Darkness at night may prevent or lessen depression....

Today's Post: Monday, 10-26-2009

Last Friday, 10-23, Health Day News had a story they titled.:

“Constant Light Linked to Symptoms of Depression”

Ohio State University researchers did a study with mice and found that mice kept in a room with light 24 hours a day had more depressive symptoms than mice that had dark conditions at night as they would in a normal 24 hour day outside.

The researchers also found that when some of the mice kept in a room with light 24 hours a day that lived in the constantly lit room, but were allowed to go into a dark tube when they decided to, had fewer depressive symptoms than mice that were not given that option.

"The ability to escape light seemed to quell the depressive effects," lead author Laura Fonken, , said in the news release from Ohio State University.

This is very interesting for many reasons.

Separate research has found that women who slept in really dark rooms got fewer cases of breast cancer than women who slept in rooms that were not very dark.

In addition, many of the healing and restorative powers of sleep seem to be mediated or triggered by melatonin. And, when the room you sleep in is dark enough or dark, your body releases more melatonin. (The article I read about the breast cancer preventive effect of sleeping in a truly dark room suggested a link to this effect.)

So, if you have curtains or added “black out curtains” that block outside light and no lights on in the room while you sleep, it looks likely to help you prevent or lessen depression, sleep better, and stay healthy better than if you don’t.

If you are older you can also consider taking the supplement melatonin at bedtime since this melatonin release is less as people get older than 50. But for most people more than 1 mg is too much and will make them too groggy and hard to become alert and fully awake the next day. 0.1 to 0.3 mg is enough to get the beneficial effects. (Since it’s easier to get 1 mg tablets, a compromise I tried once is to buy the 1 mg tablets and take half a tablet for about 0.5 mg. That allowed me to avoid feeling groggy and hard to become alert and fully awake the next day.)

I’ve not seen the dosages as yet but something that sounds interesting is that Dr Al Sears sells a spray you can spray at the back of your throat to get the melatonin and its help to go to sleep much more quickly than taking it in pill form. (If you want to try it, see www.AlSearsMD.com .)

Lastly, where I live, I’ve not gotten around to adding a heavy or black out curtain to go over our venetian blinds to block more of the light outside. But for blocking out noise so I sleep better, I sleep on my side with two pillows one below my head and one above. That IS a bit quieter. But I’ve also noticed it’s a good bit darker. So that may be a faster solution than getting and installing new curtains.

The other reason I like this research is that it adds another nondrug way to avoid or turn off depression. Since the drugs don’t work quickly even when they do work; don’t work at all more than half the time; and often have bad side effects, I think that’s important.

(For our previous post on the other nondrug and effective ways that avoid or turn off depression, see 8 ways to end depression -- proven to work better than drugs.... on Friday, 8-21-2009. A researcher found this set of things turned off depression nearly three times as often as drugs and worked more quickly!)