Light Treatments to Reduce Fatigue Symptoms

Video Transcript

"DR. SUSAN JEWELL: Hello. My name is Dr. Susan Jewell and on behalf of Expert Village today, I'm going to talk to you about how to recognize fatigue and how to reduce the symptoms of fatigue. Now, in this clip, we're going to talk about lighting. Because lighting from studies have shown--has beneficial or detrimental effects on the body and thus causing or reducing or increasing the symptoms of fatigue. Now, if studies have shown that fluorescent light versus natural light causes a person to be more prone to getting fatigue of the body, maybe it's because of the energy, the frequency of the fluorescent light as emanating from the lighting. Now, also the amount of exposure to natural sunlight and artificial light, so if you have long periods in darkness then you're going to be prone to getting not just fatigue, but also depression and lethargy and apathy, but if you go into sunlight then that prevents that from happening, and it's been shown that there's a hormonal basis that is contributing to this effect, and that is the hormone that--a substance in the body that naturally is made called melatonin. Now, when there's low levels of melatonin in the body--melatonin is produced by the gland in the brain called the pituitary gland. When there's low melatonin, then a person's more prone to getting fatigue, lethargy, apathy, and amotivational behaviors. And also studies have shown certain frequencies or light colors from the spectrum is good or not good for reducing or increasing the symptoms of fatigue like red and green has shown to be very good to maintain the energy level of a person. So, lighting is very important contributing factors to fatigue."