Light for concussion – and squeeze a soft ball if you’ve run out of ideas…

Wrapping up International Victorious Women Month.

So grateful to all the remarkable women who have blazed a trail for us who follow.

“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

International Victorious Woman Month: Celebrate some of Peace Corps Most Victorious and Inspirational Women.

Recovering from falls

My beloved stepmother, Lou (‘Oma’) tripped at in the basement of her tiny Canterbury home, falling backwards onto the bare stone floor and cracking the back of her head. Luckily no broken bones, but a severe concussion that left her quivering with exhaustion and struggling to concentrate. The technical term is mild traumatic brain injury, or mTBI and affects up to 700 in 100,000 people every year – Definition and epidemiology of mild traumatic brain injury.

Prevention is obviously better than cure, and lighting can help with that.

But could it help with recovery too?

It turns out, it can! 

• Photosensitivity – a common complaint following minor traumatic head injury. This response seems to be linked to the ipRGCs with heightened sensitivity to the blue parts of the spectrum. Offering softer, warmer lighting, ideally with controls to allow the patient to set the level that is comfortable for them will help – Post-concussion Syndrome Light Sensitivity: A Case Report and Review of the Literature. 
• Body clock – up to 70% of people struggle with sleep following a head injury. A lack of sleep is directly linked to slower recovery, so setting the body clock is essential – Sleep and Rehabilitation After Brain Injury – Study Report. The problem is that brain injury triggers an acute inflammatory response, disrupting the natural hormone cycle that synchronises the central and peripheral clocks, leading to a mis-match that compounds the problem. Making sure there is enough contrast between daytime and night-time light levels and carefully timing food and social activity will help to stabilise this essential recovery mechanism – The interaction of the circadian and immune system: Desynchrony as a pathological outcome to traumatic brain injury.
• Infrared – We’ve known about the healing and uplifting power of a view for centuries – Exploring the Relationship between Window View Quantity, Quality, and Ratings of Care in the Hospital, but growing evidence suggests that one component of that effect may be the infra-red wavelengths that are present in sunlight. but not in standard LEDs – Photobiomodulation improves functional recovery after mild traumatic brain injury. It’s early days in the development of this field called ‘photobiomodulaton’ as the basic parameters like wavelength, dose, timing and location are still being explored. So, for now, resting your bruised brain in natural light may be the best remedy for a bang on the head. 

It’s National Creativity Day

Maybe you thought you were rubbish at art at school, or maybe you think it’s all a waste of time – after all, art isn’t going to pay the bills. But maybe it’s time to think again and notice the small ways you’re creative too – it’s good for your brain – Connecting the Dots: Your Brain and Creativity.

Switching up the lighting can help you to relax and think out of the box. The interactions between brightness, colour, personal profile and preferences are complex. But the bottom line seems to be that light can heighten emotional response with this study suggesting that blue and orange are better than white light when it comes to creative performance – Research on the Impact of Lighting Illuminance and Color on Creative Performance and Mood.

 And if you’re having trouble feeling creative, try squeezing a soft ball for a few minutes – this study found that participants squeezing a soft ball came up with more divergent solutions to a problem than those handling the hard ball – Physical Activity Benefits Creativity: Squeezing a Ball for Enhancing Creativity.

Go big or go home  

My body clock has reset to BST but my brain is still in obit after a memorable trip to South Korea.

Retracing the steps over the past two years to unpack what I’ve learnt, and wonder what next.

From the decision to take the plunge and write a second book, to accept the request from a complete stranger to translate the manuscript into Korean, to a call-out for lighting connections via the LIA Newsletter, to parking my little blue car on the railway bridge at Crewkerne Station and rolling my suitcase through Heathrow’s echoing halls.

After a weekend exploring Seoul and nudging my body clock onto Korean time, Richard Busnell’s team took me on a whirlwind tour of local sights and introduced me to two of the most talented lighting design teams in the country, an eye-opening pespective on the South Asian sector: I soon realised my elaborate technical presentation about the finer points of dynamic lighting was miles off the mark. One or two had heard of the principles of the non-image-forming system, but they were all in the dark when it came to practical value for clients, let alone design or specification. The language was a barrier too: I assume that everyone speaks English – such an arrogant and lazy view.

So I rewrote my keynote speech overnight, halving the number of slides, and doubling the size of the diagrams, hoping my audience will follow at least part of the argument this time.

My heart is pounding as I climb the steep wooden steps onto a cavernous stage, hung with banners announcing the KIIEE Spring Conference adjusting the microphone I peer out over a huge basement ballroom packed with middle-aged engineers in dark suits, kindly but reserved, and baffled by this tall white lady foreigner with her big feet and strange accent. My deep bow and energetic, if hopelessly inaccurate, rendering of ‘Good Morning!’ in Korean raises a smile and my efforts to simplify seem to have paid off as a number of the audience genuinely seem to follow along, and the applause at the end is warm. Over the lunch break, a small line forms around the publisher’s table to buy a copy of the translated book from the shiny stack, so familiar and yet so completely strange. I sign each one with a flourish, grateful for their interest in this new way of thinking about light that for many, seems to have come completely out of the blue.

No wonder lighting manufacturers say there’s no market there.

We need to learn their language, build awareness and an evidence base first.

Take-aways?

1.  Say ‘yes’. And encourage others to do the same.
2.  Be ready to pivot to meet your audience where they are.
3.  Stay curious – you never know where life will lead.