Ramblemuse Touch Points

With a few days more than a month to go until Winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, the days are getting short. Even at noon, the sun is a lot closer to the horizon than it was a month or two ago. For many, the lack of light also triggers a set of depressive symptoms called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Various light supplementation treatments have been found to be effective in treating SAD, but technology is adding something new to the devices. I’ve been running with a light emitting diode (LED) headlamp for several years and even have an LED for my laptop that draws power from the USB port. Now, LEDs are starting to make the jump into SAD light devices. Glickman et al. (2006) have a paper in Biological Psychiatry. There’s also a clinical trial on SAD and LED treatment.