Bill Harvey: A light-emitting mask for diabetics

Does anyone want to hear something more about blue light?

By a coincidence, I came across a new commercially available light-emitting mask for use by diabetics in the week where the Nobel Prize committee honoured the scientists responsible for our current understanding of the mechanism behind our biological clock.

The Noctura 400 is a sleep mask which emits what appears to be a green visible light through the closed lid of a diabetic patient during sleep. The technique was theorised a while back by Professor Arden (he of the gratings, you may recall) as a way of lowering the rise in oxygen demand in the retina during darkness. This is thought to produce hypoxia in those with compromised vasculature which can then exacerbate proliferative disease and macular oedema.