But I'm wondering how different ... out the bulbs on some existing light fixtures in the house. Anyone here living in more northern latitudes using full spectrum lighting? If so, what are you actually using? ... texasdiver wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2017 12:01 pm Since moving from sunny Texas to the darker cloudier and more northern Pacific Northwest my wife has suggested that we look into installing some full spectrum lighting in the house to combat seasonal affective disorder (SAD)... More on bogleheads.org

Ah, something I'm unfortunately an expert at! Skip to point 3 if you just want to read about the light, I'm pasting in something I wrote on a different thread. I have suffered from really dramatic SAD for years (Minnesota) and have finally got a handle on it. For me, it revolves around 3 categories: Exercise, Vitamin D, and Light. Especially blue light. Also, I didn't realize until I started really digging into it how poorly researched SAD is. . . Exercise: The "easiest" one. Getting your heart rate up once a day appears to be very effective in combating depression generally, and seasonal depression specifically. Being a ginormous nerd, I bought a smart trainer to strap my bike into, and cycle fast for 30 minutes every morning through virtual lava fields in Zwift. https://zwift.com/ It definitely seems to help, and I'm no longer 'foggy' in the morning, but I'm still having issues fitting it into my schedule. . . it probably takes 45 minutes more in the morning, total, to fit this in. . . Vitamin D: My entire family is known to be chronically deficient in Vitamin D, so I supplemented with the suggested dose of 2,000 IU a day for the last year. While getting a blood-test for an unrelated reason, I asked if the doctor could also check my Vitamin D levels, and they were hysterically low, ~14 nmol/L. Normal levels are around 85, and anything below 30 is deficient. With this new knowledge I started dosing with 25,000 iu a day, and noticed an immediate improvement in my mood. I've considered really cranking this up as there seems to be no documented negatives from too much vitamin D (if you drink adequate water, at least) but 25K seems to be working for me. Light: The tricky one. . . I had a standard "10,000 Lux!" light box that was a hand-me-down from someone who hadn't found it effective. . . I didn't find it effective either. Some research showed that these were only rated at 10,000 lux when you were 8 inches from the light and looking at it. That's not going to happen. This model made no difference at all. Looking around for a DIY solution with many more lumens, I ran across this blog: https://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-lumens and https://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-led-lux This seemed like a good way to go: find the maximum lumens per dollar possible and spend what I could justify. Out came the spreadsheet, and at 183 lumens per dollar, this LED floodlight won the prize: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KFVFQFW . I was thinking of getting 2 or 3, but I've only gotten one so far as a trial. It is SO BRIGHT. I'm intending to mount this over my bike trainer to get a blast of light while exercising. . . Blue light is king, apparently. . . a fairly narrow band of blue (Lower than 540nm) controls the circadian rhythm. In an effort to get enough of the blue wavelength, I tried having a very bright white light at my desk at work. This was ridiculously over-bright, led to a lot of eye-strain, and seemed to have only nominal effectiveness. To try to deal with the 'blue issue' I was going to do two things: Wear blue-blocking glasses every night starting 90 minutes before bed. Richard actually got me turned on to these, and they seem to work really well: https://www.amazon.com/Uvex-Blocking-Computer-SCT-Orange-S1933X/dp/B000USRG90 Wire up some LED's in the specific blue wavelength to use at my desk at work. However, I happened to find an (overly expensive) ready to go solution to this from Phillips: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M3SGCUE This sits on my desk just below my monitor and beams JUST blue light into my face, within my field of vision. I can comfortably have this on for several hours in the morning, and it seems to make a huge difference. I think. The light and the glasses seem to agree, as wearing the glasses makes the light very nearly disappear. . . TL;DR: Use a LOT of blue light in the morning, block blue light late at night. More on reddit.com

You need a full-spectrum lamp with the right blue wavelengths, and it needs to be at least 10,000 lux in brightness. You want the wavelengths to be rich in the 460nm to 520nm range. You aren't going to find this in a single bulb, but you will in a single fixture. Color temperature is not important for this, but for the right wavelengths you're going to find they're all slightly bluish -- which is what you want. That, or a brilliant white like daylight. Philips makes a number of units. If you're going with LED you may note some of the blue-rich units (with blue LEDs) list their lux values in "scotopic" units. You would do well to ensure they have data supporting the effectiveness of their units. To their credit, Philips has a fair amount of research going on in this area. If you have medical insurance - see if you can get them to pay for it. If you've never been evaluated by a physician who specializes in sleep medicine, I highly recommend it. Personally, I use a big box with a prismatic reflector and (2) 24" long biax full-spectrum fluorescent tubes. ( Like this one ) I prefer it to LED because I can just replace the lamps if any burn out. Many of the LED units will only last 10,000 hours.. (although, who knows about their drivers..) which is a long time, I'll grant you, as that works out to over 50 years of use :) references: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/11/17 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032711004885 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0447.2009.01345.x/abstract More on reddit.com

This is amazing data! Great work! I'm curious, I had purchased the Luminette Glasses a few years ago when I first listened to Huberman. Do you have any data or opinions on how good they are? Specifically these ones: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VMRRB9Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 More on reddit.com