Elettaria

I wrote a honking big article about sleep and the various things I know about it a couple of months back, when I'd been using my snazzy new orange glasses for around a month. I've been using them for several months now and I just wish that someone had suggested these to me when my sleep problems started twenty years ago. They are fantastic. I temporarily came off all my supplements a month or so ago, and I've discovered that I don't even need to use valerian at night any more. The results from the orange glasses alone remain as strong as taking a good sleeping tablet. I change to the orange glasses a few hours before bedtime, I gradually get sleepy, and by now the pattern is that D and I watch a 45 min episode of some silly TV show starting at 11 or so and I have trouble staying awake until the end. I then sleep through the night pretty well and am usually out of bed in the morning just before D is. There's been too much going on in my life over the last year to know yet how far this is impacting upon the ME, but better sleep always improves my life. The dawn simulation is probably helping as well, but I think that just helps me get up in the morning and stay in a good overall pattern.

I've been experimenting with graduated light/darkness therapy to see if it will regulate my hormones, as there's been research with both bright light therapy and moonlight simulation that claims it can regulate menstrual cycles. I spent a few months varying the time I started the darkness therapy, and the length of time I spent in front of the lightbox, so that I would have the longest amount of darkness on the first day of my cycle and the most light on the fifteenth day of my cycle. It had a slight effect, but nothing spectacular enough for it to be worth the fuss for me, since while stimulating ovulation is all very well and entertaining, I'm trying to deal with PMS here, not to get pregnant. I've gone back to using the lightbox for 45 min every morning, though I'm doing a double stint for the second week of my cycle just in case that does something useful. For the darkness therapy, I've decided to try varying that over the year to see if that does anything interesting. I'm changing it by 20 min per month, so tht in December the orange specs go on at 8.20 and in June they go on at 10.20. Humans did evolve under seasonal variations in light, after all, and I think I'll find it less disconcerting to have my "darkness" begin closer to when it's actually getting dark outside. If this means I sleep more during the winter, which I think is happening, that's probably not a bad thing. I'll keep you posted on that, though it's a very long-term affair so it might be six months or a year before I have much of an idea of how it's affecting me.

Actually I acquired them last Wednesday, but I've only just taken some decent photos. If you want to see why I use them, go to this site.



( More photos )

Oddly enough, anything viewed through them appears not orange, but golden yellow.

I'm planning to do a series of posts on sleep, since by now I've learnt a hell of a lot about some of the odder ways of dealing with sleep problems. Keep an eye on the sleep tag.

I'm thinking of trying the method suggested by this place for increasing melatonin in the evening by blocking blue light. It's fairly well established by now that blue light increases serotonin production and suppresses melatonin production, and I have done heaps of good for my sleep cycle (which runs on a 25 hour day when left to its own devices) by sitting in front of a blue bright light box every morning. But I still am rather a crappy sleeper, so anything that improves my sleep would be excellent. Of course, there's no way I'm spending the amount that company wants for their glasses, especially since I'm not even in that country. After roaming clip-on sunglasses and even wondering if I could get away with normal sunglasses over my prescription specs, I finally spotted safety glasses in yellows and oranges. Now, the last time I wore safety glasses was for GCSE chemistry fifteen years ago. Does anyone know if they will routinely fit over prescription specs, and am I likely to find they are too huge to sit on my head? I'm mainly eyeing up these, these and these.

Also, does anyone have any thoughts on the whole business? If I can get suitable orange glasses for a fiver I may as well give it a go, at least so runs my current reasoning. I am currently sitting with a piece of vaguely glasses-shaped orange plastic, the sort I use for monitor filters, tucked inside my glasses, interfering with my eyelashes, and I must look very silly indeed.