# Flourescent lighting: any coping mechanisms? why it happens?



## qbsbrown (Aug 18, 2004)

I know i've seen this everywhere, that many have problems with them. What are some speculations? This surely isn't a coincedence. Anxiety related, eye/brain related, neurological problem.
Do others get much eye tension, dryness?

Anyway, any good coping mechanisms out there? Other than avoidance and putting a big hat on?

I've noticed that if im on my cell before going into the store, and im engaged in the conversation, i don't notice it. that would point to anxiety, correct?


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## Monkeydust (Jan 12, 2005)

I've never seen the issues with fluorescent lights, but I at least used to get bad eye pain - and still do, usually, in fact, when the DP/DR's not so bad.

I got told it was migraine headaches before, I knew that was never the case. It felt much more like a dryness, as you say, although my eyes were never physically dry, nor did eye drops really help.


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2005)

My brain used to feel like it was buzzing around fluorescent lights. Eventually this sensation just stopped. I know that probably doesn't help you.


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## [rula] (Jan 16, 2005)

my entire office complains about fluorescent lighting, even normal people can dissociate from it. our only coping technique is to turn off the lights, 'till the boss turns 'em back on. yea, that didn't help you either. :wink:


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## jft (Jan 10, 2005)

This is right on top as my numero uno symptom of dp/dr in terms of limitations. I had to drop out of grad school (before I really got started) becasue of it and have had to work outdoors my whole life due to my inability to function in an office or even a warehouse setting. I have quit two professional jobs because of it. What happens is that I immediately get very lethargic, spacey and zombie like while under these lights. I can't concentrate, my vision gets blurred and static like and all in all I jsut feel a need to get the hell out of there.

I truly wish I knew the reason for this. I am yet to hear a definitive answer. One reason told to me was that this light offers too much stimualtion at a time when our defenses..due to anxiety...are in full gear and we cannot handle it...or something like that. My question is why then can I be the calmest dude in the world with not a dp/dr symtpom in my body at the time and walk into a library and 5 minutes later I am a basket case.

It is not jsut flourescents for me, incandescent does it as well...but not as much.

What is interesting about reading under artificial lighting is that yes things seem too bright etc. but the major problem is the inability to have the words"stick" on my brain when I am symptomatic from the lights. Not a visual problem there..but something else.

I cannot even play a game of whist with my family at the kitchen table in the evenings. Figure.

Some people have mentioned full spectrum lighting as helpful, but it never worked for me. It would indeed help to know what is the issue, what causes this, in order to know what to do. I know anxiety is not THE issue for me...or at least it seems...but it is the lights. I hope someone can help answer this, even if they have been over it a thousand times. Maybe even someone should make their answer a sticky.
jft


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## kenc127 (Aug 10, 2004)

sneak in the office in the middle of the night and replace them with incandescents =D There is really nothing you can do except not pay attention to it. Good luck...
Ken


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2005)

I got your PM on this topic, but thought I'd answer here as you had posted.

I had an awful time with those damn lights....they alone were the Final Straw for me when I had to quit college less than a month into the first semester (on scholarship, too, and had to just let it waft away)

I would sit in my French class...there were no windows and those damn flurescent lights made everything look so surreal, I couldn't tell if I was dreaming or if the people in the room were real. Horrible thoughts came to mind...very unreal, very creepy....I felt like i was in hell (that's how we'll know at the End...if it's filled with flurescent lighting, we didnt' make it, grin)

I haven't read anything intelligent on the WHy behind this oddness...but my hunch is this: there is a "blue" quality to those lights, along the spectrum, that is also used to induce anxiety in people - films use it, horror flicks, etc. The "deadness" of the flurescents, casts odd shadows, etc...the lighting is very UNlife-like is something that strikes our mind as "omminous"

If that anxiety-producing quality is increased along with the "Surreal" look that is a hallmark of dp fears anyway, that might account for it. But it's pure speculation. I have NO problem with them now. I don't prefer them, find them not warm, etc....but have no anxiety response anymore.

My only TIP (that worked a bit) was to wear slightly tinted sunglasses. That gave the room a "warmer" effect, plus it let me take them off and put them back on, to CHANGE the way the room looked at will


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## Homeskooled (Aug 10, 2004)

