The Secret to Better Sleep

Friends and clients repeatedly ask me how they can improve their sleep for better energy. I have offered pat answers, gleaned from articles and books, and now want to give more concrete answers and explanations than those answers have offered. The one shared suggestion that has been most resisted is the one to turn off your technology — specifically, your blue-light-emitting technology— a “few hours” before bed. Both professional and personal advice for what a few hours means ranges from 90 minutes to three hours.

Blue-light-emitting technology includes TVs, computers, tablets, and smartphones. But those are the parts of our lives we rely on for work, entertainment, communication, and general relaxation! You may wonder how you can put any of those down one and one-half to three hours before bed. Without those devices, what will you do to relax and have fun? That explains a lot of the resistance — those light sources are so pervasive in your life it’s hard to imagine an evening without our tools. I mean, how could something we love and use so much be bad for our sleep?

When I started researching why blue light was a problem, I hoped to find a bit more science than I already knew about the issue. I found that, and more. There isn’t one issue at stake here, there are two issues related to sleep, and one surprise issue.

First, be clear that my research took me through myriad articles. This shared information is from details at Harvard Health and Scientific American, from studies at National Institute of Health (NIH), as well as reports publish in the Washington Post about research being conducted by a wide range of scientists and doctors.

The consensus from all this research is that blue light impacts your sleep quality and quantity. Yep, quantity too.

It makes sense, when you understand the science, why both quantity and quality are impacted. The blue light wavelength is essentially daytime light. That’s a great wavelength for the daytime. In fact, it’s such a great wavelength it’s being used to treat depression, and sleeping and eating disorders. It might even be able to help problems arising from shift work and jet lag, as well as a treatment for age-related dementia.

The problem with blue light comes about when you introduce daytime-associated wavelengths to your evenings and nights. The blue light from these gadgets fools your brain into thinking it’s still mid-day and thus delays the onset of sleep, decreases the amount of REM sleep (rapid eye movement, the sleep of dreams), and increases your alertness — and all of that means you don’t fall asleep quickly, are sleepier when you wake up, and are slower to wake up.

Circadian rhythms (your internal clock and daily rhythms) are impacted by the changing light patterns, as happens when you use light-emitting equipment as much as our society encourages. Your circadian rhythm controls the timing of physiological processes like sleeping and feeding patterns (it suppresses the internal clock to think it’s later than it is), brain activity, blood pressure, body temperature, hormone, and cell regeneration — the processes of a healthy life. Those processes also impact the quality and quantity of your sleep.

The signals that keep your internal clock adjusted are the natural flow of daylight and darkness. Daylight, the short-wave of blue light, helps you stay alert, improves your performance, and lifts your mood. It does that in part by inhibiting your melatonin production. As light’s wavelengths lengthen and dark comes on, you start to relax, and the pineal gland’s melatonin production increases, signaling sleep.

One treasure I’ll highlight from this physiological fact is that if you get outdoors during the day you’ll get a healthy dose of sunlight and fresh air, which are good for your day-time energy levels, but also are good for your good night’s sleep. Getting that flow of day to night and back to day gives you a natural flow of healthy melatonin production, and then inhibition, and then production again. That natural flow is part of the formula for a good night’s sleep of seven to eight hours (quantity) of healthy sleep (quality).

Melatonin is more than just the “sleep hormone”. It’s a powerful antioxidant, supporting healthy body systems by boosting your immune system. Part the power of melatonin’s antioxidant quality contributes to anti-aging because it neutralizes oxidative radicals, repairing your body while you sleep.

While the pineal gland is the primary gland associated with melatonin production, the hypothalamus is also involved. It receives signals about light (that cycle of light and dark) from special photo-receptor cells in the retina. The translation of those signals is then transmitted to the pineal gland. It’s a whole-body affair to get your sleep quality and quantity to come together for a great night’s sleep because so many organs are involved in the production of melatonin, not just two mentioned.

Another important factor impacting your sleep is the proximity of the light source to your eyes. The extent to you which you are engaged and how much your brain activity increases, something that should be decreasing towards bedtime for better sleep, impacts your sleep. The closer the source to your eyes (and brain), the more engaged your brain is and thus the less melatonin is created. Both quantity and quality of sleep are impinged when your gizmos have too close proximity.

That’s a lot going against the use of your TV, computer, tablet, and smartphone before bed, assuming you want a good night’s sleep.

Here’s the surprise finding about blue light in your life: it impacts your health, starting with your eyes and proceeding to the rest of your body. That’s not good for your energy levels, even if your sleep wasn’t affected.

Blue light is being associated with obesity, cancer (especially breast and prostate), diabetes, metabolic syndrome, depression and other mental disorders, heart disease, and an increased risk of accidents. Over time, exposure to the blue end of the light spectrum could damage your eyes too. Ultraviolet (UV) light can lead to cataracts. Blue/violet light has been connected to age-related macular degeneration. Blue/turquoise light is associated with the sleep/wake cycle and memory. Blue light, in general, is also increasingly being associated with eye strain and thus mental and physical fatigue. All this seemingly bad news makes me think we should move back into our caves!

What is the solution to keeping that ubiquitous blue-light-emitting technology in our lives and getting a good night’s sleep? The solution is multi-pronged, and simple. While the solution is simple, you still might resist the change.

First, you can altogether turn your gadgets off as you sit down to dinner and enjoy the human interaction of others for the balance of the evening. You could also use the evening to take a stroll “through the neighborhood” and read a paper book or magazine. A board game or two might fill the evening. Evening is a nice time to have an end-of-day meditation. Classic music could fill your home as a way to unwind and relax too.

Your evening could become a time to pick up a hobby or craft project that seems to have been put aside in favor of technological entertainment. Maybe, sitting on the porch swing watching the night sky come into its own glory could become your new nighttime activity.

Looking for a keep-my-technology solution? That’s what I wanted, at least for some nights. Watching TV is low on my priority list, so that is easy for me to drop from my evening. When I want TV watching, early evening is my preference.

You can get computer and phone apps that change the screen emissions form blue to yellow/orange. I use f.lux on my computer and Twilight on my phone. Ironically, I had another solution already in place for my night reading: the Kindle app lets me have a black screen with white letters. My husband had started doing that because he found eye-strain to be reduced. I adopted that because when I read at night to put me back to sleep, the black screen emits less light that could awaken him.

There are also various kinds of glasses and filters you can put over your eyes or light sources that cut out the blue light. That approach may work better for you than the previous solutions.

To summarize, by avoiding blue-light-emitting devices a few hours before bed you are more likely to get to bed on time, contributing to a healthy quantity of sleep. You’ll also be relaxed, have an increasing amount of melatonin building in your system, and have a mind that’s unwinding from the day, contributing to a healthy quality of sleep. Additionally you’ll have a healthier body and stronger eyes, making for an energized day that gets you ready for a lovely night’s sleep.

To get a good night’s sleep — of quality and quantity — turn off your technology two-ish hours prior to bedtime. If you aren’t willing to take that big a step, at least convert your blue-light-emitting technology into yellow-light-emitting technology with apps or glasses and filters. You owe it to your energized life to take action on getting better sleep.