Screentime before bedtime may leave people feeling groggy in the morning. Cell phones, computers and TVs emit blue light. And exposure to that bluish light during the two hours before bed can keep us from getting a good night’s rest, a new study finds.
It cut down the number of minutes people slept. It also left them feeling groggy in the morning.
It’s been known for quite a while that “blue light is bad for sleep,” observes Shadab Rahman. He was not involved in the new study. His work sleep at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., does, however, study how light affects the body’s internal “clock.” Its natural cycles tell us when to sleep and when to get up in the morning. These cycles are known as our circadian (Sur-KAY-dee-un) rhythms. The light of day and the dark of night both work to help keep this internal clock running on a roughly 24-hour cycle.
Computers, televisions, tablets and other electronic devices give off all colors of light. And, he notes, evidence has been emerging that these screens — and especially the blue light they give off — can disrupt the body’s clock. Data show that this blue light tends to make us more alert at night. That makes it harder to fall asleep get all the rest we need.
Because electronic devices are all around us, it’s hard to avoid their blue light. We use the screens constantly, notes Amit Shai Green. He is a PhD student at the University of Haifa in Israel. He also is an author of the new study.
Green and his team recruited 19 people — all in their 20s — for a sleep study. All spent two hours on a computer right before bedtime. But they didn’t all experience the same light exposures.
The researchers had tweaked the computer screens. Some gave off intense blue light. Others gave off soft blue light, intense red light or soft red light. Red light hasn’t been shown to affect sleep…
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