Postivitely Parkinsons in Bridport
There’s a good chance you know someone with Parkinson’s disease – or perhaps a friend with a family member living with this devastating condition. Parkinson’s UK estimate that someone receives a diagnosis every 20 minutes in the UK alone, one in 16 are adults under 50 years old – About Parkinson’s. The British Medical Journal points to alarming rise of incidence and PD-related mortality, with a rise of 274% in the 30 years between 1991 and 2021 – Global burden of Parkinson’s disease from 1990 to 2021: a population-based study.
Families and and informal carers are at the front line of this global health crisis, with over 75% reporting significant impact on their quality of life, with impacts ranging from sleep, mental and physical health and financial security – Beyond the burden: Measuring the quality of life impact of Parkinson’s on family members/partners using FROM-16.
Local community support can be a lifesaver for these unsung heroes and heroines,
My local group in Bridport, chaired by my brilliant friend Jane Kellas meets every month over tea and cake to learn something useful – and simply know they are not alone.
So it’s a privilege to be with them on the 25th of August, talking about how the condition affects the way the brain processes processes light – and some practical, affordable tips they can try out at home.
Please get in touch if you or someone you know might like to join – or just to learn more about this wonderful network – Positively Parkinson’s – Bridport support & chat.
1. Body clock, sleep and alertness
Parkinson’s fundamentally affect the systems involved in sleep, leading to a vicious cycle compounded by anxiety, medication and lack of time outside and seeing friends due to fear of falling and social stigma associated with the visible symptoms of tremor and frozen gait. Circadian disruption and its clinical implications in Parkinson’s disease: A Narrative review, The multimodal effect of circadian interventions in Parkinson’s disease: A narrative review.
Three practical ideas
- Plan activities early in the day to make the most of peak attention – and aim to include some time outside in low-stress settings to help to set the body clock and practice everyday social contact
- Make daytime rooms bright enough for comfortable activity, shift to soft, warm light in the evening and keep the bedroom dark at night.
- Set up warm low-level night lights in hallways and stairs, kitchens and bathrooms to keep them safe on the way to the bathroom without waking everyone up.
2. Visual–motor and cognitive processing
Parkinson’s affects brain networks involved in movement planning, attention and the interpretation of visual information. This can make gait initiation, balance, orientation and everyday tasks more demanding.
Recent research found that reduced visual input and increased attentional demands can impair gait initiation in people with Parkinson’s. Another recent study found poorer contrast sensitivity across different lighting conditions, particularly where low light and glare occurred together – Contrast Sensitivity Function in Parkinson’s Disease: Effects of Illumination and Disease Stage, The influence of visual input and attention on gait initiation in people with Parkinson disease.
Three ideas:
- Keep walking routes evenly lit, avoiding sudden transitions between bright and dark spaces and avoiding high-gloss surfaces – floors, tables and mirrors.
- Make steps, thresholds, handrails, doors and furniture edges easy to distinguish, using contrast rather than colour alone
- Consider investing in good-quality (and easy to control) lighting for everyday activities that need extra brightness for comfort and safety – cooking and eating, reading and preparing medication.
Light isn’t a cure.
But the right light at the right time can help people living with the condition and the amazing people who care for them to get some rest and feel more confident and secure to make the most of the time they share.
Are LEDs the new asbestos?
Thanks to friends and family who sent me links to the New Scientist article last week.
I’d been steering clear of this topic because it feels like a bit distraction – similar to stories about the dire health consequences of eating processed meat (aside from the ethical and environmental concerns of course).
But given the hundreds of products online – and seeing a dear friend using expensive infra-red glasses recommended by her highly-respected clinician – it’s clearly time to take a closer look.
So, what do they mean by ‘infra-red’?
The CIE defines three bands from 780 to 1400 nanometers all the way up to 1mm (the wavelength of a microwave). Just over half of the wavelengths in sunlight are in that range – 17-21-004 | e-ILV.
That’s an incredibly wide spectrum when you think that whole of the visible spectrum is just 400 nanometers – from 380 to 780 or so. So when a product proclaims it’s delivering ‘infrared’ it’s not really saying that much.
So what’s all the hype about infrared?
