Here’s a doctor’s note for you to get an extra full hour of sleep at night: put smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets on automatic “bedtime mode.”
Professor Paul Gringras, member of a research team from the Evelina Children’s Hospital and other institutions in the United Kingdom, proposed that the mentioned setting will reduce exposure to screens' blue light - the brightness that delays the body clock and keeps us from getting the sleep we need.
Writing in the journal Frontiers in Public Health, the researchers warned against the trend for electronic devices with bigger and brighter screens that maintain more blue light emissions and higher contrast levels.
Those on the blue-green side of the light spectrum disrupt the production of melatonin. Also known as the sleep hormone, melatonin is naturally produced as it gets darker in the evening.
Gringras said that while brighter screens are great for for daytime, they are “awful” for evening use.
"There is converging data to say if you are in front of one of these devices at night-time it could prevent you falling asleep by an extra hour," said the children’s sleep medicine professor.
To help mitigate blue light exposure at night, he proposed a bedtime mode that can effectively filter out blue light, as well as sleep-aware applications designed for reducing blue-green light emissions. Android-based app F.lux, for instance, can adjust the color of a computer display based on time of day and location, which may promote better sleep.
The doctor urged for more responsibility from manufacturers and to use automation in this cause. “They're fun devices but we do need some protection on what they do at night-time," he said of these smartphones and tablets.
A separate study in the UK found that school children as young as age 12 routinely wake up at night to check their social media accounts. One in five teens said they “almost always” woke up during the night to check or post messages, while over half of them reported “almost always” going to school tired.
Regular sleep deprivation is believed to lead to serious medical risks, such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Here are some tips to stop checking one’s phone in the night:
• Set a limit each night for checking emails and social media before you proceed with your bedtime routine.
• Put your phone on flight mode before hitting the sack. Leave your landline number to family and loved ones for emergencies.
• Avoid bringing your phone into the bedroom, such as the bedside table or under the pillow where the temptation to use the gadget presents itself.
• Use an old-school alarm clock, making sure to keep it out of sight and avoiding checking the time in case you wake during the night.
Photo: Japanexperterna.se | Flickr
