Stress-beating Blues

Feeling a bit stressed? For a quick fix, switching on a blue light might help. A recent study, in which volunteers were subjected to stressful mental arithmetic tasks and then placed in either a blue-lit or white-lit relaxation room (pictured), showed that those people exposed to the blue light were able to relax on average three times faster than those exposed to white light. Blue light has also been reported to interfere with sleep, which might seem at odds with the new relaxation data, but since other wavelengths of light were not tested in this preliminary study, it is impossible to say whether red hues might turn out to be even more relaxing. Figuring out the best light wavelengths and intensities for maximal and speediest relaxation could help in both clinical settings (to calm anxious patients) as well as in our everyday lives.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from the University of Granada, Spain
• Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in PLOS One, October 2017