Put That Smartphone Away! It Could be Messing With Your Sleep

Limited exposure to natural light during the day and over-exposure to artificial lighting from your tablets, smartphones and e-readers during the night can mess with your sleep cycle and have some serious health implications. The research conducted by Richard Stevens, cancer epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut and Yong Zhu from Yale University explained the known short-term and suspected long-term impacts of circadian disruption. Their study was published in the 'British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B'. According to Stevens, "It's become clear that typical lighting is affecting our physiology. We don't know for certain, but there's growing evidence that the long-term implications of this have ties to breast cancer, obesity, diabetes, depression, and possibly other form of cancers." Those devices emit enough blue light when used in the evening to suppress the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and disrupt the body's circadian rhythm, the biological mechanism that enables restful sleep. "But lighting can be improved. We're learning that better lighting can reduce these physiological effects. By that we mean dimmer and longer wavelengths in the evening, and avoiding the bright blue of e-readers, tablets and smart phones," Steven added. "It's a new analysis and synthesis of what we know up to now on the effect of lighting on our health. We don't know for certain, but there's growing evidence that the long-term implications of this have ties to breast cancer, obesity, diabetes, and depression, and possibly other cancers" said Stevens. As smartphones and tablets become more commonplace, Stevens recommends a general awareness of how the type of light emitted from these devices affects our biology. He said a recent study comparing people who used e-readers to those who read old-fashioned books in the evening showed a clear difference - the e-readers showed delayed melatonin onset. "It's about how much light you're getting in the evening," Stevens said. "It doesn't mean you have to turn all the lights off at 8 every night, it just means if you have a choice between an e-reader and a book, the book is less disruptive to your body clock. At night, the better, more circadian-friendly light is dimmer and, believe it or not, redder, like an incandescent bulb." said Stevens.