A powerful way to improve your sleep latency is to strategically protect yourself from blue light at the right times of the day so that it doesn't sabotage the reset of your circadian clocks
Many of us love our modern day lighting and electronic devices. Impressively and unfortunately, the LED/OLED TVs, ipads, iphones, and new laptops emit blue light at the same wavelength as the sun.
In the evening your suprachiasmatic nucleus, the master circadian clock of the brain and 20,000 cells in your body, and the melanopsin cells in your eyes are very sensitive/easily stimulated blue light and bright light.
If blue light enters the eyes for 1+ hours after the sun sets it will likely reset your 24 hour clock as if it is morning. If this happens that means that your body will have its most energy and productivity for the next 8-12 hours, most of that you will be asleep for, resulting in about 4 hours after you wake up the next day your entire body will be winding down for bed, aka you will feel extremely tired and your productivity will plummet by lunch time. This then will make you seek high sugar foods and caffeine all afternoon to attempt to compensate for that sabotaging your health and likely your sleep quality the following night, thus we enter a vicious cycle of poor sleep quantity and quality.
It only takes 1,500 Lux to delay your melatonin release and ability to fall asleep by 1-2 hours.
The issue here being that you will likely not get the 7+ hours and get very little deep sleep missing out on all of the attractive benefits of terrific sleep and inducing the consequences of 1-2 days of sub-optimal sleep.
Just like looking directly at the sun damages our eyes, too much direct blue light exposure to our eyes throughout the day does the same. In the final 4 hours before you plan on going to sleep, too much blue light and bright light leads to even more consequences, like:
Eye Strain/visual fatigue/nearsightedness
Damages the cornea, retina, and lens
Sleep Disorders
Reduces Melatonin Production
Spikes stress hormones
Increases blood sugar levels
Increases blood pressure
Blunts Fat Burning
Increases Sugar Cravings
Reduces Muscle Recovery
Overeating
To show you some supporting research on how much blue light impacts your body’s release of melatonin, researchers measured over 100 healthy participants’ melatonin levels in their
blood every 30 minutes between 4pm until 8am the next day. They did this with them for 5 days in a row. They had people go about their normal day to day life in their houses with their house lights on, tvs, cell phones, etc. The participants were on average exposed to 60-130 lux (1 lux = 1 lumen of brightness covering a 3ft by 3ft surface of a room or your body). The participants who exposed themselves to 60+ lux from 4pm on weren't able to release enough melatonin to even have the ability to fall asleep until 11:30pm. They made enough melatonin to stay asleep until 7:30am.
Two weeks later they repeated the same procedure but this time they were required to not use blue light devices and had to shut off most of their lights and dim only a couple to the lowest setting. Doing this exposed the participants to a lux of 3 or less. The same participants released enough melatonin to fall asleep at 9:30pm (2 hours faster than before), and were able to sleep until 8:30am (1 hour longer).
You see that if you don't use any electronic devices, maximally dim/shut off most lights in the house after it gets dark, the harmful blue light can't enter your eyes and continuously signal to your genes that it is morning and the sun is up, you easily will be able to fall asleep by 9:30pm and potentially sleep one hour later or until your alarm goes off. That’s 3 extra hours of sleep per night where you will directly burn fat, make more fat burning hormones, make more energy hormones, and recover your muscles/brain optimally.
6 solutions that help you prevent modern day technology from sabotaging your sleep programming and take back control of your fat burning ability, remove sugar cravings, recover your muscles faster, and not overeat the next day:
Turn off any lights that you don't need on
Install dimmer switches to as many switches as possible so you can dim them down to the lowest setting. Check the lux levels with the light meter app.
Dim the brightness of all of your devices as low as possible but you can still see what you're doing.
It doesn't take long to sabotage your body, eyes, and sleep from blue light, so I recommend extra protection at these times of the day:
Wear these blue light blocking glasses when exposed to screens and LED lights while working. Use discount code LSF10 to save 10%
Wear these blue light blocking glasses when exposed to screens and LED lights at home in the evening. Use discount code LSF10 to save 10%
If you use a laptop or desktop computer I’d recommend you download Iris or f.lux. This software can be programmed to emit whatever percentage of blue light you want at different times of the day.
Next Steps
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References
Panda, S. (2018) The circadian code: Lose weight, supercharge your energy, and sleep well every night. London: Vermilion
Zhao, Z. C., Zhou, Y., Tan, G., & Li, J. (2018). Research progress about the effect and prevention of blue light on eyes. International journal of ophthalmology, 11(12), 1999–2003. https://doi.org/10.18240/ijo.2018.12.20.