Children in school sitting in rooms with full spectrum lamps or sitting in schools with more windows or skylights, their standardized test scores can raise as much as 26% without any change in their reading or learning or anything else, just by changing the quality of lighting. Even how many cavities they get can change significantly.

We have all heard about depression in Scandinavia and Seattle. There are compelling clinical studies that show that people who don’t get enough light get depressed. Tell me about this as background then let’s go forward into the environments that we’re living in and the implications of a restricted artificial spectrum.

Without getting scientific everyone knows they feel better outdoors.  Most everyone when they leave their building at lunch time, if you stood by the door with a microphone the most common sound you’d here is ahhh, that sigh of relief.  We don’t realize what’s going on inside the building but when we step outside and we have a direct comparison. We know that when we are outdoors we feel better.  That’s why people go to places like Florida or Hawaii during vacation, to get plenty of sunlight.  The ancients knew this. Even in the late 1800’s early 1900’s, there were centers all over the world, spas where people would go to the highest mountain just to lay outside in daylight, frequently without clothing. It was health giving. 

We know when people don’t get enough daylight, certain people that are more sensitive, will get depressed.  If you go into certain Northern latitudes, you find that as soon as winter starts these people begin to hibernate on a certain level.  They don’t have the energy.  They sleep more.  They eat more carbohydrates.  They get clinically depressed.  They begin drinking and utilizing drugs more often, and many become suicidal.  Today many who live in these sun deprived latitudes now treat these symptoms with lamps that closely simulate daylight.  What we find using these lamps for a short period of time each day is that these people frequently come out of this depressive state very, very quickly. 

Daylight is probably the most powerful and potent environmental agent we have.  We need food.  We need water.  We need air. Human beings are also dependent upon light.  We know, for instance, that children in school sitting in rooms with full spectrum lamps or sitting in schools with more windows or skylights, their test scores, standardized test scores can raise as much as 26% without any change in their reading or learning or anything else, just by changing the quality of lighting. Even how many cavities they get can change significantly.