I’m still alive!

Well, it’s five years on, and I’m still using darkness therapy to keep to a 24 hour sleep pattern.  My sleep quality varies, as it always will for someone with ME/CFS, but being able to keep to a good bedtime is something I’m profoundly grateful for.  Chronic pain is a bigger part of my life these days, and for one reason or another I don’t have any pain medication I can use at night, so sometimes that’s a factor in my sleep problems.  I also turned out to be anaemic, something I only realised after developing Restless Leg Syndrome.  It’s always advisable for people with RLS to get their ferritin levels checked, and if their ferritin is below 75 (which is higher than the NHS reference range for preventing anaemia), to get it treated.  Thankfully the iron supplements cleared the RLS right up.

In other changes, I broke up with my former partner three years ago, and am about to celebrate my second anniversary with my lovely current partner.  He came with a ridiculous and adorable cat whom I am equally devoted to.  I could happily blether on about the pair of them for some time, but to stick to the subject of this site, this does affect my darkness therapy routine in a few ways.

First of all, he actually likes using coloured light in the evening, he finds it relaxing, so we have a variety of coloured bulbs scattered about our two flats.  I’ve been using incandescents so far, but have started to experiment with fluorescents and have a colour-changing LED bulb on the way.   That string of red LED lights  which I never knew what to do with has finally found a home, taped up under my kitchen cabinets with a timer on.  It’s easily enough light for coming into the kitchen at night to get a glass of water, and you could even wash up by it.  String lights seem to fare best when set out in a long row.  I had tried just bundling them together to give an impression of a single lamp, but it wasn’t much use, and having them out in a row as they’re meant to be somehow seems to give off far more light.  LED bulbs are so low-wattage that I don’t mind just leaving them on overnight every night, even when I’m not there.

Secondly, he’s quite fond of the dawn simulator for when he has to get up for work, and prefers to have a fair amount of light coming through the window to help him wake up.  So the blackout curtain linings are off, and I am using a sleep mask instead.  The curtains do look nicer with light shining through them, especially if you need to draw them in the daytime for privacy.

With regard to the cat, I need enough light around the place for when her ladyship decides that she wants to rush around as if her tail were on fire just when we’re settling into bed for the night.  She has dedicated spots where she likes to roll onto her back and knock seven bells out of a wrestling toy I wave around for her, but she can dash around anywhere, really.  The red lights in my kitchen aren’t quite enough, since she’s very fond of hiding under the dining table, and she’s a small black cat to boot.  I’m thinking about the options for lighting that part of the flat better at night without having to turn on the overhead white lights.  Also there’s a nightlight by the litter box in my partner’s flat now, as you really don’t want to step in that when blearily wobbling to the loo in the middle of the night.

LED lighting has come quite a long way since I was last blogging, and there are some amazing things I’m longing to try.  There’s more interest in ways of avoiding blue light in the evening too, although it rarely translates to popular products on the market.  I have various shiny new things to review, and a few more on the way.

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Tags: avoiding blue light, cats, Colour, Dark room, Dark therapy, Darkness therapy, LED lighting, Non-24 sleep wake disorder

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