Sleep and Technology Don't Mix: Why You Need to Set an Electronic
Curfew
June 26, 2014
Story at-a-glance
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95 percent of Americans use an electronic device within one
hour of going to sleep, which could be interfering with
their body’s circadian rhythm
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Exposure to even small amounts of light from a television,
your computer, tablet, or smartphone can interfere with your
body’s production of melatonin, which helps regulate your
sleep-wake cycle
-
People who use their computer for playing, surfing, or
reading on the Web, or those who use their smartphones for
the same purpose, as well as texting, are more likely to
report symptoms of insomnia
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People exposed to radiation from their mobile phones for
three hours before bedtime had more trouble falling asleep
and staying in a deep sleep
-
Turn off electronic gadgets at least an hour prior to
bedtime, and install a low-wattage yellow, orange, or red
light bulb if you need a source of light for navigation at
night
By Dr. Mercola
About 95 percent of Americans use an electronic device within
one hour of going to sleep, according to a National Sleep
Foundation poll. Furthermore, nearly all adults (89 percent) and
the majority of children (75 percent) have at least one
electronic device, such as a television, tablet, or smartphone,
in their bedrooms.1
This has a major implication on the quality of your sleep, in
ways you might not even imagine. Certainly, such devices can
keep you awake by making noises, but they also interfere with
your sleep-wake cycle, or circadian rhythm, in far more
insidious, and damaging, ways.
Light from Electronic Gadgets Interferes with Your Sleep
The quality of your sleep has a lot to do with light, both
outdoor and indoor lighting, because it serves as the major
synchronizer of your master clock. This master clock is a group
of cells in your brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN).
As a group, these nuclei synchronize to the light-dark cycle
of your environment when light enters your eye. You also have
other biological clocks throughout your body, and those clocks
subsequently synchronize to your master clock.
In the non-artificial light environment of our historical
past, people experienced greater light exposure only during the
day between when the sun rose and when it set. Now with the
advent of the light bulb, artificial light, high-definition
televisions, and any number of lighted electronic gadgets, we're
exposed to a lot more light over a 24-hour period, and a lot
less darkness.
This creates a very novel situation for your internal time
keeping and the biological pace setting mechanisms of your body;
in other words, your circadian rhythms. As reported by the
National Sleep Foundation:2
"There is robust scientific data documenting the role
of light in promoting wakefulness. Photoreceptors in the
retina sense light and dark, signaling our brain about the
status of the outside world and aligning our
circadian rhythms (centered in a small
region of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic
nucleus) to the external day-night cycle.
This signaling of light and dark helps us to be alert
in the morning and be able to fall asleep at the appropriate
time at night. The power of light as an alerting agent is
easily conceptualized when we think of the sun, but may be
more difficult to appreciate when considering the light
emitted from a tablet or smartphone."
Even the Small Amount of Light Emitted by Your Smartphone Can
Keep You Awake
Normally, your brain starts progressively increasing the
hormone melatonin around 9 pm or 10 pm, which makes you sleepy.
This helps regulate your sleep cycle as well as provide other
important health benefits, including helping to
prevent cancer.
Melatonin acts as a marker of your circadian phase or
biological timing. In a nutshell, this hormone influences what
time of day or night your body thinks it is, regardless of what
time the clock on the wall displays.
Somewhere between 50-1,000 lux is the activation range within
which light will begin to suppress melatonin production.
However, wavelength is important here as red and amber lights
will not suppress melatonin while blue, green, and white lights
will. So if you use a clock in your bedroom, make sure it has
red LEDs.
Melatonin is a regulator of your sleep cycle, and when it is
suppressed, there is less stimulation to promote sleepiness at a
healthy bedtime. This contributes to people staying up later and
missing valuable sleep, as well as missing out on melatonin's
health potential (research indicates it also helps protect your
brain health and fights against cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's,
heart disease, and more).
Whether you have the light on for an hour or for just a second,
the effect is the same. It would be nice if your melatonin
production resumed when you flip the light back off, but
unfortunately, it doesn't. So remember, when you turn the light
on at night, you are seriously short changing your melatonin
production. Not to obsess about it, but certainly don't make it
a regular pattern.
