetting these rhythms in order to restore the proper sleep cycle. Critical if you are trying to rest-up after or keep up with stressful events.
This morning I opened an old issue The Week Magazine (January 15th — I have time today…) and saw that their “Health Scare of the Week” was about the number of near-sighted people rising 66% since the 1970s. They cited epidemiologist Susan Vitale as saying that some evidence suggests spending too much time indoors during childhood “sends a signal to the eye to stop growing”.
I don’t want to read too much into this, but perhaps the use of full spectrum lighting indoors is not too bad of an idea for many reasons.
— Michael