Visible wavelengths are basically too short to get through your body, so they bounce off – or get absorbed by the top layers of the skin. Infrared wavelengths are long enough to wiggle between the cells, penetrating deep into the core of your muscles and bone – and even coming out the other side. But some of that energy gets absorbed on the way, notably by organelles in your cells called mitochondria – the ‘battery packs’ – of your body.
A recent scientific review points to clear potential for infrared and related therapies to offer a non-invasive treatment a for metabolic conditions including type 2 diabetes and inflammation – but urges caution, noting that the wavelengths have widely different effects and the doses, timings and potential risks are still unproven in clinical trials – Therapeutic Potential of Infrared and Related Light Therapies in Metabolic Diseases.
There are a growing number of small-scale studies, including a much-cited piece by Glenn Jeffrey suggested that spending just 15 minutes outside with exposure to wavelengths just beyond the visible but dominant in sunlight – 830 to 860 nanometers – can boost mitochondrial function. And interestingly, that change doesn’t just happen in the region exposed to light, it has a systemic effect: the rest of your body, including your retina – seems to get the benefit too – Longer wavelengths in sunlight pass through the human body and have a systemic impact which improves vision. So maybe a small hand-held device might be as good as a full-body one.
That principle seems to be confirmed by another study by the same team that looked at the impact of replacing a standard LED lightbulb in a task lamp with a lightbulb with the same brightness but using incandescent technology (delivering a wide range of wavelengths and specifically into the infrared part of the spectrum). Participants and controls worked normally in their windowless offices. After just two weeks, the team noted improved visual contrast sensitivity and benefits that lasted longer than those from experiments that just used targeted narrow-band infrared modules – LED lighting (350-650nm) undermines human visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra (400-1500nm+) like daylight.
Does that mean that LEDs are like asbestos?
It’s clear that LED’s don’t generate wavelengths beyond the visible – and that may well be a problem for people who don’t get outside. But were never engineered to deliver infrared anyway (and by the way fluorescent tubes didn’t either). I’m looking forward to learning more about which wavelengths count – and putting some of those miracle products under the light meter and checking for flicker too.
Jeffreys study suggests that exposure to sunlight for as little as 15 minutes per day was enough to make a difference – and his study found that normal clothing didn’t matter much. Huberman is one of many who suggest that a bit more – 15-30 minutes per day is worth aiming for. Of course don’t look at the sun or any light source and don’t go overboard and get burnt – Huberman’s clip is here. A conversation between Jeffreys and Huberman is on Youtube if you’d like to hear them talking at length. Watch here.
I wonder if the asbestos analogy should be reserved for offices and student rooms, hospital beds and shopping malls where there is no natural daylight at all.
In the meantime, simply choosing where you sit could help – these photos and readings from my local library show the difference between turning the chair to look into the room or side-on to the window – much more comfortable if you’re working on screen.
Learning to love brown
The fields and gardens here in Dorset are dry and dusty after weeks of heat – a study in gold and brown.
I miss the gentle greens, perhaps simply following the evolutionary psychologist’s ‘Pleistocene hypothesis’ that link preference for park-like landscapes with refreshment, water, life and growth – Pleistocene Hypothesis – Moving Savanna Perceptual Preference Hypothesis Beyond Savanna. Living in an area with more green space may even increase your ability to conceive – Associations between Residential Greenspace and Fecundability in a North American Preconception Cohort Study, while green light may help people living with migraine to manage pain – this article with one of the leading researchers in the field is a fascinating read – Going Green (Light) for Migraine and Pain: A Conversation with Mohab Ibrahim.
But browns look set to be the new normal – so perhaps we need to learn to love them after all.
Interestingly, most cultures have more names for warm colours than for cool ones, sugg This article by Mike Newall may be a place to start, arguing for brown to be recognised as a primary colour, pointing out that you never see a brown light or colour- it’s only ever brown in relation to a lighter or darker surround – noted by both the philosopher Wittgenstein and the physicist Feynman – A Study in brown. Try looking at a patch of that field through a hole in white- or black – paper – it will become orange or yellow. Newall points to the way colours are encoded in the brain, confirmed by more recent studies that suggest brown may indeed have it’s own unique place on the map – Perceptual Asymmetry Between Hue Categories: Evidence from Human Color Categorization.
My allotment is longing for rain, but in the meantime, I’m starting to look at brown in a whole new light.