By We’ve all been members of the well-known “Team Insomnia”; some of us are more frequent members than others. But is Team Insomnia really suffering from insomnia, or are we just giving an excuse and blaming it on a condition that we have little or no knowledge of at all?
Well, here’s the answer: Your smartphone is the reason you stay up late. That’s obvious, you might say, but no, it doesn’t keep you awake until those ungodly hours because you’re going through your Twitter timeline or you’re busy double-tapping and stalking your crush on Instagram. It keeps you awake because your screen is emitting too much ‘blue light,’ which causes the inability to sleep and makes you in some way, “hyperactive.”
Studies have shown that people who use their smartphones a couple of hours before sleep are delayed by about one hour. Now imagine how many hours we delay our sleep in one week and what this can do to our sleep cycle.
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The cause of this is the photoreceptor in your eyes, called Melanopsin, which is sensitive to a narrow band of blue light; an increase in this band of blue light may suppress Melatonin production – a hormone responsible for your healthy sleep-wake cycles, causing you to stay up longer than you should.
The solution is to lower the amount of this blue light, and it is as simple as using the inbuilt blue light filter on your smartphone or downloading a third-party app. One of my personal best apps for this is ‘Twilight,’ which is available on both Android and iOS. For those who stay up using their PCs or MACs, try ‘f.lux.’
I’m a victim of this,nice article.