Dark period products

Introduction

How can you do the dark period and still not sit in complete darkness?

This lesson’s topics will be on products that can help you remain in the dark period; at the same time, these products can help you take part in more engaging activities.

• It is most important to avoid blue and green light.
• Red light meanwhile has a much smaller effect on melatonin levels.
• All these products work best if you also limit the total amount of light; however, that will be for future lessons in this course.

We will go over two main approaches to avoid blue lights here.

Glasses

You should examine your personal situation to determine which glasses to buy to maintain healthy melatonin levels. Linked here will be glasses from each corresponding color category. You can purchase them to meet the requirements for the color filtering. Please note that all links below are affiliate links that will give us commissions.

• Once again, you should use the pair with the highest number that doesn’t extend beyond your melatonin suppression boundary. By doing this, you will ensure that your adaptation goes as smoothly as possible.
• Additionally, you should get a pair of glasses with either the “1” or “2” strengths for unforeseen circumstances; these would otherwise suppress your melatonin levels more than necessary.
  

“1” glasses

 

“2” glasses

“3” glasses

“4” glasses

Alternative 1

Alternative 2

“5” glasses

“6” glasses

“7” glasses

“8” glasses

Another option

A different option that works is using extremely dark sunglasses when combined with limiting the overall light. For this though, your standard tourist shop lenses will not do the job well.

Here is a pair of Julbo Vermont Glacier glasses; these are category 4 lenses with less than 5% light transmission.

• The lenses are also a bit tinted, which reduces blue lights a bit more.
• If you have already gotten them, sure! Otherwise, getting some red glasses is a lot cheaper and still more effective.
• If you do not feel like putting stuff on your face, you could also try to limit blue light the other way around. Instead of filtering, change the emitter.

Light bulbs

Red LED’s are suitable for this.

• If you don’t feel like living in a cyberpunk home the rest of the day though, I recommend an RGB or RGBW bulb instead; the simple ones can be pretty cheap. However, if you are willing to spend a bit more, they can also come with smart features.
• Auto-transitioning to red, anyone? Note that changing the bulb does not help if you then view a screen. Thus, it is mostly useful if you do household tasks during the dark period.