Environmental Therapeutics 101 CET E-Book No

Environmental Therapeutics 101 CET e-book no. 1, summer 2018

Improve your mood with a light box! How can you find out whether a light box will help you? When is the best time for your personal use? What light box is best? Discover a game changer, and six steps you can take.

Bring Niagara Falls into your bedroom! Recapture the mood of your honeymoon, or reduce depression without taking medication, using a scientific solution that literally comes in a little black box.

Sleep smarter at any age! You may avoid coffee, or running a marathon, before going to bed. However, you probably do not know these four secrets for getting better sleep faster.

If you have trouble getting a good night's sleep, you are not alone. A careful 2016 study of Americans found 19% did not get a good night's sleep. In addition, 37% did not get a full night's sleep, and 9% had insomnia.

Problems with the amount, and quality, of sleep can result in drowsy driving, and other dangers.

Unfortunately, sleeping pills have not been successful for most users. They usually reduce the time it takes to get to sleep by only a few minutes, and they typically lengthen a night's sleep only slightly.

Further, many studies show that sleeping pills have significant side effects. For example, they can wear off too slowly, thus keeping people from feeling refreshed, and doing their best, the next day.

Better Solutions for All Ages

What can you do if you have trouble getting to sleep? Most of us avoid coffee, or running a marathon, before going to bed. But there are less well-known tips inspired by studies on circadian rhythms, or our inner clocks.

Research finds that human eyes are particularly sensitive to blue light―a part of the spectrum of color within white light. When blue light strikes cells in the bottom of the retina, it keeps us from making melatonin, the sleep hormone. That means we are likely to stay awake, even if we want to go to sleep.

A Free App: F.lux

As justgetflux.com explains, when the sun sets, its free app, “makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again. Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live… f.lux will do the rest, automatically.”

In short, f.lux reduces the amount of energizing blue light coming from the screen at night. Thus, you do not need to forego online activity right before bedtime.

Avoid Blue Light Before Bedtime

If you reduce your exposure to the blue part of white light for two to three hours before you go to bed, you will have a better chance of going to sleep. That's because the cells in your retina will not tell the master clock in your brain that it is daytime, and you should stay awake. Instead, the cells will tell your master clock that it is time to tell the pineal gland to produce melatonin.

Some people wear blue blockers―amber glasses―that filter out blue light. These glasses can be fitover models that go over regular prescription eyeglasses. They might not look fashionable, but they are practical if worn for two or three hours before bedtime.

CET offers premium blue blockers at its online store. They block the frequencies of blue and blue- green light that suppress the production of the sleep hormone, melatonin. You can also get basic blue blockers at Amazon.com for under $10. These glasses block much, though not all, of this light, reducing but not eliminating melatonin in the LowBlueLights protective glasses blood circulation.

Regardless of which glasses you select, be sure that they block light from reaching your eyes from the sides.

Make it Easier for Yourself to Get Back to Sleep

If you get up during the night, avoid exposure to the blue component of white light. If you need a nightlight, use one that cuts out the blue rays since ordinary nightlights contain blue light within the white light. That can make it hard for people to get back to sleep.

Tailor Lighting to You

After age 40, your eyes start to change. Your pupils gradually get smaller, and your lenses create a filter that reduces the amount of light that reaches your retina.

To make up for getting less of the light around you, increase the amount of light in your environment. Use soft-white light bulbs of 2,700 or 3,000 Kelvin, available at Amazon, or your local hardware store. And even though the bulbs are soft, make sure you have a lamp shade to diffuse the light so that you never stare directly at a naked bulb.

If you are falling asleep earlier than you'd like without a reason (such as work), make sure to keep brighter lights on longer while you want to stay up (but not for the two or three hours before you want to sleep).

For more information, check Ask Our Experts at cet.org. Answers cover sixteen topics which can help you improve your mood, sleep, and energy, such as: • Blue Light • Circadian Rhythm • Sleep Phase Advance • Sleep • Sleep and Light • Sleep Phase Delay

Healthcare and mental healthcare professionals might also be interested in our Treasury of the Literature. Key papers on the science of circadian rhythms are arranged in sections covering six basic science topics, and their clinical applications in ten areas to help people with issues of mood, sleep, and energy.

