Mar 14, 2018

How Lighting Can Help You Adjust to Daylight Saving Time

Category: Illumination

Daylight Saving Time has been shown to have a detrimental effect on Americans across the country due to the disruption to one’s circadian clock. In fact, a 2016 study reported that “the overall rate for stroke was 8% higher in the two days after daylight savings time”, while the likelihood of stroke jumps to 20% during that time for people older than 65 (American Academy of Neurology).

Willem Sillevis-Smitt, Lumileds engineer, said people can avoid these problems by adjusting the brightness and colors of the artificial lights they expose themselves to in the evening. Sillevis-Smitt tells Metro US, “When I look at how people report the impact of daylight saving, it mostly impacts how people sleep. Most of us go to bed way after 7 p.m., when it is already dark. So my conclusion was that the impact must come not so much from sunset and sunrise, but more from how we keep the lights on in the evening.” To help ease into the evening, Sillevis-Smitt recommends making sure the color temperature of the light used is warm, as well as gradually dimming the lights a bit as darkness falls. “The best thing you can do with light during the day is, if it’s a bright and sunny day and the weather allows it; go outside for 10 to 20 minutes. It will actually help you get to sleep at night,” he said.

Lumileds helps the adjustment by developing LED lighting technology that automatically dim based on the time of day and shift from a starker, blue light during daytime to a softer, orange light at night. However, beyond just color, Lumileds offers LEDs with spectral output optimized to best resembles natural light, which has the most beneficial effect on humans. To learn more about how Lumileds LUXEON LEDs can help you adjust to Daylight Saving Time, read the full article here.