Bright Idea: Sunlight helps Dementia and Alzheimer's Patients

Researchers from Case Western Reserve's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and the School of Medicine, the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center (GRECC), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center and General Electric (GE) Consumer and Industrial found that Alzheimer’s and dementia patients exposed to sunlight type lighting or actual sunlight actually improves their moods.  The scientists theorized that period’s daylight can help regulate the sleep-wake rhythm by normalizing the body's secretion of the hormone melatonin. Depending on the level of the hormone, people are sleepy or awake and alert. The researchers want to see if they can regulate the sleep-wake cycle by controlling the amount of exposure to blue-white light to spur alertness during the day and exposure to yellow-white light to boost sound sleep at night.  Changing the light source could be especially beneficial to the countless people in long-term care facilities who suffer from dementia.  Memory loss and Alzheimer’s are such a tragic disease and any non-invasive way to help these patients would be huge.

"We wanted to see whether lighting could affect the participants' sleep-wake rhythms. While the group was small, the results show promise in raising activity levels during daytime hours and increasing sleep at nighttime," Patricia Higgins, associate professor at the Bolton School of Nursing and one of the lead investigators, said in a statement to the media.

This study is just one in a growing number of common sense studies I’ve seen gain momentum and this just makes sense that people will be in better spirits if they can feel the sunshine on their face.  Also, that will give the body the added vitamin-D boost it needs which deficiencies in that vitamin have been linked to dementia.

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