Doctors wielding knives,
infections on the loose, high bills, sleeping in a strange bed—these are some
of the reasons you might dread going to hospital. You probably haven’t
given much thought to an additional factor that can make you feel even worse
once you tuck into the hospital bed. According to a new study, the
lighting in your hospital room may contribute to increased pain and exhaustion,
crippling a healthy immune system. And yes, this is the
second study in a row that we’ve discussed that focuses on the effects of light
on health.
The study, conducted by
the Cleveland Clinic’s Nursing Institute, found that most hospitals keep the
lighting in rooms dim during the day, and that throws off the patients’
circadian rhythms, disturbing sleep.1 Of course, getting sleep in a hospital
room is a challenge even under the best of circumstances. Patients have to
contend with blinking monitors, constant noise, interruptions day and night,
and lights in the corridor at bedtime, to say nothing of pain that might keep
them awake. Keeping the lighting dim in the room during the day might
seem to be a kindness and wise choice since patients need to rest and catch up
on sleep lost at night, but the researchers found quite the opposite.
The study followed 40
individuals admitted to the Cleveland Clinic between 2011 and 2012. Each
patient wore a wrist monitor to track his or her sleeping and waking patterns
over 72 hours. Then, the patients filled out questionnaires reporting on their
mood, fatigue, and pain levels.
It turned out, not
surprisingly, that all the patients in the study experienced poor, interrupted
sleep averaging four hours a night. That’s typical in a hospital. The surprise
was that those exposed to the lowest levels of light during the day reported more
pain and increased depression, and increased stress
and anxiety, compared to patients in more brightly lit rooms.
If you’ve never noticed
the dim lighting in the hospital, consider that the average daytime light level
in the hospital rooms observed during the study was 150 lux. In comparison, the
lighting in an average office setting measures around 500 lux. If you go
outside in bright sunshine, you can be exposed to more than 100,000 lux. Yes,
you read that correctly: we’re talking150 VS 100,000!
The researchers note
that in order to establish a normal sleep pattern, people need to be exposed to
at least 1500 lux for 15 minutes a day. That’s the bare minimum. For improved
sleep health, which can lead to a healthy immune system, at least 4000 lux per
eight hour cycle is recommended. Obviously, hospital patients get nowhere near
that amount. In fact, office workers barely reach that level—an argument for
going out for lunch instead of staying glued to the desk or grabbing a burger
in the basement cafeteria.
These findings, of
course, have implications even for those not hospitalized, but also for anyone
who wants to sleep well. Most wisdom on insomnia recommends steering clear of
media and flashing lights close to bedtime. We’ve written before about how
important it is to sleep in a darkened room, avoiding any light
exposure at all to the extent possible. But this study points out that while
nighttime preparation for sleep is essential, so is letting your body soak up
light during the day.
The study points to one
simple thing hospitals can do to help patients heal, reduce stress and anxiety,
and maybe, to cut infection rates—turn up the lights. Again, sleep is a
critical factor in healing. When we read reports about hospital safety, we tend
to focus on things like unsanitary conditions and human error. Certainly these
are horrifying realities that cause delayed healing and even unnecessary death,
but perhaps part of a hospital’s rating should be based on how well it allows
patients to sleep. Now we know, if this study proves accurate, that part of
that equation involves providing adequate daytime lighting. And in fact, this
study merely confirms a previous discussion we had concerning the role of sleep deprivation in the onset of
post-hospital syndrome.
Study director Esther
Bernhofer points out, "It makes sense that if a loved one is recovering,
and they can be moved to an area with brighter, more natural light such as that
directly in front of a window, that their mood may improve and that they may
sleep better."
By the way, although
we’ve written before about the essential need to cut lights when you tuck in
for the night, it turns out that certain types of night lights have a more
disruptive effect on sleep and mood than others. Most night lights use white
light, and those are a poor choice if you want to sleep well and wake up
cheery. If you must have a night light, make it red. A study reported in theJournal of Neuroscience found that in hamster research,
after a month of exposure to either red, blue, white, or no light, the hamsters
who experienced red lights had the lowest rates of depression.2 (In case you’re wondering how
researchers can tell if hamsters feel depressed, they don’t stick them on a
couch and ask them questions about their mothers. Rather, depressed hamsters
lose interest in drinking sugar water.) On the other hand, a blue light had the
most detrimental effect.
In fact, an earlier
Harvard University study comparing blue and green light found that blue light
suppressed melatonin, a hormone that helps us sleep, for twice as long as green
light.3 If you think this is irrelevant to you
since you have no blue light bulbs in your house, think again.
Computer and television screens tend to emit lots of blue light. Also, those
energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs and LEDs produce far more blue
light than the old fashioned incandescent bulbs. When you think about it, maybe
it’s not just a poetic thing that the blues are called "the blues” and not
"the reds.” Maybe it’s based on an intuitive understanding by the first
great bluesmen of the effects of light and color on our psyches. So if you are
looking for hospital and operation theater lights visit Allindiayellowpage.com to get detail
information about hospital lights suppliers and dealers.