Schedule based lighting (for polyphasic sleepers)
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Currently f.lux is working for fixed period of time (sunset and sunrise). I sleep 4.5 hours per night and have 2 naps per day (at 11am and 6pm). I would like that f.lux starts filtering blue light some time before my naps, and after they are finished it stops filtering it.
Some people may sleep (12pm-03am), so when they wake up at 3am it is their subjective "sunrise", so f.lux should stop filtering blue light then so they can wake up.
I know that I can do it manually, just saying that that feature would be nice.
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Highly approving of this.
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It's not a good idea to encourage melatonin production for a nap. Naps should be either 10 or 20 minutes (10 minutes is best), and they should be entered into rather quickly. If you take the time to encourage your body to produce melatonin, then you will sleep too deeply and then you will have problems sleeping at night. You will also have more difficulty waking up from your nap and you will want to keep sleeping.
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So - secretion and absorption of melatonin happens on a 24 hour cycle, and that's the thing we're aiming to help regulate by dimming / warming up lights and screens. So although you are on the polyphasic sleep schedule, your pineal gland is still operating on a 24 hour clock. Of course every person is slightly different, with different patterns and amounts of melatonin, but I don't know of any research suggesting how to properly time light exposure to optimize melatonin on your type of schedule. It's an interesting question.
As for naps, you won't have time for a melatonin surge, but you can achieve during a well timed nap. Here's a pretty neat research-based calculator that helps you time naps to quickly enter slow wave sleep or REM in a short time: http://saramednick.com/htmls/book/napwheel.htm
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Would you say though that f.lux should be used in conjunction with warmer indoor lighting (and of course, the blocking of incoming daylight) for naps? My answer would be "definitely not!". I've had naps that were too deep, and they were unpleasant.
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I always pull the curtains for naps, when I am lucky enough to get one... someone on a regular sleep cycle shouldn't get a melatonin surge from darkness or warm light not at bedtime, if that makes sense. But too-deep naps are the worst - if you mis-time it and come out of slow wave sleep at the wrong time you'll feel terrible. (more info http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12531174)
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I do know some models for biphasic sleeping, and the "mid-day dip" appears to be circadian, so a siesta is well understood by a lot of cultures.
But what you're asking is for light to "wake you up" but not to shift your schedule from a 24-hour-day and that's really hard to do without having full control of the light you see.
In infants who take more than one nap per day, napping is usually described as "non-circadian" (with night-time sleep and mid-day siesta being circadian), and so I would guess that this might describe what your schedule is.
As Lorna says, your internal clock is still synchronizing to a 24-hour day, and so unless you can really control your environment, you still do need a reasonably normal light-dark cycle.
The trouble is there are certain times in the night that you can see extra light and really shift your clock by several hours.
So if you wake up (even without an alarm) in the middle of the night and see very bright light, your body may assume you've traveled to Europe (or wherever 8 timezones east of you happens to be) and the sun is up. So it would shift a couple hours earlier, and you'd have trouble keeping your schedule the next day.
Hope that makes sense, and I'd love to hear more about experiments people do with polyphasic sleeping.
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Yep. My dad has this problem, but he refuses to believe it. He is 65 and he's still working full time. He has to be up by 4am. He doesn't go to sleep though until close to 11pm (sigh). He seems to think that he has to watch the 10 o'clock news, and then he has to watch the monologue of the Jimmy Fallon show (bigger sigh). I just want to be like, "You should be falling asleep by 9!", hence my sighing.
So, he is being blasted by the bright bluish light from the big TV for a few hours before bed. Not only that, but they (my parents) have these bright bluish Daylight LED strips in their kitchen under the cupboards, they have very bright ceilings lights, they have bright CFLs by their couch in the TV room, etc. Then in their bedroom, they have bright Cree Daylight bulbs, which they also have in their bathroom and in their closet (I mean, good grief, talk about a bad idea). When it's time to go to sleep, he and my mom turn these lights off and try to go to sleep - straight from all that bright blue "Daylight" light. It frustrates me. They go straight from high noon lighting to total darkness at the flip of a switch.
Then almost like clockwork, my dad gets up in the middle of the night two times to pee. For some strange reason, he can't go back to bed until he goes into the refrigerator to take a sip from his mug of water! That fridge has a VERY bright light in it! Sigh! LOL So two times in the middle of the night he's blasted by this bright ~2700K light. Maybe it's 3000K. I don't know. It's bright.
Then he gets up at 4am and he seems to be a morning person, even though he didn't do anything right. lol When he gets home though (usually around 3:30 pm), he always has to take a big long nap that lasts for 1 or 2 hours. He thinks it's just because he's tired from working and from being older, but I think after reading this, we all know why he needs to take a major nap when he comes home: he is sleep deprived!
Then he gets up from his nap and if it's on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday, he'll go with my mom to go work out at the local gym (aerobic stuff just to stay healthy, you know how it is - nothing major). Otherwise, he waits until around 5:30 when my mom gets home, and then they will basically watch TV until it's time to go to bed. Bright bluish lights all night right up until they get into bed. My dad has no problem falling asleep because he's chronically sleep deprived and refuses to accept it, and my mom says it can take her a long time to go to sleep and it's very very very difficult to wake up at 5am for work. Well duh.
Then there's me. I do everything I can to simulate an indoor sunset in my part of the house, and for the last hour or so it's nothing but pure dim red light. I fall asleep easily, I sleep great, I wake up easily, and I never need a nap. Gee, I wonder why that is. lol
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Order some UVEX orange glasses for them as soon as you can. I'm surprised they use cool white LED in the bedroom, even my parents have some lamps w/ halogens! Also our kitchen has halogens and over the stove is two 60w incandescent bulbs.
