The Health and Design Benefits of Accessing Daylight and Views with Dynamic Glass

A closer look at how electrochromic glass provides healthy, productive, and controlled daylight exposure without compromising energy performance
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Sponsored by SageGlass
Jeanette Fitzgerald Pitts
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Daylight Impacts Human Health

Studies now prove that the human body is uniquely attuned to the ever-changing presence, and absence, of daylight, and that daylight exposure at the right time of day, or lack thereof, significantly impacts the functioning of a number of important internal processes called circadian rhythms.

Circadian rhythms play a large part in regulating hormone release and body temperature. They govern sleep/wake cycles and affect the body’s blood pressure, mood, metabolism, reproduction, and immune response. Disrupted circadian rhythms can manifest feelings of grogginess and disorientation, and the general state of malaise commonly referred to as jet lag that people experience when traveling across time zones.

Daylight is a drug that effectively entrains and resets the body’s clock to the 24-hour cycle and, as Deborah Burnett, co-founder of the Benya Burnett Consultancy, says, “Nature is the dispensing physician,” providing the right type of daylight (color), in the right dose (intensity), at the right time of day.

Circadian rhythms respond primarily to the availability of light and dark in the immediate environment. They are also affected by the changes in the color spectrum of daylight. In fact, the visible light measuring between 460 and 500nm (blue) has been shown to be a powerful regulator of the circadian response in humans and has been termed circadian blue light.

Exposure to morning daylight, which has a higher blue component, increases cortisol levels to combat stress, serotonin levels to provide impulse control, and dopamine levels to increase alertness. The absence of light in the evening encourages the body to produce melatonin to aid sleep, and supports other functions geared toward lowering blood pressure and regulating metabolic and repair processes. Untimely exposure to intense light, especially blue light, in the evening can disturb the body’s circadian rhythms and cause important internal processes to be disrupted, which could cause serious health concerns. LCD screens that emit blue light can be especially problematic, and there are now applications (apps) available for phones and laptops to suppress blue light emission in order to reduce the probability of circadian rhythm disruption when these devices are used at night.

 

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Originally published in Architectural Record
Originally published in December 2015

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