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Jan Denneman, chairman Good Light Group, speaks at the Future Lighting event on 23 November in Gorinchem, the Netherlands. Here is a brief summary: The science is very clear, good light is as important for our health as good nutrition and good exercise. How can we achieve good light in indoor spaces to improve health and happiness? And how can we do this in a sustainable way? Photo by Future Lighting More than 90% of our lives are spent indoors, shielded from daylight. There, light levels are usually good enough to see, but far too low during the day and usually far too high at night for good health. What almost no one realises is that indoor light levels are similar to the strength of daylight outside around the times of sunrise and sunset. So if you are indoors during the day, you miss the strength of daylight when the sun is up. This upsets our biological clock and the quality of our sleep deteriorates, with all the adverse consequences for employability, health and happiness. Electric indoor lighting should therefore compensate for the lack of daylight. Good light is the right light at the right time. Good light that reaches users' eyes should be at least five times stronger during the day than is currently the case indoors. At least 250 MEDI lux vertical to the eye. And that can certainly be done in a sustainable way. By thinking about general lighting and adding smart personal good light. A valuable application of smart lighting. You can read more in this interview: https://www.future-lighting.nl/meer-licht-nodig-om-biologische-klok-te-synchroniseren-en-beter-te-slapen/ Link to general information on the congress: Sprekers (future-lighting.nl)

Have you heard that a good night's sleep starts in the morning? Indeed, your body needs exposure to sunlight to reset its internal clock and know what time it is. It also gives you energy, improves your mood and well-being, and enhances your alertness and cognitive performance. Exposing yourself to bright light every morning, as soon as you wake up, can only improve your sleep latency and sleep quality. Some researchers have shown that exposure to light minutes before waking up can also be beneficial and help you feel better in the morning. Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash You might wonder how to do so during wintertime or even summertime when you do not want to wake up at 5am when the sun rises, and keep your curtains closed? Well, there are plenty of lights to use as luminotherapy, including the dawn simulation light. It is a light that mimic the sunrise, which will increase in intensity (0 to 250 lux) and change in colors (red to blue enriched white) for 30 minutes before your alarm clock turns off. It has been shown to improve so-called sleep inertia (= the time it takes from the moment you wake up until you are fully awake) and our well-being. We feel less sleepy, in good mood with more energy in the morning. It has even positive effect on dementia or depressed patient, it can improve mood, alertness, and circadian rhythm stability, resulting in better sleep. In a recent study, authors showed a beneficial effect on on carers' emotional distress. When patients stay in long-term care facilities, they are less frequently exposed to natural light or physical activity, so their circadian rhythms are less robust, leading to sleep disturbances, poor mood and drowsiness. Problems that caregivers face on a daily basis. In this study, they exposed patients with Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) to a daylight simulation lamp in their bedrooms for 6 weeks. They were able to measure a decrease in the severity of neuropsychiatric symptoms, a decrease in apathy and disinhibition and a possible restoration of sleep through a decrease in nocturnal behaviour due to the effect of light on circadian rhythms. It follows from these results that the level of emotional distress for the caregivers was also lower. This shows the effect of light on different levels! In short, if you want to sleep better, pay attention to sunlight in the morning! By Virginie Gabel Oey et al., 2022 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33682627/

This weekend, in many northern hemisphere countries, times will be set back to normal. Popularly called winter time, but it is our normal standard time. The clocks will go back an hour, and the night from Saturday to Sunday will be an hour longer. Photo by De an Sun on Unsplash Annoying for parents with small children, as this wakes them up an hour earlier. The upside is that after this weekend, it will be light an hour earlier every day. And that morning light is very beneficial for our health. It makes our internal clock synchronise with the time on our watch. And so we sleep better and wake up more rested, have more energy during the day and our mood improves. Shifting time is a problem for many people. It takes a long time for them to get used to it properly. The best remedy is to make sure that you spend a lot of time outside, especially in the morning, in the days after the clock has shifted. Then your body will more easily adjust your personal clock to the new time. Next summer, we should just keep our standard time and stop changing the clock. That will save many people a lot of misery and medical problems by changing the clock twice a year. The very best thing for our health would be if we also choose the right time zone, where we belong given our longitude: the Western European time zone. Then the sun reaches its highest point around 12 o'clock. That is the healthiest for us. Jan Denneman

The Good Light - Balancing Health and Energy lectures explain our need for a day with Good Light and how to balance health and energy in lighting designs. You can now join the 4th edition of the Good Light - Good Life webinars for free! After the lectures, join the panel discussion on all aspects of Good Light, health, energy and how to balance it in lighting designs. Program 15.00 Introduction Welcome, Introduction by Dr. Debra J. Skene, University of Surrey ​15.10 Let the Sunshine In by Dr. Thomas Kantermann, FOM 15:30 Bringing Natural Daylight Indoors by Dr. David Geisler-Moroder and Mag. Wilfried Pohl, Bartenbach 15:50 Balancing Health and Energy Panel Discussion and Q&A with the Audience We organize the deLIGHTed talks webinars together with the Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms (SLTBR), the Daylight Academy (DLA), the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD), and Luger Research (LR). Register and more info

