Light Therapy

Reverse Shift-Work Fatigue

Nearly one in five (or 15.2 million) Americans work off peak hours. Some work evenings or nights regularly, others jump back and forth between day and night shifts on a rotating basis. This causes all kinds of stress on our systems.

Exhaustion, irritation, and difficulty sleeping are common symptoms of shift work fatigue. These are a result of the conflict between the demands of a night work schedule - and the body's natural timing.

Our systems get confused, not knowing when we should be alert or asleep. When night shift workers travel home during daylight hours, it causes further stress on the system. But these stress symptoms can be minimized, with natural light therapyLight therapy or phototherapy consists of exposure to daylight or to specific wavelengths of light using lasers, light-emitting diodes, fluorescent lamps, dichroic lamps or very bright, full-spectrum light -- by a so-called light box.Light therapy which strikes the retina of the eyes is used to treat circadian rhythm disorders such as delayed sleep phase syndrome and can also be used to treat seasonal affective disorder, with some support for its use also with non-seasonal psychiatric disorders..

Research Results: Light therapy prevents Shift Work Fatigue

The Director of the Biological Rhythms Research Laboratory at Rush-Presbyterian-St Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, Charmane Eastman, PhD, found that bright light improves sleep and alertness in night-shift workers.

Eastman and colleague Stacia Martin experimented with exposure to high-intensity (~5700 LUX), medium-intensity (~1200 LUX) and low-intensity light (<250 LUX) with people on night shifts. They found that high- and medium-intensity light were effective in stimulating body clock adaptation.

Shift-Work Advisor

Are you experiencing the effects of shift work time changes? Do you suffer from restless sleep, low energy, or exhaustion most of the time?

This questionnaire, based on leading medical and scientific research, helps you identify problems with your sleep cycle that can be treated with gentle, simple home light therapy. Click here to access the Shift Work Advisor.

(Note: you can print it and take your results to your health care provider.)

If you have any serious or recurring conditions that may require medical treatment, always consult a licensed physician.