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Sleeping in completely dark room--helpful?

Messages
32
May I ask a question here?

Anybody experienced improvement in symptoms when sleeping in completely dark room?
Or even any positive experience after a stay in a dark room?

I am not recommending, I am asking a question only :)
 

brenda

Senior Member
Messages
2,266
Location
UK
I use a black silk eye mask to protect my dry eyes from corneal erosion and have total blackout, but it makes no difference to my sleep.
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
I use a black silk eye mask to protect my dry eyes from corneal erosion and have total blackout, but it makes no difference to my sleep.

How does that protect your eyes, brenda? Just wondering because I have some corneal damage due to my dry eyes.
 

brenda

Senior Member
Messages
2,266
Location
UK
How does that protect your eyes, brenda? Just wondering because I have some corneal damage due to my dry eyes.

It helps to keep the moisture in though l have to use oil in my eyes as well. Do you get erosions?
 
Messages
32
May I ask a question here?

Anybody experienced improvement in symptoms when sleeping in completely dark room?
Or even any positive experience after a stay in a dark room?

I am not recommending, I am asking a question only :)

Clarifying the second question: I mean a therapeutic stay in a dark room for 1-2 weeks or so.
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
It helps to keep the moisture in though l have to use oil in my eyes as well. Do you get erosions?

Thanks! Hadn't heard of that trick. I put drops in my eyes just before I go to bed to try to stop them drying out but it's not very effective.

Yes, I think they were called erosions. Only had one appt with the ophthamologist so far (another next week).

I was diagnosed with a bacterial eye infection at my first appt and given abx. It helped a bit but didn't cure the problem. With all this microbiome stuff, I wonder what the issues might be around the eye microbiome (presumably it's got one).
 

Asklipia

Senior Member
Messages
999
@Gemma about sleeping in total darkness
Yes, my husband and I (which makes it a n=2) had very noticeable results by achieving total darkness in our bedroom.
After about a week, general improvement was definite : better sleep at night and calm energy during the day, a complete stop to any night sweats, better mood, and a deep feeing what we were doing was very right. Eyes quite wet upon waking up.
It is not very clear it was only due to this total darkness because at the same time we also decided to change all computer screens to black and white, and stopped using Ipads for reading, switching to e-paper display instead (black and white too). And stopped watching films in the evening. And we changed some of the lights in the house to make sure there was no unnecessary harsh lighting. After dark, we only read books.

We were not really sick anymore, it was just an added bonus.

A couple of months later we started watching films at night again and experienced very rapidly, after three days, a slight come-back of the old problems. So we stopped. It seems that once a week is OK, not inclined to try more at the moment. We don't want to mess up the results of our RS challenge.
Good luck with whatever you are looking for!:)
 
Messages
32
@Gemma about sleeping in total darkness
Yes, my husband and I (which makes it a n=2) had very noticeable results by achieving total darkness in our bedroom.
After about a week, general improvement was definite : better sleep at night and calm energy during the day, a complete stop to any night sweats, better mood, and a deep feeing what we were doing was very right. Eyes quite wet upon waking up.
It is not very clear it was only due to this total darkness because at the same time we also decided to change all computer screens to black and white, and stopped using Ipads for reading, switching to e-paper display instead (black and white too). And stopped watching films in the evening. And we changed some of the lights in the house to make sure there was no unnecessary harsh lighting. After dark, we only read books.

We were not really sick anymore, it was just an added bonus.

A couple of months later we started watching films at night again and experienced very rapidly, after three days, a slight come-back of the old problems. So we stopped. It seems that once a week is OK, not inclined to try more at the moment. We don't want to mess up the results of our RS challenge.
Good luck with whatever you are looking for!:)

Asklipia, thank you, your experience definitely makes sense to me!
 

Little Bluestem

All Good Things Must Come to an End
Messages
4,930
I use a sleep mask and find it helpful. I have read that even having light on you skin can disrupt sleep. That may be why I prefer to always have a light cover when I sleep.
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
Hi Gemma - not sure what you're counting as total darkness. My bedroom is certainly very dark - doesn't overlook streetlights and has solid shutters rather than curtains, and if I open my eyes in the night I can't see anything.

