this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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They are excellent for seasonal affective disorder. Basically, humans technically have a mild form of hibernation. Our modern lifestyle doesn't allow for that however. When you don't get enough sunlight, our body assumes it's time to bed down. This is experienced as an extended bout of apathy and tiredness, leading to depression.
A sunlamp has enough light, of the right spectrum, to help reset this system to summer mode.
Sounds interesting, you got something to read about that?
Can google around about blue light triggering melatonin suppression and the effect of chronically elevated melatonin and circadian rhythms if you want to learn more too.
The TLDR is ideally bright white or blue light at consistent time first thing in the morning to help your body regulate circadian rhythms.
Not offhand, once I figured out what was happening and how to fix it, it became a fairly solved problem for me, about a decade back.
The NHS has a reasonable writeup on it. The hibernation theory is less proven, so tends not to come up in medical advice.
https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder-sad/overview/