Installing lighting at 30,000 lumens will help with winter depression

With the onset of autumn and winter, when it begins to get dark early, many people suffer from SAD , a seasonal affective disorder, also known as “winter depression”. Simply put, in the dark, many people show melancholy, it becomes difficult to work effectively.

One of the treatments for SAD is bright light treatment, phototherapy . Phototherapy has proven clinical efficacy in the treatment of SAD. But the lamps should be really bright.

David Chapman, author of Meaningness, is convinced that the brightness of commercial phototherapy equipment - a maximum of 10,000 lumens - is not enough, the effect is too weak. Therefore, he assembled his own light installation with a brightness three times as much:30,000 lumens , which turned out to be more effective, at least for David himself.

The author mentions tricks used by manufacturers of commercial phototherapy products. They say their products provide a brightness of 10,000 lux. Lumen is the brightness of the light source itself, and lux is the illumination directly on the illuminated area. Naturally, these are different characteristics that differ from each other. Clinical trials that proved the effectiveness of phototherapy were carried out at an illumination of 10,000 lux, but an installation with a brightness of 10,000 lumens can only theoretically provide an illumination of 10,000 lux if it is placed almost a few centimeters from the illuminated surface. So manufacturers' statements have nothing to do with reality.

For a home-made super-bright luminaire, Devil Champen took three LED corn lamps with 10,000 lumens each.



He found such on Amazon for $ 146 each, although in Chinese stores, most likely, you can buy much cheaper. But the calculation shows that the ratio of lumen to dollar is the most profitable in these lamps.



Lamps are made under the E40 connector, such cartridges are sold separately .



If you have experience in wood, then you can assemble a suitable table in a few hours.

30,000 lumens is the equivalent of 1800 watts of conventional incandescent bulbs or 1500 watts of halogen. The illumination of the workplace depends on the distance to the lamp, the closer - the better. If you place it in a meter, then at your table it will be light as in the afternoon in sunlight.

David Chapman says that such a powerful lamp completely normalized the brain and saved him from seasonal affective disorder: within a week he became "energetic, fun and capable of complex mental activity."

Wikipedia article on phototherapy (also helps with sleep cycle disorders), side effects may occur.