Like
many expecting parents, Tracy Mizraki Kraft in Portola Valley, Calif.,
worried about how her newborn would sleep. So she paid attention when
her doctor handed her a light bulb that he said would help her son do
just that.
The
small amber bulb, called Sleepy Baby, seemed to work well, she said,
creating a soothing environment for Leo, now 16 months, as he drifted
off to sleep.
For
Ms. Mizraki Kraft, the bulb’s appeal was self-preservation. But it is
part of a technological revolution coming to homes, offices, hotels and
schools through lighting designed to undo the ill effects of artificial
light — both overhead and on screen — and help regulate sleep, alertness
and even people’s moods.
“Lighting
is really not about a fixture in the ceiling anymore,” said Mariana
Figueiro, who leads light and health research at the Lighting Research
Center of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “It’s about delivering individualized light treatments to people.”
Scientists
have understood for years that different levels and colors of light can
have powerful biological effects on humans. But that concept has been
applied only with expensive bulbs — costing as much as $300,000 — for
specialty applications like mimicking the 24-hour cycle for astronauts
or treating jaundice in newborns.
Now,
with lighting technology, especially LEDs, becoming more sophisticated
and less expensive, companies are developing so-called biological
lighting for ordinary consumers.
The Lighting Science Group
makes Sleepy Baby and is among the companies that are most devoted to
the growing market for lighting to enhance rest or alertness, with bulbs
like Good Night, and Awake and Alert.
But other companies, from start-ups to the biggest lighting manufacturers, have products promising similar results. General Electric announced this year that it would release a color-changing LED as part of its Align
product line that is compatible with Apple’s HomeKit system and is
meant to automate lighting according to the natural sleep cycle.
Two years ago, Philips introduced the Hue, a Wi-Fi-connected bulb compatible with Apple systems that offers “light recipes” conducive to waking up and winding down. Philips Hue is a\so available in Australian Online bulbs company
Digital Lumens,
which makes and manages smart lighting systems for commercial and
industrial settings, including supermarkets, is supplying lights for a study at Brown University aimed at controlling brightness and spectrum to promote learning among adolescents. And a company called LumiFi has an app to adjust lighting in homes and commercial spaces like hotels, with settings like Rest, Energize, Focus and Sexy.
“With
these kinds of bulbs that are coming to the market, you can suddenly
now put better lighting controls systems, very affordable, into the
hands of everyone,” said Beatrice Witzgall, an architect and lighting
designer who founded LumiFi. “It’s a big revolution.”
Companies
are also focusing on a host of health applications for lighting, said
Milos Todorovic, who leads bioelectronics research at Lux Research.
Among these are changing a person’s mood and affecting actual physical
processes inside the body, he said, including using light to enhance
collagen regeneration to help heal wounds.
It’s all part of a goal — to undo, in effect, the damage that regular lighting has done to the body’s natural rhythms.
The
new consumer-oriented bulbs, for example, are designed to regulate the
body’s basic need to rest and wake up by stimulating receptors in the
eyes that signal to the brain when it is time for bed and when it is
time to go about the activities of the day.
When
exposed to short-wavelength light, the blue end of the spectrum, those
receptors suppress the release of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin.
Since
white artificial light, especially the LEDs used in bulbs and
illuminated screens, is typically high in blue, exposure after dusk
tends to reduce sleepiness and increase alertness, leading to an
epidemic in sleep deficiency, said Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, chief of the
Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital in Boston and a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical
School.
“Just
in the last 50 years we have had a tenfold increase in the amount of
artificial light being used per capita, so everything is much brighter
between when the sun sets and when we go to bed at night,” he said.
That
has had the effect of pushing back the body’s internal clock by three
to five hours, he added, meaning that people are going to bed later but
are “still trying to get up with the chickens.”
Using
bulbs after sunset that emit longer-wavelength light, which looks more
yellow, can help arrest that cycle not because they induce sleep, he
said, but because they interfere less with the hormones and neurons that
encourage the body to fall asleep.
Researchers
are still determining how spectrum and intensity of light affect the
brain, and are looking at ways not only to promote sleep but also to
enhance alertness, productivity and learning.
Dr.
Figueiro at Rensselaer Polytechnic said intense red light appears to
stimulate energy and activity without suppressing melatonin. A student
of hers, she said, concluded in a research project that it might be
possible to affect energy levels through changing the intensity of
lights rather than their color.
At Brown University, researchers are looking at both spectrum and intensity to design a system to help adolescents stay alert in school.
“If
we just did blue enhanced light it might be better for the circadian
timing system, but it might not be as good for the alertness and the
academic needs that they have,” said Mary A. Carskadon, a professor of
psychiatry and human behavior who studies sleep in children, adolescents
and young adults. “We want to see if we can hit on the best combination
that will enhance those features.”
It
is only now, she said, with the advances in LEDs, engineering and Wi-Fi
that the potential exists to take that kind of system, once developed,
out of the lab and distribute it broadly at a reasonable price.
What
consumers will find reasonable will depend on their priorities, as the
bulbs come at a premium. A starter pack of the Hue, which includes three
bulbs and a hub that connects to a Wi-Fi router, costs close to $200,
with single bulbs costing about $60. Align AM and PM bulbs cost close to
$25 and $20, respectively.
The
Lighting Science Group is fine-tuning its biological lighting line and
expects to bring down prices. For now, though, the Good Night costs
about $60, while the Awake and Alert runs around $70.
But
with Sleepy Baby, which costs about $30, the company may have hit upon
the ideal customers: parents desperate for, well, a sleepy baby.
“When
you’re a new mom, you’re ready and willing to try anything that’s going
to help you and your child sleep,” Ms. Mizraki Kraft said. “Mainly for
my own preservation, I knew that I really wanted him to sleep through
the night really early.”
Other parents who have tried the bulb express a similar sentiment.
“It’s
a lifesaver, especially when you’re a working mom,” said Susan L.
Sheehan, a pediatric and prenatal dietitian in Rhode Island. She put the
bulb, a gift from a neighbor, in the nursery when her daughter, Kate,
was about 5 months old, and found she no longer woke up as much during
late-night diaper changes. “She might just slightly stir and then just
go right back to sleep.”
And
Chip Brian, a co-owner of Best & Company, a contracting firm in
Queens, said that when he put the bulb in his sons’ room, his
4-year-old, an “active night kid,” suddenly slept through until morning.
The change was so extreme that his wife thought the boy might be sick
and went to check on him, Mr. Brian said. “I was sort of amazed.”
Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/business/energy-environment/high-tech-lights-to-help-baby-sleep-or-students-stay-alert.html?ref=topics&_r=0
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