As LED lights have become increasingly popular, concerns have risen that they could be harmful to your health. While LED technology offers energy efficiency and longer-lasting bulbs, recent research suggests that exposure to LED lights may suppress melatonin production and potentially cause damage to the retina of the eye. This article will explore the potential health risks associated with LED lighting, focusing on the effects on melatonin and the retina.
Why LED lights could be harmful to your health
Melatonin suppression
Melatonin is a hormone produced by the brain’s pineal gland. It plays a crucial role in regulating the body’s sleep-wake cycle, helping us fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. Exposure to light, particularly blue light, suppresses melatonin production, signaling to our bodies that it is time to be awake and alert.
LED lights emit significant blue light, especially those with a high color temperature. This blue light exposure can interfere with our natural sleep patterns by suppressing melatonin production, leading to sleep disturbances, insomnia, and overall poor sleep quality. Sleep is essential for overall health and well-being, so this disruption can have wide-ranging effects on mental and physical health.
Retinal damage
In addition to the potential impact on melatonin production, LED lights may also pose a risk to the health of our eyes. Studies have suggested that prolonged exposure to blue light emitted by LED lights can cause damage to the retina, the light-sensitive layer of cells at the back of the eye that convert light into signals that the brain can interpret as images.
The blue light emitted by LED lights has a shorter wavelength and higher energy than other types of visible light. This high-energy blue light can cause oxidative stress on the retinal cells, leading to cell damage and, in some cases, cell death. Over time, this damage can accumulate, increasing the risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss in older adults.
Recommendations for reducing exposure
Experts recommend several strategies to reduce exposure to blue light to mitigate the potential health risks associated with LED lights. These include:
- Choose LED lights with lower color temperatures: LED lights are available in various color temperatures, measured in Kelvins (K). Lower color temperature LED lights emit less blue light, reducing the potential for melatonin suppression and retinal damage. Look for LED lights with a color temperature of 3,000 K or lower (best at around 2,400) for indoor use.
- Limit exposure to LED screens at night: As LED screens on devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers also emit blue light, limiting exposure to these screens in the evening can help reduce melatonin suppression. Consider using apps that reduce blue light emissions on your devices or set your devices to “night mode” in the evening.
- Use dimmers and timers on LED lights: Dimming LED lights or using timers to turn them off in the evening can help reduce exposure to blue light and promote healthy melatonin production.
- Protect your eyes: If you work in an environment with high levels of blue light exposure, consider wearing blue light-blocking glasses to help protect your eyes from potential retinal damage.
While LED lights offer some benefits in terms of energy efficiency and service life, there is a significant downside to their wide and increasing use.
Next week, I’ll bring you an article about creating a warm and comfortable camp ambiance using incandescent lighting and gas lamps inside and outside your RV. Stay tuned.
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Thanks, Randall! I think I saw this elsewhere recently. Thank you for making sure it got to RV Travels’ readers also. Certainly interesting and helpful information. DW routinely has trouble falling asleep and sleeping through the night. Hopefully this information can be used to improve her chances of falling asleep and sleeping longer. Thanks again!
Thank you, Randall!
Might want to check out the f.lux app which is free and will automatically control the amount of blue light from your computer screen and reduce it after the sun goes down. Supposed to keep the screen from limiting your melatonin production and make it easier to go to sleep after using your computer. Here’s the download link:
https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/3675/f-lux-beta-for-windows
Thanks, Bob. That link appears to go to an old forum page. Here’s a link that goes to their current home page, I think (I don’t see any date on it): https://justgetflux.com/ Have a good night. 😀 –Diane at RVtravel.com
When I had persistent fatigue/insomnia, I researched natural sleep/healing aids. Harp music has been demonstrated to stimulate the immune system (the research is at least a decade old, no longer at my fingertips) Sounds like waves, windchimes, and bells are also healing. To sleep I went to Google wave sounds no music youtube and found a variety of videos from 1/2 to 8 hrs long. DH professed to be unbothered by the noise so I used it for nights x 2 months. A side effect was that I would drop off to sleep almost too easily, sometimes when I didn’t want to. Now only use it once or twice a month, if that.
What is Harp Therapy? – Harp Therapy Journal
Healing powers of the harp | VMCH
Sounds like a win/win for you both.
Living life is dangerous to your health
I think if you don’t stare up into your LED lights for hours on end you should be fine. Take everything ‘studies show’ with a grain of salt.
I’m going to start a movement. Bring back internal combustion engines, gas stoves and furnaces, incandescent lights, and everything else our politicians have yanked from us – to save us and the planet. Just sayin’.
I’ll join up with you Tommy!
I’ll join!
Tommy, do you have any recruiting posters? I’ll help distribute them!
DITTO!
I agree.
Yep!!
As a 40y lighting professional,
There’s more blue light in typical daylight than any interior LED. Oh, fluorescents have the same issue. There’s more likely damage from screen time than either.
