Phillips GoLite BLU, and How to Use It.

A few weeks ago, when I was particularly frustrated my life revolving around my sun lamp (oh I do crack myself up sometimes), my partner got me a Phillips GoLite BLU Plus.  It's battery rechargeable, has a clock and a timer ... generally more portable and convenient than my sunlamp.

The point: Follow the directions.  If you have trouble falling asleep at night, use it in the morning.  If you have trouble staying up at night, use it in the afternoon.
 
I decided to ignore the directions.  I figured that since my mood slumps between 4 and 8 pm, that's the time I should use the blue light.  It helped, insofar as it freed me up from my desk long enough to lift weights, do my SPCA shift, make dinner, that sort of thing. 

I now think that  using it in the afternoon was perhaps ... unwise.

Blue light is a tricky thing.  It can help with seasonal depression, but it's not necessarily a good thing for bipolar disorder (and whatever my disorder "really" is, it acts a lot like bipolar in some ways).  Folks with bipolar can be tipped into hypomania or mania if they get too much blue light.  For that matter, anyone using too much light therapy can experience headaches, nausea, and irritability.

And if you use it too late in the afternoon, you'll have trouble falling asleep.  Remember my delayed sleep phase?  Course you do.  I emphatically do not need help staying awake at night.

The upshot is that yesterday I used the damn thing for an hour in the morning.  This morning I woke up on my own at eight frakking thirty  Yeah.  8:30.  Me.

I had a bit of trouble falling asleep last night, but when I slept I slept well.  The sleep issue could well be due to the Adderall I took in the morning to alleviate my crazy mood.  I'm writing in front of it right now, so we'll see how it goes in the coming days.

I wrote yesterday about my mood lability over the past few weeks.  My pdoc and I had tried to address it with an Adderall booster in the afternoon -- it made my afternoon depression go away, but it also messed with my sleep.  Then I tried taking the Adderall booster in the morning.  It still helped, but not as much, and it still messed with my sleep.