Light Therapy for Beginners: Six Steps

Depressed, but not interested in taking drugs to improve your mood? The American Psychiatric Association guidelines have listed (bright) light therapy as an option for seasonal and nonseasonal depression for years.

Further, in 2016, this natural method for getting better gained unequivocal support from researchers who compared light therapy with Prozac (fluoxetine), and two placebos, at multiple study sites. Light therapy was extremely effective; Prozac and the placebos were not. Interestingly, light therapy and Prozac together worked best. This suggests that people can try light therapy first. That may be enough. However, if it does not work completely, they can add an antidepressant.

A 2016 review of the literature concluded light therapy was effective with or without Prozac, and that the combination of the two methods had the most consistent results.

Now that you know light therapy is backed by science, how do you begin? Here are six steps. 1. Make sure you are depressed. Depression due to seasonal affective disorder, major depression, and bipolar disorder all qualify. So do milder “blues.” Take the AutoSIGH, a free, confidential self-assessment the CET offers. This test will rate the extent of your depression, and give you feedback about your symptoms―information that can help your therapist, or help you make up your mind about seeing a therapist.

2. Read about light therapy at cet.org. Find out how it was discovered, the risks, and so on. Search the questions in our Ask Our Experts feature, mentioned above. If you do not find what you want to learn, send us your question.

3. If you and your therapist agree on light therapy, take the free, confidential AutoMEQ. The AutoMEQ (Automated Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire) will tell you the best time of day for you to start light therapy. The best time differs depending on the extent to which a person is an owl or a lark when depressed. Because timing is so important in making therapy work, it is not surprising that over a million people have taken CET’s unique AutoMEQ.

4. If your therapist is not familiar with light therapy, make sure he or she downloads a free copy of Light Therapy for Major Depression: A Game Changer.

This publication from the Center for Environmental Therapeutics covers the basics of light therapy for physicians and allied health professionals. The information it provides will enable your therapist to tailor treatment to you. For example, instead of the usual thirty minutes of exposure to the light box in the morning, you may need only twenty minutes.

Your therapist can also monitor you for side effects which, while usually very rare and minor, are possible. People with bipolar disorder should definitely be monitored for a swing into hypomania or mania, which, while uncommon, and no more frequent than with antimanic drugs, would require help.

For more information on light therapy, and other clinical treatments which use light, dark, and related methods to resolve mood problems, you might want to recommend Chronotherapeutics for Affective Disorders: A Clinician’s Manual for Light and Wake Therapy to your therapist. This concise, practical manual by experts in Italy, Switzerland, and America, is the definitive work on the subject.

6 5. Get a light box. To choose a light box, consider the criteria here for light box selection. CET recommends two basic models, the Carex Day-Light Classic, or Day- Light Classic Plus, both with 10,000 lux. Watch for a new, premium model we plan to introduce this fall.

These models have a broad screen, so they might be inconvenient to store. However, their size makes them most efficient for the purpose at hand: getting light into the lower half of your retina while you comfortably eat breakfast, or read a book, without looking directly into the light. The large size means that light will reach your eyes, striking the correct area, even if you move your head around, as you would normally.

Just be sure to tilt the light box slightly, about 30° from the vertical, as shown, to avoid glare. With this arrangement, the cells in the lower half of your retina will carry a message to your inner clock, telling it to keep you awake and alert. To learn more about the advantage of this light box configuration, you can watch a three-minute video with Vince Caimano, PhD. Dr. Caimano uses light boxes personally, and his explanation of the features of the height-adjustable, large screen model is helpful.

6. Chart your progress. You might want to record your mood daily to see how it changes. Some people are encouraged when they see daily scores because it makes them realize they really have made progress.

