Note that all quotes in this blog come from the fantastic book “The Circadian Code” by Satchin Panda, PhD.
“Circadian rhythms are real biological processes that every plant, animal, and human exhibits over the course of a day.” “Almost each and every one of our cells contains one of these (biological clocks), and each is programmed to turn on or off thousands of genes at different times of the day or night. These genes influence every aspect of our health. For instance, when we are healthy, we can have a good night’s sleep. In the morning we wake up feeling fresh and energetic and ready to get to work. Our gut function is perfectly normal. We have a healthy hunger and a clear mind. In the afternoon, we have the energy to exercise. At night, we are tired enough to go back to sleep without much effort. Yet, when these daily rhythms are disturbed for as little as a day or two, our clocks cannot send out the right messages to these genes, and our body and mind will not function as well as we need. If this disruption continues for a few days, weeks or months, we may succumb to all types of infections and diseases, ranging from insomnia to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, anxiety, migraine, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and even cancer.
For over 2 decades, the highly accredited researcher, Dr. Satchin Panda spent his days in the lab studying clock genes in plants and animals. In 2001 his first breakthrough was discovering “how our circadian rhythms adjust to different seasons or different types of light.” His team discovered that “an elusive blue light sensor in the eye’s retina that sends light signals to the brain clock to tell it when it is morning and when it is night.” This led to figuring out “how much light – of which color, for how long, and at what time of the day – we need to advance or delay our clock.”
Dr. Panda asserts that many of us are living like shift workers with erratic sleep habits. If the disruptions occur consistently, our health suffers in myriad ways. “Our job is to maintain the (circadian) clock so we can live with optimal health.” The evolution from living strictly by the rise and fall of the sun to living in artificial light environments created a challenge to our natural rhythms. Being untethered from the sun’s schedule means we can effectively work through the night. “After World War II, with all of these industrial systems in place, almost everyone in industrialized nations started experiencing circadian disruption. Sleeping less also meant increasing the time we spent awake under bright lights, especially at night when the brain does not expect to be stimulated by light. And when we were awake during the day, many of us stayed indoors and didn’t get enough exposure to bright sunlight. Both of these scenarios confuse the brain clock.” Our current 24/7 digital age technology is further pushing us away from our ancestral natural rhythms.
Research has shown that inappropriate lighting (ie. color and brightness) at certain times of the day will impair the sleep/wake cycle. Conversely, delivering the appropriate lighting will serve to restore a healthy sleep/wake cycle. Ideally, for the healthiest lifestyle, a person would get lots of exposure to natural daylight during waking hours and very little artificial light in the late afternoon through to bedtime. Our modern lifestyle lies in stark contradiction to this. We spend most of our time indoors bathed in various degrees of artificial lighting with bright screens in our eyes until sleep.
If you consider the typical lighting retrofit approach, the idea is to deliver the minimal amount of light necessary to achieve a task at the lowest cost so that maximum power savings can be gained. Offices in the 70’s used to deliver 50 to 100+ footcandles of light. Today we hover around 20 footcandles of static one color one brightness throughout the day. Light levels are nowhere near what natural daylight offers and often too bright at end of day.
It’s not feasible for computer users to work in a greenhouse as brightness in our screens and in our field of view would serve to give us migraines. Further, windows have low insulative value and therefore require more from our HVAC systems to keep ambient temperatures balanced. Therefore, we are somewhat stuck with our artificial lighting in environments with less windows. The good news is, is that dynamic LED lighting systems continue to drop in price and it is no longer the case that you have to spend a king’s ransom to provide higher quality artificial lighting. It is my guess that in the near future we will transition into lighting systems that will better support our quality of life by providing us with light that more closely resembles low glare natural light that is dynamic over the course of a workday.
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