Listen to sun, our star Dava Sobel podcast (2018)

I'm posting this BBC podcast (The Compass BBC World Service) by Dava Sobel as she discusses living for about a month in a sensory deprived environment. She discusses it's effects on her including altered circadian rhythm.

I haven't listened myself. My husband described it to me so thought I'd post it if anyone is interested.

The podcast is free on iTunes but I don't think I can link directly so the podcast I'm referring to is number 5 in the series: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-compass/id1052738045?mt=2&i=1000426850786

Also, it's a US link. I have no idea how that will affect users elsewhere but it's BBC so no doubt can be found elsewhere as well.

 

This does raise questions about the effects of the isolation and reduced sensation and reduced opportunities for intellectual engagement that goes hand in hand with severe ME.

Although the psychological impact of ME is very different, at the same time as my ME was at its worst, the wife of my cousin was undergoing solitary confinement and psychological torture following wrongful imprisonment in an Iranian jail.

I had access to the Internet and a window with pleasant views, I was not held by hostile guards actively seeking to break my will, I at least nominally had full control of my fate, my environment was comfortable and pleasing, but I could not but contemplate that many of the practicalities of our situations overlapped. My cousin in law remains in prison, and even if released will face significant health and adjustment issues, that will impact on her and her family for the rest of her life.

I can not imaging the impact of existing in such a hostile world, but was surprised how I coped with days, not infrequently more than a week, without seeing another person, weeks or even months without going beyond a couple of rooms.

 

That does put ME in perspective.

 

I haven’t listened yet but there’s a big difference between being normal and therefore wanting normal sensory stimulation and being so ill you have to withdraw from it and hate it. Light deprivation to a normal person has I think been used as a form of torture, I shun daylight, blue light and light itself feels like torture.

I will listen and so on I just would want to emphasise that the symptoms and intolerance come before the voluntary sensory deprivation found in severe ME before people who haven’t experienced it might start to suggest it’s an important cause. Just as whilst deconditioning and sleep reversal might compound less severe ME, say moderate level, it doesn’t cause it.