What is it about?
Good vision is important to enable living at home and performing everyday tasks. Due to normal age-related vision loss, older people need correct glasses and more light to perform daily activities efficiently and safely. Our study showed that good lighting improved the ability to read and perform activities of daily living, and increased the home environment. Notably, improved lighting could easily be achieved with a basic low cost control system. Our study confirms that lighting is an environmental characteristic influencing quality of life and should be considered in promoting healthy ageing.
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Why is it important?
The ability to perform meaningful activities is essential to maintain good quality of life and facilitate healthy ageing at home. This requires good vision and lighting. However, this has received little attention. We show that improved lighting can easily be achieved using a basic low cost light system. Adopting to higher lighting levels evolves quickly. Our results suggest that improved quality of light could improve quality of life, and lighting should be included as a factor promoting healthy ageing at home.
Perspectives
I hope this article will highlight the value of good vision and lighting to promote healthy ageing, and that with age there is a need to increase the lighting levels to compensate for normal age-related vision loss. I am grateful to have worked with such multidisciplinary collaborators and co-authors, and that we were granted access to peoples home. The take home message is that improving the lighting will improve quality of life.
Helle K Falkenberg
University of South-Eastern Norway
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Improved indoor lighting improved healthy aging at home – an intervention study in 77-year-old Norwegians, Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, May 2019, Dove Medical Press,
DOI: 10.2147/jmdh.s198763.
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