One 2011 study compared daily melatonin profiles in
individuals living in room light (<200 lux) vs. dim
light (<3 lux).3
Results showed that, compared with dim light, exposure to room
light before bedtime suppressed melatonin in 99 percent of
individuals, and shortened the time period when the body has an
elevated melatonin level by about 90 minutes.
Furthermore, exposure to room light during the usual hours of
sleep suppressed melatonin by more than 50 percent. Even the
light from your computer screen or smartphone is enough to
interfere with your circadian rhythm and melatonin production.
Computer screens and most light bulbs emit blue light, to which
your eyes are particularly sensitive simply because it's the
type of light most common outdoors during daytime hours. As a
result, they can easily disrupt your melatonin production and
keep you awake.4
Research shows, for instance:5
- Children who use electronic media at night go to bed
later, get fewer hours of sleep per week, and report more
daytime sleepiness
- Adolescents with a television in their bedroom go to bed
later, have more difficulty falling asleep, and have a
shorter total sleep time
- Sending texts or e-mails after initially going to bed
increases daytime sleepiness among teens (even if it's done
only once a week)
Computer and Cell Phone Use Before Bed Linked to Insomnia
The research is quite clear that people who use their
computer for playing, surfing, or reading on the Web, or those
who use their smartphones for the same purpose, as well as
texting, are more likely to report symptoms of insomnia.6
This is an enemy to your sleep for multiple reasons, in addition
to the problems with light exposure explained above. It can be
difficult, for instance, to slow your mind down after surfing
the Web, leading to racing thoughts when you should be in
slumber.
Plus, when you're connected to the Internet, your phone or
computer are communicating with nearby cell towers, which means
they're also emitting low levels of radiation.
One 2008 study revealed that people exposed to radiation from
their mobile phones for three hours before bedtime had more
trouble falling asleep and staying in a deep sleep.7,
8 The following infographic, created by
BigBrandBeds.co.uk, illustrates how your electronic gadgets
wreak havoc on your sleep when used before bedtime.9
People Who Turn Off Their Gadgets Report Excellent Sleep
According to the 2014 Sleep in America Poll, 53 percent of
respondents who turn electronics off while sleeping rate their
sleep as excellent, compared to just 27 percent of those who
leave their devices on.10 This
is why I recommend avoiding watching TV or using a computer or
tablet at least an hour or so before going to bed.
An alternative, you can try a free computer program called f.lux
(see JustGetFlux.com), which alters the color temperature of
your computer screen as the day goes on, pulling out the blue
wavelengths as it gets late. You can also wear yellow-tinted
glasses, which block the blue wavelengths of light.
Since humans evolved in the glow of firelight, yellow,
orange, and red wavelengths don't suppress melatonin production
the way white and blue wavelengths do. In fact, the range of
light that inhibits melatonin is fairly narrow — 460 to 480 nm.
If you want to protect your melatonin, when the sun goes down
you would shift to a low-wattage bulb with yellow, orange or red
light.
Dr. Russel Reiter suggests using a salt lamp illuminated by
a 5-watt bulb in this color range.
