Sleep Tip: Avoid Blue Light (from Cfls, Tvs, Cellphones Etc.)

[Don]

Incandescent lighting's no problem but if your evening lighting includes fluorescents, CFLs, LEDs or you're using your PC, a newer TV or Tablet, cellphone etc., your eyes are receiving a fair amount of 'blue' (mid-day Sun like) light. And it's the blue component of lighting that's the cue for our body to suppress our body's melatonin production. Early morning and late evening Sunshine lack much blue lighting as that's filtered out through the low angle of sunshine passing through a lot more atmosphere (& smog).

Sleep tip: stick with incandescent lighting only for the last couple of hours before bedtime (or, wear yellow tinted glasses, -- I wear glasses already, so have a couple of pairs of pale yellow tinted insert style wraparound sunglasses I wear in the evening). That's worked very well for me, my sleep's much deeper.

Don

 

[shimmerz]

There is a program I put on my PC called f.lux. It was very helpful for me. It is free as I recall.

 

[NarcSis]

I use a blue bulb in my nightlight because it doesn't disrupt my night vision, is that also included as a no-no? It's not LED, just a standard nightlight bulb in light blue...

 

[joeylittle]

@Medic72 - it shouldn't be a problem, assuming it's an incandescent bulb. 'Blue' refers to the spectrum associated with the color blue, and it burns very bright and hot - but not in significant enough concentration in incandescent bulbs. The warning is more pertinent to light emitted from screens, which will not seem blue necessarily, but is in that part of the spectrum that is bright/hot enough to cause damage.

 

[Don]

Incandescent lights don't burn hot enough to generate blue light that's bothersome (and they're getting harder to find: eg. in Canada, 100watt, and 60watt bulbs are no longer readily available beyond existing shelf stock, 40watt and 25watt bulbs will soon follow I expect). A blue coating on an incandescent bulb ought to be no problem at all.

If you're in a darkened room with a CFL bulb as the main light source, you can readily check to see that the yellow tinted plastic is actually filtering out the blue component of the spectrum, see (hmm, my post count's too low now for link posting). Well anyway, if you use a DVD or CD surface angled
so you're seeing the rainbow spectrum from a CFL, you can compare with and without the tinted sunglasses to see if the blue/violet component is being blocked [Dr. Jack Kline's forum provided that test description].

I've tried the flux PC program which is fine if your only non-incandescent light source is the PC and you're content to keep regular hours. I found I kept having to over ride it as my sleep habits and schedule varied. It would be more useful if you could manually start it a couple of hours before bedtime but it works rigidly on your calculated local sunset time. If you work in the evening mostly, then in the winter it's on all the time, an odd light balance which I found distracting. Since my PC room lighting's flourescent, that needs to be off if I'm just relying on flux software. But then with just my PC as a light source, that was tiring my eyes, and flux software doesn't address the rest of my home's (CFL) bulb lighting or TV use.

Wearing yellow tinted sunglasses proved just so much simpler in practice for me.

 

[StarChild]

Thank you for the tip dear @shimmerz; I installed the software you mentioned right away, yesterday. And it really helped me a great deal! I fell asleep at about 2 o'clock a.m. instead of being awake until 7 a.m. or even more late.

It would be more useful if you could manually start it a couple of hours before bedtime but it works rigidly on your calculated local sunset time

Hi @Don, you actually can change the settings manually at any time you want. And it doesn't matter if it's the night or the day settings.As I changed my (for me) much to bright day settings down to 2700K. :tup:

 

[Don]

@TreeHugger >Hi @Don, you actually can change the settings manually at any time you want.

Well, I was over riding it manually every time, as my local time zone's sunset hour did not synch with my PC viewing habits. Is there a setting for bypassing it locking into your PC's time zone so you can choose your own sunset start time for it to start automatically every day thereafter at your preferred time?

I couldn't find such a setting which would be quite useful (not for me, as the rest of my room lighting's got blue light from fluorescents and CFLs, and once those are off I'm tiring my eyes looking at my PC as a single light source, but other readers might have a PC in a room with incandescent lighting). ((I added a pic demonstrating yellow filter testing using a CFL bulb to my profile's media gallery, was not able to figure out how to post that here))