Yeah, I'd be quite pissed off it they switched that out, I like warm white light in there (kitchen), it's relaxing for sure. Also we have warm dining room lighting (old chandelier). I'd persuade them to get rid of the cool white light in both the kitchen, closet, living room, and their bedroom. Or put warm white in the lamps, that would be enough.
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@timpster said:
Order some UVEX orange glasses for them as soon as you can. I'm surprised they use cool white LED in the bedroom, even my parents have some lamps w/ halogens! Also our kitchen has halogens and over the stove is two 60w incandescent bulbs.
Yeah, I'd be quite pissed off it they switched that out, I like warm white light in there (kitchen), it's relaxing for sure. Also we have warm dining room lighting (old chandelier). I'd persuade them to get rid of the cool white light in both the kitchen, closet, living room, and their bedroom. Or put warm white in the lamps, that would be enough.
If you knew my parents, then you would know that you don't try to teach them any new tricks. They would never go for orange glasses, they would never want to simulate a sunset at night, etc. etc. etc. They are stuck in their ways, and you just don't try to mess with that. When they wanted these Cree Daylight bulbs in their bedroom and bathroom, I had to bite my tongue. I know how they are. They are great people, but you just can't teach an old dog new tricks.
I could go on and on about all the things that they do that should be changed, but I can't get them to change. They are stuck in their ways. They will be stuck in their ways all the way until the last second of their lives. It's sad, but that's why we have that old saying that goes, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks".
Yes, I want very badly to teach them all about avoiding bright light at night, blue light, etc. etc. etc., but it would be lost on them. I know from experience. lol Again though, they're great people, but you can't change them.
So, the only reason why I brought that up was just to show an example of what NOT to do, how NOT to be.
Edit: Maybe it's time I start trying to teach them. My dad has a bad back right now, and he just got up and went into the kitchen to take some pain medication or put on his ice pack or ... I don't know what he did. All I know is, OUT OF ALL THE LIGHTS HE COULD HAVE TURNED ON, he turned on one of the Daylight-colored long (and bright) LED strips under the cupboards. He could have turned on the warm and dimmer incandescent microwave light that lights up the stove top, but no. He turned on the dimmest LED strip, but it's still super bright and very blue. He just doesn't have any idea. Damn. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but maybe it's time I try.
So, he just blasted his eyes (and his body) with this bright blue light and now he's in bed and who knows if he's sleeping yet. Sigh. After he was done, he proceeded to take his sip of water out of his mug that's in the refrigerator (more bright light), and went back to bed.
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Don't give up. I'm sure they'll understand once you explain it.
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@timpster said:
Don't give up. I'm sure they'll understand once you explain it.
Meh. Maybe some day I'll figure out how to tell them. It's not as easy as you might think. lol With us, we're young, and so it's not as big of a deal. They are in the mid 60's, so they're very very very stuck in their ways and don't want to be changed. My dad is the worst. He's a great guy, but stuck in his ways like a metal pole stuck in cement or something.
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I think you are too forceful in face of your parents's grain. You should learn to be kind of diplomatic, or somehow lead them to make them realize that THEY want it, not you want them to want it. Try to make them understand not so conscious way. In conscious mind, they are rejecting any adverse action that isn't corelative with their dogmas. Conscious mind resists, but unconscious is free always. Tell it to them subliminaly. You may consult some psychicist probably. These people are familiar with subliminal consciousness and I think they are able to help you. To all of us!
And I think it is enough to stop watching into blue lights (and TV) before sleep, so it isn't necessary to force them to switch lights to orange bulbs. It would be enough to switch to incandescent bulbs. -
If you knew them, then you'd agree that they're great people, but you won't be able to change them. lol
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Don't give up and focus on the first paragraph I wrote.
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lol you don't know them. Trust me.
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Just switch out some of the lights in key areas -- find out what happens.
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@timpster said:
Just switch out some of the lights in key areas -- find out what happens.
The only lights that I could switch out are lights that they would notice, and they have specifically selected them because they like bright lighting. They are like me: they know when something's different, and they will figure it out within seconds.
So, I probably shouldn't have brought this up because it's a dead end. I guess I just needed to vent is all.
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Copied directly from f.lux' research page:
Mental activation and sleep
Some EEG studies of color effect on the brain have been done. One of the earlier ones we found is cited here.
From Effect of Illuminance and Color Temperature on Lowering of Physiological Activity, Noguchi H, > Sakaguchi T."...we surmise that the effect of color temperature is greater than that of illuminance in an ordinary > residential bedroom or similar environment where a lowering of physiological activity is desirable, and > we therefore find the use of low color temperature illumination more important than the reduction of > illuminance. Subjective drowsiness results also indicate that reduction of illuminance without reduction > of color temperature should be avoided."
These results suggest that low color temperature light creates a smooth lowering of central nervous > system activity, and that low color temperature illumination can be used effectively in a bedroom or > other such environment where it is desirable to facilitate lowered physiological activity.
So, you may have to just buy some Philips (yes there are the best brand for warm white light) 100w equal bulbs. In this situation, I'm glad that Philips are using 2700K and not a whiter light like Cree is that I would actually prefer. Philips is a bit warmer than the Cree of similar light output.
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Thank you, but it's not going to happen. It can't. They are among the billions of people who are still asleep. They just aren't ready to be woken up yet. You can just tell. Do you remember The Matrix? Many people aren't ready to be unplugged yet. They will fight to protect the reality that they are used to. Me and you? We're awake. They're not. It's still in the middle of the night for them, so to speak. The "Do Not Disturb" sign is still hanging on the door, if you want to look at it that way.
