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Copyright Insight Matters corporate psychologists, except where
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You Can Naturally
Relieve Pain With Simple Sunlight
Exposure
to sunlight may be the newest method of easing pain. According to a
report, boosting the amount of sunlight in a patient's hospital room
decreases their perception of pain and their need for painkiller
medication.
Researchers enrolled nearly 90 patients who had undergone spinal surgery
and placed them in randomly assigned hospital rooms--the rooms were
either sunny or dim upon their return from surgery.
With
the aid of light meter measurements, researchers found:
· Patients assigned to bright rooms received an average of 46 percent more
natural sunlight a day, compared to patients in the dim room, which
translated to an average 21 percent reduction in the cost of painkiller
medication for patients in bright rooms
· Bright-room patients had considerably lower stress scores and slightly
lower pain scores when they left the hospital, compared to patients in
dimmer rooms
These
results may motivate hospital administrators to relocate patients with
high painkiller requirements to rooms with higher intensity sunlight.
Psychosomatic Medicine January/February 2005;67(1):156-163
Stephanie Thompson's comments:
Light is a
severely under-rated nutrient! There are several fundamentals
required for psycho-physiological health - I view light as a key
'macro-nutrient' along with clean air, pure water, and a pleasant
soundscape (peace). There is plenty of evidence that disruption to
any of these has numerous biological effects.
Light,
though, is perhaps the least studied. Maybe not for much longer.
Levels of natural light have been shown to predict examination results
of students educated in brighter or dimmer rooms - brighter is better.
Skin cancer researchers are increasingly critical of the possible
bio-effects of fluorescent lighting (and/or the electromagnetic effects
of the units). Breast cancer researchers note that levels of
natural light correlate negatively with breast cancer incidence -
brighter geographic locations (in the same country/culture) predict
lower rates.
And we all
know, instinctively, that sunshine makes us feel good, whereas dinginess
makes us feel...well, dingy.
As for most
things, as far as possible, keep it natural. The best is natural
daylight. Second best is perhaps traditional tungsten lighting -
your everyday light bulb - because this produces a smooth spectrum not
too dissimilar to natural afternoon light. Avoid using fluorescent
lighting in rooms where you spend a large percentage of your time.
