Indoor Light Quality and Your Health

Making small but powerful changes to the lighting in your home can alleviate the effects of junk light on your body, giving you better short and long-term health.

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How is Indoor Light Quality a Health Hazard?

Most modern forms of lighting contain high levels of blue light, without the balancing red or near infra-red light that is always found in natural light.

Blue light adversely impacts your entire hormonal system and neurotransmitters in your brain.

It particularly affects melatonin (the sleep hormone). Unfortunately, melatonin is extremely sensitive to the artificial light we get from our screens and modern lighting. It comes out to play right after sunset. But if we are absorbing blue light through our eyes which directly links to our brain right up until we go to bed, melatonin will not be released for several hours and we don’t sleep well, if at all.

It makes sense, we’ve just been telling our brain it’s 12 noon (daylight) when in fact it’s 11 pm. Melatonin helps us sleep and recover from the day’s events. It’s also the greatest anti-cancer agent we’ve got.

Artificial light also adversely affects your neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin; the feel-good hormones. The result can be depression, anxiety and addictive tendencies.

When you impact your hormones you also impact your circadian rhythm. As well as affecting your sleep this also affects your metabolism and has been linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes. It also affects your skin and reiteration of bone and muscle.

The high energy blue light also increases inflammation in your body, believed to be the root of all chronic disease. Think myopia, macular degeneration disease, and autoimmune disease along with tiredness and fatigue.

Left unchecked, we can unknowingly be damaging our health simply by the lighting we choose for our home.

Symptoms Associated with Artificial Light

Do you struggle to sleep at night?

Get frequent headaches and tired eyes?

Do you find yourself straining your back and neck muscles without realising it?

There are a wealth of health problems associated with poor light conditions, such as:

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myopia (short-sightedness)

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age-related macular degeneration

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obesity

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Parkinson’s Disease

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depression

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trouble sleeping and insomnia

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diabetes

The artificial blue light found in our homes can damage the photoreceptors in your eyes (melanopsin), suppress melatonin, harm sleep, damage mitochondria and accelerate ageing and disease.

Indoor Lighting and Electromagnetic Fields (EMF)

Aside from the effects of artificial blue light, there are other concerns with lighting.

Many of the lightbulbs used in the home can emit electromagnetic fields (EMF) which can have a significant health impact. We are all sensitive to the effect of EMF but some have more evident symptoms than the others, which can include tinnitus, ADHD, anxiety, migraines, chronic fatigue, insomnia, and even rashes.

Whether you are experiencing health issues or not, EMF caused by lighting and other sources in your home will affect you and the long-term conditions that have been linked in numerous studies are brain tumours, breast cancer, heart problems, childhood leukaemia, infertility, chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, ADD, autism and a number of neurological disorders including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The best way to optimise your light quality for the best wellbeing is to have an expert do a light quality assessment in your home.

How I Can Help You to Improve the Light Quality in Your Home

Book a Light Quality Assessment

How does a Light Quality Assessment work?

An initial phone consultation to discuss your concerns and needs.
Completion of a brief questionnaire.
On-site audit using a high tech spectrometer and/or EMF meters to assess possible causes of poor light quality including overhead lighting, screens, TV, gaming devices and blue-blocking glasses.
Verbal feedback on the day.
A personalised report including recommendations on healthier lighting and a checklist of light quality hazards with a priority rating for action steps.
Follow up phone call or email to check-in on action steps.

Prices start from $190 depending on location. Can be combined with any other service at a discount.