Dear qbsbrown, 
I had this symptom, too, and I'm going to venture a guess based on a study done on DPed people. PET studies were done of the brains of several DPed people by, I believe, Daphne Simeon, a couple of years ago. They seemed to show "hyperperfusion" or too much activity in DPed and DRed patient's parietal lobes. This is the second most important area of the brain in processing vision. First your visual images go to your occipital lobe in the back of your head, then the flat image travels to the parietal lobe where spatial recognition occurs, the awareness of your body's position in this space, and finally 3 dimensional vision. If this area is over or under excited, you may either lose your 3 dimensional vision, and get the flat "DR" look, or you may experience a stimulation overload from bright colors or lights. The particular properties of fluorescent lights make your brain's neurons very vulnerable to overstimulation. When a neuroligist does an EEG, fluorescent lights are often used to induce a semi-seizure, because they have this peculiar quality. Television also can induce seizures pretty easily, and I'll venture a guess that most people on here feel worse for being on the computer or television for long periods of time. I'll eventually get this all down in a DP paper I'm writing. Unfortunately, I sent an email to Daphne Simeon for input, and still no reply. I'm afraid that she may not be as up to date with neurologic developments as I once thought. Irregardless, using sunglasses seems to be pretty good advice, and I would think that an anticonvulsant might help as well. Eventually, however, it may subside on its own. Neuroligists have also found that low-grade seizure activity will respond to coping techniques used for anxiety, so thats a thought as well.

Peace
Homeskooled


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## jft (Jan 10, 2005)

Homeskooled...thanks for that post. Best sense maker I have seen. It would explain why the lights get the whole thing going (extreme symptoms).
Are you going to post your paper on dp when finished? I would love to have a peak at it.
God, someday before I hit the pearly gates I hope to fully understand this stuff and see treatment come to fruition.
Thanks again.
jft


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## [rula] (Jan 16, 2005)

Homeskooled said:


> Unfortunately, I sent an email to Daphne Simeon for input, and still no reply. I'm afraid that she may not be as up to date with neurologic developments as I once thought.


She seems reluctant to volunteer any info over email (phone only), but I wouldn't say she's not up to date. i get the sense that she doesn't want to give away too much about her research. she won't even answer my questions over her latest choice of drugs she's testing for DP, and i'm volunterring my body for the experiment :roll:.

-rula


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## qbsbrown (Aug 18, 2004)

Wow, talk about the worst florescent lighting experience. Just came back from playing raquetball, and it's pure white lighting. Dizzy, head inflamation, DR/DP. There were a few moments (especially when i was really tired), when it subsided, and after the games when i was beat, i was out of my head. Goes to show how cardio can work. But those lights are a killer.
I did notice that wearing sunglasses helps greatly, and i wouldn't leave the house w/o them. That was in san diego, now im in seattle, and it might look a little funny. But i'd rather feel comfortable than look funny.
But is this masking the symptoms? Or just adapting to what is for now.


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## jft (Jan 10, 2005)

Q. Funny about raquetball. I used to love it but gave it up becasue of the lights. The lights and white walls and concentrating on that little ball drove me to symptoms extreme, and from there the hollow noise of the room and other overstimulating effects assured me I did not want to play again. I will play with you all day on an outdoor handball court, but never again indoors.
Researchers....please go figure.
jft


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## eldoofus (Aug 10, 2004)

From my own experience I can say that the discombobulated visual thingy is happening all the time ---flouro lights just make it a whole lot worse.

When I was at my worst flouro lights would give me what I can only describe as a 'subconcious' panic attack. I'd become disorientated and confused, and at times completely incapacitated.

These days flouro lights give me an indicator of how "well" I am ..or how far I am removed from reality.

I don't have any coping mechanisms other than to remove myself from situations where there is a lot of artificial lighting.


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## jft (Jan 10, 2005)

Somebody on another thread mentioned dilation of pupils can be caused by anxiety/panic (fight or flight type.) I can certainly see (if this true..is it?) that all kinds of nasty light would enter and cause problems. But it would not explain why light bothers when we are not anxious or panicked, right? Homeskooled spoke of the brain stimulation areas of someone in a dp/dr state. And that makes sense too. But what about the times when you enter under these lights with no apparant anxiety/panic or a current dp/dr state but yet the lights still blow us out of the building with extreme symptoms their casualty. Are we just ultra sensitized"
jft


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## eldoofus (Aug 10, 2004)

I don't know whether anyone has mentioned this but flourescent lighting has a refresh rate of around 60Hz, meaning they flicker on and off at 60 times per second. Standard CRT (cathode ray tube) computer monitors and televisions have similar refresh rate of around 60Hz.


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## Homeskooled (Aug 10, 2004)

Dear Jft, 
Thanks. I'm entering my paper on PTSD and its roots in hysteria virilis, or male hysteria, in a symposium at my university. Hopefully it will get picked up by a journal. As for the DP paper, its in the works. I'm attempting to show that people with DP have the same cluster of personality traits as people with epilepsy. Its long been well known to doctors that patients with epilepsy tend to have common eccentricities. This syndrome is called Waxman-Geschwind syndrome. Interestingly enough, many people with DP have these traits as well. Its one link between DP and seizure activity.

As for the lights, thats a fascinating idea that fluorescent lights flicker at the rate of a television set. I'm going to have to look into that further for my paper. Even if you arent DPed at the time you are under them, though, they can easily overstimulate your neurons. In the long run it may pay to have soft lighting in your home

Peace
Homeskooled


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