Lumie is a British brand on a mission to empower people to reconnect with their natural rhythms for best-ever sleep, mood and energy levels. Innovative, science-backed and aesthetically pleasing, Lumie light therapy devices aim to deliver the best user experience and swift results – right out of the box and for the years to come. For over 30 years now, Lumie has been researching, designing and developing lights which help combat seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and winter blues; boost mood and energy levels as well as improve sleep and waking. Lumie’s first Bodyclock dawn simulator - an alarm that wakes you with increasing levels of light - was the world's first wake-up light and brought light therapy into the mainstream. “I’m delighted to announce that Lumie has joined the Good Light Group! Here at Lumie, we know how important it is to educate people on the benefits of light, so we’re excited to partner with the Good Light Group to encourage the use of good light at both home and work. Most people spend more than 90% of their lives indoors, so it’s never been more important for people to get the right light at the right time, and we’re proud to say Lumie light therapy can help with that! As part of this partnership, we shall be providing light therapy lamps for the Good Light Group’s 30 Days Good Light Experience, to help people working from home feel their happiest and healthiest selves.” – Jonathan Cridland, Lumie CEO

Buropix is a specialist in (re)furnishing your office or business premises. They supply and place office furniture with an eye for ergonomics, acoustics & lighting. They want to create a comfortable, ergonomic and fun working environment. You can now join the Roadshow 2022 in which Buropix wants to highlight the sustainable office environment of tomorrow. They opened a POPUP showroom to the general public in the Achelse Kluis in the Netherlands where they organise professional events with fascinating info sessions. Today Tuesday 11 October Jan Denneman will talk about the topic: Learn how the health and well-being of employees can be improved through good workplace lighting. We don't just use light to see better. According to science, light is also an important source of nutrition for our bodies. The science is very clear: good light is as important for our health as good nutrition and good exercise. How can we realise good light in indoor spaces to improve the health and happiness of lighting users? And how can we do this in a sustainable way? More than 90% of our lives are spent indoors, shielded from daylight. There, light levels are usually good enough to see, but far too low during the day and usually far too high at night for good health. What almost no one realises is that indoor light levels are similar to the strength of daylight outside around the times of sunrise and sunset. So if you are indoors during the day, you miss the strength of daylight when the sun is up. This confuses our biological clock and the quality of our sleep deteriorates, with all the adverse consequences for employability, health and happiness. Electric indoor lighting must therefore compensate for the lack of daylight. Good light is the right light at the right time. You can still register for free here!

Daylight gives life. This is common knowledge. The energy of daylight is undeniable. Plants need daylight to grow, to survive. Animals that evolved to live by day also need this light, just like plants, just like us! Too little daylight can be thought of as an outdoor plant standing in a dark room and slowly withering away. This is because outdoor plants evolved to survive outside and not in a dark room, they need the outdoor climate and daylight. You can compare this to the human body. We have transmitters in our eyes that tell our brain what time it is and what processes need to be set in motion, these transmitters are triggered by daylight. So it also affects our physical processes like sleep, energy, the organ system. The consequences of too little daylight are rigorous. It starts with too little sleep, which not only has a huge impact on your mood, but also on your health. Scientists link too little sleep to conditions like burnout, depression, dementia, other brain damage, obesity and heart disease! So you can actually say that we literally become that withered plant when we get too little daylight! So STOP being in twilight all day (that’s the amount of light you get when staying inside)! And go outside or make sure you do have enough daylight inside or install Good Light indoors.

A new podcast aired on health and nutrition since March 2022! One of the world's top scientists in this field explains the latest research and translates it into practical advice to improve your health and weight. ZOE science & nutrition is a scientific journey of discovery presented by Jonathan Wolf. Photo by Reynier Carl on Unsplash In the episode 'How to make your body clock work for you', you will learn all about the ticking clock inside us. This clock uses light to keep track of time and tells us when to sleep and eat. Not listening to this little clock inside us has dramatic consequences for our health, weight and mental well-being. Russell Foster, a scientist from Oxford, has dedicated his life to studying the circadian rhythm. Listen to the podcast

