Bright light at night … not a good idea

We take the modern world for granted, and accept that this is just the way things are. But they haven’t always been this way, and we should remember that. For example, if you go back a hundred and fifty years, or maybe two hundred, the only light you would ever have would be a) natural daylight or b) candlelight or light from an oil lamp.

It seems so archaic now, and like something out of some old black and white movie, but I’m old enough (just about) to remember when the only light we had in the house was gaslight. And if we needed to use the toilet, which was outdoors of course, we took a paraffin lamp if it was after dark, or maybe a flashlight. I know, sounds like something from a horror movie or maybe a bad dream, but that was the way it was and it was nothing exceptional. There simply was no other way.

Electric lights were available of course, it’s just that we didn’t have them (the same as nearly everybody at the time). And when I was about five years old we got electricity in the house and things started to change. Within a year or so we had not only electric lights but television! Wow, can you imagine what a change that was … not so much for me, I was just a kid and accepted changes as run-of-the-mill, but for people who had grown up without electric lights all their lives, and then to have them installed in their homes, and television too … Wow, a time of incredible innovation.

Okay, so we move on. We have electric lights. We have them in our homes and we have them in the street. Night has practically become like an extension of normal daylight hours, and we can experience bright light at any time of day or night. Amazing! But not natural.

Humans have always lived by natural rhythms … till now

For hundreds of thousands of generations humans have lived by the natural cycles of daylight and dark. People would get ready to bed down for the night when it was going dark, and they would get up in the morning at first light. That was the natural way. And it’s generally the way animals still operate to this day – their waking hours are still determined by the light of the sun. But not ours. No, we’re too clever for that … we’ve tricked Mother Nature and decided we can do what we want, when we want, and have daylight 24 hours a day if we feel like.

But is that really any good? Following Mother Nature’s dictates is a pretty good idea generally, since we’ve done it for millions of years. Just because we move the goalposts, that doesn’t mean out bodies keep up with the changes. Physically, we’re just the same as we were a couple of hundred years ago.

It’s probably not the cleverest move to try to trick Mother Nature just to suit ourselves. She’s too smart to be tricked, and we try it at our peril.

We’re very fond of having a night life, and living in cities that never sleep. We love the idea that we can control things to this extent, and be cleverer than Nature. But what’s natural is generally what’s good for us.

Researchers have known for years that shift workers are more prone to illnesses, even cancers, and anyone who’s ever worked shifts for any length of time knows that it leaves you feeling disoriented and uneasy.

Technology is advancing quicker than we can adapt

On top of all that, our technology is moving forward at an ever faster pace. We carry mobile phones, we have tablets, we have … 24-hour connectivity. It’s good to have all this potential magic, but it can spell disaster for our health if we just use it randomly and without due care and attention.

While researchers have accepted for years that working unnatural shifts is a health risk, they are now postulating that it’s possibly one of the causes of the rising incidence of obesity and chronic disease. Any upset to the natural circadian rhythms is suspect; we’re meant to abide by nature’s clock and we deviate from it at our own risk. The circadian rhythms, by the way, are the physical, mental, and emotional rhythms that follow a roughly 24-hour cycle and respond to the light and darkness of an environment.

And it’s not just that the circadian rhythms are upset, but that we are actually subjecting ourselves to bright light at times that it shouldn’t really happen. Bright light signals to the photoreceptors in our eyes that it’s daytime, and if we work in bright light, or stay up late and have the lights on at home, the body is tricked into thinking it’s daytime. Not a good idea!

Here’s a quote from Harvard Medical School on this subject:

And it turns out that it’s blue light in particular that seems to be the problem. Here’s another Harvard quote:

In another study, this time at the University of Toronto, researchers compared melatonin levels of those exposed to bright light indoors who were wearing blue-light–blocking goggles to others who were exposed to less-bright light but without wearing goggles. The melatonin levels were about the same, which suggests that blue light is a strong suppressor of melatonin.

The conclusion was that shift workers, and anyone who stayed up late for any length of time for that matter, would benefit from wearing blue-light-blocking glasses.

Please note that this doesn’t mean blue light is bad for you. It’s just the opposite in fact; you get plenty of it in normal daylight and that’s as it should be. The problem arises when you get it at night, and your brain interprets that information as meaning that it’s still daytime. Hence your circadian rhythms are put out of sync.

In fact, avoiding blue light during normal daylight hours has been linked to depression and sleep problems, so it’s pretty clear that in its normal time slot it’s a good thing. It’s just that outside of that time slot it can cause problems.

Bright light: blue-blockers might be the answer

According to Psychology Today, wearing blue-light-blocking glasses at night has been shown to help people get a good night’s sleep more easily. And shift workers who wear them, at least during the last few hours of their shift, also reported far more comfortable sleep patterns.

Here’s a few ideas to help you avoid blue light at night, and therefore get a better night’s sleep:

• Get plenty of normal daylight during the day. Get out in the open air more often and away from your desk.

• If you’re using your computer late in the evening, use an app that reduces the brightness automatically, such as Screen Filter (for Android, get it from the Google Play Store), or f.lux for your PC.

• Get used to not using your mobile phone, tablet, PC, or even television after dark. I know that won’t be acceptable to most people, but it’s quite possible to at least reduce it to a fair extent.

• Use lamps in your room, rather than a bright, overhead light. A lamp gives a room a much more comfortable ambience anyway, particularly after dark, so this is easily do-able.

• Wear blue-blocking glasses, or orange glasses, after dark. They reduce the blue light and achieve the effect you’re looking for. NOTE: Not all orange glasses are the same – some have not been tested or rated as particularly effective.

A team of Swiss researchers investigated the use of blue-light-blocking glasses in the evening, and their conclusion was definitely in favour of blue-blockers:

“Blue blockers therefore can prevent those light responses which are not helpful in the evening hours when our body and mind has to prepare for sleep,” Vivien Bromundt, researcher at the Centre for Chronobiology at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel said.