Remember, You Can't Cheat Sleep
…at least, not without consequences. You can have the
healthiest diet on the planet, doing vegetable juicing and using
fermented veggies, be as fit as an Olympic athlete, be
emotionally balanced, but if you aren't sleeping well, it is
just a matter of time before it will adversely, potentially
seriously affect your health. Sleep deprivation is such a
chronic condition these days that you might not even realize you
suffer from it. Science has now established that a sleep deficit
can have serious, far-reaching effects on your health, and once
you're deficient, lost sleep can be difficult to "make up." For
example, interrupted or impaired sleep can:
- Dramatically weaken your immune system
- Accelerate tumor growth—tumors grow two to three times
faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions,
primarily due to disrupted
melatonin production. Melatonin inhibits the
proliferation of a wide range of cancer cell types, as well
as triggering cancer cell apoptosis (self-destruction). The
hormone also interferes with the new blood supply tumors
require for their rapid growth (angiogenesis)
- Cause a pre-diabetic state, making you feel hungry even
if you've already eaten, which can wreak havoc on your
weight
- Seriously impair your
memory; even a single night of poor sleep—meaning
sleeping only 4 to 6 hours—can impact your ability to think
clearly the next day. It's also known to decrease your
problem solving ability
Earlier this year, I interviewed Dan Pardi on the topic of
how to get restorative, health-promoting sleep. Pardi is a
researcher who works with the Behavioral Sciences Department at
Stanford University and the Departments of Neurology and
Endocrinology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. According
to Pardi, the following three factors are key to determining how
restorative your sleep is:
- Duration—i.e. the number of hours you
sleep. Sleep requirements are highly individual, and can
change from one day to the next, depending on factors like
stress, physical exertion, illness, and pregnancy, just to
name a few. But, on average, most people need about eight
hours of sleep per night.
- Timing—i.e. the habit of going to bed
at approximately the same time each night. Even if the
duration of sleep is the same, when the timing of your sleep
is shifted, it's not going to be as restorative.
- Intensity—This has to do with the
different stages that your brain and body goes through over
the course of the night, the sequence of them, and how those
stages are linked.
Some medications will suppress certain phases of sleep,
and certain conditions like sleep apnea will lead to
fragmented sleep. With these scenarios, even if you're
sleeping for an adequate duration and have consistent
timing, your sleep will not be as restorative.
One of the easiest ways to gauge whether you've slept enough
is to assess your level of sleepiness the next day. For example,
if you had the opportunity, would you be able to take a nap? Do
you need caffeine to keep you going? Answering yes to these two
questions would indicate you need more and/or better sleep.
How to Get a Truly Restful Night's Sleep
Small adjustments to your daily routine and sleeping area can
go a long way to ensure uninterrupted, restful sleep. I suggest
you read through my full set of
33 healthy sleep guidelines for all of the details, but to
start, consider implementing the following changes. Number one
on my list? Turn off your electronic gadgets and keep
them out of your bedroom:
- Avoid watching TV or using your
computer/smartphone or tablet in the evening,
at least an hour or so before going to bed.
- Make sure you get BRIGHT sun exposure regularly.
Your pineal gland produces melatonin roughly in
approximation to the contrast of bright sun exposure in the
day and complete darkness at night. If you are in darkness
all day long, it can't appreciate the difference and will
not optimize your melatonin production.
- Get some sun in the morning. Your
circadian system needs bright light to reset itself. Ten to
15 minutes of morning sunlight will send a strong message to
your internal clock that day has arrived, making it less
likely to be confused by weaker light signals during the
night.
- Sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as
possible. Even the tiniest glow from your clock
radio could be interfering with your sleep, so cover your
clock radio up at night or get rid of it altogether. Move
all electrical devices at least three feet away from your
bed. You may want to cover your windows with drapes or
blackout shades, or wear an eye mask when you sleep.
- Install a low-wattage yellow, orange, or red
light bulb if you need a source of light for navigation at
night. Light inthese bandwidths does not shut down
melatonin production in the way that white and blue
bandwidth light does. Salt lamps are handy for this purpose.
- Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher
than 70 degrees F. Many people keep their homes too
warm (particularly their upstairs bedrooms). Studies show
that the optimal
room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees
F.
- Take a hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime.
This increases your core body temperature, and when you get
out of the bath it abruptly drops, signaling your body that
you are ready to sleep.
- Avoid using loud alarm clocks. Being
jolted awake eachmorning can be very stressful. If you are
regularly getting enough sleep,you might not even need an
alarm.
- Be mindful of
electromagnetic fields (EMFs)
in your bedroom. EMFs can disrupt your pineal gland
and its melatonin production, and may have other negative
biological effects as well. A gauss meter is required if you
want to measure
EMF levels in various areas of your home.
Copyright 1997- 2014 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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