>The biggest game changer: Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up. Try morning walks for 1 week (without sunglasses) and your life will be changed.
For me I had to also really avoid light at night. F.lux or Windows Night Mode is not enough. You gotta suffer with strong indoor lightblocker glasses, or use e-ink or something at night.
And in the winter there sometimes isn't enough sun. You need a LOT of lightbulbs to make up the difference. A minimum of 10 100-watt bulbs in my experience, and even more is better.
The real test if this will help you: think back to a time when you were camping, or maybe a child at a summer camp in the woods, or a vacation somewhere without lots of light at night and where you got lots of sun in the morning. Did your sleep schedule naturally shift to become more regular? If it did, then light therapy has a very high chance of helping you.
> A minimum of 10 100-watt bulbs in my experience, and even more is better.
Plugging in some rough numbers, that seems equivalent to a ~170W LED flood light. A 200W version is $70 from Amazon (e.g. [1]). Are the emitted wavelengths crucial or is such a lamp on a timer a viable way to get early "sunlight" in the winter?
That may have been exactly the article I saw, there's certainly more useful information in there than I can answer. I pretty much just took away MORE BULBS.
The setup that I have... I have 5 led flood lights, 1 3000K, 2 4000K and 2 6000K.
I point them at the ceiling to get diffused light. I use different combination of some on / off to get the right warmness depending the time of day. Ie. 3000K in early morning / late in the day. Combination of 3000K and 4000K for around 9am. 2 4000K if I feel sleepy.
They work quite well. I suggest trying it out if you have seasonal affective disorder or trouble sleeping
> Did your sleep schedule naturally shift to become more more regular? If it did, then light therapy has a very high chance of helping you.
You just made me feel I might be on the brink of a startling discovery. Holy hell, I have tried a lot to improve sleep. I haven't tried this. And while there was one confounding variable in my case with camping, it did indeed shift my sleep rhythm to the day/night cycle of the country I was in!
Also remember that when you're out camping, you're probably getting more exercise, too, not just sunshine. A walk in the sunshine is both walk and sunshine. The two in combination may explain more than sunshine alone.
I've thought about trying to simulate an outdoors awakening. With Phillips hue lights you can simulate the sunrise, then a smart thermostat for having the air become warmer. You could play bird chirping noises as well. Can't do much about making the air smell different in the morning like it does outdoors.
you can definitely have one of those perfume sprayers, and there's bound to be lots of companies making a "morning woods" fragrance somewhere that you can plug in there
I also tried colored LED lighting in my computer space. I turn it down and red, kind of like those rooms where people develop photographic film. It works wonders for getting me to feel tired after a while.
I worked some pretty grueling swinging shift work as a Stationary Engineer in a high pressure steam boiler plant for a couple of years. I bought a "bright light therapy" lamp and it seemed to make a difference for a while, but I was never able to make it's usage a sustainable habit. Just throwing its existence out there in case it could be helpful to someone.
For me I had to also really avoid light at night. F.lux or Windows Night Mode is not enough. You gotta suffer with strong indoor lightblocker glasses, or use e-ink or something at night.
And in the winter there sometimes isn't enough sun. You need a LOT of lightbulbs to make up the difference. A minimum of 10 100-watt bulbs in my experience, and even more is better.
The real test if this will help you: think back to a time when you were camping, or maybe a child at a summer camp in the woods, or a vacation somewhere without lots of light at night and where you got lots of sun in the morning. Did your sleep schedule naturally shift to become more regular? If it did, then light therapy has a very high chance of helping you.