last updated 3/28/2024
Cheap, harmless, antidepressant for many people. This should be the first step in “light therapy” for many people.
What’s a dawn simulator?
Short answer: it gradually turns on a bedside lamp in the 30 minutes before you wake up. This “simulated dawn” reaches your brain through your closed eyelid and says “Time to wake up now, time to get up now”. Since you set the timing, you can avoid the shift toward a later dawn in the winter and thereby minimize or avoid seasonal mood changes.
Dawn simulators can also be used to help move your sleep rhythm earlier. By setting the timer a little earlier each day, you are helping your brain move your body clock earlier too. It makes getting up a lot easier when you and your body clock agree on the plan!
Design options
Light/timer/alarm combinations save space on your bedside table. Some come with radios, security timers so that the light goes on and off when you’re out of town, beepers to back up the light in case it doesn’t wake you, automatic dimming at night, snooze switches, and nightlight settings to which it switches after a set interval at night. (The nightlight thing: very bad idea. It works against what you’re trying to achieve here: darkness at night, light in the morning. If you need a nightlight at night, you need an amber one. That’s another story).
This shouldn’t cost much. Surf around a bit. Prices as of 12/2023 (ooh it’s dark outside in the morning) are around $30, looks like.
Oh, and there is a small risk. If you have a bed-partner who arises after your wake-up time, you cause some trouble with a dawn simulator. So, for a few more bucks, get them a stylish eye mask!
Using a Dawn Simulator
Start using it in the fall when at your regular wake-up time your room is not filled with sunshine anymore. Keep using it until the following spring when the sun is “ahead” of your dawn simulator, giving your room light sooner than your little light (unless you’ve really blacked out your bedroom for dark therapy).
Set it so that the light wakes you up at the time your alarm clock would usually go off. This takes several nights to figure out. Most of these units are set so that they are fully “on” at the time you set. The light starts going on long before that, gradually. On some units, you can specify how long this will take; on some it is fixed, at 30 or 45 minutes. Either way, you want to keep adjusting the “fully on” time until the light is waking you up just when you would like to wake up — neither earlier nor later. Got that? It took me about a week to get it right.
If you have Episodic or Mixed depression, start by having your dawn simulator wake you up “too late”, with a back-up alarm clock to actually get you up. In other words, if you have “bipolarity”, you don’t want to give yourself automatic sleep deprivation by waking up too early with this thing. Some people are very sensitive to light and will wake up as soon as the light begins to increase. So err on the side of having it wake you up too late when you start figuring this all out.
How Will I Know If It’s Working?
This gizmo has two effects: it wakes you up, and for some people it will also have an effect on mood. The wake-you-up part should be pretty obvious! As for mood, some people notice an effect within about 3-4 days, but to be sure it’s “not going to work”, you should have at least two weeks of regular waking to the light at the right time. Since this thing can’t hurt you, as far as we know, you might even want to give it 4 weeks before turning it off and selling it to a friend. (I have been telling patients “if you buy one and it doesn’t work, bring it in and I’ll buy it from you, I need a demonstration unit” for years. I still don’t have one. So either folks don’t buy them; or everybody benefits from them; or everyone finds a friend or buyer who’ll take it off their hands!)
If it does “work”, your mood should be better. Granted, that’s not a very solid measure. How are you supposed to know? If you have doubts, you can wait to see if people who know you well comment on how you look or act (if they comment before you ask, you know it’s for real). If no such comments come along, and you’re still in doubt, you can wait to see your doctor and see what she thinks, listening to you. But you know, we’re looking for a pretty blockbuster response here. A dawn simulator may not get you well (that would be great, and it can do that for some people) but it ought to do something pretty obvious. There should be little doubt in your mind that it’s worth having the thing wake you up, even on weekends!
How Long Do I Use It?
That’s right, you have to keep doing this on weekends too, all through the winter. Remember, the idea is to trick your brain into thinking it’s still July. You can’t just have a few days of December show up every week. Your brain will know. “Trying to trick me, eh? Ah, I’ll show you then.” You can stop using it when the morning sun is waking you up before the dawn simulator does. Pretty obvious, huh? And start it up again when, in the following fall, you’re starting to find it dim or dark in your bedroom when you wake up. Get started early; there is reason to think you can “get behind” trying to keep your brain in July, so don’t let that morning darkness establish itself before you dig out your dawn simulator. Good luck!
A smartphone app’?
One of my patients, when I was trying to explain dawn simulators, said “there must be an app’ for that”. Sure enough, he surfed it up while I was ordering his lab tests.
But I’ve since tried a few of those apps and wasn’t impressed: even using the flashlight the phone just doesn’t emit enough light in the morning. But it wouldn’t hurt try it while you’re waiting for a proper dawn simulator. Maybe it will work for you…