Exposure to sunlight may be the newest method of easing pain.
According to a report, boosting the amount of sunlight in a patient's
hospital room decreases their perception of pain and their need
for painkiller medication.
Researchers enrolled nearly 90 patients who had undergone spinal
surgery and placed them in randomly assigned hospital rooms--the
rooms were either sunny or dim upon their return from surgery.
With the aid of light meter measurements,
researchers found:
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Patients assigned to bright rooms received an average of 46
percent more natural sunlight a day, compared to patients in
the dim room, which translated to an average 21 percent reduction
in the cost of painkiller medication for patients in bright
rooms
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Bright-room patients had considerably lower stress scores and
slightly lower pain scores when they left the hospital, compared
to patients in dimmer rooms
These results may motivate hospital administrators to relocate
patients with high painkiller requirements to rooms with higher
intensity sunlight.
Psychosomatic
Medicine January/February 2005;67(1):156-163
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