The Problem: A lack of sunlight can lead to ill health with a variety of mental, emotional, and physical symptoms.
The Causes of Light Starvation: Photophilia and Malillumination
Working and living indoors: Poorly illuminated environments with inappropriate artificial lighting could have serious health implications. For example, most artificial indoor lighting lacks ultraviolet light (UV), which at the proper intensity is essential to the production of vitamin D and the metabolism of calcium.
Unhealthy artificial light: Most indoor lighting lacks the requisite full-range color distribution and the proper intensity to sustain health and certain functions, such as vitamin D and hormone production. Light’s effect on human mind body health has, until recently, been ignored in architecture, design, and engineering. Both fluorescent and incandescent lights have lots of Red, but are lacking in Green, Blue and Violet. Furthermore, indoor lighting is generally not bright enough, amounting to only 1/20th the intensity of outdoor light in the shade on a sunny day. The amount of light that we receive from 16 hours indoors is dramatically less than the amount we receive from a single hour outdoors.
Negative lifestyle habits: Even in sunny California and Florida, the average individual receives little sunlight in a 24-hour period. The additional interferences we have, such as tinted sunglasses and contact lenses, tinted car windshields, and tinted windows, don’t allow in the health-giving properties of the entire spectrum of light.
Seasons/low light conditions: In winter in the northern hemisphere, the onset of winter depression and seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.) occurs in late fall and peaks in February. (These symptoms usually wane in early spring, as the days get longer.)
The Symptoms of Light Starvation:
Symptoms of lack of exposure to sunlight: Scandinavian winters have been associated with a higher incidence of irritability, fatigue, illness, lowered immune functioning, insomnia, hypersomnia, depression, alcoholism and suicide.
Vitamin D deficiency: Sunlight is crucial to vitamin D production.
Calcium deficiency: Calcium levels are lowest in the low light conditions of winter. Calcium is necessary for the growth of bones and teeth. A lack of calcium is related to such conditions as osteoporosis and osteomalacia, the softening of the bones.
Neurotransmitter and Neurohormonal deficiencies: Create a disturbance of bodily rhythms, leading to symptoms such as those seen in seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.) or its sub clinical form, winter depression, phase shift disorders, and jet lag (with symptoms such as disturbances in sleep, appetite, or mood.)
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