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Those blinking lights are really annoying.

Does blinking lights make light therapy work better? Hmm…. Does a strobe light make you dance better because they can’t see 3 quarters of your fancy dancing moves?

I kind of get a kick out of this question.

Whenever a light is blinking, that means it’s off for some amount of time.
That means you’re not getting light therapy for the time it’s off. They usually blink on and off evenly. You’re only getting half the light energy. Kind of like filling your coffee mug with dripping water rather than pouring. Which would you rather do?

I haven’t seen any studies indicating blinking is better than non-blinking.
Only three reasons I can see to blink:

1. Looks pretty and makes you think it really is doing something special.
Put on your leisure suit, get out the old Bee Gee album, and hit your Light therapy blink button. yowza yowza yowza

2. Blinking or pulsing may cause cells to be more stimulated. Like getting slapped. That’ll wake you up. Again, you would have to say that the blinking is more beneficial than twice as much energy, because to reiterate, “THE BLINK MEANS THE LIGHT IS OFF”. No Light = No Light Therapy. Just simulate the blinking by putting your light in behind a fan and save yourself the extra blinking money.

3. Most logical and real reason: LED’s get hot. Heat reduces their lifespan, and reduces the amount of light you actually get. Most electrical engineers make the light blink to cool them. In fact most LED’s are actually blinking, but it’s so fast you can’t see it. If you have a video camera with a variable shutter speed, you can speed the shutter speed up and can usually detect the blinking.

Anyways, I don’t know why but all this talk about blinking is making my eyes tired. Stare deep into the blinking lights. Your getting
sleepy…..sleepy…zzzz

This entry was posted on 19. January 2010 at 09:41 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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3 Responses to “Those blinking lights are really annoying.”

  1. ronald says:
    14. March 2010 at 01:56

    agreed. On an aside, LED”s don’t wear from switching on and off, there are no moving parts or filaments which wear out like in lightbulbs, but my question is what is the estimated lifespan of the LED’s LED uses?

  2. Brent says:
    15. March 2010 at 09:07

    That should be easier than it is. We don’t get much feedback from manufactures on lifespan. I’ve been told LED lifespan’s are measured in thousands of hours”, and the actual LED typically doesn’t go out. It just slowly reduces radiant output so that it’s not as strong, but still working.

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