Manchester: the light that we experience on a daily basis has a major influence on our body rhythms. People with 24-hour access to electric daylight can disrupt sleep and negatively impact healthwell-being and productivity. But, a new study has addressed the issue of brightness lighting should be during the day and evening to support healthy body rhythms, restful sleep, and daytime alertness. The study was published in the journal “Plos”.

Professors Timothy Brown from the University of Manchester, UK, and Kenneth Wright from the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA, brought together an international group of leading scientific experts to agree on the first evidence-based consensus recommendations for a healthy day, evening and night exposure to light. These guidelines provide much-needed guidance for the lighting and electronics industries to help design healthier environments and improve the way we light our workplaces, public buildings and homes.

A key question addressed by the new report was how to properly measure the extent to which different types of lighting might influence our body rhythms and our daily sleeping and waking patterns. Light affects these patterns via a specialized type of cell in the eye that uses a light-sensitive protein, melanopsinwhich is distinct from the rod and cone proteins that support vision (and upon which traditional methods of measuring “brightness” are based).

Because melanopsin is most sensitive to light in a specific part of the visual spectrum (blue-cyan light), the new recommendations used a newly developed light measurement standard tailored to this unique property, equivalent illuminance. in the melanotic daylight. Analysis of data from a series of laboratory and field studies has proven that this new measurement approach can provide a reliable means of predicting the effects of light on human physiology and body rhythms and may therefore constitute the basis for widely applicable and meaningful recommendations.

An important next step will be the incorporation of recommendations into formal lighting guidelines, which currently focus on visual requirements rather than health and well-being effects. Additionally, the increasing sophistication of LED lighting technology and the availability of low-cost light sensors should increase the ease with which individuals can optimize their personal exposure to light to better support their own body rhythms in line with new recommendations. .

Brown said: “These recommendations provide the first scientific, quantitative, consensus guidance for appropriate daily patterns of light exposure to support healthy body rhythms, nocturnal sleep and daytime alertness. This now provides a clear framework for inform the way we light any indoor space ranging from workplaces, educational institutions and healthcare facilities to our own homes.”

(The article is written by ANI. Only the title has been changed.)