Brightlite, enhancement?
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Is it possible to enable some sort of a brightlite mode for use in the mornings? Like the sunrise lamp from Philips? At least where the sceen lights up in just one color, and no other graphics.
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@eriksmoe Step 1: Walk outside.
Step 2: stay outside for around 5-10 minutes at least.
Step 3: Go inside and crank up your monitor brightness and contrast to the maximum! Turn on ALL the white lights in your home as well, or get more if you don't have quite enough.
I'm waiting for the quality of LED cool white bulbs to improve, so they look more natural, but that'll probably be 5 years from now at least.
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I feel like this is coming. The brighter and closer the screen the more alerting it will be, even a plain white page.
@herf wrote a bit about this here: https://medium.com/@herf/circadian-reality-35f9c649d0cc
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I tried this a while ago. I got a paint app for my phone, and did a full screen bucket-fill of cyan (zero red, full green, full blue), and turned the brightness to maximum. As soon as I woke up, I put it right over my eyes, behind my sleep-mask. You could do the same thing with the computer monitor, and sit with your face almost touching the screen for an hour or so in the morning, if you want to do "light therapy".
Subjectively it seemed to have an effect. In theory using cyan instead of white, i.e. filtering out the red, increases your exposure because the overall brightness is lower and your pupils will contract a little less. I don't know how much difference it would actually make, if any, versus a white screen. In other words, I don't know that a "reverse f.lux" that made your screen more blue in the daytime would be of any use in terms of sleep.
Also a screen isn't ideal for maximizing exposure. It simulates cyan by mixing green and blue, but doesn't put out the true cyan that the eye is most sensitive to for circadian rhythm changes. Still it has an effect, otherwise we wouldn't need f.lux.
The biggest problem is that it's terribly boring staring at the blue screen of wakefulness, and I have many other things that need doing. So it only lasted a couple of days, and now I basically go with what timpster said above. I can assure you that going outside for a half-hour walk every day is a much better idea, on many levels, than lying in bed with your phone strapped to your face.
There are varying reports, some say that light therapy should be done first thing in the morning, others say that any time up until the afternoon is just as effective. It also has to do with total exposure, so that several hours in subdued daylight can be the same as half an hour in front of a classic 10000 lux light box.
I sit so that I can see the sky out the window when I'm on the computer. I'm thinking about getting some true-cyan led panels to put above the screen for the days when it's overcast.
The Philips "wake up light" that @eriksmoe mentioned uses red and/or yellow leds, and isn't "light therapy" any more than waking up and smelling coffee is "aromatherapy". Doubtless it could make the morning more pleasant, but it won't have any effect on your circadian rhythms.
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Actually I have done the "feeling tired while driving at night, hold up iPhone at full brightness for 5 minutes" thing and it seemed to help! I pulled over before that of course. :)
Also, the wake-up light research says that light before you wake up has a much bigger effect than light you see afterwards, so you can use less light then and get the same effects as light therapy.
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@herf said:
Actually I have done the "feeling tired while driving at night, hold up iPhone at full brightness for 5 minutes" thing and it seemed to help! I pulled over before that of course. :)
Pulling over for 5 minutes will help even without the iPhone... I would actually recommend taking a 5 to 10 minute power nap instead of spanking yourself to be awake. Perhaps also a 1 minute walk & stretch outside after the nap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_nap -
If you're going to pull over and sleep, 5 minutes isn't going to do that much. Best not to drive tired never ever. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/driving-after-a-night-shift-is-seriously-dangerous-confirms-study_5679ed6ce4b06fa6887f6533
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@lorna, I agree, driving tired should be avoided as much as possible. Unfortunately under some professions and situations it can't always be avoided. And when I couldn't as a musician, I found a 5-10 minute nap surprisingly effective and helpful.
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I think we should look into the effects on vision with screens 2" away from our face. I just don't like the idea.
