Health:Bright light therapy may help fatigued cancer survivors sleep better/Story: 7-9

Lorenzo's Health Corner: Bright light therapy may help fatigued cancer survivors sleep better “Cancer survivors often suffer from chronic fatigue, and when they do, a new study suggests that waking up to bright white light may help them sleep better.   For the month-long study, researchers had 44 cancer survivors sit very close to a light box early every morning for 30 minutes. The patients were randomly assigned to therapy with either bright white light or dim red light.   More than half of the participants suffered from what’s known as poor sleep efficiency, a measure of how much time in bed people spend asleep. After a month of treatment, however, 86 percent of the people exposed to bright white light had normal sleep efficiency, while 79 percent of the people exposed to dim bright light still had poor sleep efficiency.   It’s possible that the bright white light helps cancer survivors reset their internal clocks, or circadian rhythms, so that their body can more easily rest at night and wake during the day, said study leader Lisa Wu of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.”   By Lisa Rapaport https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-cancer-sleep/bright-light-therapy-may-help-fatigued-cancer-survivors-sleep-better-idUSKBN1FF2QY   Story: Fanny K. Stein Mad Scientist: The Fran with Four Brains 7-9. By Jim Benton