{"id":1177,"date":"2012-01-09T20:25:04","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T00:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thiscontemplativelife.com\/?p=1177"},"modified":"2012-01-09T20:25:04","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T00:25:04","slug":"cet-center-for-environmental-therapeutics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/2012\/01\/09\/cet-center-for-environmental-therapeutics\/","title":{"rendered":"On sleep, light & mood :: Center for Environmental Therapeutics"},"content":{"rendered":"

These people specialise in research and treatment of mood\/sleep\/circadian disorders like depression, SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), sleep onset delay etc with\u00a0daylight therapy<\/a>, dawn simulating light <\/a>“alarm”, hilarious yellow sunglasses<\/a> for indoor use, air ionizers<\/a> and other techniques that are drug-free but backed by good research and clinical evidence. They only sell the products that have actually been used in the research and tested (not to be confused with those bedside table light alarm clocks which have not been studied for effectiveness). Also, the light therapy units are available in the US and Europe, in various voltage\/plug combinations and can be easily shipped to Australia.<\/p>\n

Ideally humans sleep in darkness (except for moonlight) and wake to natural dawn. I find that my whole wake\/sleep cycle, energy levels and patterns of sleep are affected by where I am sleeping and what the light situation is. Berkeley is currently the worst for me (of my 3 homes), not only is there alot of light pollution outside my window which I have to block out with dark blue velvet curtains but even if I remember to open them around dawn, there is no strong direct sunlight available around 8am (my individual need) to sustain a healthy circadian rhythm, so I start feeling sleepier and sleepier in the late mornings, drag through the day and then wake up in the evenings and then have trouble going to sleep at a reasonable hour. In Boulder there was good available strong sunlight (300 days of the year !) but the Bay Area itself, and the house where Im living (as well as in 1996-7 in San Carlos) there just isnt enough morning light to have me wake up around 8 am and get sleepy around 10pm. And yes, I do need more hours sleep than “normal” but it becomes unmanageable if Im sleeping those 9.5 hours late into the morning and stay up way too late at night.<\/p>\n

People have alerted me to the other dangers of light pollution and not sleeping reasonable hours at night time: endocrine disruption, some hormonally based cancers (eg breast), weight gain, depression…<\/p>\n

The CET published\u00a0Chronotherapeutics for Affective Disorders<\/em> <\/a>in 2009 and supply apparatus (light boxes etc) that are supported by the research. \u00a0They are an incredibly generous team (in terms of information sharing) of scientists and doctors emerging from Columbia University, NYC and in Switzerland (also elsewhere internationally). Here is the long list of members and their qualifications:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cet.org\/eng\/AboutUs_ENG.html#Organization<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the very helpful aspects of the general public site is the self assessment tools<\/strong> <\/a>they offer for free online. These are proper diagnostic questionnaires for depression, seasonal mood issues (eg. SAD) and also circadian rhythm diagnosis; literally are yo ua night owl or a lark? What time does your system naturally wake and sleep? All of these tests help to decide whether you want to try the light therapy and if so how much and when. Obviously, if you suffer from moderate to severe clinical depression, you need professional advice which your doctor\/therapist can seek from the professional website for CET and use the manual and other resources to apply light therapy in your specific case. People with mania and hypomanic diagnoses also need to consult a qualified practitioner.<\/p>\n

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There are two sections of the website, one for physicians:<\/p>\n

CET – Center for Environmental Therapeutics.<\/a><\/p>\n

and one for the general public:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cet.org\/eng\/Index_ENG.html<\/a><\/p>\n

If anyone is actually reading this and decides to do the tests I would be very interested to hear of your experiences \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These people specialise in research and treatment of mood\/sleep\/circadian disorders like depression, SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), sleep onset delay etc with\u00a0daylight therapy, dawn simulating light…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,14],"tags":[111,140,292,293,334,430,445],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}