Go outside!
Nice to see the red hat brigade out here in the comments, spreading baloney.
The DHS and CDC recently revised the food pyramid to include 7 portions of sugary cereal, breads and grains per day as the foundation for healthy eating and also listed Fruit Loops as a good source of those grains in the cereal category. Strangely, some of us felt like the General Mills and POST must have been working together to write the new pyramid and guidelines. Oops, we were right again. Turns out they were behind the “science” presented to and then from, the DHS and CDC. Darn those Red Hatters.
Its Just SAD What Is Being Done (By Design + By The Alphabet Agencys) To Americans…
This article is meaningless without links to the supporting research studies.
Factual reporting means citing references.
Exactly. That RVers are probably out in natural sunlight more than other people renders the melatonin issue moot.
Another idea by a politician to do away with incandescent lights to save the planet that’s gone awry, politicians and scientists will ruin the world. Politicians because they come up with a stupid idea and never consider the “What if’s” of their idea, scientist’s because they get paid on grants and they have to show something for the grant money they’ve received. I always think of the scientist back in the 70’s who studied the harmful effects of saccharine, then the only artificial sweetener, that concluded saccharine caused cancer in rats. Then another scientist refuted that by saying if we drink as much saccharine as he fed his rats we definitely would get cancer. It turned out we would have to drink 815 cans of diet soda per day to get the same dose of saccharine he fed to his rats. Lol. So anytime I see a scientific study I question the validity of the study. After all everyone isn’t a standup honest citizen. Some would rather climb a 50’ pole to tell a lie than tell the truth. Lol
Agree
Your understanding of the scientific process needs help.
Large doses are used to short time requirements. Duplicate studies are used to verify results.
And headline writers exaggerate to sell!
It’s pretty tough to trust health releated science or health studies lately, for a lot of people. I’m not sure why, unless of course it has something to do with having been told for 2 years, that the previous 200 years of research and lived reality, related to natural immunity of viruses disappeared without reason. That a novel virus whos exposure ito humans offered no naturally occurring immune response in humans, unlike every other virus in the studied history of viruses.
Sorry a few people are skeptical.
Natural immunity only occurs after you have been exposed to the new virus, and survive. The initial spread of Covid resulted in an unusually high number of deaths, much higher among older people. The (over)reaction was due to the lack of ability among the politicians to synthesize the scientific and geographic information into understandable, reasonable, and consistent policies.
Your exactly right on the first sentence. Thank you for making my point.
If you feel better making an excuse for 2 years of lies that NO natural immunity existed, good for you. “Pandemic of the unvacinated ring a bell”? A lie.
Millions of people with natural immunity forced to take injections or lose your job.
Thanks again for making my point. Your a pal and especially for hiding behind children to protect yourself. You know, the little tykes that lost a lifetime of learning to protect their teachers. In the old days, kids hid behind teachers. Grownups took on a little extra risk for the sake of protecting our youth. This is the same group that can’t define a woman. Who’s the science deniers?
Ooooo Cancelproof! You are my daddy! LOL
Outstanding! Well Stated…
Some reference citations to these studies would have been very helpful.
Just remember eggs: they were bad for us, then they were good for us, then they were bad for us, then…
Studies are done by flawed and biased humans. It’s prudent to keep this study in mind, but I’m sure we will see more studies that will come up with different conclusions, if that hasn’t already happened.
Yeah, kinda makes you wonder about El Presidente’s big announcement the other day that he’s going to sign a bill to outlaw incandescent lights. Compact fluorescents, as in the photo, have their own environmental problems, so I guess we just lose, huh? Nice to know our gov’t. has our backs.
The “bulb” shown in the opening photo for this article isn’t a LED bulb, it’s a CFL (Compact Fluorescent). Also it has a 120 volt household screw base, so would not be the type of bulb used in any RV, which are almost exclusively 12 volt based in regard to lighting. This misrepresentation immediately created a sense of skepticism before I even read one word of your article. However, by no means new information (smart phones I’ve owned since about 2016 have had blue light filters), I do believe your article is generally accurate. Although, the title smacks of sensationalism. *Any* shorter wavelength intense “blue” light could be harmful, it isn’t necessarily limited to LED’s. Personally, I have always found the high color temperature bulbs (like cool white LED and florescent) to be very harsh on the eyes and unpleasant. Perhaps RV builders should be implored upon to standardize with warm white LED fixtures that can be dimmed.
All very interesting. One big problem. With all the hoopla about saving energy, people are being brainwashed into using LED’s without being told the risks.
Also, the picture of the light in the article is not an LED. It’s a compact fluorescent. I still have a couple of these in my basement.
All I see is a lamp shade.
Where’s this research about LED light being harmful? It would be helpful if the article pointed to the source of these claims. All I see is a link to a WebMD article about blue light, which is not specific to LED lights.