Rise and Shine - Another Review

How about another review...  :)

Another Christmas gift I received this year is a Verilux Rise and Shine Natural Wake Up Light.  I'm really benefiting from it.  A little back story...

I have a huge problem waking up in the morning.  I am a very sound sleeper and have this amazing (note the sarcasm) ability to get out of bed, walk across the room, snooze my alarm clock, and get back into bed every 9 minutes for an hour without ever waking up.  I don't even remember doing it.  After about an hour, I finally wake up somewhere between my bed and my alarm.  I've tried music, multiple alarms, moving my alarms around the room...just about everything I could think of to help myself wake up.  I only wake up well if I've gotten good sleep (7-8 hours every night) for about 2 weeks in a row.  Since this so rarely happens, even when I'm really trying hard, I end up setting my alarms about an hour before my "drop dead, get out of bed" time and praying that I eventually wake up.

Adding to this issue, IMHO, is the fact that I get very little exposure to the sun during the winter.  My classroom is underground and I work 7:30-5:30, so Monday through Friday, I get a little light before I go to work (the sun isn't actually up yet, but it is light out), and about 20 minutes of sun during lunch (on the days I get upstairs to eat).  I think this messes with my sleep patterns somewhat.

In comes this "Rise and Shine" light.  Starting about 15 minutes before the set alarm time, the light slowly starts to come on.  There are 20 different settings.  You can set how bright you want it to be and over the course of 15 minutes it goes from off to that setting to simulate a sunrise.  There is also a sleep setting to use at night where the light starts out bright and over 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes dims to off.  This is supposed to simulate a sunset (something I rarely experience during the winter).  I have found both of these settings to be very helpful to me.

I use the sleep setting starting an hour before I want to be "lights out."  In that time, I get ready for bed and I read.  This helps me in three ways:
1) My ADD is worst when I'm tired.  This means I procrastinate going to bed like a champion.  However, I have a time limit...1 hour.  If I take 50 minutes to get ready for bed, this will only leave me about 3 minutes to read before the light is too dim to see by.  If, however, I can be ready in 20 minutes, I have lots of time to read.
2) As I stated in my Kindle review, I can read for hours without realizing time is passing.  I've often gotten absorbed in a book and read until 2 AM when I needed to be up at 5.  Three hours of sleep just isn't enough.  When the light's too dim to see, however, it forces me to realize how much time has passed and I almost always quit for the night.
3) I fall asleep so much faster when I've used the sleep function...sometimes before the light is actually 100% off.  I also seem to sleep more soundly.

So far, I've only overslept a couple of times since I started using the light in the morning...once just after New Year's, when I was definitely sleep deprived and once when I forgot to set my other alarms.  Most of the time, I'm awake and out of bed within 20 minutes after the light reaches its full brightness.