Night digital screen time and Extinct Good Night Sleep

Nisarg Joshi

LED, Light Pollution, Media

ipad-night-reading-1

If I tell you (and I did convey in past) that artificial light is killing us like slow poison, many of you, will call be primitive or fanatic 😀.

Well, here is the report from trusted sources from science.

Craze for smart phones, late night working, e-readers etc – read the consequences here. Wake up before it is too late. (Y)

Oh yes, if you are giving smart phones to kids for game playing! STOP it NOW! At least stop now!

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Use of a light-emitting electronic book (LE-eBook) in the hours before bedtime can adversely impact overall health, alertness and the circadian clock, which synchronizes the daily rhythm of sleep to external environmental time cues, according to Harvard Medical School researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.


Research


E-Readers Foil Good Night’s Sleep

Light-emitting electronic devices keep readers awake longer than old-fashioned print

http://hms.harvard.edu/news/e-readers-foil-good-nights-sleep

Use of a light-emitting electronic book (LE-eBook) in the hours before bedtime can adversely impact overall health, alertness and the circadian clock, which synchronizes the daily rhythm of sleep to external environmental time cues, according to Harvard Medical School researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. These findings of the study that compared the biological effects of reading an LE-eBook to a printed book are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on December 22, 2014.

“We found the body’s natural circadian rhythms were interrupted by the short-wavelength enriched light, otherwise known as blue light, from these electronic devices,” said Anne-Marie Chang, corresponding author and associate neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. “Participants reading an LE-eBook took longer to fall asleep and had reduced evening sleepiness, reduced melatonin secretion, later timing of their circadian clock and reduced next-morning alertness than when reading a printed book.”

Previous research has shown that blue light suppresses melatonin, impacts the circadian clock and increases alertness, but little was known about the effects of this popular technology on sleep. The use of light-emitting devices immediately before bedtime is a concern because of the extremely powerful effect that light has on the body’s natural sleep/wake pattern and how that may play a role in perpetuating sleep deficiency.

 

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