Home lighting may affect activity level in older adults with visual impairment
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Key takeaways:
- Researchers reported an association between better home lighting and greater activity metrics.
- There was no association between the number of home hazards and activity metrics.
Better lighting was associated with improvements in at-home physical activity levels among older adults with visual impairment, according to a study published in JAMA Ophthalmology.
“We evaluated whether more home hazards, as well as specific home hazards, ie, poor lighting, are associated with decreased physical activity at home,” Seema Banerjee, PhD, from Wilmer Eye Institute at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, and colleagues wrote. “We hypothesized that homes with more hazards and poor lighting will be associated with reduced number of daily home steps and less time at home spent in nonsedentary physical activity.”
In a cross-sectional study, 153 adults aged 60 years and older (mean age, 70.9 years; 46% women; 29% Black) with glaucoma suspect and primary glaucoma were recruited from the Wilmer Eye Institute Glaucoma Clinic from September 2013 to March 2015.
Participants underwent visual field testing at baseline and wore an omnidirectional accelerometer and GPS tracker near the hip for 7 consecutive days. They also were asked to complete the Home Environment Assessment for the Visually Impaired questionnaire to assess potential hazards throughout their homes, which included 127 hazards in eight different areas.
Banerjee and colleagues found a significant association between better lighting and a greater number of at-home steps taken, with 5% more steps taken as well as 3% faster average peak cadence for every 0.1 log unit increment in home lighting. Average nonsedentary activity at home, average bout duration and activity fragmentation were also associated with better lighting.
The researchers found no association between number of hazards and hazard frequency with any activity metrics.
“In this study of individuals with varying levels of visual impairment (visual field damage) from glaucoma, better measured home lighting was associated with more steps taken daily at home and significantly faster peak cadence,” Banerjee and colleagues wrote. “Neither the total number, nor frequency of home hazards, were found to be associated with any home physical activity metrics. Overall, our findings suggest that lighting may play a substantial role in improving physical activity measures at home in certain populations.”
Perspective
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A recent study performed in Baltimore found that increasing illumination in the homes of glaucoma patients results in higher mobility.
The authors discovered that a higher level of lighting was associated with taking more steps (P = .04) and walking with a faster pace (P = .01). It would be interesting to see how these results can be reproduced with a different patient population and whether results would differ from patients with age-related macular degeneration or diabetes.
As an optometrist, make sure you stress the importance of increasing lighting for your low vision patients, not just for devices but also for environmental lighting, as it can affect their independence.
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