Find your rhythm to harness your health.

INSIGHT

Natural disturbances from light and sound affect our circadian rhythm and behavior.

Until the parabolic curve into our modern era, billions of years of all life on Earth has relied on the natural rhythms of day and night — it’s encoded into the DNA of all plants and animals, affecting everything from our stress responses to our growth. We lived by the light of the sun and the sounds of nature (biophony).

Humans have spent the last handful of decades radically disrupting this cycle by lighting up the night sky and disturbing the world’s ecosystems. Artificial light, particularly that of the white LED variety, has negative effects (some times deadly) on many creatures and trumps air pollution as the most drastic change to their habitat as a whole. Turning night into day means predators can’t hunt the same way, nor can prey take cover; insects, hatchlings and migratory birds are lead to their demise, following artificial light cues that detract from their natural cues and routes. The light intensity of your average updated suburban street lamp can be up to 200 times more glaring than what the night sky naturally provided — disturbing not only the surrounding ecosystems but also harming human health (circadian rhythm can be disrupted through skin for those of you wearing eye masks). Though we should be alarmed by the increased energy consumption, I'm equally saddened by the inspirational loss of future generations no longer having the view of an astral sky or be stunned by the magnificent Milky Way.

Synthetic or human-induced sound (anthropophony) is also a silent disrupter, affecting habitat rhythm both day and night. Scientists who study soundscape ecology look at the collective noise-making of certain species for their survival (biophony). For instance, frogs are able to avoid nocturnal predators with their collective orchestra, often interrupted by things like airplane jets or car horns and breaking their sound shield. A recent House Committee Hearing on the environmental impact of seismic air-gun testing, a practice used to locate underwater oil deposits, is 16,000 times louder than an air-horn — not the funnest time to be a marine animal. These one-off examples are a drop in the ocean considering the detrimental effects we are having on natural habitats (and ultimately ourselves!) because of our crude designs to find our way home at night or not take into account the deleterious effects of sound.

INSPIRATION

International Dark-Sky Association (IDA)

The International Dark-Sky Association works to protect the night skies for present and future generations. They have an award-winning flagship conservation program that recognizes and promotes excellent stewardship of the night sky. As of August 2019, they’ve certified more than 120 International Dark Sky Places worldwide across six continents, comprising more than 90,000 square km (34,700 square miles).

IDA’s grassroots advocate network is a nimble and effective distributive network, capable of sharing best practices and tools while remaining locally attuned to specific geographic, political and demographic needs.

INNOVATION

“Rise/Set Clock”

An intuitive environment sound and lighting home system set to the sunrise and sunset hours of where you live. The system emits the proper spectrums of light and frequencies of sound for our biological circadian rhythms to normalize as if we lived in Nature.

• Set to WAKE, WILD (jungle sounds and lighting for higher performance), and WIND DOWN at dusk for slowing the system. Also has special settings like FIRE (party time) and WATER (extra relaxing time) for different occasions when you need a boost of higher or lower energy.

• Lighting works with the spectrum and hues of natural light through warm LED technology that does not affect our sleep cycles. Dimming features allow for the slow transition from one lighting situation to another. Automatically set to the season, it adjusts for extra light when its dark/raining outside and can easily be turned off if you want to enjoy actual nature and open all shutters/windows of your home.

• Anthropophony (human-induced noises) can often be a quiet threat to our stress levels so this system administers biophonic sounds (nature-induced sounds) through the day to ease the system and mimic living in nature.

• Set to seasonality, dweller circadian rhythm, and separate modes for internal and external lighting; this home lighting system gets smart over time as it reads environmental cues and human preferences.