From sleep to circadian health – the focus is shifting



By LYS
10 Mar 2020

It suddenly feels like the world has woken up to the importance of circadian rhythms.

Earlier this month, the Global Wellness Summit announced that circadian rhythms will be the number one health trend in 2020.

“We predict a major shift”, starts The Future of Wellness 2020 report. “There will be less focus on generic sleep solutions and a keen new focus on circadian health optimization.”

So what’s driving this new movement and change in people’s awareness?

Firstly, there is a new wave of scientific research. In 2017, the discovery of the molecular workings of our inner clock won the Nobel Prize. Since, then there has been a surge of interest in circadian rhythms. More and more researchers have turned their attention to the link between our circadian rhythm and health.

There also seems to be a growing feeling amongst consumers that sleep tracking products are not delivering on their promises. Why, with an avalanche of sleep solutions, do we remain in a sleepless epidemic? Around one in three of us sleep badly and one in 10 have regular insomnia.

The reason is that so many sleep solutions defy the basic facts of our biology. Light provides the daily “time cues” needed to reset our circadian clocks every day. Light has a powerful effect on how well we sleep but also our very cellular health.

In other words, most sleep products focus on the symptoms of sleep disruption and ignore the root cause. As the Future of Wellness report says, “any solution claiming to reset your sleep and circadian rhythms must have the timing of light at its centre”.

So what will this new interest in circadian rhythms mean for the average person? What changes should you expect to see in your life?

In the future, everything from your diet to the time you have surgery will be informed by a greater knowledge of circadian rhythms. And in the next few years, we will finally bring circadian lighting into our homes and workplaces.

Circadian lighting, or Human Centric Lighting, supports the natural sleep-wake cycle of the human body. It promises to improve people’s health, alertness, productivity and more.

LYS Technologies is at the forefront of this new movement in lighting.

We hold the most comprehensive database about circadian rhythms in the world. We have analysed close to 1 billion distinct data-points, across 53 countries, over thousands of days of light intake. And with the power of machine learning and advanced data analytics, we’re able to interpret all this raw data into insightful stories and powerful insights.

Our services empower lighting designers, architects, and construction firms to embrace the cultural shift towards true circadian health.

Get in touch today to hear more about the benefits of Circadian Lighting.