Charting your mood daily year-round also enables you to discover patterns. For example, you may tend to get depressed in the late fall and winter. This seasonal depression is Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, if it is due to the shorter days (as opposed to stressors that may occur during holidays or other events). SAD depressions, or the winter blues, tend to involve oversleeping, overeating, and carbohydrate craving. If you keep track of your moods and related symptoms, you will understand more about yourself, and can take care of yourself better.

7 How to Bring the Romance of Niagara Falls into Your Bedroom

Do you want to recapture the mood of your honeymoon in your cramped fifth-floor walkup? Or feel less depressed without taking medication? Or just relax after a long, hard day at the office?

You can move closer to these goals of comfort and good feelings with negative air ions.

The Science of Negative Air Ions

Negative air ions are created when an electron—a tiny particle with a negative charge—piggybacks onto a big molecule of oxygen. The molecule of oxygen, which has no charge before this event, then carries a negative charge. The oxygen continues to carry a negative charge if microscopic drops of water surround it and its visitor, preventing the electron from leaving.

At Niagara Falls, beaches, tropical rain forests, and anywhere near a storm, the moisture in the air tends to keep an extra electron on zillions of oxygen molecules.

These charged oxygen molecules turn into the equivalent of miniature vacuum cleaners by attracting dust, smoke, pollen, mold spores, and other unwanted particles with positive charges, since negative particles attract positive particles. When the charged oxygen molecules attract positive particles, they form heavy clumps, which drop to the ground, leaving the air we breathe fresher and cleaner.

Negative air ions occur far more often in nature than in our homes and buildings, where heating systems and air conditioners remove moisture from the air, making it hard for electrons to stick to oxygen molecules. People can buy ionizing air cleaners to reverse this problem, but need to be sure the machines are powerful enough to give satisfactory results. (Industrial-strength ionizers are hard to find on the consumer market.)

8 Perhaps more important, negative air ions can relieve depression and enhance sleep quality if used properly as a treatment for these problems. For example, a clinical trial (experiment) at Columbia University found that the mood and sleeping problems of people who received high-density negative air ions improved as much as they did in people who received bright light therapy, a treatment that had already been proven effective.

What remains a mystery about negative ions, however, is how they work. Scientists suspect the effects may be linked to the ease with which ionized air reaches the lungs, oxygenating the blood.

Moving Niagara Falls into Your Bedroom

How can you take advantage of negative air ions to improve mood? If you live in the country, or have a big backyard, you can build yourself a waterfall. Or you could move to a land with tropical rainforests, such as Saint Lucia.

However, for an everyday solution most of us can use, try a miniature Niagara-Falls-in-a-box using modern technology. This negative air ionizer works like a waterfall or tiny tropical rainforest by allowing charged oxygen particles to attract allergens and smoke, and then drop to the ground, making the air above—the air we breathe—purer. In addition, these negative air ions affect the central nervous system to produce an antidepressant effect—CET’s primary focus of interest.

To find out more, read CET's description of a basic high- output negative air ionizer, download CET's instructions for users, or search our site for “negative air ion.” Upcoming in fall 2018: a new, premium ionizer (pictured here), so please check back in mid-September.

For more scholarly information, read this research paper—the first to report the antidepressant action of high-density ionization—co-authored by CET’s president, Michael Terman.

Dear Reader,

We hope you have enjoyed this ﬁrst edition of our new e-book series, and have taken the opportunity to delve into the many links to our site.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Saenger, PhD, our Director of Education, for designing the e-book and composing the three articles and many of the illustrations. We want to hear from you, dear reader, with suggestions for topics we should cover in upcoming issues. After all, our purpose is to provide you with engaging introductions to the burgeoning scope of environmental therapeutics, from bedside to home, to oﬃce and classroom, and indeed to the entire built environment. Please email Elizabeth with your suggestions and your impressions of this ﬁrst edition of Environmental Terapeutics 101.

We hope you will come back to cet.org to ﬁnd many other tips on how to improve your mood, sleep, and energy – naturally.

Sincerely yours,

Michael Terman, PhD President