Talk:Light effects on circadian rhythm

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Vhensey.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Measurement

Per comment from Looie that the "measurement" section is "simply advertising and doesn't belong unless the tool achieves significant secondary coverage in the literature"

I disagree. This information has been published in numerous peer review journals, including:

• Rea MS, Bierman A, Figueiro MG, Bullough JD. 2008. A New Approach to Understanding the Impact of Circadian Disruption on Human Health. Journal of Circadian Rhythms, 6:7 (29 May 2008). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430544/

• Bierman A, Klein T, Rea M. 2005. The Daysimeter: A Device for Measuring Optical Radiation as a Stimulus for the Human Circadian System. Measurement Science and Technology, 16:2292 (4 October 2005). http://iopscience.iop.org/0957-0233/16/11/023/pdf?ejredirect=.iopscience

• Figueiro MG, Bierman A, Bullough JD, Rea MS. 2009. A personal light-treatment device for possibly improving sleep quality in the elderly: Dynamics of nocturnal melatonin suppression at two exposure levels. Chronobiology International. 26(4):726-739.

This information has also been covered in non-educational journals, including:

• MedGadget: http://medgadget.com/archives/2008/07/daysimeter_helps_to_study_lights_effects.html
• Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=wireless-light-device
• AARP: http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourhealth/diseases/articles/the_promise_of_a_good_night_s_sleep.html

Furthermore, Eva S. Schernhammer, MD, DrPH from Harvard Medical School is using this device in her studies. I'll try to find the exact published articles she has in which she has utilized this device. http://www.channing.harvard.edu/schernhammer.htm

I am going to repost the measurement section citing all the above sources unless 3 peer-reviewed sources and three+ outside references.

I will also include information about the Dosimeter, which is another light measurement device. Sherazade96 (talk) 19:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

[The above unsigned comment was added by Sherazade96. A section heading has been added, as it was missing.]

The three articles cited are by the team that designed the instrument. It is too early for this to appear in Wikipedia. When the instrument has been used by others and independently reviewed it may be mentioned in an inclusive section on measurement based on independent reviews. Anthony (talk) 17:49, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think that the brand-name device should be mentioned at all in Wikipedia, unless it is unique and gets a lot of 3rd party attention. Descriptions of what it does can be included without mentioning brand names (see for example Actigraphy). See also the discussion about advertising masquerading as articles at Wikipedia:Spam. - Hordaland (talk) 19:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Driving home last night I heard a discussion about this product on Australia Radio National (serious, non-commercial public broadcaster). The comment was that it is very promising. Just too early for Wikipedia with our content constraints. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources. It will get coverage in the secondary literature soon. Repost the information then. Your (excellent) work will be saved in the article's history until then. Anthony (talk) 10:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

An outside scientist is using this device. Patricia Higgins from Case Western Reserve University School of Nursing. Her article "Older adults' rest-activity and light exposure patterns in the home setting: a methodological case study" has been approved for publication in the American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease & Other Dementias and is currently in press. Sherazade96 (talk) 18:37, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Unreadable

This article is a prime example of a failure to K.I.S.S. While it would be nice if all readers have a college level eduction... Please, PLEASE, simplify the language (or at least add links for language which may be higher order). 2602:306:30E6:29:4530:4BDD:5205:D154 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 05:27, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I do see what you mean. Just for fun I plugged this article into a readability tool, and found that (only) 25% of Wikipedia's articles are harder to read than this one. Well, that's not toooo bad. Then I entered just the first section (the lead) of the article into the tool and found that, of its 105 words and 4 sentences, only 4% of the articles on Wikipedia are harder to read than this one. Ooops.

Our circadian rhythms are complicated, but the first section of any article should not be that hard to read. I'll try to make that section a bit easier to read. --Hordaland (talk) 11:34, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

OK, I've edited a bit. Now the result for the lead (the first paragraph) is that 30% of Wikipedia's articles are harder to read than my 106 words and 8 sentences. That should be better than the 4%. Hope this improvement helps. --Hordaland (talk) 12:58, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Worked a little bit on the rest of the article. The whole article's readability is now: 32% of the articles on Wikipedia are harder to read than this one. That's a little better than the previous 25%. --Hordaland (talk) 13:43, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

(Un)necessary information?

Is the information in the "Internal regulators" section of this piece really appropriate for encyclopedic writing? The three points provided seem a bit random, and are not approachable for a non-technical audience. Please consider revision of this section.

Vhensey (talk) 00:33, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree and have deleted that section. Other parts of the article also could use improvement, though. Looie496 (talk) 13:35, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

What is Nature's Rhythm?

"The human circadian rhythm occurs typically in accordance with nature's cycle"

This isn't specified and to someone not knowledgeable in this field, (me), it sounds pretty vague and perhaps unsupported by evidence. Is it a real thing?Kurtdriver (talk) 14:29, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

What is relevant: e.g. sunrise, noon, sunset?

As I see it, the article at this point in time is missing a very fundamental point. Let me illustrate it with an example: if somebody is living in the tropics (where the days have essentially always the same length), everything is fine. But for a person in, let's say, Iceland, where the summer days are practically 24 h, how would the circadian rhythm of the average person (in the absence of civilizatory effects) lock in? Would it stay fixed to noon time, that is, to the clock time, or would it follow rather sunrise or sunset (or anything in between)? From personal experience I would think that sunrise is the more important effect -- to me it feels natural to get up at or a bit after sunrise. Thus, for optimal correspondence between natural and civilizatory rhythms, they would need much more drastic daylight savings time. All there is now in the article is "exposure to light soon after wakening advances the circadian rhythm, whereas exposure before sleeping delays the rhythm", but which of the two is more important? The fact that daylight savings time exists at all and globally follows sunrise instead of sunset seems to argue for my point. But surely there is research on that point, I would hope. Seattle Jörg (talk) 07:54, 23 February 2022 (UTC)