There is no shortage of advice about healthy homes. Air purifiers, special light bulbs, sleep gadgets, paints that promise to clean the air. Some of it is well founded. Some of it is marketing. Very little of it starts by measuring the home in question.
We started Circadian Environments because we kept having the same conversation from two directions. One of us is a physician, used to reading research and asking how strong the evidence really is. The other trained in engineering, and is used to asking what the instruments actually say. Put together, those two questions make a fairly good test for any piece of home health advice.
Where it started for us
Circadian Environments is something SJ and I have built together. The idea, though, started with me, and with a book. Reading Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep was what sent me down the rabbit hole.
From there I went to the primary research: what is well established, what is promising, and what has been overstated. I have kept reading ever since, so that I can share what holds up with others.
None of this is easy. Most people don’t have time to read the research or measure their own rooms, and most advice is either too vague to act on or too complicated to keep up. Our aim is to make it as simple as possible: measure what matters, explain it plainly, and help you change the few things that make the biggest difference.
What evidence-based healthy home advice means to us
It means we tell you how confident we are, not only what we recommend. For some parts of the home environment, such as ventilation and light exposure across the day, there is a solid body of research. For others the evidence is thinner, or mostly about workplaces and hospitals rather than homes. We think you should know which is which before you spend money.
It also means measuring first. Two homes on the same street can have very different air, light and noise. A general checklist can’t tell you which of your rooms needs attention. A few days of readings usually can.
What to expect from our healthy home journal
We will write about one topic at a time, in plain language, with the sources we rely on. Where the research is uncertain, we will say so. If there is a topic you would like us to cover, let us know.