However, I nevertheless have insomnia as part of my ME - I find it hard to get to sleep and stay asleep, despite taking pregabalin (lyrica) as a sleep med. I typically wake four or five times a night.
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
I've stayed involuntarily in a darkened room for weeks at end during the most acute parts of my illness when light intolerance played a major part. Although I did recover enough to recover from these episodes staying in a darkened room for more than a few days now doesn't play a noticeable part in recovering from the day to day symptoms of ME.

When I was first acutely ill with viral symptoms light intolerance was very severe and I was in and out of consciousness. This still occurs but in episodes now. I need time in a dark room then but only as long as the acute phase lasts. After that I feel trapped.

I'm guessing what you are referring to is not getting a good nights sleep in a dark room but deliberately spending time in one for a week or more to see if ME Symptoms improve? Rather like a sensory deprivation.

There was an interest in this area in the 80's and 90's. Particularly in the area of sleep therapy. There were doctors who advocated taking patients into a dark ward or room and then drugging them for a week or two. I met one of these doctors who did try and convince me to try it and afterwards I met some of his patients who had been through the treatment and physically / mentally scared by this. Some patients were not always drugged but admitted to a dark ward.

There were deaths in both London and Australia from these sleep clinics but I don't know if any ME or CFS people died.

This is a report of an extreme version of the sleep therapies.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...p-months-Londons-Royal-Waterloo-Hospital.html

and one that was advocated for PWME by a NHS Cardiologist

http://www.duncancampbell.org/content/preying-hope

We still get the occasional poster to groups who advocate shutting away in a completely darkened space for a period of time as a treatment. That is, taking the CFS or ME patient into a state of having no light or other stimulus. It's not something that works for me other than in the short term and not as a long term solution.
 
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adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
I definitely sleep much better in a totally dark room. I haven't tried dark therapy, though.
 

Ripley

Senior Member
Messages
402
This may help understand what dark therapy is:

Richard Hansler Ph D said:
It has been observed for many years that people with some forms of mental illness do not sleep well. Only very recently have people been thinking about this the other way around. Perhaps they become mentally ill because they don’t sleep well. Bipolar disorder used to be called manic depressive illness. It is characterized by people who go from one extreme to the other. For a while they are on the top of the world and feeling just great and then they plunge into the depths of depression. Some early studies found that when people went into depression it was usually after sleeping rather than at the end of a period of being awake. The manic mood was more likely to begin toward the middle or end of a period of being awake. Researchers tried things like sleep deprivation to get people out of depression since it was thought that sleep was causing depression. One of the bodily parameters that is easy to measure is core body temperature. In general, it varies the opposite way as the concentration of the melatonin in the blood. It is highest during the day when melatonin is absent and drops to a minimum when melatonin concentration is at a maximum. In more recent studies, it has been plotted against time for patients with rapid cycling bipolar disorder. The results showed that it cycled up and down but not in synchronization with the twenty-four-hour clock. It was free running, going in and out of phase with the patient’s schedule of waking and sleeping. The patient’s mood was cycling up and down, but in a very irregular fashion.

Now, rather than trying sleep deprivation, a novel approach was tried, known as “darkness therapy.” The patient was placed in a darkened room for fourteen hours a day, not required to sleep, but simply to be in the darkness from about 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. After just a few days, the patient’s mood became stable and the body temperature cycle was locked in with the twenty-four-hour clock. The period of darkness was decreased to twelve hours and the mood continued to be stable. A similar approach was tried with sixteen rapid cycling bipolar patients in Italy with similar results for new patients without a long history of bipolar disorder. These studies strongly support the notion that bipolar disorder is somehow associated with abnormal functioning of the circadian clock. This fits with the early observations that the manic phase could be triggered by erratic behavior involving staying up until the small hours of the morning. Exposing the eyes to light during the night could have a disruptive effect on the circadian clock. Whatever the explanation of how the clock gets out of order, darkness therapy has been demonstrated as a way to get it back to normal for some patients. With the present theory of melatonin suppression by blue light, it is possible to produce “virtual darkness” by simply putting on blue-blocking glasses. This makes getting fourteen hours of darkness very easy. Putting on the glasses at 6 p.m., going to bed at midnight in real darkness, and getting up at 8 a.m. is all very simple, easy, and not disruptive of normal evening activities. Hopefully experience will show this as another tool to deal with a very difficult condition.