An artikel by Jan Denneman for the Led professional Review Life on earth has developed over hundreds of millions of years under the influence of the 24-hour rhythm of the sun’s energy, light and darkness. In order to cope with this, 24-hour rhythms have also developed in all forms of life: the so-called circadian processes. These processes are the oldest and most fundamental processes that make life possible. Life uses the light of day and the darkness of night to keep in sync with the rhythm of the planet. Photo by Eduardo Alexandre on Unsplash Humankind, our species, Homo Sapiens, has been around for about thirty thousand years. For most of our relatively short history, we were outdoors during the day. As hunters and gatherers, we lived off the edible food we found outdoors. So we automatically got enough daylight every day. This ensured that our circadian rhythms kept pace with the time of day. In recent centuries, however, humans have increasingly begun to live indoors. Since the industrial revolution, this transition has been very rapid. We now spend most of our lives indoors (90%). Few people realize that the intensity of light indoors, even with electric lights on, is comparable to or less than the intensity of daylight outside at the time of sunrise and sunset. So we are inside all day in the twilight! During the day the intensity is much too low and at night much too high compared to the light outside. Our bodies cannot interpret the constant signals of twilight properly and our circadian rhythm gets out of sync with real time. Every day that we do not get enough daylight, our personal circadian rhythm lags behind by about 15 minutes. After just a few days, our personal clock can be more than an hour behind. This has consequences for our health. When you go to bed, you fall asleep because you are tired, but your body is not yet ready for a good deep sleep. Due to superficial sleep, your body does not recover sufficiently at night and you do not wake up rested. During the day you are less fit than you would like to be and your mood becomes gloomy. “Good light is just as important for your well-being and health as good nutrition and sufficient exercise.” JAN DENNEMAN, CHAIRMAN OF THE GOOD LIGHT GROUP If you recognize these symptoms, it may indicate a disrupted rhythm due to a lack of daylight or light at the wrong time. Many people suffer from this. The best way to stay in rhythm is to be outside a lot every day. A few hours of morning light is especially good. Daylight is always the right light for our biological clock, and our body responds positively to it. If you can’t be outside, make sure you are inside close to a window during the day, less than a meter away and facing the window. Otherwise, your body will still only experience twilight. If this is not possible, make sure you have good lighting that mimics daylight as closely as possible. For this, it must have the same rhythm as daylight: dynamic in intensity and light color. During the day it must be sufficiently strong, at least five times stronger than what you are used to. Otherwise your biological clock will not react properly. Good light, i.e. the right light at the right time, can change your life. A lot of light during the day and cozy, dimmed light at night. You will notice that you wake up rested, can handle more during the day and are less likely to feel depressed. Good light is just as important for your well-being and health as good nutrition and sufficient exercise. At Light & Building, we will see many innovations in the field of energy efficient and smart lighting. It will be up to the lighting manufacturers to actually bring these innovations to market and provide the billions of people who sit inside, in the twilight, every day with good light. Read the Led professional Review

It is essential that buildings and homes contain natural light and fresh air as a fundamental part of their environmental factors. In current times, we spend 90% of our lives indoors while, if you look at the evolution of mankind, we spent most of our lives outdoors. Our bodily functions are not used to living most of the day indoors in rooms with insufficient light. Nowadays, many buildings have good ventilation systems. But what about daylight? It is still often forgotten to include this in architectural designs. Although it is happening more and more because people are starting to realise how important daylight is. There is even an organisation that rates buildings on their health. Among other things, they rate buildings on how much daylight they let in. This is not surprising, if you read our previous article in which we wrote about the beneficial effects for employees when they work in more daylight. And employers not only benefit from more productive employees, but in the short term also from lower electricity prices. As electricity costs continue to rise, it is more expensive to light buildings with artificial light! Let daylight in! Build more buildings with large windows, as there are literally no downsides.

The REBF Festival takes place on 21 September in the Zuidas in Amsterdam. Jan Denneman (our boardmember), will give a keynote presentation on ‘The health effects of Good Light in Buildings’ and afterwards we host a roundtable discussion about this theme with Marijke Gordijn (our other boardmember), Erna van het Erve and Maarten Voorhuis. You can now enjoy a 75% discount via this link: forms.summit.nl/HCP/REBFPartners/ and listen to our keynote presentation and roundtable discussion. As of today everyone with a REBF Festival ticket can compile their own personal programme. So join us and choose what presentations or discussions you find interesting! For more information visit: https://www.realestatefutureproof.nl/

Shift workers are more likely to suffer from depression or other mental health disorders. Because of their disrupted daily cycle of the body, also known as the circadian rhythm. Sarah DeWeerdt wrote an article about how disrupted sleep and unnatural exposure to light can increase the risk of depression. In 2018, researchers invited 23 people to a study on circadian rhythm. They wanted to understand why workers on night shifts have an approximately 25% to 40% higher risk of mental illness. Photo by Arno Senoner on Unsplash The findings suggested that one of the reasons for an increased risk of depression is the misalignment of the body's internal clock with the outside world. There is also growing evidence that circadian rhythm disturbances and altered light exposure (more artificial light at night and less natural daylight during the day) increase the risk of depression. According to one study, more than 90% of people with depression have sleep problems. So the two seem to be related. Sleep has a protective effect: better sleep can help prevent depression in adults. Previous studies have shown that light also has a direct antidepressant effect, by stimulating the mood-regulating brain centres. Cajochen even says that light is "as powerful as antidepressants". Perhaps modern lifestyles need a little adjustment to improve circadian rhythms. For shift workers, the solution might be typical meal times or redesigning evening lighting in homes or night shift lighting in factories. Source: article Sadness and schedules by Sarah DeWeerdt