SOURCE: Hansler, Richard (2012-09-10). Great Sleep! Reduced Cancer!: A Scientific Approach to Great Sleep and Reduced Cancer Risk (Kindle Locations 422-445). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Kindle Edition.


And, so, it's been hypothesized that dark therapy can be used for CFS.

The cool thing is that you no longer need to lock yourself in a dark room. You can use special blu-blocker glasses now — provided you don't take them off, not even for a second, during the prescribed time period (unless you're actually in a completely dark room). The glasses from lowbluelights.com are expensive, but tested for the correct wavelengths, but there are cheaper versions for as low as $11 on Amazon that many people swear by.
 
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Messages
32
This may help understand what dark therapy is:
And, so, it's been hypothesized that dark therapy can be used for CFS.

Ok. Everybody listens to what Ripley says.

-- it is important to live with natural circadian rhythms, get melatonin cycle right. It is good to sleep in darkness (yes covered, because even skin can feel the light) and get natural sunlight during the day.
So: dark curtains in the bedroom and/or dark eye mask, getting to bed early (midnight is late). What about a teaspoon of natural honey before bed?
Getting natural sunlight during the day: sun salutation yoga in the morning, no sunglasses if you do not really need to, blue-blocker glasses in the evening, installing f.lux on you computer, etc.

-- dark room therapy (longer than 1 week) is crazy powerful even for healthy person. We should probably be very careful with that. It is not being drugged or so, or induced sleep. It is voluntarily living a normal life (inside a dark cabin or so) as a blind person.

On magnesium: what beast is eating our magnesium?
 

Ninan

Senior Member
Messages
523
I've been thinking about this for some time. I also feel better with as little light as possible since I suffer from constant sensory overload. Darkness lets my brain rest and reload.

But I wonder: Could dark therapy make you more sensitive to light afterwards? Or do you tolerate it more?

I've even looked for black lenses. I don't really need to see much when I'm at home anyway.
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
Hi @Gemma - what's the logic of a tsp of honey before bed?

I've seen a few people mention now that it's better to go to bed early because sleep is "worth more" before midnight but I haven't seen any references to evidence or rationale, even though I've asked for them. Is there some data on this?
 

Ninan

Senior Member
Messages
523
@Ripley About those glasses: I don't get it, do they block out all light? If they don't then how is it darkness therapy? :cool:
 

Ripley

Senior Member
Messages
402
even skin can feel the light

Yes the skin can "feel" light when it makes Vitamin D for instance. However, it's never been proven that light hitting the skin suppresses melatonin.

Only one single study (Campbell and Murphy) has ever claimed that they were able to suppress melatonin production with light shined on the skin. Supposedly they used a billi-blanket shining lights under subjects' kneecaps and claimed they were able to suppress melatonin production. It appears to have been a fluke. There have been many experiments and studies that have tried to reproduce that experiment and no one has ever succeeded. So, it is not generally accepted that shining light on the skin can suppress melatonin. There's just no good evidence to support that hypothesis and no one has well explained how it could even happen (photoreceptors to suppress melatonin, known as "Melanopsin" are only found in the eye).

Plus, the glasses, and being blind, actually have the same effect of encouraging melatonin production. That's why blind people are thought to have less cancer (i.e. they have more melatonin production than the rest of us). It seems to have nothing to do with the skin.

Still, melatonin production can be suppressed by other factors (noise, for instance, exercise, extreme brightness of any colored light, etc.). Light hitting the melanopsin receptors in the eyes just happens to be one of the biggest suppressors — and so you can see why the Campbell and Murphy experiment was likely flawed. So, when encouraging melatonin production, it does help to stay inside and in a relatively dark atmosphere. But, the glasses make it so that you can have a normal life while doing darkness therapy.

The goal, when wearing glasses, when awake, is to reproduce what it's like to sit around a small campfire. Fire tends to give off a very warm color temperature (< 2000ºK) so a fire should not suppress melatonin at all. Nor would we expect it to, since our ancestors were using fire almost round the clock up until 100 years ago.

Sunrise starts at 2000ºK and quickly rises in color temperature — thus becoming more "blue" as the sun rises. So, ~2000ºK is really the cutoff point of where the melanopsin receptors in our eyes became sensitive to suppressing melatonin. Almost all artificial light bulbs are

A really bright bonfire and lots of bongo drums might suppress melatonin. :) You get the idea.